Intuitive Psychology: A New Paradigm of Medicine
What does it mean to integrate the wisdom of psychology with the wisdom of intuition? There is much to be gleaned from modern Western psychology, including the foundational research and understanding of attachment theory, early life relational dynamics, trauma, and the function of the nervous system in seeking safety v. danger and threat. However, like any field, there is also much stuckness that has accrued over the years of traditional psychological teaching and practice that adhere to outdated systems of diagnosis, treatment, and caregiving relationships. The advancement of trauma research in the modern age will be, in my opinion, an integration of the wisdom of the body, the science of energy medicine, and the spiritual implications of one’s suffering. The practice of intuition is not simply a skill or tool, though it may be cultivated as such, but it is an entry way into a path of understanding the deeper holistic meaning of symptoms and dis-ease, as well as their connection to your life’s design.
As modern trauma research continues to integrate elements of mind and body, a new paradigm has emerged around ways of understanding, identifying, and releasing trauma. For those who are unfamiliar, I describe trauma specifically as the limiting beliefs about yourself, others, and the world that are shaped based on early life or ancestral experiences, as well as the associated emotion-based memories that remain trapped within the body until acknowledged and released. The beliefs make up your unconscious mind, which wires your nervous system to respond and interpret your environment through this lens. The associated emotion states are energetic material produced and stored in the nervous system thereby creating an emotional “home” for the body and mind to resonate in. By continuously operating at such traumatized emotional states, like shame, blame, and fear, your mind and body produce a personal reality rife with conflicts and drama that align with these limiting emotions and beliefs - the story of your life as you know it. Though your belief system and emotion energy are not the only sources of information that dictate your health and life path, they are the most powerful sources within you feeding your mind, body, and spirit on a daily basis. By sending continuous signals to the nervous system (imagine feeding your brain McDonald’s every minute of the day!), the source energy of your trauma may produce symptoms in all aspects of your experience, including physical, emotional, behavioral, and relational. Only until you are ready to acknowledge the source material of the story you have been living in will you be able to amend it and transcend it.
One area of study I believe will develop as an advanced opportunity for understanding and healing trauma is the field of epigenetics. A general definition of epigenetics is the study of how environmental experiences alter the way your genetic material is expressed in the body. The field of epigenetics is expansive and has many implications in all areas of life. In the area of emotional or physical trauma, both inherited and experienced, the field will continue to uncover the way the body responds to an inherited lineage of genetic information based on traumatic experiences and circumstances of the past. Another name for this lineage is “intergenerational trauma.” From this perspective, all human bodies carry trauma from the lineage of their ancestors in combination with their own early life experiences. The advancement of this field will increase the potential to understand in what ways your nervous system is limited and conditioned based on experiences of the past. The ability to identify, alter, and release these lineages, blockages, and informational messaging will pave the way for a modern mode of healing to rewire the brain and be a welcome advancement in the field of trauma healing . Impactful areas of interest include rewiring the brain’s neuropathways for pain, healing the gut microbiome, improving immune functioning, creating a new emotional “home,” and fundamentally altering the unconscious mind or belief system to align with your life’s vision.
Once society comes to understand the power of this framework for healing, the question naturally becomes, “Well… how do we do it?” Modern medicine will certainly develop evidence-based technologies that are scientifically identifiable, quantifiable, and measurable within the framework that all gold standard research is studied and, ultimately, considered as reputable. In addition to these valuable contributions, I believe the combination of intuitive and energy-based practices that allow for rapid identification and release of these blockages in concert with lifestyle changes and modern therapeutic tools will be the most potent and integrative way to transform your life. The power of intuitive and energy-based practices is in their ability to tap into the subconscious mind, or belief center, which dictates upwards of 95% of your functioning and reality. By harnessing the power of your belief center, you are able to instruct the body to release what it has been carrying and set the stage for a new reality - a new vision - for your life to take root at the cellular level. Intuitive and energy-based practices also utilize different sources of knowing and guidance to learn the energy of the body and to align with your spiritual path, or the life you are meant to live. With deeper access to the unconscious mind, you begin to heal all areas of stuckness that were resistant to traditional forms of talk therapy and relationship. The notion of the unconscious is not new or novel; it has been talked about for the past century in Freudian Psychoanalysis and other modes of study. However, never has it been clear how it is shaped by ancestral and early life experiences, or how to access and mobilize it without years of indirect “processing” and relational struggle. Over the past few decades, modern psychological practice has advanced to include more somatic and body-based practices that allow the body to speak, no longer relying purely on modalities like hypnosis, dream interpretation, relational validation, or cognitive and behavioral strategies. However, intuitive and energetic medicines offer additional healing power in the identification of where precisely individuals are stuck. By limiting the guesswork and reliance on the thinking brain in traditional therapies, you limit the ego, or humanness, of the healer who is attempting to guide the process.
In part II of this blog, I will expand upon the limitations of a healer’s and sufferer’s reliance on the thinking brain to heal trauma and unfold a new paradigm for you to become the vessel for your own spiritual path and channel the medicine meant to come through the wisdom of the body and the spiritual realm. This path applies to all who may be stuck in their healing path and looking to expand beyond their brain’s fear-based conditioning and outdated theories of problem solving. I am called to bridge the spiritual path with evidence-based medicines in an accessible and integrative way that does not resist nor diminish the current state of healing but humbly contributes to and amplifies it. Intuitive psychology is the new paradigm of healing in the 21st century and I invite all to learn, practice, and dance their way forward as a vessel for life’s unfolding.