Intuition
anthony bruni
What exactly is Intuition?
L.M.T. often use the word intuitive to describe their massage. All too often their language makes intuition seem like some metaphysical gift given to the chosen. As if we are either graced with intuition or are bereft of it. What exactly is intuition though?
If we examine the etymology (history of a word) intuition is derived from the Latin intueri, meaning to look at. Tueri is an ancestor of our word to tutor. In implies, the tutelage is from stemming from within ourselves. So it would seem intuition is a sort of inner teacher/ observer.
It is my opinion that everyone has intuition. We can certainly see the role of intuition in other animals, who will instinctively fight, migrate, mate, and flee predation all without much formal training. Why would humans be the one animal exempted from being guided from within? We, of course, are living lifestyles that would be unimaginable to all but wildest unhinged mystics just generation or two ago. In our new and often unimproved environment, we frequently ignore our intuition as it is often not situationally practical. Our intuition can be out of step with what we need to do. Giving that it is easy to begin to believe our intuition is untrustworthy. If we start to ignore our intuition though it will cease to develop.
On my home page, I display a quote concerning feelings, that I believe could easily about our intuition. “When you listen to your feelings, you follow an algorithm that evolution has developed for millions of years, and that withstood the harshest quality control test of natural selection. Your feelings are the voice of millions of ancestors”. Why I find relevance in this quote is it takes what's is often seen as a fuzzy concept such as our feelings and it maps out the logic of why we have them in evolutionary terms. Our feelings are not random whims. They are genetically encoded survival strategies we been gifted. Our feeling, intuition, inner wisdom, whatever we call it, just as relevant to biology as genes despite them being less accessible to the leer of the microscope.
So how can we begin to cultivate our intuition if we have been detached from it for any reason? My thoughts to this are following our pain. Not that we should be defined by our traumas but that we should be able to find reasons for what intensifies and diminishes our suffering. It is all too common to be under an anesthetic (which literally means to remove beauty) spell of drugs (legal, illegal and prescribed), routines, and distractions. Of course, this is unavoidable to some degree. Who goes through life without a dimmer switch experiencing every micro-moment of pain and pleasure. But there, at least to me, some inverse correlation between how much we ignore our pain and how attuned our intuition is. Conversely the more we ask ourselves why there is pain the more data points our internal tutor will have to employ feelings. The more we focus on our pain, in an objective way the faster our emotions can connect to our thoughts, giving us the wisdom to alleviate our suffering.
For a massage to be intuitive, which I think it should be, we as L/M.T. have to first begin to explore our own pain in such a way. It is then, at least according to me, that we develop the intuition with regards to other people. I also believe for no other reason than my intuition that intuition is contagious. After an intuitive massage we should feel a heightened connection with our intuition.
Anthony Bruni