What Your Body Already Knows: How to Strengthen Your Intuition

Intuition, Holistic Wellness

Intuition is the knowing.

It is the ability to distinguish between what is a full yes and a full no in your body. What aligns with your values without question. It is discernment, and it is knowing what is not for you, in any sense.

Let me back up and say what it actually is, because I think people hear the word intuition and picture something mystical.

Your body, your nervous system, and your subconscious process information faster than your thinking brain does. Much faster. So by the time you have words for something, your body has usually already made up its mind.

Relearning to trust your inner yes and your inner no

What is intuition and how do you strengthen it?

That is why intuition shows up as a sensation before it shows up as a thought. For me it is usually one of these:

A soft opening in my chest.

A grounded heaviness low in my pelvis.

A sudden tightness in my throat.

A twist in my gut.

Yours might feel completely different, and that is fine. The point is that it is physical first.

This is not magic. It is your lived experience and your own pattern recognition talking to you in feelings, because feelings are faster than words.

And here is the part I did not understand for years. You strengthen intuition the way you strengthen a muscle. Consistent, gentle practice. You pause. You notice. You ask your body what it is saying. And then you honor it in some small way.

That last part is the whole thing. Every time you act in alignment with what you felt, you are telling your nervous system, I hear you, and I will protect you.

That is how self-trust grows back.

So how do we tune into it, refine it, or even strengthen it in this modern world?

Some people are born with really strong boundaries and a really strong sense of intuition, so it is not everyone who has to work on defining theirs. But I will share my experience with getting in touch with mine and strengthening it over the last ten years.

The feeling I could not name

For most of my nursing career in the hospital, I constantly felt dysregulated, with a baseline feeling of ick in my gut, for lack of a better way of describing it.

I would question how things were done and feel like, why am I the only one who feels this way? What is wrong with me? Why do I feel this way at work?

But those were the wrong questions to be asking.

It was not until I met a new friend of mine, someone who is a psychic with extremely strong boundaries and extremely strong intuition, that I learned the basics of how to tune in. How to have unwavering yeses, and more importantly, unwavering noes. When you do not agree with something, do not want to do something, or something just does not sit right with you, it is not a question. It is a fact.

No, I will not do that, because it does not align with my values.

The journey has been long, and my intuition has grown incredibly strong in the ten years since that moment.

Step one: notice

I started by noticing when I was going against the inner knowing.

When I got a yes in my body, you know that wave of excitement, or a flicker of butterflies, or chills, however it feels in you, I was too scared to speak up on it, or too afraid to ask for help.

And there were other situations that were a clear no, and I did them anyway. Most often at work, following rules without any sense of autonomy, without questioning the way things have always been done.

I started to notice that I was following rules set in place by people as guidelines, instead of being a patient advocate and informing patients fully of what their options were.

I know this sounds vague, and I want to be clear: I am not saying do not follow protocol as a nurse. What I am saying is give full consent. Really give it.

Consent was the biggest area I saw falling out in health care across my whole career. Not just by me, but I have no problem admitting that I did it at the beginning of my career too. I followed the lead of other nurses by saying the doctor said to do this, or the doctor ordered this, or this is just what we do.

A more recent example

When I was pregnant, to my disappointment, I had to transfer to the hospital to finish giving birth, and my daughter broke her collarbone on the way out.

There is no treatment for that, because they heal so quickly. The doctor even said that to us.

Yet she wanted to order an X-ray, which would put unnecessary exposure on our newborn. And when we asked her to tell us the rationale behind doing it, she said, it is just what we do.

So if you were thinking that it was just me, and that other nurses do not do this, unfortunately you would be wrong. It happens a lot. And this is exactly why we need to inform ourselves, and inform the people we care for, about how to speak up in situations like that one.

"No, I will not do that, because it does not align with my values."

Step two: act on it

Back to strengthening your intuition.

If you are a newbie to this like I was, acknowledgment is step one. Noticing what is a yes and what is a no in your body.

Step two is taking action on those things. Because like I said above, sometimes I noticed the clear no and did not follow through. Or I noticed a clear yes and did not speak up.

Honestly, this is where the bulk of the work lies. It takes a long time to strengthen that area, because there could be other things at play.

Are you a people pleaser? Are you afraid of authority? Are you living in a place of lack and fear, too afraid to ask for what you want or need because you think you do not deserve it?

There are so many things that could contribute to a weakened intuition.

So my only advice in this phase is to stick to it. Keep going. Keep trusting yourself. Keep speaking up as it comes up. Even just saying it out loud to yourself helps.

What happens when it grows

As my intuition grew, I started aligning myself spiritually, emotionally, and physically to what was meant for me in this life. And I did that by cutting out what was not.

Negative people. Negative jobs. Anything drawing me into negative thought, or in directions that were not bringing me closer to the highest version of myself, and not aligning me to God, or however you define God, universal consciousness, whatever it is for you.

Then intuition developed into more than just yes or no. It became a feeling. An overall, resounding yes, this is the direction I go.

And then I went. I took steps toward what was meant for me.

