Can You Really Trust Your Gut? | Amber Tamblyn
Amber Tamblyn, author, actress, and director, discusses intuition as a trainable skill and a vital bridge between our conscious and unconscious minds. She explores the gut-brain connection and offers practical tips for listening to our bodies, connecting with nature, and distinguishing intuition from anxiety.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Challenging the Dismissal of Intuition as Unscientific
Amber Tamblyn's Motivation: Intuition in Social Movements
Defining Intuition: Bridging Conscious and Unconscious Minds
Societal Conditioning Against Intuitive Intelligence
Historical Oppression of Women's Intuition and the Hearing Voices Movement
The Science of Intuition: Gut-Brain Connection and the Second Brain
The Role of Nature in Boosting Intuition
Practical Tips for Listening to Your Body and Intuition
Step-by-Step Guide to Trusting Intuition: The Roadmap Revealed
Meditation and Other Practices for Intuitive Connection
Distinguishing Anxiety from Intuition and the Power of Community
Intuition and Creativity: Brittany Murphy's Story and Personal Transformation
Taking Your Dream Life Seriously for Intuitive Insights
4 Key Concepts
Intuition
Intuition is the connection between the rational intelligence of the mind and the feeling of truth the body knows. It acts as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds, serving as the 'margin of error' when not all outcomes can be known through rational thought alone.
Enteric Nervous System (ENS)
The ENS is comprised of over 100 million nerve cells lining the gastrointestinal tract, in constant communication with the brain. It's known as the 'second brain' because it processes information not only about digestion but also about danger, influencing our gut feelings.
Gut-Brain Axis
This refers to the deep connection between the gut and the brain, where the gut processes information and often where diseases and illnesses can originate. It highlights that our physical sensations in the gut are directly linked to brain activity and overall well-being.
Doctor's Gestalt
This is a mechanism that emergency medicine physicians rely on, beyond their learned medical knowledge, in split-second, life-or-death situations. It represents an intuitive, immediate understanding or decision that arises when rational thought alone is insufficient due to time constraints.
8 Questions Answered
She defines intuition as the connection between the rational intelligence of the mind and the feeling of truth the body knows, acting as a bridge between conscious and unconscious parts of the mind.
Society often validates rational intelligence over intuitive intelligence, telling people not to be emotional or hysterical, and historically, women's intuitive experiences have been dictated or dismissed by male authorities.
The enteric nervous system (ENS), composed of over 100 million nerve cells in the gastrointestinal tract, is known as the 'second brain' because it processes information and communicates with the brain, influencing our 'gut feelings.'
It's like flexing a muscle; practice by asking hard questions, sitting with potential answers without immediate reaction, pushing past fear, and engaging in practices like meditation and connecting with nature.
It's a practice to develop an authentic relationship with your gut; if unsure, trust your community and bounce ideas off friends and family who can offer an external perspective.
Having a long-standing, active relationship with nature, such as finding a daily 'sit spot' or putting your feet in the dirt, is extremely healing and provides scientific benefits for connecting with intuitive processes.
Meditation helps by sitting in silence and feeling without words dictating the feeling, allowing the 'voice' to be in listening and feeling rather than language, which can quiet the discursive mind.
Dreams can be tools for better understanding intuition, offering markers, symbols, or mythological stories from the unconscious mind that point towards things that might need to be resolved in waking life.
20 Actionable Insights
1. Use the “Roadmap Revealed” Process
To make a difficult decision, find a quiet place, ask yourself the question, and observe what comes up first without reacting; then, imagine two parts of yourself (one scared, one supportive) to process the fear, allowing you to sit with potential answers.
2. Practice Gradual Intuition Trust
Start building your intuitive muscle by asking yourself hard questions and observing your body’s initial response without immediate reaction, gradually pushing past the fear that prevents you from listening to your body’s truth.
3. Set Boundaries for the “Head Voice”
Recognize that your conscious mind’s ‘head voice’ (rambling, paranoid, anxious thoughts) needs boundaries, like an unruly toddler, to prevent it from controlling everything and overshadowing the valuable information from your gut intuition.
4. Cultivate Authentic Gut Relationship
Understand that trusting your gut is a practice, not an immediate action; dedicate time and effort to develop an authentic relationship with your intuition, as it can be wrong if not properly cultivated over time.
5. Meditate for Intuitive Connection
Practice meditation and sitting in silence to quiet verbal thoughts and access feelings without language, allowing for a deeper connection with your intuitive process and gut feelings.
