How to Tap Into Your Intuition: 8 Ways to Listen to Your Intuition
If you have been wanting to enhance your own intuitive and psychic abilities, I have good news for you: You don’t have to have been born with supernatural abilities in order to be intuitive!
As someone who trained under teachers, read books, listened to podcasts, and worked through my own healing and self-discovery journey in order to strengthen my own intuitive abilities to the point where I now give readings to complete strangers, I can promise you that anyone can strengthen their intuition.
All you need is the desire and the dedication to practice trusting yourself.
Here are 8 simple and effective ways you can strengthen your own intuitive abilities:
1. Let Yourself Daydream
Intuition and imagination originate in the same area of the brain, so when you let yourself space out and daydream, you’re actually helping your brain get more comfortable and receptive to the language of intuition as well.
Set a timer for 15 minutes a day (or longer!) where you can give yourself complete freedom to daydream and let your imagination run wild.
This is an especially beneficial practice if you are wanting to enhance your clairvoyance (clear intuitive seeing) since you’ll be strengthening your ability to ‘see’ things in your mind’s eye.
The more easily you can ‘see’ something using just your mind, the more easily your guides can send you visual clues and images for you to interpret - kind of like a game of spiritual Pictionary with the universe!
If you’re having a hard time unleashing your imaginative powers, you can also practice this by recalling destinations and special places that you have been to before.
Create as full of a scene in your mind as you can, including the colors, the textures, and patterns, the people around you, the nature.
If you’re artistically inclined, you can also practice putting your visualizations to paper, further strengthening the subconscious belief that you can create whatever you imagine.
2. Free-Write While Listening to Music
Free-writing, or automatic writing, on its own can be a great way to practice clearing your mind and listening to whatever is intuitively coming up.
When you add the element of music, you’re also responding to a prompt, which is one of my favorite intuition hacks, because intuition is responsive - it rises up within a situation we’re in, to a question someone has asked, to a feeling we have, etc.
Music is super-charged with its own energies and intentions, and it has the power to act as a portal to other worlds for us. Using music as a prompt for intuitive messages to come through helps us tune into the unique energies, vibrations, harmonies, and emotions embedded within a song.
To do this intuitive practice, put on some music that you can connect to in some way. I suggest starting with instrumental music so that there aren’t words to distract from or get in the way of any clairaudient (clear hearing) messages you receive.
Take a moment to clear your mind and set your intention to receive any messages of love and light.
From there, just start letting your hand do the work as it moves across the page, and don’t censor or edit yourself. I also find that using unlined paper helps keep me out of linear, structured thinking.
Start writing whatever messages, memories, feelings, phrases, colors, or downloads that you feel come up in response to the music, and don’t worry about everything making sense.
3. Ask For and Receive Signs from Nature
So often we live in our own heads, not actually present to the world around us. When we live like this, we miss out not only on the present experience but also on the messages that are constantly surrounding us, trying to break through and get our attention.
When I am feeling overwhelmed or confused by a situation I’m going through, I like to go out into nature, ask my spirit guides for assistance and guidance, and then get present to what is around me at the moment.
If all of a sudden, I see a small bunny run across the yard in front of me, maybe there is a message for me about needing to act quickly. If I see a hawk circling above, maybe I am being called to take a higher perspective.
My top tip with this practice is to not rush to look up the defined meanings of specific animals or symbols and to instead take some time to reflect on what they mean to you.
What specific memories do you have associated with a certain sign or animal? Does it make you think of a particular movie or cultural reference? Does a random thought pop into your head when you see something that stands out?
The meaning may not be the same for you every time, either. For example, in the past year, I’ve seen a snake twice. Once, it felt like a confirmation to me of divine feminine energy awakening, and the other time, it felt more ominous, like a warning and reminder to be alert for potential ‘dangers’ in a work situation I had been seeking guidance on.
Pay attention to how your body reacts, how you feel in the moment, and where your mind goes first when a sign comes up for you.
4. Pull a Daily Tarot Card
Tarot is a wonderful tool to help you get in tune with your intuition, and I especially like to use cards that have lots of symbolism, colors, and objects to add more layers of intuitive interpretation, like one of the OG Rider-Waite decks.
As a part of a daily tarot practice, hold and shuffle your cards with the intention of connecting to your spirit guides or your higher self, and ask an open-ended question, like What do I need to know today? Or What do I need to help me with [goal you’re working on] today?
Once you pull a card, take some time before you allow yourself to start interpreting it to just take in the imagery, colors, patterns, and scene on the card. You can then journal through what you feel like the guidance from the card is telling you and how you plan to integrate it into your day.
