Intuition In The Context Of Mind-Body Connection (7)

In this 7th event, we will focus on intuition and explore its definition; learn 2 experiments on intuition; and brain-gut connection. If you are eager to know yourself better and build a trustworthy relationship with your body and mind, make sure to join us and check the previous episodes!

Transcript

Hello everyone! I will also introduce myself shortly. My name is Diana Mirceiva. I am a life coach, A meditation teacher here on Insight Timer and a philosopher. The topic that we are all going to discuss today is intuition and I really hope that it will be more of our dialogue and conversation rather than just my talk. So I really encourage you guys to participate in the comment section. You can ask me any related questions, You can share your opinion even and I would say especially if it is different from what I would be talking about because I am always open to listening to other people, Their experiences and I believe it will help us to enrich ourselves and our knowledge even more. I would like to remind that this is the seventh event of the Mind Body Connection series that we are having here almost weekly. You can find the previous events in my profile on Insight Timer if you would like to catch up with the previous information. We covered quite a few topics and aspects related to Mind Body Connection. First of all, I would like to say that everything that I will be talking today about is science-based, Just some scientific facts, Experiments from doctors and professors of universities that were held all over the world. So it will be less spiritual and more practical I would say. It is great because it means that we can understand how intuition works, What it basically is and how to work with that. First, In the beginning, I would also traditionally like to thank Insight Timer for our opportunity to meet here, To listen to the free meditations in the immense library and your donations guys are always welcome. They will be distributed between contributors and the platform itself with a team who is working for our good. So thank you so much in advance and thank you Insight Timer. Well, I should say that our discussion will be divided into two live events because I guess it will require quite a lot of time. Today, We will concentrate on the following statements. The definition of intuition, We will talk about the experiments that were proving intuition, We will talk about our brain and our gut and in the next live event, We will talk about how to tune into your intuition and how to train your intuition. So there will be some practical tools that we can use daily and enhance our inner voice. Let's start with a formal definition of intuition. As Oxford English Dictionary says, It is the ability to understand or know something immediately without conscious reasoning. So the ability to understand without conscious reasoning. So it is something other than conscious according to the Oxford dictionary. And I found a very popular and I would say very related quote of Albert Einstein who was saying that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. For me, It was very surprising to read such words of such a genius scientist. He paid attention and respected intuition quite a lot as we can understand from the quote. And indeed, I would say that modern society doesn't really rely on intuition, Doesn't respect intuition that much. And most of us, I would say, Majority of the society all over the world rely on our rational mind. Well, I wouldn't say it is good or bad. It is just how it is, How I see that. And I'm very curious guys, How would you define intuition for yourself? How do you understand intuition? Maybe the way you feel it, Perceive it, Think about it. There can be no wrong answers. I would sincerely like to hear your perspective to know your thoughts about that. Yeah, Sorry, It's your gut feeling. Yeah, Indeed, We can refer to intuition as a gut feeling or maybe inner voice. I totally agree with that. But what exactly is gut feeling? Is it what you literally feel in your gut or something else? For me, In the very beginning of my path of working with intuition of, Let's say, Discovering intuition in myself, I wasn't sure that I had intuition. I had no idea how it worked and how I can get in touch with it. So for me, It was something definitely irrational, Something unexplainable, But something that I felt from time to time, Probably either in my body, Somewhere in my heart, Heart region and in my brain area, Let's say. This is how it was for me in the beginning before I started deepening my knowledge and continuing my work with it. There are different kinds of sensations, Flow and streams of sensations in our bodies and we continuously recognize these patterns on a physical level but without conscious attention to that. So I would say now that intuition links our conscious and non-conscious parts of our mind. So it is something in the middle, Something that helps us to use the unconscious sensations and turn them into some kind of consciously perceived information. I hope it will be a little bit more clear later after we discuss the experiments that were held in some institutions around the world. Basically, Let's start with the experiment of Joel Pearson. He is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of New South Wales in Australia and he was holding the experiment with blind sight people. So these are the people who have their healthy eyes but the area in the brain that is responsible for converting the visuals, The visual information into conscious information that can be used by our mind later, This part of the brain is damaged. So they can physically see but they do not have any images in their mind, So their blind side. And they held such experiment where such people had to find their ways, Not sure whether it was in a long corridor with many rooms or inside the room but where they had a few obstacles but at the end all of the people who were taking part in the experiments could do that even without seeing it with their eyes. And they were using the information in a different way. So they make decisions based on their feelings. So not the information that we perceive when we see something and when we make our way through obstacles but they feel this information. And this is how intuition works, Joel Parison says. It is the act of taking unconscious information and utilizing it to make productive and useful decisions. So the people were using the unconscious information that their brain perceived but they couldn't really see it and they still used it. They kind of felt it. They described it as a feeling to find their way, To have a positive outcome. And to make it short I would like to say that we all perceive everything happening around us every second. Every second that our eyes are open we also are doing it with our eyes but we do not realize all of the volume of information coming to us. We pay attention, The information becomes conscious only when it is of a high importance to us. For example, Probably you guys do not see what's happening on your left right now because you don't really need it but if something will be moving quickly towards you from the left you'll definitely pay attention to that and turn. This is when the signals from the brain become the useful information for you. It goes to your consciousness. This was the first experiment and we can continue with the second experiment that was held in Japan by Dr. Keiji Tanaka. I hope I'm pronouncing his name well. He's a her name, Not sure about that though. They were conducting a study on expert shage players. Shage is a game similar to chess but if in chess we have to rely on our rational mind to make better decisions, Logical decisions let's say. In shage you have to rely more on your intuition and make more intuitive movements in the game. They were studying the brains of people who were playing shage, Not just people but experts. Let's highlight it. They scanned their brains while they were