3 Simple Exercises that Develop Your Intuition
/Expanding your intuition means expanding your imagination. As writers we don’t just “make stuff up,” we get to the truth or the heart of the matter. We’re able to see and sense things that everyone else overlooks. That’s intuition.
Over the past few years, I’ve polished and developed my own intuitive skills quite a bit to bring subjects such as synchronicity, clairvoyance and even working with muses into my own writing. And yet, the more I learn, the more I realize, we use this stuff all the time without realizing it. Here are three fun exercises that will not only open up your intuition but your imagination, curiosity and awareness of the mystical world around you.
1. Can you sense what you can’t see?
Everybody senses things they can’t see, from your partner’s mood to the right time to ask for the car keys as a teenager. If you don’t quite trust your intuition yet, don’t worry! It gets better with practice. Just go through these questions and reflect, how often are you relying on your intuition to answer everyday questions. How much do you trust your intuitive abilities? Are you confident or does it feel like you’re reaching for stuff you can’t quite grasp? Can tell the difference between what you can trust and what you can’t?
As you go through this list you might even rate your abilities on a scale of 1-5 and choose where you want to improve. The further down we go, the more you’ll have to stretch.
Emotional Intelligence: Can you sense the moods of people you care about? Does somebody have to tell you they just went through a breakup or they had a bad day at work, or can you just tell? How much do you know before they say anything? How much is based on prior knowledge and how much can you sense?
Decisions: Do you get a gut instinct about decisions? When you make a decision, how do you evaluate? Do you look outside of yourself or inside yourself more? Can you tell when someone is lying to you or if information you’ve been given isn’t accurate? How do you know?
Spaces: When you walk into a room, can you sense the energy of the people in it (bored, tense, exuberant, etc.)? When you walk into someone’s house, do you get a sense of their lives? Have you ever walked into an empty room and had a feeling that something had just happened there? Have you ever gone to a place and felt you knew something about it, couldn’t say exactly how?
Friends and Relatives: Have you ever gotten a call from someone right when you were thinking of them? Have you had the sudden feeling like something might be wrong with someone you love and decided to check in on them? Did it end up being paranoia or was it accurate? Do you ever get quiet and sense on your connection to your son, daughter, sibling or twin to see if they’re okay? Have you ever felt a strong connection to a loved one before they were born or after they died? Can you put the connection into words? What specifically could you sense?
Synchronicities: Do you experience a lot of unlikely coincidences that would be difficult to chalk up to mere chance? Have you ever been the conduit of synchronicities for others, by knowing just what they needed to hear, or giving them something they really needed at just the right moment? Are you ever a conduit of synchronicities for people you’ve never met?
Now, let’s have some fun with this as writers. Sit in a park or café and go people watching. How much can you sense about people you’ve never even met? Stretch yourself and try to sense things you couldn’t possibly know. How does it feel? Do you trust your ability to read people or are you just making stuff up? Remember, either way is fine, we’re all writers here.
2. Calisthenics for your Consciousness
Sit down and close your eyes. Draw all of your attention into the center of the head. It might feel like you’re a little dot in the center of your head. Now, try stretching that dot like liquid into your ear, so that you still have your attention behind your eyes, but you can feel the nerves in your ear as well. Now, jump over into your ear, so you’re just hanging out over there and nowhere else. Try jumping around to different places in your body, such as your hand, your belly or your foot. Then slide your awareness back up to the center of your head, making a path from wherever you jumped to all the way to that dot behind your eyes. Now leak your awareness all through your body. How much of yourself can you feel all at once?
Open your eyes. After doing that fun little experiment, what general questions come up for you? If you can move your awareness around in your body, what is that awareness? Who are you? Where are you? What are you? You don’t need to know all the answers just jot down any thoughts.
Close your eyes again. What can you let go of? If you can go back to that playful sense of yourself in the center of your head, what can you let go of? Is there any tension you feel in your body? Is that you? Are there any unwanted sensations you feel ready to let go of that are hanging out beneath your skin?
Keep your eyes closed and imagine a tree trunk connecting you down to the earth. Feel a sense of safety like you’re really grounded. Now let any unwanted emotions or thoughts fall down that tree trunk, like stones.
Once you’re finished with that, open your eyes again. As you go about your day, notice “where” you are inside yourself. Do you ever become completely absorbed in what you’re doing? (That’s often considered a state of flow.) Do you ever get lost in your thoughts? (That’s actually not particularly creative.) Do you ever jump around in time? Do you find yourself completely locked up in the past or future? How often during the day do you actually feel yourself inside your body?
3. Ask.
If you want help, you have to ask. Easier said than done. How often do we NOT ask for something because we feel like we’ve got to do everything ourselves, or we’re afraid of being disappointed or rejected, or we don’t want to be a burden. Reflect for a moment on how easy it is for you to ask for help in life, because these same issues will come up when you ask for spiritual guidance through prayer or any other method. So as you move into this exercise, make sure you’re ready to receive help.
The first step in asking is coming up with the question, There might be a big question at the center of your book about love, or health, or life, or death, like “How do we fall in love again after a heartbreak?” Or there might be smaller questions, like “How do I begin this chapter?” or “What does this character really want?” There can also be logistical questions around money, or time, or promotions or anything else that needs to be figured out for you to be successful.
Then you have to surrender the question. This is the part to have fun. Feel free to try any of the methods I use:
Surrender it in a ritualistic way, like writing it down and putting it in a box and paying attention to what answers arise over a period of time.
Surrender your question to a book by opening it to a random page and seeing what wisdom is there.
Surrender your question to a card reading. There are so many fun card decks coming out lately, I just picked up a deck by Julia Cameron.
Surrender your question to a walk, where you offer it up and listen for answers.
Surrender your question to channel writing, where ask for wisdom on the subject to come through your pen.
Surrender your question to meditation. A few times recently, I’ve gone into meditation with a certain conundrum, and during the meditation, I’ll nod off into a dream state where I’ll get really interesting perspectives on the questions I have.
The funny thing about intuition is the less seriously you take yourself, the more accurate your findings. Play around with any of these tricks and let the results surprise you.