I left my full-time job as a nurse, because it did not suit me anymore. My heart led me to explore different paths, and each one gave me a clear yes or no. Sometimes it took a few months. Sometimes it took a full year. But I was taking steps in new directions that aligned with my soul purpose.

I left friendships that were no longer aligned with love. I left the party life. I cut out drinking for a time. I stopped going to bars and staying up past midnight. I prioritized health, fitness, people who talked about long-term goals and mental health, and spiritual practices that made them feel connected to each other, and again, to God, or universal consciousness.

My life began to unfold and expand in incredible and beautiful ways that I never would have imagined when I had closed thinking and was living out of alignment.

So what is alignment?

If you are asking at this point what it means to be in alignment, it's the cohesiveness of your mind to your heart, to your body and soul.

If you are familiar with the chakras, it's feeling the channels open between your third eye, your throat chakra, and your heart chakra. Those are things I will touch on in another post, because only in the last couple of years have I connected to the chakras so deeply. My throat chakra specifically has taken years to fully open.

Which makes me want to throw a note in here to say that healing is a long process that never really ends.

You just have an easier time dealing with the unfolding. The unveiling. The things that are really hard at first, when you go deep and look inside those wounds and think, ugh, I do not like that, I do not want to go there. That part gets much easier. You start to look at it from a different lens, and you accept that it is not a defining thing about you. It is an experience, or an emotion, that is fleeting and will pass. And it made you who you are.

So without getting any deeper here, alignment is more of a feeling. It is knowing that you are connected, and that your actions, your words, and your emotions are all pointing the same direction.

Where to start, if you are starting today

You do not need a psychic friend or ten years. You need one honest moment.

The next time something lands in front of you, a request, an invitation, an order, a recommendation, pause before you answer. Notice what your body did before your brain got involved. The tightening or the opening. The lean in or the pull back.

That is the information. That is the whole thing.

You do not have to act on it immediately. In the beginning I did not, and that was fine, because noticing came first. But name it to yourself. This is a no. This is a yes. Say it out loud in your car if you need to.

And then, when you are ready, ask one question out loud that you would normally swallow. Why are we doing it this way? What are my other options? What happens if we wait?

That question is a small thing. It is also the whole practice. Every time you ask it, the signal gets a little louder and a little easier to hear the next time.

Your body has been telling you the truth this entire time. You are just learning to listen.

Frequently asked questions about intuition and alignment

Q: What is intuition, really?

A: Intuition is your body's way of integrating information faster than your thinking mind and sending it to you as sensations, images, and quiet nudges that are often simple and steady rather than dramatic. It is the deep inner knowing that says this feels right for me or this does not feel safe long before you can line up all the logical reasons on paper, and it becomes easier to recognize when you slow down and pay attention to how your body responds in real time.

Q: How do I tell the difference between intuition and anxiety?

A: Anxiety usually feels fast, tight, and urgent, with a lot of spinning thoughts and worst case scenarios that push you to decide quickly just to get relief, while intuition tends to feel quieter and more grounded like a simple yes or no underneath the noise even if it is inconvenient. Giving yourself permission to pause before deciding, to breathe, and to notice what softens and what remains true after a few minutes can help you sense whether you are responding from fear or from that deeper inner knowing.

Q: Can you strengthen intuition, or are you born with it?

A: You are born with intuition and with a body that knows what it needs, and over time many of us are taught to override that knowing in order to be easy, agreeable, or compliant, especially in medical and caregiving spaces. You strengthen your intuition by rebuilding trust with yourself through small daily choices that honor your sensations and your values, so that your system learns it is safe again to speak up and to be taken seriously.

Q: What does it mean to be "in alignment"?

A: Being in alignment means that your choices, your schedule, your relationships, and your health decisions are consistent with your values, your body's capacity, and your inner yes and no instead of constantly pulling you into resentment or self betrayal. It feels like your words and your body are on the same page, so that when you say yes your nervous system also feels like a yes rather than tightening or bracing underneath the surface.

Q: How do I start if I have never listened to my intuition before?

A: You can start by choosing one small area of your day and practicing a tiny pause before you decide, asking your body what would feel most nourishing or most honest in that moment and then honoring that answer even if it is something as simple as what you drink first thing in the morning. Over time you can extend that pause to bigger decisions, practice saying I will think about it and get back to you, and allow yourself to change your mind when you realize your body was actually a no, which is one of the most powerful ways to rebuild self trust and strengthen your intuition.

About The Holistic Momma

I am a holistic registered nurse and mom who has spent the last ten years learning how to honor my intuition in healthcare settings, in motherhood, and in my own body after years of being told to disconnect from what I felt. I support women in reclaiming their inner yes and inner no so they can move through medical decisions and everyday life feeling grounded, informed, and deeply aligned with their values.

This same trust-your-body approach is exactly what shapes how I parent day to day - I write about that more in Intentional Parenting Over Perfection.

If you are ready to have a grounded, validating conversation about your own health story and your intuition, you are welcome to book a free 30 minute connection call with me.

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