A deep trust in our innate wisdom.
What is intuition?
I see at as those moments when we are moving from our deepest wisdom and authenticity.
How do we tap into this sense of deeper knowing—from the body—before it is censored or cleaned up by the mind’s worries of how we appear?
We often function from a linear society with things unfolding in a generally agreed upon way. As long as your actions/behaviors/hairstyles/pant-styles fall within those norms, you can feel safe or possibly fall asleep at the wheel.
Meaning to say—when we veer off the linear path toward an “acceptable” life, we wander onto a new path that might be winding and looping and uncertain.
We are all born with a deep intuitive state that is not often nurtured through the education process, familial expectations, workplace values and more. Many of us are called to yoga practice because it offers a space to connect to our intuition, to bridge the body’s wisdom and mind’s intellect and get to a deeper source of knowing.
If we can return to the trust in our “gut” we might wake up a bit more. We may feel the intrinsic vitality of life.
We can apply this to creating sequences. When we break from the norm, we may feel a little shaky in our choice to place this asana before that one and move in a way that we haven’t seen plastered on yoga magazines, yet feels so alive within.
One way I connect to intuition is to create activities or rituals outside my normal routine. For example, I may take a different route home from dropping my kids off at school, play completely different music than normal, or take a dance class completely out of my comfort zone. This, in essence, helps me shift from a deep, well-worn behavioral grove into a new way of seeing. Any of these small acts help me drop into my creative, vital, knowing.
If we pay close attention, we’re all living a Hero’s Journey, fraught with challenges, moments of uncertainty and then clarity. This is fuel for how we live an awake life.
The life that is being lived fully, the life that is being paid attention to and nourishing our best self—that life has a well of trust in their inner wisdom and intuition.
In any classic Hero’s Journey there is the moment of resistance to leave the comfort of your habitual life—the familiar and sleepy old way.
When we head into a practice of yoga we will confront this again and again. If we can cultivate a practice of moving toward the places that challenge us—possibly even scare us—well, this brings so much fuel to creative living.
We come awake, we pay attention to the grace within and offer breath, movements, practices from that place.
All of this is to say, thank you for coming on this journey with me. For being willing to move toward discomfort and swirl around a bit and find new pathways.
This month is my 16 year anniversary teaching at Yoga Tree and in honor of this, I'm throwing a mini-party based on care for community, tapping into our superpowers to be kind, and cultivating a deeper place of trust and love.
