What Is Intuition?

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. Intuition, gut feelings, vibes, cognitive [inaudible 00:00:09] knowledge. We have all had moments of knowing something before it happens. Yet intuition, though it's common enough, somehow seems risky to talk about, a little new age, a little out there. But aren't we told to trust our gut? So clearly, there's something there. Understanding intuition and developing the confidence to listen to our inner voice without letting our minds get in the way might help open up possibilities, both for personal growth and professional success. Being intuitive can help us be better leaders, avoid embarrassing or unsafe situations, and make good decisions. It can also help us feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. Today, we discuss developing intuition. It's time to put your finger on the pulse.
Hello and welcome back to the pulse on AMI Audio. I'm Joeita Gupta. I'm joining you after a couple of weeks away. I was just dealing with a bit of illness and some health stuff, but it's really good to be back with you, and I've been thinking a lot about intuition and a lot about how some of the really big decisions in my life have been quite intuitive. You have a good feeling about a place or a person or just a good vibe from them, and you make some significant decisions about career, about money, about where you live based on those gut feelings. At least, that's how it is for me.
But a lot of people are sceptical when it comes to intuition and they think of it as one of those new age phenomena that attracts a lot of interest from [inaudible 00:02:00] type of person. So I was really fascinated to find out there was actual serious research being done into intuition. I knew I was going to trip up on that one. And so my guest today is Emily Sadowski, who is a researcher, a life coach, and the author of an upcoming book. And Emily joins me today, not only to talk about her book, but also to talk about intuition. Hello and welcome to the program, Emily. It's so, so nice to have you.

Emily Sadowski:
Hi, Joeita. It is so good to be here with you. It was so exciting for me to hear you talk about intuition. It gave me chills, honestly. Really.

Joeita Gupta:
So intuition is one of those things that I think we all kind of know what it is, but find it difficult to define intuition. Why is it so difficult to put intuition into words or to find a definition for intuition?

Emily Sadowski:
It's a really good question and an important question. There's a philosopher, I can't remember your name right now, who said once that it's impossible to say anything in general about intuition. You can only speak about it specifically. I think one of the reasons is because we use the word "intuition" so broadly that it means too many things to us. It means psychic stuff and just regular gut feelings and the whole range in between. So I think that's one reason.
But another reason is the intuitive mode or the process of intuiting itself comes from a place where language doesn't really work. It comes from a non-discursive, non-language place. So the feeling is really hard to capture in ideas or words and concepts and that also makes it hard to talk about.

Joeita Gupta:
Yeah, no, for sure. Then, what is it that got you thinking about intuition because you have a background in education and you wouldn't really think that intuition is something that gets talked about a lot in education. It's very facts-based and logic-based and you're kind of telling people how they can learn to be in the world. What role does intuition play, and how did your journey in education lead you to think about intuition in more depth?

Emily Sadowski:
Well, that's kind of exactly what happened. So I studied education and then I made my way into the philosophy of education, so thinking about teaching and learning. I realized that intuition had been totally absent from my education. I never heard the word growing up, not in my family and certainly not in school. And the more I looked into it, I realized how much the process of education actually educates intuition out of us.
So as we learn to... in our culture, generally, we prize analysis. We prize rationality, and the scientific method is based in doubt. So we learn that over and over again through school and basically, we end up... well, by attrition, we never talk about intuition. We don't value it. And so it leaves us often... if we are intuitive, we don't even know about it. And if we are, we often don't want to admit to it because we understand it as a lesser process.

Joeita Gupta:
Would you say that you are a very intuitive person? Have you gotten to be more intuitive over time as you dug deeper and explored the topic?

Emily Sadowski:
I think both. I consider myself intuitive now, but it comes to me in ways that I didn't recognize for a long time. Because if you think about intuition, I don't know. Just what do you think about when you think of an intuitive person?

Joeita Gupta:
Well, often, the most common example that I have is I'll pick up the phone and I'll call someone and the first thing out of their mouth was, "Hey, Joeita, I was just thinking about you." It's almost like they knew I was going to call before I was going to call. And I've had this happen with friends. I've had this happen a lot with family, and I think it's a very common experience of people having someone on their mind and having the phone ring and there they are.

