characterizes as “the energy that enlivens and carries out all balancing and life-giving processes in nature. “It speaks through the body as sensations, impulses


and urges,” she says. “This ‘inner divining rod’ informs us what feelings, thoughts and actions are moving us into alignment with our source and what is moving us out of alignment.” Quieting the mind and strengthening the directives of


prana through meditation, yoga and being in nature moves us away from what we tell ourselves and back to directly responding to its promptings. “Absorbed in the present moment and bodily sensations, we connect with inner guidance,” explains Desai. “With practice, our mind becomes a servant to inner intelligence. It can both direct our lives and make us sensitive to early symptoms suggesting oncoming illness,” she adds.


Awakening Your Intuition “There is growing interest in energy medicine and developing a deeper connection to the body’s intelligence through yoga and energy practices like qigong and tai chi because people are tired of taking medications that don’t heal the root cause of health problems,” comments Dr. Sue Morter, founder of Morter Health Center, near Indianapolis, Indiana, and the healing phenomenon she terms Energy Codes. A regular practice of any one of these disciplines expands sensory function to encompass internal recognition and referencing of subtle information. Morter teaches how to awaken gut feelings, personal


power and self-love to restore wholeness left behind in pursuit of external sources of happiness. “Participants learn to trust their gut more than the opinions of others, which turns up the volume on the whispers of intuition,” she explains. After Pat Hall, a therapeutic bodyworker in Augusta,


Georgia, read Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight, she was certain a habit of listening to mental chatter interfered with feeling and interpreting her body’s helpful promptings. “Jill’s experience of her body as energy and her mind as silent when the left lobe of her brain shut down due to a stroke was my ‘Aha!’ moment,” says Hall. For her, heeding inner guidance took practice and a commitment to dismantling reactive thought patterns and habits, plus discerning between intuition and distracting chatter. “Mind chatter generally creates fear, negativity


and pressure to do something,” she explains. “Intuitive guidance is gentle, expansive and undemanding.” Hall believes in the Buddhist concept that mindfulness of the body allows us to love fully. She finds, “It brings healing, wisdom and freedom.”


Follow Your Instincts She relates how she is led to direct a client’s attention to their own body’s intuition, which works best when she is following her instincts, rather than thinking. “After one session, my client, who had been silently experiencing numerous feelings in her stomach, asked me why I had touched her abdomen. I was just intuitively led to that


part of her body.” Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz, also a Ph.D., medical intuitive


and co-author of All is Well, notes that everyone has a connection to intuition. “We get a gut feeling and sadness in our heart from our inner intelligence that we don’t know what to do with. While some individuals consult a practitioner, others listen to their body’s intuitive language and reflect on their insights and dreams—the language of soul,” says Schulz. “Intuition can speak softly through symptoms,” she observes. “Eventually, when disregarded, it can become a full-blown illness.” Biochemist and author of Secrets of Our Cells:


Discovering Your Body’s Inner Intelligence, Sondra Barrett, Ph.D., is awed by the body’s cellular intelligence. “Our cells are invisible, so we don’t think of ourselves as cellular beings. However, a deeper understanding of our constitution and that our cells speak to each other and collaborate harmoniously could inspire us to befriend our body’s intelligence for life,” she says. “We might shift from wanting to fix an ache or pain to understanding that our cells are warning us of something.”


Using Your Compass Sonia Choquette, a global consultant who recommends we rely on our sixth sense as our first sense, has authored several books on intuition. She finds, “With intuition, we have a personal compass and an ally in discerning what is authentic and true for us so that we won’t be tugged and pulled in different directions when we make decisions.” Laurie McCammon, co-author of Enough: The Rise of


the Feminine and the Birth of the New Story, was relaxing and reflecting with two friends when intuition graced her with a message of information-laden energy: “I am enough. We are enough. I have enough. We have enough. Enough!” The experience inspired them to collaborate on an e-book celebrating the grassroots groundswell toward a major shift in the world. “I believe intuition is an aspect of The Grand Plan, which always moves us toward greater expansion, inclusion and an ever more mature and loving response to life,” says McCammon. Ute Arnold, founder, director and teacher of the Unergi


School of Body-Psychotherapy, in Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania, describes several physical signatures of body intelligence that can foster improved self-care. “You feel more expansive, available and receptive—with a sense of a longer spine, a wider and deeper body and feet rooted in the Earth’s powerful energy,” explains the author of Touchback: A Self- Healing Journey with Body, Art and Nature, who also has a master’s degree in fine arts. “Expanded into a condition of soft relaxation, your mind stops talking; you enter a mind- body state of energetic receptive listening, where emotional intelligence is accessible. “These feelings and sensations are indicative of


wholeness. From it, we have access to the eternal place of the fully healed soul, which whispers intuitively, nudging us toward what can heal our life, body and mind.”


Linda Sechrist is a senior staff writer for Natural Awakenings. Visit ItsAllAboutWe.com for the recorded interviews.


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