When developing the intuition, we are focusing on developing sensitivity and attunement to the profound and subtle energy flows occurring around us in both our external environment and within our physical and energetic bodies.
The five senses of the physical body—touching, tasting, hearing, smelling, and seeing—are the information gatherers for the brain. They are its antennae. The brain, though situated within the skull, is connected to the entire physical body through a complex system of nerves which never cease relaying information back to the brain.
The mind, conscious awareness, exists throughout the entire body, within every cell of the body. Every second, huge amounts of sensory information are gathered by the five primary senses and travel to a section of the brain known as the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is like a vast, centralized computer. It analyzes and deciphers the information it receives and decides what to do with the sensory input it has sorted.
Some information is sent to the section of your brain that brings sensory input to your conscious awareness. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, you get a message, very quickly and very consciously, to remove your hand from the heat. However, most of the information (approximately 95 percent) is transferred to your unconscious mind. Your physical body responds physiologically to this sensory input, often without registering on a conscious level. If your brain receives sensory information it considers threatening to your well-being, it directs the hypothalamus to alert the pituitary gland (the master gland of the body). This gland directs the adrenal glands to secrete hormones (glandular substances) that help your body cope with the threatening situation by fighting, running away, or freezing (becoming paralyzed by fear). This function is known as the “fight or flight” mechanism. Its purpose is simply to ensure your survival in life-threatening situations. When the fight or flight mechanism is activated, other body functions are temporarily suppressed. Once the threatening situation has been resolved, normal physiological balance is restored.
The hypothalamus cannot readily discern the difference between a real threat, a remembered threat, or an imagined possible future threat to your life. Close your eyes and imagine you are precariously balanced on the outside windowledge of a building, on the twelfth floor. The window is closed; the ledge is narrow; the wind is gusty and blowing hard. Your body will physiologically adapt itself to protect you from possible death. This happens even though, in reality, you are sitting in a comfortable armchair imagining this scenario in your mind. What is perceived by an individual in life as threatening depends largely on cultural and family conditioning, as well as on personal life experience. If a person thinks a situation is threatening, it becomes threatening in his or her imagination and the body reacts accordingly.
Only a limited amount of information can be stored and accessed in the conscious mind at one time, so most of the memories and accumulated experiences of life are stored in the unconscious mind. The hypothalamus refers to this accumulated experience stored in its computer banks in order to decide how to direct the body to respond to any given situation. The directions it gives depend largely on the habitual reactions you have programmed in your brain.
A habit is simply the same decision made over and over again. You have learned to survive many threatening situations in your life, so this process has functioned successfully for you on many occasions. However, there are many instances when a habitual reaction is, in fact, not the most useful choice in a situation, or the one apt to bring about the best possible outcome. If you are habitually fearful, anxious, or threatened—on a conscious or unconscious level, either by real or imagined situations—the fight or flight mechanism will be triggered in your body and your sensory input channels will be temporarily suppressed. If your senses are not gathering information reliably, you cannot accurately perceive what is happening around you, because, at that moment, you are preoccupied with survival issues and are not at all concerned with subtle exterior events occur-ring within your vicinity.
Your intuition relies on the balanced and regular functioning of your senses to operate and bring you conscious awareness of events occurring around and within you. If you are in a state of fear, if your body/mind is tense and unreceptive because you are engaged in the survival tactics of fighting, freezing, or fleeing, your intuition cannot function. The intuition can only be fully functional when you are relaxed—when you feel safe, secure, and trusting of the environment surrounding you. When you feel safe, the muscular system of the body can relax and the mind (awareness) can operate in a state of relaxed alertness. When you are relaxed, the body functions in a state of homeostasis, a state of balance. When you are in a state of balance within yourself, you naturally feel safe and secure. When you feel safe, you can allow yourself to be vulnerable, available, and open to your internal and external environments.
In intuition development, it is essential to learn to relax and be available, so that your intuition can begin to function for you. Habitual fear-reaction patterns must be addressed, diffused, and resolved, so that an inner state of relaxed alertness becomes a preferred habitual way of life.
Intuition development teaches breathing, grounding, and centering techniques you can use in daily life to maintain a state of relaxed awareness. In this state, your senses can be fully open to receive the complete range of sensory information occurring all around you. When you feel clearly, hear clearly, and see clearly, you will naturally maintain a greater equilibrium in yourself and in your interactions with others.
Gaining control over the chronic activation of the fight or flight mechanism of the body requires self-monitoring and an awareness of inner thought patterns and habits. Self-awareness is an acquired habit, developed over time by personal choice and self-investigation. To be self-aware, you must be willing to be honest with yourself and accept responsibility for your own personal growth. From a position of personal responsibility, it is possible to assume full creative control of your health, your state of mind, and your sense of well-being.
Your intuition is a subtle, delicate, and very powerful aspect of your being that requires a very specific environment in which to function optimally. Your physical body is the environment through which the intuition integrates your experiences in life. For this reason, the state of the body/mind must be fully addressed and transformed for you to obtain the best results from developing your intuition.