(upbeat music) What exactly is intuition? And how do you know when you're hearing it? We're gonna get into this and a bunch more frequently asked questions in today's episode. I'm Kayleen Elise Seuss, your intuition coach and the host of Celebrate Cultivate Podcast. This is episode 174. I'm so excited to get into this with you. Recently, I was at a playdate with my son. He is very into chess and he made a new friend at a chess camp. And so we got his mom's phone number and we met up at this really cool park area and the boys played chess and the mom and I chatted. I had never met her before. And of course, in that conversation, usually it comes up, what do you do? How do you spend your time? What kind of work are you in? And so I shared that I'm an intuition coach. Years ago, whenever somebody would ask, what do I do? I would freeze and panic. I really hated that question. And I almost always would respond with a question. Like, oh, what exactly do I do? And I would ramble on and on and I felt so uncomfortable because I was still figuring out what I was doing. And this is before I came to the work of really truly listening to my intuition and letting my inner voice lead so much of my life. And nowadays, when I say, oh, I'm an intuition coach, I say it with so much confidence and freedom and excitement, and still it's not clear, of course, to the other person. Most people haven't heard of an intuition coach. And so then I go on to explain, I help people listen to that inner voice of wisdom inside of them and I work one-on-one with clients and in group settings. And depending on their level of interest and their response, we'll spend a little time talking about it. The thing about intuition is you get to decide what it means to you. We all have intuition. We all have an inner voice. And the way that you learn how to recognize it is by recognizing it. So it's not something that I can come inside of you and poke and prod at and say, this is your intuition. Like when you have little babies and you teach them their body parts and you know, I'm doing this with our youngest Neil, he's two and a half. So there was like this phase in time, he talks a ton now. He is like so verbal. He's got two older siblings. So he's doing everything he can to keep up with them. And there was this point in time where I was like, I don't know if we've actually like talked too much about body parts since he became so verbal. So he's poking at his elbow, poking at his shoulder, saying, what is this? What do you call this? But you know, it's so fun to hear them try to explain like the difference between an ankle, and a heel, and a shin, and a calf. Like they don't know all of those. We teach them those parts. But your intuition is different. You know, your awareness is different. It takes time and practice for you within you to poke and prod and point at and say, this is intuition. And in life, there are times where you listen to that gut feeling, you trust the way that your inner voice is guiding you. And then you can look back and say, oh, that was a really intuitive decision. I really trusted myself there. And so that's one of the ways that we learn how to listen to our intuition. One of the questions that I get often is, what is the difference between intuition and the inner voice? And there's this amazing book named Chatter. That's the title. And it's all about the inner voice, but not the inner voice that I talk about. It's about all of the other inner voices that we have, the Chatter, the mental Chatter inside of us. I listened to it as an audio book a few years ago and I'll definitely link to it in the show notes for today's episode. So go over to kalenalease.com or click the link in your podcast app and it'll take you over to my website. So you can check out anything I mentioned today. It'll be linked over in the show notes. But this book Chatter talked about the difference, mental tracks that play in our mind. And some of those are from our parents or coaches, from society. Some of them are almost inherent in being a human, but they're not all part of you. And he does a really good job explaining how you can piece that apart and examine it. When I talk about inner voice, I use the terms intuition and inner voice really interchangeably. For me, they're the same. In my experience of my own intuition, it often does feel like a gut knowing that almost drops into me as like a packet of words. I had somebody ask recently if I actually hear a voice in my head when I'm hearing my intuition. And for me, that isn't the actual experience. I place my awareness inside my body. So when I'm thinking thoughts and I'm aware of my mental chatter, my attention is above my shoulders, above my neck, in my head area. And I don't really know if you think about it for a second. Like why do we think that thoughts come from our mind? You know, like there's science and there's brain waves and there's all these things. But like, how come sometimes it feels like your head is so full of thoughts, your head isn't actually more full of anything when your head is full of thoughts than when it's daydreaming or when it's asleep, right? It's not actually full. It's just a very interesting thing to explore. Anyways, with intuition, with my inner voice, I feel it in my body, the whispers, the knowing, the clarity that comes from tuning into my intuition comes from my center. I don't really identify it as like my heart or my gut. Although when I'm working with clients, I'll often direct you to put your awareness in that center place within you and you'll know where to go. It takes, you know, a little bit of trial and error and practice to find out where exactly it is for you. But for me, it's not an