Keeping In Touch With Your Intuition: Catherine Duncan Of Learning To Live On How To Get In Touch With Your Intuition And When To Trust Your Intuition When Making Decisions
Choosing love — love is the highest vibrational energy and when you open into love, the doorway opens into your soul. It is here that you receive the insights, the inner guidance and wisdom surfaces. Practice this exercise, put your hands over your heart area and say, “I love you,” and feel the warmth of your hands, your heart beating, and breathe in and breathe out for several minutes.
Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reasoning. Where does intuition come from? Can it be trusted? How can someone tune in to their intuition? To address these questions, we are talking to business leaders, coaches, mental health experts, authors, and anyone who is an authority on “How to Get In Touch With Your Intuition And When To Trust Your Intuition When Making Decisions.” As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Catherine Duncan.
Catherine Duncan, MA, BCC is an Integrative Spiritual Consultant and author of Everyday Awakening. She has worked extensively in the areas of chronic illness, life transitions, grief, and loss. Catherine is an ordained minister, chaplain, spiritual director, and trained in a range of healing modalities. She served for many years as a hospice chaplain, and now owns her own practice, Learning To Live.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
At age 11yo I was suddenly walking on a tightrope between life and death going through treatment for a rare childhood cancer. Faith up until then meant nothing to me. My family occasionally went to a Lutheran Church and I my only memory from church was loving hearing my Mom sing next to me. Out of nowhere, I started to pray, my prayer was, “Please let me live to be 20yo.” I told no one I was praying. Not long after a feeling of deep peace poured through my body. A knowing came through me that I was going to live. I also knew that I was not alone in this world.
This deep feeling of peace and presence cracked me open and has informed who I am to this day.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself — Marcus Aurelius
This quote was framed and hung on my bedroom wall throughout my childhood. I believe we all have the power to awaken, to feel vibrantly alive, and choose how we live each day. We can open into the good or dwell on the negative and let our mind run us. I have been contemplating the meaning of life since a young teenager and understand what it means to be alive right now.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I started to read books on life, meaning, purpose as a teenager. The book, Existentialism and Human Emotions by Jean-Paul Sartre I read as a 16yo. This book resonated with me and the understanding that we have the power of choice, and human freedom. We live our life by the choices we make, and the power lies deeply within us.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. Let’s begin with a definition of terms so that each of us and our readers are on the same page. What exactly does intuition mean? Can you explain?
Intuition is a deep knowing that comes through us. It is not an intellectual knowing but a gut feeling, a sensation, a deep understanding that surfaces and points us forward. An example of this is when I was working as a senior advertising executive for Time Magazine and amidst making lots of money and the glamour of the job, I had a feeling deep within me that this was not where I was being called. I knew that I would be making a career change, but I didn’t know where. After having a NDE white water rafting in Costa Rica on a Time Inc trip in 2000, I flew home, and a knowing came through me that I was done. I gave my notice within a few weeks and felt a strong nudging to open into where I was being called next.
I have been listening deeply to the internal nudgings and knowings and guidance that arise within for most of my life.
How would you define common sense? Are intuition and common sense related?
Common sense is about thinking and behaving in a judicious manner. Common sense is more cerebral, using your mind and intellect to guide you.
Intuition is tuning into your feelings, your inner guidance, that gut feeling, a nudging within.
There is great power in making life decisions through tuning into your intuition, your inner guidance, and then running it through your common sense to feel if it is grounded and the right next step.
How are they different from each other?
It is helpful to tune into your intuition, that inner guidance and open into the knowings that arise. And, then it is helpful to run these gleanings, knowings, guidance, through your common sense to see if there continues to be a resonance with this guidance to move in that direction.
What are the positive aspects of being in touch with your intuition? Can you give a story or example to explain what you mean?
We are all guided each day if we are open, in the present moment, and listening. I believe we experience intuition through our senses, and through clairvoyance, seeing, clairaudience, hearing, and clairsentience, feeling.
An example of this is when I worked as a chaplain for our level one trauma hospital HCMC in Minneapolis. I worked a lot of night shifts. Some nights after being called into the hospital, typically for a rough sudden patient accident, I’d be done in the middle of the night and yet on call until 8am. I’d walk to my car and some nights, after a particularly rough shift, I’d say a prayer to be done for the night. I’d then hear,” you are done,” or,” you have one more call.” I received guidance regularly within when I tuned in, and this helped me understand how my night shift would unfold.
Are there negative aspects to being guided by intuition? Can you give a story or example to explain what you mean?
If you follow a nudging that resembles old programming that is fear based, or leans into being compulsive, that is a reason to reevaluate the guidance you are receiving. If you are dysregulated and in a stress state it is hard to feel into your intuition and the guidance you receive may be fear-based.
