Write@Home
Winter 2015

General

The flow experience. Woman experiences the state of total concentration and happiness

One day, when my teacher gave me a reading assignment, I saw that this was a great and challenging topic about instinct and whether we should be trusted with our instincts. I started to research this topic. After reading many explanations, reasons and scientific documentation, I acknowledged trusting our instincts. Still, I can manage them and be aware of them to understand more about everything happening to us.

The first point I learned was to explain that intuition means the ability to understand or know something without conscious reasoning. For instance, do you sometimes feel that something wrong or terrible will happen without reason? This is due to our intuition. We do not have facts or a rationale for our feelings, but we feel it is correct. When intuition comes to play, we do not analyze the situation. We also better not weigh the pros and cons; we only know about them.

Meanwhile, we try to find the best reason for doing something and verify the advantages and disadvantages. However, humans do not have sufficient information to recognize state or thought. Instinct is not something we have learned, but it is a natural response. In this situation, you hardly take enough time to think, but you respond automatically to save yourself. This should come from our instinct.

We often hear from old people who say: “trust your gut when you thought you could not find an answer for your feelings”. This comes back to trusting these feelings of intuition, often as a way to stay true to yourself. According to much psychological research, following your instinct can direct you toward the best path.

There are connections between the gut and the brain. When you feel anxious, fearful, or confident that something is wrong, you might experience stomach twinges, pain, or nausea in some uncommon sense. That’s called gut feeling. The human brain collects and processes sensory data from its environment every day. You’re perfectly aware of some of this information. For example, if you notice two people fighting, you’ll probably cross the street and make it far from them. But you wouldn’t say your gut told you to move since you made a reasoned decision based on available information, and this is why I believe our instincts can be helpful if we are conscious of them.

Listening to the heart is vital to improving agility and intuition. Based on ancient civilizations believed that the heart, not the brain, was the most critical part of their body and must be nourished by us. The heart-brain connection is often overlooked, even as we understand that the heart is more than a simple pump. Research has shown that emotional states, including stress, impact the heart and the heart and brain are linked together for reaction in any circumstance. This link is comparable to the brain-gut axis.

In conclusion, your body is connected more than you can imagine or even understand. Listening to your mind, heart, and gut feelings requires courage. These feelings are formed using past knowledge and experiences. If we listen to our intuition more, we can understand the circumstances better and make better decision.