actual sound from within. It's more like if you're reading to yourself, you don't hear the words in my head, I can feel the words in my body. It's very difficult to describe, which is another reason why you just have to play with it and experiment with it and allow yourself to define it for yourself. So this whole episode is about frequently asked questions and the answers aren't going to be super cut and dry, right? Because everybody's gonna be a little bit different. A lot of my clients and her voices speak to them in our client sessions through imagery. So they will see an image or a scene playing out within their awareness. Are they actually seen with their eyes? No, they're seeing it inside. They're kind of opening up that portal, that connection point to this place of wisdom within themselves. And they are receiving analogies and interesting imagery that helps them know something to be true for them that they didn't know before the session. So if you're curious, how can you cultivate and strengthen your intuition? It's really quite simple. Start by tuning in. My favorite starting place is to pause and breathe, close your eyes and ask your inner voice, what do I need? And I started this practice for myself when I had little babies and I would get like, put a kid down for nap and I wouldn't know if I was gonna get 20 minutes of silence or two hours, with little ones, it can be very, at least for me, it was very unpredictable for a while there. By my third, not unpredictable at all, but we also had a snoo. So that really helped him nap much more effectively. So in this time where there was a lot of unknown and a lot of uncertainty of what I would do with my time, pause, breathe, ask, what do I need? Became this pathway to listening to my intuition and getting information that my mind couldn't come up with. And so as you are interested in cultivating and strengthening your intuition, journaling is a really great practice and I'll include some free resources for journaling with your intuition in the show notes for today. You can also use it on very easy, low stakes decisions, like what to wear, what to eat, where to go, which email to answer first, what work to prioritize in this next 15 minutes. So things that you don't actually really, really matter or that the mind doesn't have some big story around. If you have a lot of drama and story and emotions around food, then picking what's eat might not be a very good place to start cultivating your intuition, instead pick out your clothes or decide what kind of workout you're gonna do that day. Or if you're gonna send your grandma a letter or if you're going to send her flowers, do it on something that the mind doesn't care about too much and that will help you cultivate that connection. Another question I get often is, what are some of the signs or indications that my inner voice is speaking to me? And I love this question because it really varies. For me, when I see aligned numbers like 11, 11 or 222, any aligned number, when I start to see those a lot, it is a sign to me that I know I am really connected and I'm being guided by my intuition. And sometimes it happens like in an in-opportun time, like I might be arguing with my husband about something and then I pick up my phone to escape to the internet. And then it's 222 or more often if we're arguing, it's like 11, 11 and we should just go to bed, right? Like, so there are times where I'm in tension or I'm in struggle or something's not, something's wrong, quote unquote, wrong. And still I find that aligned number. And it's that reminder to me of, oh yes, even in the difficulty, I am being guided. Even in the challenge, I have a connection to my intuition. You might get those downloads or pings, people call them all different things, but you might just get this knowing about something all of a sudden, out of nowhere. An intuition often is something that I experienced without warning, it just kind of happens. I had somebody tell me recently, well, I can't control my intuition. My intuition just comes to me and I said, you're right and that's true. But what you can control is if you open the door to your intuition throughout your everyday life, through journaling, meditation, one on one sessions with an invoice facilitator like me. So you can cultivate that connection so that it isn't always random. You will still always get those random pings and knowing and oftentimes they come when you're not gripping so tightly to the wheel, so to speak. So lots of people get amazing ideas in the shower or when they're out on a walk, really absorbed in nature. When you've unwound from the tension of the day, then the pathway is more open for you to hear your inner voice. Your inner voice is always there. It is always available to you. But sometimes you're just gripping too tightly. The mind is holding on to the thoughts and holding on to the drama and the emotions and the right way to do something so you can't hear your intuition. And in the work that I do, one of the things that is very effective and very helpful is emotional release. If you follow Bella Lively in her work, if you listen to her podcast, she calls it bean bag releasing. And the reason why she calls it that is because the first time she experienced it, the emotion that she felt inside her body felt like a bean bag. So it's a silly little name. It's like a nickname for this practice of releasing emotions. I call it bean bag releasing whenever I'm working with somebody who I know has a connection to Bella. But in my more general work with people who don't know who Bella is at all, I just call it emotional releasing. And when I went through my really difficult back injury at the end of last year, I