Emily Sadowski:
Totally. I call that telephone telepathy. It's especially common with people that you're close with. For some reason, that kind of empathic resonance, vibing with people tends to happen when you have an emotional connection with them.
So, yeah. So I always thought, if you're intuitive, it looks like a psychic fortune-teller or sudden impactful moments that are just undeniable. But for me, my intuition is much more subtle. I just happen to know things, not even in a clear, concise way. It just like an impression of what might happen later, or I just suddenly understand something in a holistic sense that I have no business knowing because I didn't learn it, those kinds of things?

Joeita Gupta:
Now, you are an educator. You are a researcher, an academic, and when you went to someone and said, "I want to study intuition, those gut feelings that we all have," was that a tough sell?

Emily Sadowski:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. In the university, it really was. I was laughed at. It was described as wacky and now, I've come to really try and reclaim the idea of "woo." I am speaking to people who are "woo curious" or "woo friendly" because there's been a, yeah, as you said, scepticism, but also a taboo around this inner knowing. And I certainly came across that in the Academy.

Joeita Gupta:
Do a lot of people who are researchers, who stake their reputations or whose reputations, I should say, are rather are at stake, do they shy away from intuition, which is why we don't see a lot of serious scholarship into what it is, just because people don't want to be seen as somehow being associated with a far away or far out concept?

Emily Sadowski:
Yeah. Okay, so this is a bit abstract, so stick with me for a sec. But what I encountered in the Academy is a lot of researchers who wanted to talk about intuition. They put a boundary around it and defined it in a really specific way where intuition, for them, was more on the end of fast thinking or just gut feelings that were basically explainable as unconscious processing, but nothing of the psychic stuff, nothing... no vibrations, no extra sensory perception or anything like that. That was somehow put into a category and left alone. So yeah, we ended up with a definition or a lot of people were understanding intuition researchers and in a pretty narrowly defined range of experiences.
So for me, I was really intrigued. What about these other experiences? What about the psychic stuff? What about just knowing, pre-cognitive knowing or, as you said, the telephone telepathy. Where does that fall in? And that became a huge driver for my research. I wanted to be able to understand, first of all, I wanted to understand better the taboo and why our culture is unwilling to accept that kind of inner knowing and also looking for vocabulary. How can we now talk about those "woo" experiences without feeling like we always have to add a disclaimer. You hear people say like, "This might sound wacky but..." and then proceed to share an intuitive experience. And to me, that's sad because it really is a range of human experience that we don't have that much language for and contact with.

Joeita Gupta:
Yeah, I mean, just because you don't have words to describe it doesn't mean that it isn't real. You talk a lot in the super secret chapter of your soon-to-be-released book. You make a reference to the fact that if a framework doesn't fully encompass your lived experience, then you've realized the problem isn't with the person's experience. The problem is with the framework. So how do we then create a framework that is more accepting of or open to talking about intuition in a broad way?

Emily Sadowski:
Well, first of all, I just want to shout out to the feminist theorist who taught me that practice and there's no shame in not knowing how to talk about something. That's not a personal feeling. It's a social-cultural feeling. So we'll start there, but that's what my book is about. My book is about offering up some suggestions for a framework. I think actually in the past, at least 10 years since I've been working on this, the culture has shifted a little bit and is now accepting more of the unseen things that we previously were sort of just parking with religion and spirituality and saying, "Okay, priests and such, you take care of this stuff. We'll do the analysis and the reason and rationality." But there's definitely a movement in our culture where people want to understand things that are greater than themselves and what is the connecting force that sort of underlies all that is. And if you can be curious about those things, then you're on your way to accepting a framework that lets intuition make sense.

Joeita Gupta:
You also work as a life coach and people come to you to learn to be more intuitive or I suppose that might be an oversimplification of the work that you do. So tell me a little bit about how you help people become more intuitive, more in touch with their inner gut feelings and to listen to that voice when they come to you and talk to you as a life coach.

Emily Sadowski:
So a lot of what I do is help people become more of who they are and that does typically include being more intuitive or more confident in their inner knowing. So as we said a little bit before, we learn doubt, we learn to be sceptical, and we really internalize that at a value. So all of us have our inner critic and intuition can be really subtle. So if you're not looking for it or ready to receive it, then what tends to happen is the thinking mind interferes pretty quickly and it's like, "No, no, that couldn't be possible." Or, "Oh, no, no, that's not for you," or, "There's no proof for that. Why would you even believe that?" So the work that I do with clients tends to be a little bit more general, but it connects really well to intuition because it's mostly about helping people access the authority to live their lives on their own terms.

