Curious Mind Grapes
Curious Mind Grapes is a podcast where we explore all the strange, wondrous, interconnected things in life. In each episode, sometimes with guests, we explore topics like psychology, health, energy medicine, science, pop culture, and so much more.
Curious Mind Grapes
Listen to Your Gut and Mind Your Vibration
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Welcome to Two Harmless Randos with your hosts, Mary and Christine.
Mary:I'm part of the special interest group with the American Psychological Association, the group for spirituality and psychology, when a researcher in Brazil surfaced a study that he did, and several studies actually, on anomalous experiences, things having to do with intuition, seeing ghosts, you know, having dead family members come to your dreams and the conversation was sparked because someone else surfaced, a new Pew research study on number of Americans who've reported having their dead loved ones come to them in dreams or in their heads, like his voices, and it's a fairly large number.
Christine:That's interesting. So their deceased relatives were coming to them Primarily in dreams. In dreams Were they giving them advice, just visiting saying hello?
Mary:You know the Pew study didn't go into that.
Christine:That's interesting and I wonder what the connection is to like, say, media and the ship. I thought you were going to say that it came through a medium or spoke to them, but it sounds like there's no medium involved, it's just direct communication. Yeah, and you know, you hear a lot about people sort of talking to their deceased relatives, having conversations with them in their head or out loud.
Mary:Yeah, but yeah, and I know we often talk in coaching about like the little voice in your head, and it's an interesting question like how much of, say, dead relatives speaking in your head and like people hearing their voices giving advice, whatever how much of it? And is it the dead relative or is it that part of them that stays with you as part of your conscious or your conscious, your voice of reason or whatever?
Christine:I was just wondering the same thing, because people sense their intuition in different ways has been my experience. But some people, including myself, I do almost hear the guidance. I remember one time I was in a certain room at work and I just someone said, oh, you think we're coming back. And they met like from a break and I just heard a voice that said you are never coming back here. It was just this, it wasn't quite a voice, but I just my brain just went you're never coming back here. And I thought what hadn't even occurred to me. But it was some still clear voice inside of me and it was right. I never returned into that room. Wow, yeah, sometimes you, just you hear that voice. And what I think is interesting about that intuition is what I call it is. It often flies in the face of reason or is surprising.
Christine:Yes, it's usually simple, direct, short and sweet and surprising and doesn't like. My logical brain could have come up with five or six things on the top of my head of why I would definitely be in that room the following year, and there's a sense of a sense of truth that you can feel when you hear things like that.
Mary:Yeah, like a clarity.
Christine:Yeah, you just knew it was true, but you weren't sure why. And then since that moment I've really almost looked to foster it, to try to make it happen more often, because it was kind of cool.
Mary:Yeah, what have you done to foster it?
Christine:I have played around with intuition, what I call like low risk, low stakes situations where it doesn't matter quite so much. Like, if you know, I have to make a decision about which route to take and it's really one's going to be five minutes longer than the other. I kind of, you know, see what my intuition says, what the voice says, and then see what happens along the way. Occasionally things do happen. One time I was driving with my mom. There were three different ways we could have gone and my intuition just said turn, don't go that way. And my mother did not listen. And then the next, straight over, there was this huge incident involving angry people getting out of their cars and like fighting, and we had to like quickly get off the road. So I thought maybe it was a coincidence.
Christine:But I play around with things like that to see like does my intuition leave me anywhere? Or sometimes I get a thought don't send that email. But I'm not really sure why I shouldn't send it. So I'm like well, I can wait. And then I would say, like nine times out of 10, something happens where I didn't need to send the email. I get news that changes it, or information, or someone does it for me first, which is always nice. So, yeah, I played with it in some more simple situations and when I coach clients who want to learn about intuition, I recommend you don't jump into a really important decision until you've played with it.
Mary:So those interesting example you gave like your mom not listening to you actually was great for the experiment, because if you'd been by yourself you probably wouldn't have gone down that road. But here you got to have confirmation that you're in your car anyway.
Christine:Yeah, or just like you say I don't really want to, I don't want to go to that event or I don't want to do that thing, and then something happens. That's sort of a confirmation later. I don't know. I just I take a lighthearted approach to it. I don't take it seriously. When I get confirmation, I just go oh, that was cool and I feel like it strengthens it. But I do think there's times when the intuitive hit is a lot stronger and it's like it's not just a voice, it's like your full body, like you can just feel it everywhere.
Mary:Can you give an example of how that was for you?