came across this new way of healing back pain that's called pain reprocessing therapy and a lot of the work that they do with their clients is very similar to this emotional bean bag release. So what is it, right? And why is it helpful? And why is it help you hear your inner voice? Well, our bodies and our awareness have an ability to hold on to trapped emotions. If you think about it in everyday life, when something happens, we don't process it immediately, right? Like we like deal and kind of push it down or do whatever and get through it. Like my inner voice is showing me, you know, when you have to shove your child in a car seat and they're kicking and screaming, it's not like you finish that moment with like a hug and a kiss and everybody's okay. Oftentimes there's like the screaming, the putting them in the car seat, you drive to where you need to go, you're late for your appointment, you go to your appointment, like things unwind, they simmer down, but that tension is still there. So this bean bag emotional release is about tuning into what's safe and ready to be released in the quiet awareness of a client session or on your own and it's bringing your attention, bringing your awareness to the place where you can feel that emotion, identifying the size and the shape of it and breathing into it and allowing it to exist, not resisting it, not making it wrong, not fighting it, just allowing the frustration and the fear and the worry or whatever it is that the feeling is allowing it to be there, staying with it, breathing through it. When I guide clients, it's super helpful because even still when we are like trying to release the emotions, we don't have to try so hard, we just have to sit and be and breathe and so I help coach and guide and encourage that process because when you're doing it alone, especially if you're first getting started or really anytime, it still feels really nice for me, years into this practice to have somebody hold the space and be with me and support me along from start, middle and end of that process. So when you release the emotions, whatever it is, then it's much easier to hear your inner voice, but it's also a lot easier to trust what your inner voice is telling you because that mental and emotional drama isn't hot, it isn't heavy, it isn't present anymore the way that it once was. You might still know, I felt really terrible shoving my kid into the car seat. I have a particular memory that's coming to mind right now but it's not a pleasant experience for anybody involved but it's okay, I don't have the mom guilt or the shame about it, I know I'm not a bad person, I know they're not a bad kid, it's okay. But in the heat of the moment, all of those slots are running through your head like this kid is who are they gonna be when they're a teenager? Why am I such a bad mom? They're never gonna wanna talk to me, they're gonna need therapy, how come they can't just get into the car seat the way that I saw that kid on Instagram climb up into the car seat so easy and happy is all this mental drama. And so as we learn them practice of releasing emotions, that all of that that comes up in everyday life, you have a way to release it and then a way to hear your inner voice through it and without it. Another question that I love to answer is, can intuition be wrong and how can you handle a situation when it seems like your inner voice led you astray? And the answer is, I don't know, I don't know. What does wrong mean in my work one on one with clients oftentimes and if you've worked with me, you know this, there is much less attachment if any at all and almost always not any attachment to the idea of right and wrong when it comes to the inner voice. My inner voice has told me many times all paths lead to the same point. And a lot of times it can be very tempting to try to get the inner voice to pick A or B, right? Should I do this, should I do this? And some inner voices will go for it and tell you which to do this or this. And other times inner voices will say, it doesn't matter. So then if your inner voice says it doesn't matter, can it be wrong? Like if you still have to mentally choose or if you allow the universe to unfold and you let the choice just happen, can it be wrong? My gut instinct is to say no, your intuition can't be wrong but timing can be off. It can be very confusing sometimes, right? Like it can seem like your inner voice is telling you to do something, you do it and you're like, okay, now what? And there are no guarantees. The thing that I know to be true about listening to my intuition and that I know from over 175 one-on-one client sessions is that your inner voice is always, first of all, it's within you. It's part of you. So it's not going to tell you to do anything that you don't want to do, a part of you doesn't want to do. And ultimately you get to decide what to do. So how do you handle situations when it seems like your inner voice is wrong? Ask more questions. The biggest pitfall I find that myself and everyone I work with falls into is that we ask a question, we get an answer from our intuition and if it's not satisfying or it doesn't make sense or we're not really sure what it means, we just stop and then go on to making another coffee and answering emails and scrolling on Instagram. Instead of getting a question that's confusing or I'm not sure what that means asking another five questions, another 10 questions, another 100 questions from the inner voice to the inner voice to get that clarity. So that's one of the reasons why it's really useful to have a coach like me walk you through accessing your inner voice, staying in that frequency, recording the session, working together to get you