Tag: intuitive healing

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How to Listen to Your Own Higher Wisdom

Graphic design of letter blocks spelling “How To Do It” surrounded by circular icons labeled The Elements
A simple reminder: You already know how to do it—your intuition just needs room to speak.

For anyone learning to trust their intuition

Most of us are taught to trust outer authority—experts, systems, institutions. But there comes a point when that model breaks down. Something inside us starts tugging for a different kind of guidance: one that doesn’t require an hourly fee, paperwork, or a formal request.

That’s where intuition comes in.

You don’t have to “get” intuition—you already have it. What most of us need is to begin using it again, with trust and consistency.

You Already Know More Than You Think

In a recent Heal with Kelly podcast interview, Vishen Lakhiani, founder of Mindvalley, says:

“Intuition is a muscle. The more you practice it, the better you get. But as we grow up, we’re often taught to ignore it, to stop believing in it. That’s why, for most people, the ability fades. Not because it’s gone—but because it hasn’t been used. The good news is, you can bring it back.”

This is a powerful reminder. Your capacity for intuitive knowing hasn’t disappeared—it’s just waiting for you to reconnect.

The Illusion of Separation

In the same podcast, Vishen reflects:

“The greatest lie is that we’re separate.”

At our most alert, task-oriented level of mind (the beta brainwave state), we often feel cut off—from each other, from nature, from our Source.

But when we enter more relaxed states—especially the alpha and theta brainwaves we access in meditation, daydreaming, or quiet reflection—that illusion begins to fade. In those moments, intuition becomes more accessible, not just as inner knowing, but as connection—to something larger than ourselves.

That connection is where higher wisdom flows.

Why I Can’t Tell You How to Get There

When I was in my 30s, I had an EEG that showed I naturally spend most of my time in those relaxed alpha and theta states. For me, intuitive access isn’t something I have to work for—it’s just where my system tends to live.

That doesn’t give me much to offer by way of an understanding about how to get there. But it’s also why I encourage you to explore what helps you shift into a quieter, more intuitive place. It might be breathwork, time in nature, journaling, or music. It might be prayer or stillness or movement. It might be letting go of the need to know, or a concrete, intellectual grasp.

There’s no one right way. And your way might change over time.

Let the Practice Be Messy

Tuning into your inner guidance is vulnerable. Especially at first.

You may sense something but hesitate to believe it. You may get something that, if you trust and follow it, would steer your path in a completely new direction.

You may wonder if you’re making the whole thing up. That’s normal. Learning to trust yourself takes time.

Don’t put added pressure on yourself. A writing prompt during a quiet moment might be helpful:

  • “A word or image popped into my head…”
  • “There’s a feeling I can’t quite explain…”
  • “What would my life look like if my thinking (about this topic) turned on its head…”

Then you can ask yourself:

  • “Do my intuitive responses mean anything?”
  • “Does this new feeling resonate at all?”

You’re not trying to be conclusive—you’re inviting an internal dialogue. That’s where intuition really comes alive: not in perfect answers, but in original, creative thought and exchanges between your higher wisdom and your here-in-this-world self.

When You Get Stuck

If your mind blanks or doubt creeps in, pause. Try something simple:

  • Ask your intuition a yes/no question.
  • Hold your hands out like an old-fashioned scale.
  • If the right hand feels heavier, let that be your “yes.”
  • If the left feels heavier, that’s your “no.”

Ask small questions and follow the thread:

  • “Is this about the past?”
  • “Is this something I’ve experienced before?”
  • “Is there a word I need to hear?”

You’re not solving a puzzle or looking for definitive answers. You’re staying in conversation with your more creative, more expansive, self.

Honor What Comes Naturally

Your intuition will likely express itself in certain ways—through feeling, images, sudden words, or even body sensations. It might be a knowing that doesn’t anchor itself in any of these ways. You might notice that certain questions or topics open the channel more easily. That’s worth honoring.

Try saying:

  • “This is what I’m most tuned into.”
  • “This is where I feel most confident.”
  • “These are the kinds of questions that light up my insight.”

You don’t have to be an all-knowing oracle like the ones on YouTube. Just notice what’s already coming through clearly for you. That’s where your guidance flows most easily.

You are your own best expert.

The world doesn’t need more polished advice. It needs more people willing to listen deeply, speak honestly, and trust the wisdom that arises in stillness.

Let yourself practice. Let yourself be unsure. Let yourself receive.
That’s how your inner voice gets louder.
That’s how you become the guide you’ve been waiting for.

