Follow your intuition

If I had to distill everything I've learned from yoga, it would be this:

Listen to your intuition.

This is not always easy to do. In the modern world there are many distractions that strive to keep us from hearing our intuition and many pressures that strive to keep us from following it. Charting your own course can be unpopular, and when you first start tuning into your intuition you may ignore that little voice in your heart that's trying to talk to you because you don't believe it's actually happening.

Something about the past few days has turned my intuition into overdrive. Maybe it's the things I'm learning, maybe it's the place I'm in (they don't call Bali the island of the Gods for no reason...spirituality is thick here), maybe it's the supportive people I'm around who encourage each other to tune in to their inner voice, or probably it's a combination of all of the above.

Small example: Tonight a big group of fellow students is going out for one of my classmate's birthdays. It's a great group of people and I am enriched by knowing them, but I also know that I am drained by being in a group setting all day. I just need time to myself to recharge and process what I've learned and let my mind wander a little. At first I agreed to join the group for dinner because everyone was going and it seemed like the thing to do, but soon after I agreed I got this nagging feeling that a group dinner was really not what I needed tonight. I needed solitude and time to process some of the things I have experienced this week. (Next time I will try to tune into my intuition before I agree to do something so I don't flake on friends because that's just rude.) Despite pressure to go along with what everyone in the group was doing, I came to a really nice Thai restaurant in my neighborhood, which will heretofore be referred to as my happy place.

I settled in with my laptop, a lychee martini and vegan stir fry and am listening to a live blues band. The first song they played was Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." My eyes started tearing up because I knew my intuition had led me to right where I needed to be in that moment. It's a beautiful thing.

Want to learn more about how you can start to tune into your own intuition? Good, because you'll probably hear me gush about it for many weeks, months and years to come. Start with bringing conscious awareness to your actions throughout the day. Example: When you're eating, be aware of how the food looks on the plate, how it smells, how it feels in the mouth and how it tastes on the tongue. Chew slowly and deliberately.

Another example: When you're sitting at your desk/in your car/on the bus/wherever, take a minute to just bring your awareness to your breath, take deep inhales and deep exhales and notice how your breath feels as it enters your body and as it leaves. Focusing on the breath is one of the simplest meditations and also a simple way to bring awareness to the present moment. And being present is key to being able to tune into your intuition because you have to be aware of what you are experiencing in the moment to be able to tell how you feel about it and how your heart is telling you to act.

Another powerful (but at times difficult) tool is to cut down on my reliance on electronics and social networking. Everybody knows that Facebook and email bring distractions, clutter and at times unwelcome feelings of the need to compare yourself to others or prove something to others. In my opinion, constantly looking at facebook was crushing my ability to hear my own inner voice because I found myself thinking of things I could post (to try to impress people? and to connect with what was familiar back home instead of embracing the experience of being far away).  I would venture to say that my conscious effort to stay off facebook and to not email anyone except for my husband has really helped me to stay centered in myself.  Yes, I will get back on Facebook periodically because I love looking at pictures of my friends' and cousins' adorable kids and I want to have some way to maintain friendships back home but I don't want the daily intrusion into my rhythm. Blogging is a form of journaling for me and it helps me to write things far more that in helps anyone to read it.

And finally, one last thought:
Wow, blues music is really good! Now I know why people like it so much.

Far from blue,
Firefly