My first gut reaction to my first husband was stay away from him. I listened to that in the beginning but then over several months of randomly meeting at many events, it was obvious that we had many similar interests.  So that logic and my emotions eventually overtook that first impression. It was a decision that I’d have to pay an extremely high price for later in life after an abusive marriage, discovering that he had lied to me from the very beginning of our relationship.

Why is it that we don’t always trust our intuition or listen to ourselves? I believe our bodies give us messages all the time. Unfortunately, the majority of us are not taught or trained to listen well. This is a tragedy! Tuning into our bodies and learning the various ways we get messages should be a standard lesson growing up.

I recall reading a study about Native Americans that were recruited to the Army specifically for their strong intuitive feelings and almost supernatural tracking abilities. However, as the first groups went through their boot camps, they got the standard short military haircuts like everyone else. It turned out that they lost a lot of their intuitive abilities and did not perform as expected. When the commanders were able to make that connection, they let the next round of recruits keep their long hair and they turned out to be some of the best soldiers and trackers they had. Apparently, their long hair gave them signals of danger far in advance from when their hair was cut.  Your hair may just be an antenna for your intuition!

This study is interesting when you consider how we always cut our hair and all the products that most women use as well! Is it possible that it is affecting our intuitive abilities as well?

There are four key channels of intuitive communication that we can receive:

• Clairaudience: this is the ability to hear messages. This can be from external sources such as a message via a song you hear on the radio. Or you can hear audible messages within your mind.
• Clairvoyance: this is the ability to see or have visions within your mind. You may suddenly get an image in your mind that is important. Or you may have strong messages come through in dreams.
• Clairsentience: this is the ability to feel into information. For example, getting goose bumps when you hear something that is truth or the hairs on the back of your neck rising up. You are getting some clear message that should have your attention.
• Claircognizance: this is the ability to know, to have a deep inner knowing. Most often, this is when you just know and you don’t know why you know something. You don’t have any facts to back up your understanding of something other than a deep feeling that it is what you know to be true.

Our bodies are amazing. They tell us so much all of the time. We need to learn to understand just how we receive messages and get in tune with our own system. The more we talk about this, the more we can learn from each other.

Over the years, I’ve learned that my strongest ways of tapping into my intuition are through clairvoyance, claircognizance and clairsentience. I will often get an image in my mind—such as a face of someone I should contact, and I reach out to that person. I also have had many experiences with a deep inner knowing that something was true.  And I have become aware that when I hear something that is truth, I often get a wave of goose bumps (I call them spirit shivers) going down my spine and spreading down my arms.

I’ve heard a story of a very savvy investor who would make his final investment decisions based on how his leg felt. Of course, he analyzed the numbers and did his research, but the final choice came after he would tune into his body.

I like to say, lead with your heart and take your brain with you! We need both the logical and the emotional to make wise decisions. And it is great if we can listen to our intuition as well.

Learn how you get messages, which channels are the strongest for you, and start to listen and actively work with your intuition. And most importantly, learn to trust in yourself.  You are wiser than you may think!

When you start aligning and tapping into your intuition, life may just start to unfold in magical ways for you!