Intuition or your inner voice, is there to support you in moving toward your highest good. While symptoms are just one way your body speaks to you, there are many other ways your body or your life could speak to you – and many ways to develop your intuition.
Additionally, each person is different when it comes to how they get these signals.
Here are 8 Ways Your Inner Guidance May Signal You
You should always be listening for what your body wants.
1. Feelings
Some people refer to them as “gut feelings,” or getting a “bad vibe” or a “good vibe.” You may not know what the feeling exactly is, though: it could be very vague, like something that just feels bad, uncomfortable, or “not right”; or wonderful, uplifting, or “right.”
2. Emotions
But, I haven’t been depressed in years…Similar to feelings are emotions, yet to some, they have subtle differences. You may experience an emotion that seems to come out of the blue Perhaps you have thought of something or someone right before that emotion came up. Or maybe you walked in a a place and felt the emotion. While, emotions, like symptoms, feel as if they’re really ours, remember to check to see how this emotion is speaking to you. It may be telling you that something is or is not aligned to your greater good.
Years ago, I was walking along and suddenly felt depressed. My first thought was, I haven’t been depressed in years, so why am I feeling this way?
As I tuned in, I realized that it was not my emotion – it had come from a woman I’d just passed, who was sitting on the porch and talking on her phone. I sensed some things about this woman and her life and sent her the energy of love. The depression immediately went away. At that point, I began to think about all the years I’d had depression, wondering what really belonged to me and what I was picking up from others. As you can see, if we don’t learn to tell the difference, we can be caught up in or hold to emotions that are not our own.
3. ESP
Extrasensory perception is a category of intuitive abilities that includes the following:
- Telepathy (the ability to read people’s thoughts)
- Clairvoyance (the ability to see what is happening somewhere else)
- Precognition (the ability to predict the future)
- Retro-cognition (the ability to see things that happened in the past)
- Psychometry (the ability to touch something and pick up information)
- Mediumship (the ability to channel spirits).1
4. Symptoms
This could be any physical sensation, such as tingling, chills, fatigue, energy, pain, “pit in the stomach,” aches, lightness, and so forth. One of the easier ways to notice this is to see how you feel when you’re with different types of people. Notice if you feel normal (that is, as you usually do), energized (or uplifted), or drained. If you consistently feel drained with certain people, look more closely at how you feel about them – you may find that they are not right for you.
Some teachers refer to these people as “energy vampires.” We like to think of them as not being aligned to what you need in your life.
5. Thoughts
Sometimes you may think of something and it’s actually your intuition guiding you. An example of this is when I first started recovering from bulimia, I would notice that I’d think of food when I wasn’t feeling physically hungry. I judged this as old, disordered eating behavior, as if I “could not stop thinking about food.” Within a week of watching my thoughts around this, I realized that within 30-minutes of having a thought about food, my blood sugar dropped so drastically that I was in blood-sugar emergency. At that point, my body was so hungry that it felt like no amount of food could solve the hunger. Overeating can be very common as a way to get the body back into comfortable balance when blood sugar has gotten too low.
What was happening? My digestive system hadn’t healed enough for my body to get the right signals of hunger at the right times. A bloating in my small intestine sent a signal of fullness when my stomach was actually hungry. I realized that my body was compensating for my digestive issues by using my thoughts to send the “time to eat!” signal.
I began to eat when I’d think of food, and this worked beautifully until my digestive system healed.
See, our bodies love us! When we judge the signals we’re getting as “wrong” or “bad,” we lose the opportunity to allow our bodies to guide us to better health.
6. Words
Louise Hay has always been incredible at listening to the words people use and understanding how they play out in their thoughts and beliefs. She has seen the relationship between how they speak and how things happen in their lives.
Listening to the words you use, along with the words other people use, is another way you may get an intuitive hit on what is working or not working for you. For example, do you find yourself saying things like “This is so hard,” “I can’t stand this,” “The body starts breaking down at the age of 40,” or “They’ll never accept me”?
If you’re saying things like this, it may be time to look at your belief systems and see how you can change them so that you can love yourself more.
The inability to digest life can create health challenges. So remember to use loving words – your body is listening.
Listening to your words, using affirmations, and doing mirror work can help shift the thoughts you think and the words you use into more loving ones.
7. Dreams
For some people, signals come in dreams. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, believed that dreams tapped into the unconscious mind. According to some researchers, he may have been right. In one study, amnesiacs with no conscious memory of their past would have memories of their past when they dreamed. Studies like this have led scientists to believe that when dreaming, we are accessing parts of our brain that we don’t often use in our waking lives.2
If you’re unsure of what steps to take in your life, ask yourself before bed to have a dream about the next best step you can take. Another great way to work with your dreams is to write them down when you wake up and ask yourself what meaning they have for you. There are many books on dream interpretations that you can use if you want to learn more. At the same time, make sure you practice paying attention to these interpretations so that you can learn the language of your dreams.
8. Patterns
Some people get signals through recurring events: Perhaps someone tells you about a book they love, then two more people tell you about it. This kind of pattern could be a signal to check out the book.
Or maybe you keep having the same experience over and over again, but in different situations. For example, one of my clients had a pattern of being the expert or helping in every relationship. She had very few equal relationships because off of her friendships and even her significant other seemed to rely on her for her strength, knowledge, and support. When she first started working with me, she was exhausted with adrenal fatigue and felt that no one would ever be there for her.
Notice that the patterns that keep happening in your life, whether they’re circumstances that occur, things people, keep telling you, or situations you keep finding yourself in. These are signals that can help you take action in your life.
If you get any of these signals, or even others that are not mentioned here (remember, everyone is unique and special in how these signals show up!), get curious about them. Ask what they want you to know. You are starting a conversation, and learning a new language that no one has ever taught you. The more you listen, the more you’ll understand what your body and your life are telling you.
Over time, you’ll learn to trust these signals and may come to find that life feels a lot easier. Think of a car with no dashboard – no speedometer, no gas or temperature gauges. How would you know how fast you’re going, when you need gas, or when the car is overheating? Know that you have an inner dashboard that you can learn to read as easily as you read the dashboard in your car!
It may take time, and that’s okay. You are on a beautiful journey of discovery with your body, so allow it to unfold at its own pace.
- Harris, Tom. “How ESP Works.” HowStuffWorks.com. 3 Sept 2002. Web. 14 Feb 2014.
- Science Channel. “Are dreams a window into our unconscious?” Curiosity.com. n.d. Web. 23 Feb 2014.
Latest posts by Heather Dane (see all)
- Listening to Your Gut and Heart - April 24, 2019
- Breaking Through Resistance: Following Creative Energy - April 16, 2019
- Love Intuition: Follow the Energy to True Love - April 10, 2019