Self-care is important in ensuring that we live the healthiest life possible, and self-care starts with intuition.
Intuition is an instinctive response that comes without any logical or rational thinking behind it. It is that feeling that you get when you instinctively ‘know’.
We are all born with intuition, but some people choose to ignore this in favour of ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ thinking.
It is never too late to embrace your intuition and the sooner we learn to develop and nurture our intuitive insight, the more in-tune with our bodies we become. We learn to know what is wrong and what to do to heal ourselves.
There are 8 key qualities that support the development of strong intuitive insight and by embracing these your intuition will flourish and grow.
Empathy
Many people find it hard to distinguish empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, without feeling pity for that person.
When you feel pity you are experiencing sympathy, an entirely different emotion. Sympathy can involve you getting dragged into someone else’s drama, whereas looking at it with empathy means looking at it from an outside perspective.
There are many ways to maintain empathy, including a prayer of protection, surrounding yourself in white light and using aromatherapy, just to name a few.
Find something that works for you and use this technique anytime you feel you are getting sucked into someone else’s crisis.
When someone is in crisis, we often feel the need to ‘rescue’ him or her. It is important that you take a step back and realise that it is not your responsibility to save them.
This is their journey. As a friend, be empathetic and ASK if that person would like advice. Often they would just prefer someone listening to them.
Discernment
Discernment is the ability to determine the value and quality of a subject or event. More particularly, it is the ability to look beyond the physical view and make a detailed judgment about that “thing”.
In relation to a virtue or quality of your personality, if you are a discerning individual, you are considered to possess wisdom and good judgment.
Always hold in your heart the best of intentions when you make a choice and through experience and choices you will become wise and learn good judgment.
It is important for you to discern with wisdom and demonstrate good judgment when using your intuition. When you don’t know something, say so and don’t guess.
This could happen initially while you are developing your intuition. Take some time to really listen to your intuition as it can be fleeting.
Compassion
When you feel compassion for others, you experience pity and a strong desire to help them. In order to not be pulled into their drama (as discussed above) it is important to first determine if the person in crisis actually wants to be relieved of their suffering.
Sometimes people like to hold on to their drama for any number of reasons – attention, lack of strength in dealing with the problem or even because they are in their comfort zone.
This is very hard when we really want to help someone because we can see the effect it is having on him or her.
Strength
There are 5 types of strengths we need to possess to develop our intuitive insight:
Energetic strength refers to the reservoir of strength we have deep within the core of our being. This is the strength we use everyday and to get through tough situations.
It is important to keep this reservoir topped up at all times, balancing what goes out with what comes in. If you don’t maintain this balance, you can make yourself very sick.
Physical strength and stamina comes from moving your body. Make sure you engage in regular exercise to keep your body in a healthy condition. Pilates, gym workouts, organised sport and even regular walking will help maintain your physical strength and stamina.
Tough love involves making a decision that is in your best interests but is not something you would initially choose to do. This could involve making some sort of sacrifice in order to maintain your health or state of wellbeing.
Often these decisions are made by others on our behalf, because we are not looking after ourselves or making the best choices. Instead of getting angry, try to look at the situation from the other person’s perspective.
Look deep into their heart and you will see it is coming from a place of love for you and this will diffuse the anger.
Boundaries are essential in maintaining our energy and intuition. Without boundaries we are at risk of having our energy taken from us by others.
In Order To Maintain Your Boundaries, You Need To:
• Know who you are and maintain your unique identity in all relationships.
• Make sure you have alone time and refill your energy reservoir regularly.
• Say NO when you want to, rather than saying YES just to please someone else.
• Only give out the energy you have the capacity to give.
• Be fully present in all activities.
Intuition
Develop your intuition by first being willing to connect to your feeling body. When you do this, your intuitive response will come without you having to think about it. This is your authentic knowing – where at a cellular level your body gives you the answer.
Take some time to develop your intuition by observing the tangible signs. These signs are different for everybody but could include a tingling sensation, goose bumps, hairs standing on end or a feeling in your solar plexus.
To develop this intuition further, do exercises that strengthen the connection between the left and right halves of the brain.
For example you could draw (or copy) something with your dominant hand and then replicate this with your non-dominant hand.
When you do this, the left side of your brain is concentrating so hard on the drawing that it has no time for ego chatter, allowing your intuition to come in.
Trust
Once you have developed your intuition you need to learn to trust it. Often this is a struggle, as you need to choose between the left-brain thinking option and the intuitive option.
This is where your tangible sign comes in, and you will learn to choose the intuitive option when your tangible sign is activated. It helps to make a note of your choices and to look back and see the outcome.
Ethics
Living with ethics can be seen as living to your highest values. This could entail honesty, integrity and doing no harm, as well as any other values deeply important to you.
It is important to not punish yourself if you don’t always live to your ethics because this can be very harmful. Take some time to think about why you acted the way you did and think about how you can make a different decision next time.
Authentic
When you live an authentic life, you know your core values and live to these values. By identifying the top 5 values in your life, you will be able to more easily make decisions that correlate with your authentic self.
Every time you make a decision, ask if the answer matches with your 5 core values and if it doesn’t, take some time to rethink it.
Authentic people know who they are and are themselves, always. They don’t change to be what others want them to be.
By living this way your authentic vibration attracts people who resonate with your beliefs and inherent qualities.
To sum up, we all have the ability to intuitively find the root cause of all disease and by understanding these key qualities you will be able to better develop the intuition to do that.
The gift of intuition is the birth right of every man and woman and it lies hidden within you just waiting to be awakened. The secret to bringing your gifts into consciousness is to take action.
You can find much more information on living a holistic lifestyle in these free magazines and on our YouTube channel.
Julie Lewin – Medical Intuitive