Joeita Gupta:
That's beautiful. That's really well said. I mean, that's what we're talking about a lot on this program as well for people with disabilities to have autonomy and to be able to live their life on their terms. When you start to think about becoming a more intuitive person, I think, as you say, intuition is something that we're trained out of. It's like people don't want to listen to their gut. People don't want to go with something because it gives you a good vibe. How do we learn to deal with the fear around listening to our intuitive inner voice?

Emily Sadowski:
That's a great question, Joeita. It's true that sometimes you might pick up on information that's inconvenient or uncomfortable and that becomes an issue, not exactly about intuition, but about confidence and about a willingness to risk when you might be being asked to go outside of your comfort zone or the comfort zone of people around you. So the question of authority is a little bit different from the question of trust. There's the issue of trusting yourself and then trusting the circumstance to support whatever has to come next. That make sense?

Joeita Gupta:
So you talk a little bit about taking lessons in reiki to try and unlock some of your own intuitiveness. It isn't that it's now become a superpower, but you've certainly been practicing meditation more than you were before and that's helped you tune into these intuitive moments. What are some of the pathways open to someone if they wanted to become a more intuitive person?

Emily Sadowski:
Okay, so it's kind of become cliche, but meditation really, really does help and it helps for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is when you can observe the things that you tend to think about, you can start to separate your thought from your intuitive experience. So that's quite key.
The other thing is kind of cultivating your mind or the state of mind to be receptive. So when your thoughts are more calm, there's just simply more room for intuitive experience to arise. So that's why meditation is almost always a key to a prescription for becoming more intuitive and it doesn't have to be sitting meditation. Whatever works.

Joeita Gupta:
I feel like when one's life is fairly straightforward, it's nice to have those intuitive moments like the telephone telepathy or thinking... you have another example where you say, "Okay, well, I was waiting for some books and I thought maybe the books are going to arrive and your doorbell rings and the books get here." Those experiences are always nice and they make for a fun conversation piece. But I often find myself, and I hesitate to say this somewhere that my husband can hear this, but I often find myself relying on intuition for really big decisions. For example, where to live. That's a huge one. I will often make decisions about where to live, based less on some of the more rational factors like the location and the price. I mean, obviously, one considers them, but ultimately, what clinches it for me is do I get a good vibe when I walk in the space? So how much is intuition a factor when life is in turmoil or you're in a moment of change or transition in your life? How often do people listen to their guts or do people listen to their guts in those moments?

Emily Sadowski:
That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. What is the rate of people following their intuition, although that would be a really fascinating study, especially to compare over time. But I consider intuition to be a relationship that you have with yourself. So there's a part of you, the intuitive part of you, that is potentially always in communication with the rest and if you are willing to be in relationship and cultivate that relationship, you end up in a feedback loop where you can hear and trust more. So if you're already kind of intuitive, then just almost acknowledging that and recognizing that, you can become even more intuitive.
So the thing about big life decisions, I find that there's a real strength in intuitive knowing. Sometimes, it comes on very subtle, but it's certain and you do know. So a lot of the learning that I do with people is to just help them recognize that when you know, you actually do know.

Joeita Gupta:
Yeah, it's funny because the thing with this is I will tell you, if you ask me, that the first time I met my husband, we hadn't even been introduced [inaudible 00:18:32] to each other. We were just at an event together and he was kind of off doing his own thing and I was off doing my own thing and I just sort of felt in my gut that this is someone really special. The first time I walked into the place that has been my home for the last 10 years, the moment I walked in the door, I said, "I've got a really good vibe from this place. This is the one." So I want to say that I feel confident in trusting my gut. Who's to say that that's not confirmation bias?

Emily Sadowski:
Yeah, that's true.

Joeita Gupta:
That I'm just looking for evidence to back up what I'm saying or is it really just a sort of genuine indication that I'm in tune, not just with myself, but also with the world around me and I'm picking up on the things that are right and good for me and that support my wellbeing in the world.

