Recently, I was working with a client who was longing to strengthen her intuition. She really wanted to start living her life from “THAT place”, making decisions that FEEL good. We were exploring together the different paths that Ayurveda offers for those who wish to live more intuitively.
First of all, all Ayurvedic practises, when done correctly, will have a harmonising effect on you as a human being, which will inevitably result in you paying more attention to your inner voice.
A very good place to start is to begin listening to your body’s needs and to learn to truly honour them.
Our bodies are talking to us all the time.
Yes, all of the time. We sometimes hear them, but more often than not, we choose to shush them for convenience.
In Ayurveda, we talk about the 13 natural “urges” that all bodies have at some point, which we must honour. They are:
- Sleep
- Hunger
- Thirst
- Burping/belching
- Flatulence
- Defecating
- Urinating
- Ejaculation
- Vomiting
- Sneezing
- Coughing
- Yawning
- Crying
Before you say “eeew”, let me explain.
These urges are there for a very good reason. Each of them has a very important physiological function. Take flatulence, for instance. Excuse me for not being prude, but farting is a genius way for our body to get rid of gaseous metabolic waste that is present in our colon, deemed “toxic” by our inner intelligence.
So let me tell you what happens next time you are holding one in because you are in a yoga class and, you know, it’s impolite (okay, we’ve all done it…).
This metabolic waste that was not allowed to escape your body through the natural passageway, is now sieving through the large intestine permeable wall and is probably settling in and getting absorbed by your bone tissue. Is it no biggie? Perhaps, if it happens once or twice. But if you have a belief that some of these natural urges are shameful and you repeatedly repress them, two things will be happening:
a) your body will be deprived from carrying out its physiological functions to the best of its abilities, possibly resulting in blockages and disruptions in various channels (paving way to disease)
b) you will be sending the message to your body that its needs just don’t matter. This is not the note you want to play (ever) and especially if you want to develop your intuition.
Coming back to my client, one of the exercises we did together was examining which of these natural urges she was resisting regularly. We found at least 2 big ones that she was repressing on a daily basis, which is huge. With this awareness in mind, she is now taking steps to address this, so that she can re-build a deeper connection to her body by actively listening to it.
Is this easily done?
Working through something like this might be as simple as it might be complicated. One thing is to reverse our belief that “burping is not elegant” and finding a discrete, polite way to comply with this urge. Repressing something like crying on a regular basis might require a lot of deep digging, self-acceptance and compassion and might require establishing a support system of some sort.
Do you want to have a go? 🙂 Are you already noticing some deep-seated beliefs about expressing some of these natural urges? Let me know!