Is Meditation an Effective Exercise for Developing Your Intuition?
So many times I see lists of "intuition exercises" that include meditation. But is meditation really an exercise to improve your intuitive development? In short, no. Let's explore the reason so many recommend meditation and also why it is NOT an exercise in developing your intuition!
Most of us are aware that some great science has been done that supports the many benefits of meditation –decreasing stress and pain, improving our immune systems, expanding the grey matter in our brains, and increasing our happiness and social connections. These are excellent benefits and certainly a reason to begin a meditation practice.
If meditation can help open your mind and expand your thoughts, why, then, isn't it an intuition exercise?
Effective intuition exercises have 5 things in common that make them helpful in developing your intuition.
1. Low Risk. First, an effective intuition exercise uses low risk situations. Asking yourself while driving when the red car in front of you will turn off the highway is a great example. You shouldn't use high risk situations, such as financial actions, relationship questions, or buying a new home (as examples) to improve your intuition. Those are things you can do once you've reached a high level of experience with your intuition but not as practice to develop it.
2. Simple. The quicker and more simple an exercise, the easier it is to do. The best exercises are often those you can do on your own, because if you need other people to do them, the chances are you'll do them a lot less often. Simple exercises for your intuition might be sensing what color blouse your boss is going to wear today, or the exact time a meeting you're attending will end, or which day you'll get a phone call you've been expecting.
3. Repeatable. Using exercises that can be repeated many times also can help improve your intuition. This element goes hand-in-hand with an exercise being low risk and simple. For example, you can do any of the examples mentioned in #2 every day or even multiple times a day. This allows you to practice every day, all day, as you choose. That's an incredibly flexible way to practice!
4. Can Be Validated. Unless you can validate the information you receive through your intuitive exercises, you will not really know if you're getting good info, let alone if you are improving. When you ask yourself where that red car will turn off the highway, you will know very soon if your thought "they'll turn onto Green Street" is accurate or not. Validation is the key element of what I teach about developing your intuition - it does no good to draw in intuitive information if you don't know if it's valid.
5. Can Be Done Anywhere, Anytime. The flexibility of an exercise is also important. When it can be done in your car, on the commuter train, at work, at home, or in the bathtub (!), it makes improving your intuition much more accessible to us 'common folk'. It allows us to practice whenever we'd like, without anyone else being aware of it, and without any special equipment, people, or cost.
Now, looking over this list, let's think for a moment about how meditation fits as an exercise to improve intuition. Certainly, meditation is a low risk activity and it can be simple. It is repeatable. Can it be validated? In other words, can you confirm that the information you get while meditating is accurate? That it is coming to you via your intuition? Perhaps sometimes, but not all of the time. Can you meditate anywhere or anytime? Not exactly. You do need a quiet location where you can remove yourself from your immediate surroundings - not something you can do while driving or at work, most likely. Overall, there is a role for meditation on your intuitive development journey, but it in itself is not an exercise to improve or develop your intuitive skills. It can be helpful, to be sure.
But what if you don't or can't meditate effectively? Can you still improve your intuition? Absolutely! I know lots of highly intuitive people that don't meditate or meditate only occasionally. And while I highly recommend meditation as a tool to quiet your mind, there are lots of other ways to clear your mind. I'll be sharing those in another post soon!
Thanks for stopping by!
Carol
Dr. Carol Pollio
Director, Intuitive Investigations®