Christine:Yeah. So I recently interviewed for a job that seemed like a pretty good fit to me on paper. I went to the interview Great atmosphere, beautiful environment, lovely people and it was to work with children and people coming into an environment where I would be a guide for them and I thought it sounded like fun. And they told me a few things. I didn't know about the job and I was like, ah, it still sounds cool. But as I was driving home I had about 25 minutes to digest it.
Christine:I was actually thinking when I left like, oh, I'm going to take this job. But halfway through I realized like I just had a nervous feeling in my stomach. I just felt like I call it the bees. I feel like there's bees swarming around in my belly, it's. I just thought something's not right and I thought, well, what? What is it? And I realized the small piece of information they had said. Oh, and, by the way, several times during the week we actually leave campus to go places to do these educational things and I realized I don't want to do that.
Christine:I want to be where the job was located. I did not want to go visit schools and be in a school environment, and it was something small but it was actually making my whole body react. So, yeah, and I ended up contacting them and saying if there's no way to tease these two parts of the job out, if you don't have someone who's exclusively on campus and doesn't do tours, then I'm not interested. And that was something new for me, because the younger me would have said oh, you're just nervous, it's a new job, you could just go try it. And the more experienced, you know person with more experience, with intuition, said you know how this is going to end, because you've had this feeling, because you've had this feeling before and didn't listen to it and it didn't go well. Well, so, um, yeah, so that was a time.
Mary:Yeah, it is amazing how we've talked about our bodies holding emotions. But our bodies hold emotional intelligence and I've talked about this before. How amazed I was in grad school to learn that our stomachs, stomach lining, contains neurons similar to the brain and that it can hold memory, so that that gut feeling is most definitely tied into that, that kind of nonverbal intelligence that our guts hold, our hearts hold. And it's amazing we've talked about this before too the language that we have as a society, or probably other societies too, around these feelings like, like, obviously feeling it in your gut, that's something here all the time or following your gut, a gut feeling.
Christine:Trust your gut yeah.
Mary:And or someone says something awful to you and you say it feels like a punch in the gut.
Christine:Yeah, I was just thinking that a gut punch and it really does when something really hits you hard, breaks your heart. It feels like you've been punched in the gut.
Mary:It's amazing.
Christine:And aren't a bunch of, aren't like neurotransmitters also produced there, like like serotonin and dopamine, and they're actually made in the gut right.
Mary:Yeah, again, the brain like structure, neurons and stuff. They all have those same mechanisms.
Christine:Yeah, yeah.
Mary:Yeah, I remember reading a long time ago that they someone did a study on successful business leaders, like corporate executives, and found that they tended to be really good at intuiting about situations where they didn't have all the information. They just would would get that gut feeling or like kind of flash of insight without without, so that they can make really quick decisions or make decisions when things were ambiguous and do it fairly accurately. So that's interesting too, like how do we cultivate that intuition, that gut feeling? I mean part of it is, as you said, you're an experienced teacher who's been in situations before where you had that same feeling and you didn't listen to your gut. So maybe that's it too. These experienced executives have been in situations where they did or didn't listen to their intuition and knew from experience what it would lead to. Or they have enough information that they can combine that with that that intuitive sense, to make quick decisions.
Christine:Yeah, I think there's something to be said for the number of times that you've repeated a situation, you start to develop the patterns in your brain. So you know, and I think you too, you really have to be ready to detach yourself from social and cultural expectations and norms, this idea of like saying no to something because you have a gut feeling. Sometimes you have to disappoint somebody and say no or like, wow, you know, I know I came in for that job and I sounded really excited when I left, but 20 minutes later I realized it didn't work for me. And I think you have to be willing to let yourself off the hook. You know, I think of the idea of people pleasers like I don't want to ever look bad or look like I'm not following through, and you have to be willing to set up the boundary that you're going to say no to something if your intuition is telling you and that you don't, you may not have, you don't have to explain it.
Mary:Right, yeah, it's interesting. I a couple of months ago I went to an art exhibit an open house, said one of the local art centers. It's become a cultural center and met a guy who was one of the featured artists and his stuff was really interesting, really good, clearly a skilled craftsman. When I looked at his bio, like he's studied in Italy and like done all this really cool stuff, so fascinating guy. But in our first conversation I thought this is like one of these artists that I would really like to get to know because he he's done interesting things, had an interesting life. But I got this little bit of just in our I don't know three minute conversation, five minute conversation. I got a little bit of a sense of pessimism or something more than I like in a human being conversation. I don't know why I said human being conversation more than I usually enjoy in a conversation. So but I waited a couple months and something was telling me I really should go see his, his art studio. So I made an appointment to go see see it last Saturday and the range of his work is incredible. He's been doing this for a long time and he can do everything from like classic still life that look like Renaissance painting style to very modern abstract stuff and everything in between, and he's just really a brilliant guy who can talk about any topic too. He's just got such vast knowledge of all sorts of things.