I’d love to hear how this lands for you. Or if you just want to say hi, click Say Hello below. I’m here.

Say Hello!

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Nature Nudges

My Suburban Yard Had Plans for Me

I didn’t plant the violets. I never had to — they’ve always grown here, scattered generously across my half-acre in Minnesota. But I only started noticing them differently long after my brain injury — after I had already become a vegetable gardener, after I’d learned to grow my own food and even started foraging. The real turning point came when I discovered how much more wild foods had to offer me. I was reading about plant compounds that support immunity and skin healing, and there they were: violets. Already present. Already offering.

It wasn’t the first time this happened. Over and over, plants I hadn’t planted began appearing right when I needed them. The more I noticed, the more I wondered: is this coincidence… or communication?

Healing Isn’t Always Linear (Or Visible)

More than a decade ago, I sustained a moderate traumatic brain injury during a horse-jumping lesson. There was internal bleeding in the brain, and I spent time in the hospital. I don’t remember everything, but I do remember needing a walker for a while because my balance was off. I remember not being able to tell which keys on my own keychain unlocked what. I was advised — unofficially — not to see clients for thirty days. My speech was too slow, but no one told me directly. That was the beginning of the long, invisible part of recovery.

What’s lingered isn’t just memory lapses or fatigue. It’s a deepened sensitivity — to food, to chemicals, to people’s energy. Anxiety and obsessive thoughts (Pure O) crept in where clarity used to live. Years later, after a stage 2 melanoma diagnosis in 2012, I doubled down on healing. I started eating more vegetables than I ever imagined possible, started foraging, growing, and blending every bit of nourishment I could coax from the earth. That was the turning point. And that’s when I began noticing what had been quietly growing around me all along.

The Plants Were Already Offering

At first, I thought I was doing all the work — researching, testing foods, logging symptoms, eliminating triggers. But something shifted when I stopped looking only at what I was putting on my plate and started paying attention to what was growing just outside my door.

The violets had always been there, but now I saw them. Chickweed appeared in soft green carpets. Dandelion pushed up through the pathways. Virginia waterleaf caught my attention with its speckled leaves, just as I was learning how deeply nourishing it could be.

They weren’t just plants anymore. They were patterns. They showed up right when I needed what they offered — cooling, cleansing, nourishing, supporting. They weren’t the foods I thought I needed. They were the ones I actually needed.

What Science Now Confirms

For a long time, I thought this was just personal — maybe even poetic. That the plants growing around me seemed to match my healing needs. But then I started reading the science, and the pieces fell into place.

Healthy soil isn’t just dirt. It’s alive — teeming with bacteria, fungi, and microbial communities that shape the health of the plants growing in it. When those plants are picked and eaten soon after harvest — especially raw or lightly rinsed — they carry that microbial life into our gut. And what’s in the gut, we now know, speaks directly to the brain.

Research has shown that exposure to certain soil microbes (like Mycobacterium vaccae) can reduce anxiety-like behaviors and even increase serotonin production. Other studies link the richness of the soil microbiome to the richness of the gut microbiome — and in turn, to better mood regulation, immune function, and nervous system resilience.

What I’d stumbled into intuitively — eating what grew near me, simplifying my diet, trusting the weeds — is something science is only just beginning to understand: that the land and our bodies are in conversation. That healing might not come from far away, but from just beneath our feet.

Relational Eating and Green Messengers

These days, I don’t think of food as just fuel, or weeds as things to fight back. I think of them as signals. As responses. The violets, the chickweed, the dandelion — they were already growing while I was still trying to figure out what was wrong with me. They weren’t waiting for a diagnosis. They were already offering support.

My diet isn’t restrictive anymore — it’s relational. I eat what calms my nervous system, not what excites my cravings. I notice what helps me sleep, what keeps my thoughts from spinning, what makes me feel steady in my skin. And often, those things grow just outside the door.

I don’t romanticize the hard parts. The brain injury, the melanoma, the anxiety that still flickers at times — they’ve been real and sometimes brutal teachers. But in their aftermath, I’ve become someone who listens more closely. Not just to symptoms, but to signals. And the land — full of green messengers — has been one of the clearest.

What’s Growing Around You?

It’s been nearly 17 years since the brain injury and over a decade since the melanoma diagnosis — long enough to forget some of the hardest parts, but not the way they reshaped me. I didn’t expect healing to come through food. I certainly didn’t expect it to come through the weeds. But looking back, I can see a quiet intelligence in what showed up uninvited. The more I paid attention, the more it felt like the land was listening, too.

