In my mid twenties I started to reclaim my intuition. I knew I had lost it somewhere along the line, but where & how was a mystery. What I did discover very quickly was that up until that point I had mistakenly confused my fear messages as intuitive ones. On the more obvious scale I can see that when I am confronted with a scenario that is unknown and scary, I have the opportunity to convince myself that those feelings inside are my intuition telling me to steer clear or I can recognise them as feelings of fear, the next choice to push on through or find safety.<\/p>\n
More deeply, our intuition has multiple levels and subtleties and so many of them have been dismissed, suppressed, ridiculed and forcibly removed from us that making decisions about our natural needs can be overwhelming.<\/p>\n
It was when I became a parent that the light bulb switched on and I started to understand how so many of us are left with dulled versions of our inner guide. Our move away from nature-led parenting to societal-defined parenting is causing our intuition to haemorrhage.<\/p>\n
From the very first moments, when we start to choose our birth plans, we can begin to implement supporting the next generation to live and be guided by their instincts. Allowing our children to enter the world when they are ready, not when we deem them to be, like reconsidering how necessary inductions are (is being two weeks ‘overdue’ a necessary reason to induce? Or can babies be born on a wide scale of gestation periods?); choosing to allow our babies to feed on demand rather than on a prescribed schedule, allowing them to stay in touch with their instinctive calls of hunger, what they feel like, how they can sate themselves and call for response.<\/p>\n
Sleep! My midwife counselled me to ‘never wake a sleeping baby’ and I live pretty religiously by that for this very reason; to respect my children’s natural and individual rhythms. That is not exclusive of having regular and sympathetic household rhythms, it does not mean being beholden to each child without flexibility, but more about listening to where their needs are and finding a place that can comfortably hold theirs and yours. Both my children have ended up being morning sleepers, tired by late morning and then happy to have a long stretch in the afternoon, whilst many mother’s I know have kids that do the afternoon nap and are ready to sleep again just a few short hours later. Every child is different, every child is attuned to their own natural needs unless told or trained otherwise by their guides… us… the parents.<\/p>\n
And the list goes on: our language can strongly override another’s intuitive response. A child’s agility and balance may make them perfect climbers, but constant cautioning with ‘watch out’, ‘careful’, ‘that’s not safe’ etc makes them listen to fear instead of their own natural caution. It’s not easy, I am still on a massive learning curve myself with this principle, however it does make the utmost sense to me. I am still relearning my hunger messages as I, more often than not, finish my plate of food irrespective of whether I actually need it all. I don’t respect my tired signals enough and ‘push on through’ far too much, however, I am becoming more conscious about it than I used to and learning to reconnect with that deep, beautiful voice inside of me.<\/p>\n
For ourselves and for our children, this world needs us all to get back in touch with that inner wisdom that answers the call of nature and guides us skilfully through life.\u00a0 <\/span>So next time you are \u2018teaching\u2019 yourself or your child something, whether it be cooking, sleeping, loving or playing, check-in with that true inner spirit and follow its lead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my mid twenties I started to reclaim my intuition. I knew I had lost it somewhere along the line, but where & how was a mystery. What I did discover very quickly was that up until that point I had mistakenly confused my fear messages as intuitive ones. On the more obvious scale I … Continue reading “Intuition or Fear?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}