Mary:But I was starting to feel, after talking to him for a little bit, really high, like physically tired, and I started feeling this heaviness in my chest and I was thinking, oh my God, am I having a heart attack? Like it felt like something was sitting literally sitting on my chest like a weight, like a 100 pound weight, pressing down and I almost thought like maybe I need to get up and get my inhaler. But when I so, I need to get going and left. Then all these feelings like lifted. I realized a lot of times I take on other people's physical symptoms. I was at lies for a longest time, but now I know that if I'm feeling something that extreme and it feels like it's me, but I step away from the situation, the person, and it instantly goes away. That means that I was just taking on whatever they're feeling and it's really awful at times. Yeah, what's wrong with me?
Christine:Well, like what you said, it's not even just the gut, it's your whole body. Your whole body is a is a barometer for what's what's going on. Those businessmen you were talking about maybe over time they developed, they were able to sort of calibrate that and figure out, like, even if they didn't have words for it, they knew what was feeling good and what was feeling bad. And every time that you check in with your intuition, you strengthen that yeah.
Mary:And, as you said too, they're, I think of, like a typical busy executive or entrepreneur who's not afraid to be like okay, this meeting's over, I'm done, and yeah, I need to get better about that, like not worry about being in play or cutting people off and just saying I need to go.
Christine:I had to do that. This weekend. I tried two volunteer experiences to see how they would go, and one was great and one was fine, but it was a no and I actually had to leave early. Well, just wasn't working. So the first one was wonderful, it felt great and when I finished it I thought I felt light, I felt like I was happy, I felt like even the rest of my day things just, I don't know, just rolled off me. It just was such a great, powerful experience. I was working on horses doing healing touch and then a couple of days later I went and volunteered at an animal rescue that I was interested in giving my time to, and it wasn't that anything bad was happening. It was beautiful, the animals were all cared for, the people were very caring.
Christine:But halfway through I realized my whole body just was aching closed up, tired, and I was supposed to be there for four hours and after an hour and a half I said I'm really sorry I have to go, and again the old me would not have done that Good for you. I was scared of like, and you know what? They didn't care. They were like okay, go take care of you, see you next time. And I don't know if there's gonna be a next time. But thank you for saying.
Mary:And the voice in your head said there won't be a next time.
Christine:Yeah, yeah, I don't know if they'll. I have to think about it. I have to check in with my body compass again and see where it is.
Mary:You said still small voice before, and I was thinking that that part of us, that wisdom, part of us that's kind of below the surface, that our conscious minds don't always access. Oh, that's another thing A lot of successful executives do and other people who definitely more than executives, but just they found that people who take time to meditate every day or take time to just be still are definitely more successful, more balanced, and I think that's part of it too making time for that little voice.
Christine:Yeah, I was just thinking about that the effects of. I would love to read some studies or work about the effects of meditation on intuition and hearing that voice.
Mary:I am.
Christine:Being able to separate it from the voice of everybody you know of the world, and just hearing your voice.
Mary:Yeah.
Christine:So you asked me earlier what's the time when, you like, your intuition was kicking in or you had a gut feel about something. Do you have an example?
Mary:Half an hour into a six hour train ride and the guy in the rear of the car and we were in the middle started talking really loudly in French like kind of ranting. But then I thought maybe he was just listening to some music and was like saying it out loud. It was in French, so I didn't know. It sounded like it could have been rap, but it went on for a while and then a man who had his young child with him and it confronted him and said you can't do that, you're scaring people. He was saying I'm not dangerous. You think I'm dangerous? I'm not dangerous. But he was like up in the guy's face. It was disturbing because he was a young man of color. He I'm not sure what his ethnicity was, but paired that with all that was happening, with the riots in Paris where we were heading, and all the discontent and the anger over the establishment here was this way. I confronted him on the train and it just felt like it could go very badly.
Christine:Yeah.
Mary:And then they eventually went back to their seats, this kind of for some reason, they got up and they were confronting each other and then the guy who had been ranting moved through the car toward that the guy's end of the car with two other friends, and I was kind of keeping an eye on their hands. They had bottles of liquid and I was thinking, okay, what is that actual soda Cause, that's a weird color, that's definitely not something that people and they all yeah, and they didn't seem disturbed by this guy's ranting. So, and I didn't understand enough of what he was saying to kind of get the gist. But Kia got the idea that, yeah, he was kind of mumbling and we realized he probably was on something, and so at that point we still had another like five train ride.