Maybe healing doesn’t always start with effort. Maybe it starts with noticing what’s already growing — and asking why it’s here.

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Nature Nudges

Garage, Sweet Garage

I cleared out the garage to make room for new life.

Leo and Orion arrived in a large dog carrier—two baby goats gifted by a friend with an eighty-goat dairy in Cumberland, Wisconsin. I drove them thirty miles home on Highway 46, where they huddled in the far corner of the carrier, wide-eyed and wary.

Their new residence: a metal pole shed with a dirt floor and two south-facing windows. It shared a view with my kitchen door. I thought of it as homey. They did not. I’m pretty sure a garage and a wire enclosure weren’t on their bucket list. From the start, they saw the place as temporary. A prison, really. And they made mental notes of every security weakness they could exploit for a potential escape.

Their sense of captivity lasted about four days—until they realized I was the one delivering the milk.

Twice a day, I showed up. They were ready. The twin kids would climb over each other to reach the bottles. A three-minute duet of staccato sucking noises followed. Whoever finished first would shove the other aside and latch onto the second bottle to get the drizzle of remaining milk. And slowly, they began to trust me. Leo, who had wanted nothing to do with me on day one, started climbing into my lap and gazing into my eyes like he’d known me forever.

This was a few years after a traumatic brain injury—an injury I worked hard to overcome. At the time, I was insistent that it wouldn’t derail what was then a new career as a therapist. I was used to pushing through. Twelve-hour workdays gave me the illusion that I could outwork the damage. That it was just another obstacle to clear.

Then in 2012, I was diagnosed with melanoma.

A general surgeon told me I’d need a second surgery with an oncology specialist. More tissue would need to be removed—including surrounding lymph nodes—to make sure we got it all. A biopsy would follow to check if the cancer had spread.

I scheduled the surgery. But I wasn’t convinced.

For a while, I flipped between “good elements” and “bad elements.” After the one-two punch of brain injury and cancer, I gave “cancer” a dark persona: sinister, gravelly, shoving aside the sunlit breezes and baby-bird chirping I loved so much. I wanted to fight back.

And then I paused. A thought drifted in: what if this wasn’t something to fight?

Maybe going after every last cancer cell would be missing the point. Maybe the cancer was a message—something I needed to listen to. Maybe the healing would come not from action, but from stillness.

I cancelled the surgery and the lymph node biopsy. I sensed that what I really needed was rest. I decided to get out of my body’s way and let it do what it knew how to do. I hoped, deeply, that it knew what it was doing.

I also began to look inward. I read about the Type C personality—one shaped around coping by not coping. People who don’t share their feelings, who put others first, who repress their needs.

That description felt uncomfortably accurate.

I loved the work of attuning to others and helping them discover their own wisdom. I also loved the way that work let me avoid the things in me that didn’t feel good. Vulnerability, uncertainty, and emotional discomfort weren’t welcome guests. While I often prescribed emotional openness to my clients, I rarely gave myself the same medicine.

So I stepped back. I referred my clients to other therapists and turned inward. Sort of. Not wanting to hand control over to the elements, I did what you do when you’re not quite ready to get quiet: I got goats.

And in doing so, I began to rewrite my story without even realizing it.

During the consult with the oncology surgeon, a friend asked what would happen if I didn’t have the surgery.

“The cancer will come back,” the surgeon said.

Not could. Not even would. Will.

That word stuck with me. I felt the absence of context. No “if,” no “unless,” no consideration for the healing I was already trying to cultivate. I wanted to live in a different story. One where “will” softened into “could,” and maybe even into “won’t.”

The goats helped me live in that new story.

Each day I fed them, and each day they seemed to love me more. The garage shifted. It stopped being a prison and became a home. They stopped planning to leave. I stopped trying to escape myself.

Time passed. Trust returned. The story, like the garage, softened.

Eventually, it became the story of someone who chose to live just slightly more within their own range. Someone who fed goats twice a day and rewrote her fear into something gentler. Someone who didn’t have cancer—not in that moment, not in that morning, not in the soft look Orion gave me after finishing his bottle.

I imagined myself as someone who doesn’t have cancer.

And Orion, standing beside me in the dusty garage light, imagined it too.

Auto-Thoughts

Quick, automatic thoughts that pop up in daily life—often shaped by old beliefs and past experiences.