playing. What lit up during the game which parts of the brain they were responsible for intuition. They were definitely linked to intuition because in the game you have to rely quite much on it. Without any difficult scientific terms let me put it into simpler words and simpler language. The area that was lit up mostly was the area right between the left and the right parts of our brain, The one that connects to hemispheres. This part is responsible for episodic memory and visual-spatial processing and consciousness. The second part of the brain that was lit up and used a lot by expert players was ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It is the area where we store the information about the past, It's responsible for decision making and it also responds to our emotions. And the third area of the brain was the part of the basal ganglia and it plays a big role in learning, In the process of learning in our habits and automatic behaviors. As the experts were playing the shage game they used their intuition as they also proved themselves and these parts of the brain were linked to intuition in our bodies physically. And this is how our inner voice works. This is where we can find it, Basically parts of it. So of course we cannot say that intuition lives in particularly this area of our body or mind, Of the brain. No, I would say that it is all the complex combination of all the parts and something else. And I hope that it was another convincing proof for you guys that intuition definitely works in our body. However we define it, However we feel it. And the question that I want to ask all of you guys now, How does your stomach feel right now? How does your gut feel right now? So the first thought, The first feeling that you sensed, Let me know please if you don't mind sharing of course. As for me, My gut feels very calm, I can barely say I feel anything right now, Very comfortable. About my stomach, I feel some tension there. At least take a note of that for yourselves, It will be very interesting to remember that after we move to the next part of our discussion for today. Carol you feel it and you are aware of it? Excellent, Yeah that's really important. And your stomach is a little upset. Yeah, Alright sorry to hear about that but thanks for sharing it. Sorry for you it's a little bit of tension and heaviness. Right, Can imagine that too. Thank you ladies for sharing your experience at the moment. So this question was of course related to the next part of our discussion. I would like to pay your attention guys to brain-gut connection. How our brain and digestive system, Our gut especially are connected to each other. And actually did you know guys that our body has two brains? Yes, You heard me right and I'm not mistaken, Two brains. But don't get me wrong here, Cause the second brain except for the one that's in our head is called the enteric nervous system. It is lying in our digestive system and how it looks like? It is two thin layers of more than a hundred million nerve cells. So that's an immense amount and that is why in science they call it the second brain cause of this huge amount of nerve cells that live there. Quite surprising I guess, Well but it is indeed so and that is why we are going to pay attention to our guts. As one of you guys mentioned the gut feeling, Definitely absolutely agree with that and we have such expression in English. Not sure about other languages though, Let me know if it is in your native language the same or not but it's not just a coincidence that we have such an expression of gut feeling. And the main role of this enteric nervous system that I mentioned previously is controlling the digestion from the moment of swallowing to the release of enzymes that break down food to controlling the blood flow which will help the nutrients to be absorbed till the moment of elimination from our bodies. So this is the main role of the system. And what's really important, It communicates back and forth with our big brain. Big brain is the one in our head, The main brain let's say that. And the brain in your gut links to not only digestion but based on experiments and scientific data it links to your mood, Your overall health and even to the way you think. When I was just starting to study the topic I was extremely surprised and fascinated. It was like another universe opening up for me and I was like wow there is so much to learn about my body. And I still kind of feel this way when talking about that. I'm really fascinated by human body. The way that it influences us so much can be described and illustrated for example by the irritation. So if we have some kind of irritation in the digestive system it may send signals to the central nervous system that trigger our mood changes. So our mood will change, Probably we'll have mood swings and so on just because of the irritation in our digestive system somewhere in our gut for example. And digestive system activity may also affect our cognition, Our thinking skills and our memory which is extremely important, That is crucial. And still the final statement that it relates to our thinking abilities and the memory, It still needs more research up to this moment when we are having this life event but a lot of scientists are expecting it to be so and I hope that it will be proved in the nearest future. As I mentioned previously the big brain and our digestive system, Our gut are connected to each other and what we also have to take into consideration that the signals from our big brain go to our gut much quicker than the signals from the gut to our brain. So probably it also plays a role in why we are perceiving intuitive information a little bit slower or with a bit more uncertainty or hesitation. So it is just my suggestion but I say it this way, That is why our topic of course today is very important. I would like to say that it is essential, It is possible to learn how to consciously access the information in our gut, In our digestive system and actual brain. So this is where mind-body connection can be extremely helpful, That is why I believe we should develop that and work with it. It will be extremely beneficial not only to our mental health but of course physical health as we can see. And I strongly believe that we can convert these physical sensations, Unconscious sensations in our bodies into some conscious information in our brains that we can make it into a thought. So that is why I am so much into the topic of mind-body connection and I love working with it. I can say with certainty that it works for me, That I could develop my intuition much better thanks to the dialogue, The inner communication between my mind and my brain. So I would say that is all that I wanted to share with you guys for today. Once again to sum up we have covered the definitions of intuition, We have talked about some specific experiments that let's say proved intuition and how it is linked to the activity in our brain and we have viewed our gut, The digestive system. In the next life event, In the next part of the intuition topic we will be discovering how to tune into the intuition and how to train your intuition. Some very effective tools that will be suitable both for beginners and for experienced practitioners. So I hope it will be very helpful for everyone. I am really happy to share all this information with you guys and to hold these life events for you so more people will be aware of this connection between the mind and the brain. I strongly hope that it will help more people become healthier, Living their more authentic lives, More freely, Understand themselves better and so on. So there are numerous, Numerous benefits of mind-body connection and I am happy to be your guide in this topic. Thank you so much for joining this event and don't forget to check my profile for more meditations. And if you would like to have a private session with me, Do not hesitate to send me a private message and I would really love to connect with you. Goodbye, See you next week.