Mary:I just realized at some point well, I'm not gonna try to change cars and stuff Like maybe there's a reason I'm here and I've told you about some other situations where I was just in a really what could Gary? Disturbing situation and Kia has said this too about situations she's found herself in that it's almost like we feel like we're supposed to be there because we can be a calming presence, and, as we've talked about that before that people's energy, their heart rates can infect the people around them. So that's what I decided to do and I could tell she was just doing that, just staying really calm and not worrying about it. So, yeah, so I did and it turned out okay. When he got off the train eventually at the Gardinore he was still being kind of weird and stuff Like clearly he was on something and he said something to one of the platform operators and they just kind of looked him like whoa dude, but then he kept going.
Christine:So so what were you doing, like mentally and physically, to try to health of the situation?
Mary:Well, I just stayed calm and I don't know how else to say this. I anchored myself which is something I do which is kind of get more into a relaxed, grounded state, so that I'm not feeding into the frenetic energy around me. That's what I do. I try to just kind of sink down into a place of calm so that my heart rate slows down and I'm emitting that kind of like everything's going to be okay energy.
Christine:I was wondering too, like do you consciously like slow down your breathing or breathe more deeply and do other things? Yeah?
Mary:Yeah, and I stay aware, but I don't react. I don't take anything in like I stay away from fear or anger or any kind of thing that could feed into what's going on.
Christine:Yeah, you're not going to add that resonance or that amplifies the waves of.
Mary:Right to speak heart-match language. Yeah.
Christine:Yeah, yeah so. But your intuition was telling you I don't have to leave the car. I have a role to play with what I know how to do.
Mary:Yeah, and it's going to be okay.
Christine:What do you think I know? In like coaching, often we end up talking about like how do you know when something's wrong, like even the examples I gave of like oh, I had a bad feeling, oh it didn't feel right. Like what are your tells when you know something isn't like for you, when you know something isn't right for you?
Mary:Yeah, Definitely my heart. I can feel my heart racing. I think that's the first place I know it was when I was a little kid. Whenever things were stressful for me, I'd feel it in my gut, I'd feel it in my stomach pains. But now I think it's more like a fluttering in my, like those bees you said you have in your stomach. I get them in my chest so and probably like a more jittery feeling in my whole body, Like I've had a little too much caffeine.
Christine:Mine, mine has moved up too. I often, I sometimes feel it in my, my chest as well.
Mary:Yeah, so when that starts happening, that's when I know to start doing the, the breathing, like you mentioned.
Christine:The feeling I get in my chest. I get a little bit of a shock. It's like it's like a very good feeling, I think it's. It's like I think I'm going to get a little bit of a shock, so that's what I think it's like. I think it's like I think it's like a very good feeling, and then I think that's what I think is the best feeling, and so I think it's like. I think it's like, I think it's like a very good feeling, and so I think that's why people remind me of if you've ever had like a near miss while driving, like everything was fine but you almost had an accident, that sort of physical sensation you get. For me, that's where I feel like, oh, this isn't right. When it's really a really strong now, or the tight chest, do you have a yes feeling?
Mary:Well, you mentioned something before, that feeling of just feeling light and like uplifted and, I'd say, sunny, like there's certain people that after I've been around them, I just feel really energized and inspired, and not necessarily inspired just like, just like. Well, I could do this for a long time. I mean, I'm not like, I'm like, I'm like I'm going to make it work. You know, I'm like, I'm thinking of it and I'm like, I'm like I'm just like, I'm like I'm going to keep talking to them.
Christine:Yeah, Just where things flow smoothly and like, yeah, there's a flow and Communication and a lightness of being. Something I want to work on is working more with my yes Tells. Have become pretty adept at looking at my no tells Like that's a no, that's a no, and I'm, you know, proud of the work I've done work of Byron Katie, the work where you're looking at a belief that you have that's not bringing you any joy. So it's a limiting belief, something that's probably not true.
Christine:But the question is that she asks how do you treat yourself, how do you feel when you have that thought? What sensations do you feel in your body? But she follows it up with how do you treat yourself and how do you treat others. So when you're dealing with a thought that is not really true for you, not in your highest and best good, you'll notice your heart on yourself, you snap at other people and the opposite is, when you let go of that thought or you think something that's opposite, that is more in alignment, not only do you feel lighter and more expansive, but a lot of people will say and I noticed that I put less pressure on myself. I noticed that I don't I'm not trying to numb out, I noticed that I treat other people differently. It's really interesting that all three of those components come up when you're not in alignment or you're following your intuition. It's not just the feeling in your body, it affects your behavior.
