Our gut– also known as the enteric nervous system in our bellies or “Second Brain”  –  goes far beyond just processing the food we eat. We also experience “gut feelings” that can support us in making decisions. Or are these intuitive feelings we’re experiencing?

How can we tell the difference?

First, let’s look at the difference between your gut feeling and intuition. Then we’ll touch on the whether this gut feeling is coming from fear or if it’s truly intuitive.

At the most basic of levels, one could argue that gut feelings could be classified as mechanisms or aspects of intuition. The feeling of “just knowing” is what we perceive as a gut feeling. And these feelings are natural. We don’t ask our gut how we feel. They simply come on their own. What’s interesting about them is that we usually appreciate them in hindsight. Most times we only recognize the feelings afterwards and we beat ourselves up for not having listened to them.

Now let’s talk about intuition. As mentioned above, gut feelings are aspects of intuition, but not all aspects of intuition are gut feelings. There’s more to intuition than your gut feeling. When we truly allow our intuitive capabilities to be at work, we’re including many other powerful tools of impressions, visions, symbols and archetypes. And what sets these tools apart from our gut feelings is they are objective, neutral, & independent from our feelings. More often than not, our gut feelings come from a survival or protective mechanism.

So where does fear come in? Tune in next week…