Positive Health Online

Overview

Intuition is the inner knowing that comes without outer sensory stimuli. It is the modality that senses most deeply, yet one our Western society has valued least. We invest most of our efforts in educating our children to use their outer senses, ignoring and even denigrating the inner ones.

Intuition is often perceived as or accompanied by an inner uneasiness, a sort of spiritual itch that invites us to scratch below the surface of our ordinary perceptions, thoughts and feelings. If we respond to this inner ring on the intuition hotline, we are often rewarded with important messages and inspirations.

If you have ever worried about coming out and admitting your intuitive abilities, you should know that you are certainly in the company of prominent people. Many famous people have acknowledged their intuition, including Socrates, Joan of Arc, Carl Jung and Adolph Hitler, among others.

While you might question, or even dismiss, some reports as simple luck or exaggeration, here is a typical story that stretches such explanations, from Brian Inglis, in The Unseen Guest.

Winston Churchill, who was reputed to have had a charmed life, related that he had always felt he had a protector. Churchill told of having escaped from captivity during the Boer War in South Africa. He was unable to escape from the region on a freight train and could only hope that the local Kaffirs would help him. His problem was that he had no way of knowing who among the Kaffirs might be friendly or unfriendly, and a mistaken guess could be fatal.

Without being able to explain why, he was drawn to a particular house in a particular Kaffir kraal. The owner turned out to be the only one in a radius of 20 miles who was friendly to the British. His host hid him until he could be smuggled to safety.

These sorts of stories are typical of intuitive awareness. Guided by an inner knowing that is not reasoned, but seems to arise from a source that carries its own certainty, people find they know information that is of great help to them – particularly in times of need.

Many doctors, nurses and various therapists report clinical ‘hunches’ that proved extremely valuable, sometimes even lifesaving, to people in their care. The following is a story I have heard in many variations.

Doctor Sam, on his way home after a long day’s work, had a hunch he ought to stop and see how 68 year-old Miss Jennifer was doing. He hadn’t thought of her in several months, since her last annual checkup, when he had found her arthritis to be improving. Sam struggled against the hunch, thinking of his wife and children waiting for him at dinner, but it simply would not be dismissed. Sighing, and preparing the possible excuses he might give his family for being late yet again from work, he rang the bell of Miss Jennifer’s apartment. There was no answer, but the door was not locked and opened when he turned the knob. Miss Jennifer was lying on the floor, unconscious. A quick examination suggested she had had a stroke, and a call to 911 brought an ambulance in time to rush her to the hospital, where she fortunately recovered well after several weeks.

More than one nurse has told me of an inner urge to stop by the room of a patient who was recovering without apparent complication from surgery – to find that patient in shock from internal haemorrhage (or with other urgent problems), just in time to call the crash team and save his or her life. Doctors have told me how they sometimes intuit that a person has a tumour, a metabolic problem, or some other disorder that showed no outward symptom, which is confirmed on subsequent laboratory exams. Some doctors are so gifted that they regularly diagnose their patients’ problems intuitively. They reluctantly order lab tests – for medico-legal reasons as well as to avoid criticism or censure from their colleagues and supervisors. Some are able to identify intuitively medications or other treatments that
will help.

It is surprisingly easy to connect with our intuition. Using our bodies, we can invite our unconscious mind to speak to us. This has been ritualized into a variety of systems called muscle testing, and the most popular and widespread is that of Applied Kinesiology. The basic principle is that the body becomes weak when we ask a question that has a negative answer, and strong when it has a positive answer. I teach these methods as part of the self-healing process of WHEE: Whole Healing – Easily and Effectively. The intuition of muscle testing allows us to identify what is healthy for us or not; issues that need addressing; helpful ways to address them; and much more.

An expanded version of this column appears as Benor DJ, Intuition, International J of Healing and Caring – On line 2(2), 1-12, 2002.