Mary:Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point too. And he thinks how many people are not living in alignment with what they need or their true selves, because they're trying to, as you said, adhere to what the expectations are of the world around them and then taking that discomfort and happiness and spreading it around, you know.
Christine:Yeah.
Mary:I was thinking about I may have told you this how random strangers come up and talk to me. I may have talked to this. One of the things that's happened several times in my lifetime is people just reciting their poetry to me. That's amazing.
Christine:And this may surprise you, but that's actually never happened to me.
Mary:I'm sorry. Maybe someday it's happened to me when I was by myself, but more often it happens when I'm with my daughter, who I went to France with. Or this other friend, donna, who I met in Virginia, who's a writer and editor, who just always has a smile on her face, is another person who's up for adventure and just open to the world and ready to laugh at things. She can see the humor even in just things that many people would find annoying. So being around her also, it's that, also that kind of yes, energy, and so, like with Kia or Andy in Paris, where we have this, seem to have that energy together and we draw in these serendipitous whether good or I mean positive or negative experiences.
Mary:When I'm with Kia, we've also had poetry read to us by random people on the street. Same with Donna, and one time Kia and Donna and I were together and in fact, and this guy came up and said can I read my book? So yeah, it's funny. So I think it is, I think it's perceptible by people You're saying like it's a tangible thing.
Christine:Well, animals certainly sense it. I mean, I've know, I've told you stories where not a good day at work. I open the door, I haven't said a word and my dog's like I'm just going to go, wait over here. I haven't even looked at her and she's like why don't you get a drink or one one week at? I did? It was equus coaching.
Christine:I worked, went to a horse farm and worked with a coach and you were working with horses with a long rope and trying to get them to do what you wanted them to do and they could sense when you were hesitant, scared, not an integrity, not grounded, they just wouldn't do anything. I can't, I can't imagine that people are that much different. And I did. I knew that you attracted a lot of strangers that would like to talk to you, but I did not know they were reading poetry to you. It's really cool and it's funny. You said I attract these experiences, positive or negative, and I maybe part of the reason you attract them is you always somehow find a positive when you've told me these stories like hey, there was this guy on the train and he was really scary to everybody. But look at this work I did with my daughter, you know, following my intuition and grounding it, or there's always a positive spin to it. Like you said, your friend can find the humor and things.
Mary:Yeah, yeah, thank you for framing it that way. That's interesting. Yeah, this is kind of related, but last weekend I went to friends will turn friends meeting, which I hadn't been to in a while because summer's been so busy. And the night before I had seen someone said they were coming the next day with their two year old and there isn't like a Sunday school, first day school, as they call it right now, because there aren't enough kids. So she wanted to know if anyone would be around to hang out with her two year old so that she could have some quiet times.
Mary:Or husband was like traveling and I kind of forgot about that when I went. I had sat down, was starting to get quiet and I then I heard a door open and a two year old at the hallway very enthusiastically saying hi to people and I remember that they're her email. So I went out in the hall to see if anyone had volunteered and nobody had volunteered to hang out with this two year old, and so I volunteered and it was hilarious. This child was very, not shy and she she insisted that I do everything she did, which was like use all the playground equipment, and we were in constant motion for like an hour and a half. Wow, we'd make such a great workout.
Christine:It was like I'm tired just hearing about it.
Mary:Walking up little tube slides that I could barely fit in and then climbing up ropes and it was, it was fun. And then the end, when her mom finally came out to get her, she's like no, I want to stay and play with my friend. And your mom said, oh, she's your friend. I said, yeah, we're friends now. And her mom told me after that she they had a no pair for her and the daughter was like I don't, I don't like her and just refuse to be. And she said that her daughter is a really good like judge of people and their integrity or their, their authenticity. So I was very honored. I think this child also thought I was a kid too, because she at one point I think she forgot my name. She's like hey, kid.
Christine:Hey kid.
Mary:Hey you. Yeah, that was really fun. So my my intuition was I should be the one here today to do this. And then it turned out to be like a really, really fun experience and I was glad to see that I had my toddler play muscle memory still intact.
Christine:Yeah, thanks for listening to two harmless randos. Check out our show notes for links to more information about the topics we discussed today. If you like the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. You can rate, review, subscribe or do all three anywhere that you listen to podcasts.