Emily Sadowski:
I address this a lot in my book. The Question of validity, we're always looking for an analytic sense of validity where there's triangulation available, where you can look at something and I can look at something and we feel the same thing happening. But intuition is not like that and we shouldn't expect the same approach to truth because the truth is that for intuition, it is subjective. And although I know that's challenging when we are so wedded to the scientific method, et cetera, but if you can trust yourself and I trust that.
And you keep referring to the vibe of a place and I think that's really exciting to me because the truth is we're energetic beings. The truth is everything is energy, actually, when we get down on that level and that's a part of our humanity that we've sort of forgotten or we don't tend to think about or certainly don't cultivate it, but we all resonate to vibrations. We can do that even more if we practice, if we attend to it, and sometimes, the practice is really just allowing it to exist and trusting that it's real.

Joeita Gupta:
People say that about kids a lot, that kids are very intuitive, that they have a really good sense of what they want, what they like, what they don't like. How can we create a world which nurtures intuition rather than stifles it?

Emily Sadowski:
I think certainly talking to young people about intuition, just the fact that it exists, confirming for them that we trust that they know themselves and they are perceiving what they are perceiving. When I grew up, we would definitely hear things like, "Oh, that's just your imagination. You're making that up." None of the gut feelings were confirmed or authorized for us and so that's one way.
There's also all these other ways to cultivate intuition just through practicing like playing games. When the phone rings and you could say, "Oh, guess who that is" and then you get to play with... and if you're right, you can kind of register what that feels like when you're right and if you're wrong, you can start to register, "Oh, that's actually not that. That's not intuitive."

Joeita Gupta:
It's a really interesting one to sink one's teeth into because intuition is really one of those experiences that is universal. I have yet to meet a person who's said, "I've never had an intuitive moment." I can confidently say that just about everybody I've talked to in the lead up to the show, I said, "I'm having Emily Sadowski on to talk about intuition. Yeah, I had this really weird thing happen to me and I was so intuitive." Everybody has these moments, but we just, as a society, seem to not have the language or the vocabulary to actually describe intuition and to think about it and to take it seriously as a force that guides our decision-making.
Now, you've got this book coming out. Tell us a little more about the book. You should tell us what it's called and where we can grab a copy.

Emily Sadowski:
I would love to. So the book is called What is Intuition and it is really addressing what we've been talking about today like creating a framework for understanding intuition, not through an analytic lens, but through intuition's lens, helping us have vocabulary to talk about what intuition is. It does outline some framework and also, some practices that people can do to cultivate their own intuition. It's not available yet. It will be coming out in the summer. And for now, the best way to get it, get your hands on it is to subscribe to my email list, probably, and then you'll be the first to know when it's available for purchase. So you can go to my website, emilysadowski.com.

Joeita Gupta:
All right, Emily. It was so good talking to you. Thank you so much for being on the program.

Emily Sadowski:
Such my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Joeita Gupta:
Emily Sadowski is a researcher and life coach, also the author of What Is Intuition coming out very soon. You can grab a copy by looking at Emily's website, emilysadowski.com, and she has a great listserv that you might want to sign up for as well. I usually don't advocate signing up for email list service because I know email clutter is a thing, but Emily's emails are particularly insightful and they're fantastic reads, if you ever wanted to sit down and have an email with amazing content and links you want to really chew over. She did a recent one about fear and intuition, which was really quite a good read as well. So feel free to check out emilysadowski.com and pick up that book. I'm going to be waiting for it to come out later on in the summer and I'll have a read. Maybe we'll have Emily back to talk more about intuition.
But my gut is telling me you want to give us feedback about the program and why should I get in your way? Here's how you find us. You can find us on Twitter @amiaudio. Use the hashtag pulseami. You can pick up the phone and give us the ring at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545, and you can always leave your voicemail there, as well as give us your permission to play the audio on the program. If you feel like you have a lot to say and 280 characters on Twitter just isn't going to do it for you, send us an email feedback@ami.ca. However, you want to get in touch with us, we would love to hear from you. It's been great being back on the program. I've missed you guys, and so it's back to regular programming here on The Pulse and I hope you'll tune in every week.
Our videographer today has been Matthew McGuirk. Ryan Delehanty is the podcast coordinator. Mark [inaudible 00:25:19] is our technical producer. Andy Frank is the manager here at AMI-audio, and I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.