A client shared with me that they received guidance to quit their job due to a difficult manager. This client was running a lot of fear and unrest and when we met. I recommended giving her job a little more time and working on releasing the fear she was holding in her body. I introduced several exercises to calm her nervous system and give her peace and ease. After a couple weeks of practicing mindfulness exercises, moving her body, sleeping, and eating well, she realized that a better solution was to apply for an internal position within her company rather than quitting. Within a month she was able to move into a different department in her company and reported that her new boss was great to work with. If she had followed that quick internal nudging to leave, she would have missed out on the better opportunity that was ahead of her. She learned valuable self-regulating, and self-soothing skills along the way.
Can you give some guidance about when one should make a decision based on their intuition and when one should use other methods to come to a decision?
Tuning into your gut, your heart, that inner knowing is important, and we all receive guidance. It is important to be open, and present, and listen to what comes across your path. When you feel, hear, see, or sense guidance, can you tune in further and notice if it feels life giving. Here are some good self-reflecting questions to ask yourself — Does this new guidance align with your values, and the direction that feels on track for you? Does this new guidance feel life-giving, full of energy?
Intuition is like a compass, a guide, and it is important to run it through your common sense when you are making a big life change or transition.
I find the practice of reviewing your day and asking two questions at the end of your day very powerful and insightful — what today was life giving and what today depleted me? Simply practicing this exercise every day will give you so much information on how you are being led and how to lean into the good.
From your experience or perspective, what are some of the common barriers that hold someone back from trusting their intuition?
Often our ego mind gets in the way and wants to run our lives.
It is very easy to live in your thinking mind and when you are in your mind you are in the past, or future, you are not even in the present moment. It is your thinking mind that causes you so much suffering every day.
Another barrier is when you are stressed, anxious or dysregulated, and then it is hard to hear your inner guidance. Your fear-based mind wants to run your life.
If your life has gone in a challenging direction, fear and self-doubt may dominate your thinking and then there is little room to feel into your inner guidance, that compass leading you each day.
What are five methods that someone can use to become more in touch with their intuition?
1 . Present moment — being here now, in just this moment, you can feel into what arises. When you are living in this moment, not your fast-chattering ego mind, you can receive so much guidance. This includes being still and noticing what is arising within and all around you. A good exercise is putting your hand on your lower abdomen and feeling it expand on the in breath and recede on the out breath. Practice this breathing exercise for several minutes to calm your body, ground you, and bring you fully into this moment where you can tune into your inner guidance.
2 . Connecting with Something Greater — and this is different for every person. What gives you strength, meaning, and life? What practice helps you be present and feel into the energy that you are and the energy of the universe? It may be prayer, meditation, breathing, somatic body movements, toning, sound healing, journaling, are a few examples. When you can tune into the energy force within and around you, here is where the guidance lies, and the inner knowings, nudgings, and gleanings surface. For example, journaling is a powerful practice that connects your neocortex with your emotional brain and when you start writing you may find yourself writing ideas, thoughts, feelings that are new and they start coming through you. This is your soul speaking to you.
3 . Trust in just this moment — when you can be here now in this moment, accepting it for all that is happening, you can hear the guidance that is present and know you are on the right path. Can you tune into what trusting in life feels like for you? Can you trust easily or not? What gets in the way? Through tuning in and building your awareness muscle you can see what is holding you back and choose to open.
4 . Choosing love — love is the highest vibrational energy and when you open into love, the doorway opens into your soul. It is here that you receive the insights, the inner guidance and wisdom surfaces. Practice this exercise, put your hands over your heart area and say, “I love you,” and feel the warmth of your hands, your heart beating, and breathe in and breathe out for several minutes.
5 . Holding openness — means going with the flow, right here and now, letting life happen and breathing in and out versus moving into a stress or freeze response. It is in the moment, going with the flow, where you receive the guidance that is all around you. The way becomes clearer. Tune in and notice are you going with the flow? Can you go with the river? Notice what is holding you back. Breathe into your body and say, “I release whatever is not of my highest good,” and breathe out. Spend the next five minutes feeling the air moving into your body and out of your body.
You are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Are you living in Love or Fear? Kindness always wins. Love is the healing balm in life and what we take with us when we die is our ability to love. How are you embodying love and opening each day into more love?
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
Oprah. She recently spoke with Al Roker about turning 70yo and the power of love and good health. My book, Everyday Awakening, is about how are we choosing to live our lives. It is a daily choice to awaken and live a vibrant life right now.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Catherineduncan.org
Instagram — Catherineduncanmabcc
Facebook — Learning to Live
LinkedIn — Catherine Duncan, MA, BCC
TikTok — Catherine Duncanmabcc
YouTube — Catherine Duncanmabcc
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Keeping In Touch With Your Intuition: Catherine Duncan Of Learning To Live On How To Get In Touch… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.