the answers and the clarity that you really truly crave so that you can apply your inner voices wisdom and guidance to everyday life. So for me now, years into this practice, more than five years, I don't ask as many questions to my inner voice as I do simply live through it and with it. So a good example is that I used to start my days by going into my closet and asking, pausing, breathing, bringing my awareness down into my center and asking my intuition, what should I wear today? And that is a really good place to start. But eventually, it is like a shorthand, right? Like when you're first making friends with somebody, you have to ask them thousands of questions. By the time you've been really close friends with somebody for five years, you can just look at them and know what they want to do, right? Not always, but oftentimes you know what they want to do. So same thing with me picking out my clothes. Now I walk into my closet and I just get this like nudge of, "Oh, I want to wear those jeans." Okay. Well, those jeans feel really good with these sandals. Oh, and that shirt feels good. So it's a lot of feeling into what feels right for me. And then the other thing I've really noticed after years and years of doing the emotional releasing practice is that I have a lot less tendency to question that I'm doing it right. I am not worried about, "Oh, well, what if that's wrong?" So even that mental question of like, "Am I doing it right? "What if I do it wrong? "What will happen?" All of that second guessing and questioning, which I used to do a ton. Over time that has softened, quieted, and is now nearly silent except for, you know, some acute situations like when I hurt my back. There was a ton, and I didn't actually hurt my back. My back was injured. I didn't do anything. It just happened to me, right? And if you want to go back and listen to that episode, if you are in any sort of health situation right now and needing some encouragement and some honesty, and if this is resonating with you, then by all means go back and listen to that episode because it was a different cult and challenging time. And now that I'm on the other side of it, I am grateful for my practices. I am grateful for the passing of time, and I'm so happy to be in this position where I'm no longer in pain. And I wouldn't say like, oh, yeah, it was just like a magical healing experience, but it does give me a lot of compassion for those times where things are not going smoothly. And so if you're in a season of your life where it feels really hard to access your inner voice and you used to be able to do it so easy, but now it's like really, really tricky and hard, that's a good time to get some extra help. I was just at the dentist today, and I'm laying there like mouth open, just there for a cleaning, there's nothing wrong. And I was laying there and I could just feel into this sense of appreciation and gratitude for being a person and how vulnerable it is to like have your mouth wide open and somebody who don't know very well, you only see once every six months at most, is like in your mouth, cleaning the gunk and grime out of your teeth, this buildup that just happens naturally, even if you have good oral care habits, which trust me, after having three kids in a relatively short period of time, my practices for oral care have ebbed and flowed, (laughs) but I'm in a good spot now, I'm taking really good care of my mouth and I feel like it's a good thing. But when I was in other phases where I just didn't have the time for it, even I'm so grateful and thankful that there are people willing to help me keep my mouth in safe and healthy shape. And I was just laying there thinking about how, no matter what we do and how we live our life, there is a residue that builds up, right? And so having a practice, whatever it is for you, journaling, meditation, exercise, working with a coach, whatever it is, that is so crucial to your overall life experience. And going to the dentist is just one of those things where we can't do it alone, right? Like, you, I need that dental hygienist help in getting to all the nooks and crannies that I don't get to on an everyday basis. So every six months, I go see her, she fixes me up and I'm on my way. And I was just thinking about how like, you know, it's so easy for us to think that we have to do everything alone and on our own, but really we can't, you know? So just take that for what you will. As we wrap up for today's episode, I just want to encourage and invite you to explore your own relationship with your intuition. And if you're feeling called to get some outside support, to get an expert opinion, that is what I'm here for. That is the joy and pleasure of my work. So please reach out to me, explore my different coaching offers, explore the meditation collection, explore the seasonal ritual bundles, wherever you are in your journey. There is something that I have that can support you for where you are now and that you can add to as you grow. I've been working with some of my clients for years now, years and years. And it is just so fun to be there alongside them, to cheer them on, to help them have that accountability and that space of listening inward. Do you need me? No, like, no, but it is so nice to have somebody alongside of you. So if you take away something from this episode, I hope that it is to practice listening to your intuition a little bit more, defining it for yourself. And if you have any questions that you didn't get answered, please send me a message on Instagram. I'm @kalenealise. And until next time, keep trusting your inner voice and I'll be back with a fresh episode soon. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
