HOW TO TAP INTO YOUR INTUITION FOR NEW INSIGHT.

This is yesterday's post!

Wow - I am a great believer in listening to my 'gut'! It tells me all sorts of things - but as stated in the article, I can't always articulate them. What I do know for sure though is that there is a place, somewhere inside all of us - that knows the truth when we hear it. When we 'hear' that truth we need to act on it.

How to tap into your intuition for new insight
04 April 2007 at 11h00

At work or in our personal lives, we may feel vaguely uneasy about a decision that on the surface appears to be logical. At such times our intuition may be telling us that something is amiss, warning signals that are often ignored because we can't pinpoint why we feel this way.

Later our misgivings may prove justified, causing us to wish we had paid more attention to our "gut feeling" and found an alternative solution. In our modern culture, which emphasises the power of conscious, rational thinking, intuition is a powerful resource that is often overlooked.

Adopting a new approach, clinical psychologist Catherine Johnson and corporate trainer Maryse Barak have developed a course to teach business leaders how to tap into and use their intuition. Their revolutionary course will be launched at the UCT Graduate School of Business next month.

Called "Thinking with your gut," it will centre on a process called focusing to help executives improve their strategic planning and decision-making abilities in the increasingly complex and demanding business world. Through the focusing process, which has its roots in psychotherapy, business leaders will be taught to combine reasoning with bodily-felt sensing of problems, to arrive at what Flavia Cymbalista, an international financial market focusing expert, describes as "more-than-logical decision-making". She says that while intuitive feelings may seem to appear out of nowhere, they are actually based on experience and knowledge held in the mysterious area bordering between the conscious and subconscious mind.

Our "gut feeling" - often manifested as a physical sensation, such as a knot in the stomach or a heavy feeling in the chest - is the body's way of telling us that there is critical information that we should be taking into account. Such physical manifestations are widely experienced. English has many phrases describing the physical reactions when faced with situations, such as: "butterflies in my stomach" or "that felt like being punched in the solar plexus".

In focusing, these are called "felt senses," says Johnson. Our intuitive feelings are initially fuzzy, unclear and can't be put into words. "Through the six-step focusing process used on our course we bring an inner attention to the bodily sensations that may cause unease, teaching the 'focuser' to locate and identify the felt senses, and then to symbolise them accurately, using an appropriate word, phrase, image, sound or gesture."If the symbol accurately describes the physical sensation, the person will experience a subtle change or "felt-shift" in the body's signal, she says.

"He will also experience further felt-shifts as he begins to unravel the 'knot' of emotions and thoughts that have made him feel uneasy, through a series of questions that form part of the focusing process. This will lead him to a point where he can access and bring to the surface the information and wisdom hidden in his subconscious, providing fresh insights into his understanding of the situation."

Focusing was developed by psychologist Eugene Gendlin during his research at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. Gendlin observed that clients who had benefited most from therapy differed in the way in which they internally processed their experiences.

Johnson explains: "While trying to convey their inner experience... they 'focused' on a conceptually vague, but clearly bodily-felt sense, and were open to the unexpected results that emerged from doing so."Gendlin devised the focusing methodology to teach others the same skills that seemed to come naturally to some people, and which he believed had resulted in positive change.

The focusing process is now used in a variety of disciplines, from education to financial marketing, human resources and life-coaching, Johnson says. To illustrate the power of intuition, Johnson cites a case study that author Malcolm Gladwell described in his bestselling book, Blink.

In 1983 the Getty Museum was offered an ancient sculpture at a price of just under $10 million. To have the piece authenticated, the museum first consulted several geologists, and then several expert art collectors and experienced museum directors. Three of the art consultants intuitively felt something was wrong with the sculpture and advised the museum against buying it. But, spurred on by its wish to own a sculpture that it believed would enhance its reputation, the museum went ahead and bought the statue on the strength of the scientists' favourable opinion.

The piece turned out to be a fake, which had been produced in the 1980s. By using the focusing process, this conceptually vague sense could have been articulated better and more clearly, she says. "If the consultant had been better able to express his intuitive feeling, explicitly complemented by his specialist knowledge, the museum might have listened to the opinions of its art experts and saved itself $10 million.

"The "Thinking with your gut" course will be a three-day experiential learning process, which will run from April 18 to 20.

Contact Shireen Brown on 021 406 1370 or shireenb@gsb.uct.ac.za
Impti du Toit is a freelance writer, editor and publicist who can be contacted on 021 762 4364