6. Connect with Nature Actively
Engage in an active practice of being physically in nature, such as finding a ‘sit spot’ to visit daily and putting your feet in the dirt, to foster healing and strengthen the body’s connection to the natural world.
7. Prioritize Body Awareness
Dedicate a fraction of the time you spend thinking about food choices to actively asking, ‘What is my body telling me right now?’ to cultivate a deeper respect and understanding of its signals.
8. Consult Community for Gut Checks
If you can’t distinguish between anxiety and intuition, or if you distrust your gut instincts, rely on your trusted community (friends, family, partners) as a ‘shield’ or ‘safety net’ to help you process and validate your feelings.
9. Share Intuitive Insights
Recognize that intuition is a ’team sport’; share your intuitive insights and boundaries with people you love, allowing them to provide support, accountability, and a different perspective when you are blinded by fear or grief.
10. Take Dreams Seriously
Pay attention to your dream life, especially recurring dreams or specific symbols, as they can serve as tools from your unconscious mind to help you intuit meaning, resolve past traumas, and better understand your intuition.
11. Keep a Dream Diary
Maintain a diligent diary of your dreams, especially recurring ones, to track patterns and visuals that your subconscious mind might be using to lead you towards resolving unresolved issues or understanding past traumatic events.
12. Embrace Existential Rebirth
If you feel a deep, intuitive pull towards an ’existential death’ of your current self or life path, lean into that feeling as a catalyst for rebirth and transformation into a more authentic, multifaceted identity.
13. Allow Intuition to Guide Creativity
When undertaking a creative project, allow an intuitive, almost uncontrollable urge to guide your process, even if the ultimate outcome or purpose isn’t immediately clear, as it can lead to profound personal and career transformation.
14. Act on Intuitive Truths
After sitting with an intuitive truth and processing the fear, recognize that you have choices; acting on something that terrifies you but your body indicates is true can be life-changing, even if not immediately.
15. Trust Retrospective Intuition
When reflecting on past experiences, acknowledge and label physical sensations as intuitive moments, even if you didn’t act on them at the time, to build trust in your body’s signals for future decisions.
16. Engage in Connecting Activities
Foster connection to your body and others by engaging in simple activities like sitting around a fire with friends or strangers, and talking to people you don’t know, which helps to counter feelings of numbness and separation.
17. Shock Nervous System with Cold
Practice cold plunging or other forms of cold exposure to shock your central nervous system back into feeling, which is beneficial for health and reconnecting with your body’s instincts.
18. Embrace Play and Service
Incorporate play and service to others into your life as ways to get out of your head and connect more deeply with your body and intuition.
19. Holistic Healing Approach
If facing a major ailment, consider a holistic approach that includes retraining your body’s story of illness, adjusting diet (cutting/adding specific things), using herbs and natural remedies, and integrating Western medicine.
20. Train to Teach Mindfulness
If interested in sharing mindfulness with young people, consider enrolling in IBME’s comprehensive year-long teacher training program to gain confidence as a mindfulness educator and make a difference.
5 Key Quotes
Intuition is sort of this, to my mind, connection between the rational intelligence that your mind has learned and the feeling of truth that your body knows.
Amber Tamblyn
We're in the belfry with all the bats, utterly unaware of the tower below.
Dan Harris
If we gave a fraction of the time we spend on deciding what we're going to eat on any given day... to respecting and having an understanding of our body and our gut, we would be in such a profoundly different space.
Amy Poehler (quoted by Amber Tamblyn)
When I can't trust my intuition, I trust my community.
Jessica Valenti (quoted by Amber Tamblyn)
Our rational thought was pointless in survival.
Amber Tamblyn
1 Protocols
Roadmap Revealed for Intuitive Decision Making
Amber Tamblyn- Identify a difficult question or decision you need to make.
- Find a quiet place and center yourself.
- Go inward and ask yourself the question.
- Observe what comes up first without immediately reacting, avoiding the brain's flight or fight mechanism.
- Separate yourself into two 'people': one representing the scared part (like a child), and one representing the supportive part (the adult).
- Support the scared part, holding its hand and acknowledging the fear, helping it get through the feelings.
- Once past the fear, acknowledge the understanding of what is true for you, recognizing you now have choices.
- Understand that following through on something that terrifies you, but your body has been telling you is true, can lead to profound, life-changing outcomes.