5. Practice Naming Your Emotions
To help increase clairsentience or clear intuitive feeling, it helps to be able to put specific words to different feelings and emotions that come up. I like to do this at the end of each day and pick the top 2-3 emotions that I felt throughout the day, using the Emotion Wheel.
Naming your emotions will help you train yourself to be more specific and discerning so that when emotions come up at the moment, you can more easily identify them and understand what messages they are trying to give you.
It’s a lot harder to identify what you need when all you know is that you’re feeling ‘bad,’ as opposed to being able to discern what feeling nervous is like versus feeling irritable.
This is also a helpful intuitive development practice because naming your emotions trains you to dig a bit deeper and ask follow-up questions about your internal world.
When you learn to name the specific emotion(s) you’re feeling and get curious about what triggered that emotion and what you need to move through it, then you are also more easily able to ask similar questions of your intuition.
In other words, you’re investigating for the deeper meaning instead of just taking everything (including your emotions) at face value.
For example, if I’m in a client reading and I feel a specific emotion of grief come up in her heart chakra, I don’t just stop there. I ask her guides, What’s prompting or leading to this feeling of grief? What is this grief asking her to learn and experience? What does her heart need right now?
6. Build Associations
My best tip for increasing your intuitive abilities is to continuously create associations between seemingly disparate things, as a way of creating a shorthand language with an understanding of your intuition.
Really, using your intuition to communicate with your spirit guides, your higher self, your physical body, or anything else is just like one big, inside joke between you and the universe - you know that feeling when you and your best friend just have to exchange one split-second glance to know exactly what you’re both thinking? That’s what you’re going for, but on a larger, more constant scale when you’re working with your intuition.
For example, after giving hundreds of intuitive readings, I have developed some shorthand cues and associations with my own intuition: I know that whenever I get chills on the back of my neck during a reading, whatever we’re talking about at that moment is super important; I know that whenever I sense the color blue in a client’s heart chakra or hands, they have very strong potential as a healer; and I know that whenever I feel or sense something on the left side of my body during a reading, it has to do with the client’s feminine side that’s responsible for creativity, flow, receiving, and intuition.
And don’t be afraid to assign meanings to things, instead of worrying about if your interpretation is ‘right’ according to anyone else’s standards.
I tell my spirit guides all the time, Ok when this certain color/symbol/number/etc. appears, this is what I understand it to mean.
Don’t forget that your intuition is a co-creative function, and you have the power to decide and assign meanings to things - you’re not just a completely passive vessel, and you don’t have to prove anything to anyone about how spot-on you can be with your intuitive abilities and interpretations.
I also love using the practice of mind-mapping as an easy, flow-inducing way of creating associations between things that seem totally random and disconnected at first glance.
7. Have a Conversation with Your Body
Another form of clairsentience (clear feeling) comes to us in the form of physical sensations from our bodies, rather than from emotions. When you get chills on the back of your neck, or when you feel butterflies in your stomach, these are ways that your body is trying to speak with you.
As a way to further develop your intuitive abilities, engage in conversations with your body, or specific parts of your body, on a regular basis, again, using your curiosity to guide you. Instead of seeing your shoulder pain as an annoying problem to try and fix with medication right away, ask your shoulder what’s making it feel so much pain.
Maybe the pain came in response to something physical you did, or maybe it’s a more cumulative effect from taking on too much of other peoples’ problems around you.
Notice how your body feels in specific situations - do you feel light and expansive around certain people, or do you feel a tightening in your stomach or clenching in your jaw?
The more you can start to work with the signals and messages from your body as intuitive messages, as opposed to annoying disturbances that need to be ignored or fixed, the more you’ll be able to pick up in the present moment.
8. Practice Creative Writing and Storytelling
I personally believe that most writers and storytellers are actually masters at channeling and they just don’t know it. Many authors share about how parts of their writing seem to just stream through them, especially when they are ‘in the zone.’
So it makes sense that actively practicing creative writing and storytelling can help you tune into these abilities as well, especially if you approach them with the intention of connecting with your intuition.
I like to look up creative writing prompts online and pick 1-2 per week that I work on developing a story around. Again, using your imagination ends up enhancing your intuition, and you’ll likely find yourself receiving inspiration from unlikely sources all around you. This is a positive sign that your ‘antenna’ is up and ready to receive!
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Let us know in the comments below how these tips help you strengthen and enhance your relationship with your intuition!
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Chelsea Jewel is an Intuitive + Karmic Astrologer, Spiritual Coach, and Intuitive Mentor to those waking up to their own intuitive powers. You can connect with her on Instagram or via her website, chelseajewel.com
