Hello, welcome, this is, put the kettle on. I'm your host, Krista Thornhill and I'm with my special guest, Cathy Grindler. Thank you for coming back. Kathy.
Thank you for having me.
We had a wonderful conversation on Tuesday, so I've invited Kathy to come back and continue our conversation about the magic of intuition. And between Tuesday, and today, we've had a lot of feedback on Facebook, people asking questions, conversations happening about intuition. And so having a second chance to revisit this conversation gives us an opportunity to address some of the questions that people were asking. Thank you so much for chiming in and engaging with us on this subject. Let me just introduce Cathy.
She is a craniosacral therapy facilitator and has been for the last 20 years. She was trained through the Upledger Institute, and has done all their advanced training and offers them assistance when it comes to teaching others. She has been in practice for 20 years and a mom of three adult young men and partner to an amazing man for 36 years. She's lived on Salt Spring Is. for the past 10 years, where she has a private practice. Thank you, Cathy, this is a wonderful opportunity to delve into your world and learn from you your perspective and understanding of intuition.
Thank-you, I think of it as kind of magical. Yeah. And I don't think I have anything to say that is earth shattering new, I think we're just going to reinforce people's thoughts about intuition as being a very important part of our lives.
Absolutely. And we're going to speak to the fact that everyone is intuitive, for sure. It's something that we were born with, and just need to awaken to, and learn how to harness that gift that we were born with. Would you like to start with maybe just a definition of intuition?
I think a very easy definition is it's your inner knowing. Okay. Another way to say that might be your soul, communicating with you.
Okay, your soul communicating with you? Can you just go in to your understanding of souls so that we understand your reference?
I think it's the, the eternal part of you, the part that lasts forever. That enlivens you.
Okay, so it's the soul informing you? Yeah, the part of you that exists forever,
The wise self
The wise self informing us and our humanity. Absolutely! There you go. Okay. Now, let's just jump right on into, you know, one of the major questions that several people asked was, how do we trust it? I mean, how do we develop it? Tune into it? Then how do we trust it? And when do we know? When is the time to use it? So you have a really great explanation as to how to first of all, how to begin listening to your intuition.
Well, for one thing, I think intuition is very fast. It's instant. It's that gut feeling. It doesn't explain to you what it is. It just is there. Boom. I also say it's not rational. It doesn't come from your mind. That's not thought out. It's very fast. It's there from your soul. Okay. And I think if you think too much about it, it becomes muddled and you lose it. So Something that comes, and you have to just trust it. How do you trust it? That's another question that you just asked.
Yeah, especially when we have so many voices in it. We're in such a loud, crazy world, we are inundated with messages and influences all the time so how do we know what's us? And what's not? Right?
I guess what I would like to say is, the more you trust yourself, the more intuition will be easy and obvious to you. So what blocks trust would be all this conditioning that we're talking about? Expectations from society, or from families or experiences we've had, of not being allowed to use it.
And then are some emotions such as fear, shame, and things like grief, they overwhelm us and make us muddled. And when those emotions are really swirling around, it's hard to feel the intuition is real. So I would say, to increase trust, we have to decrease all that swirling emotion, or go underneath it, find a place underneath it.
So, there's all kinds of exercises and ways to drop below the swirl of emotion, and conditioning. I mean, meditation is an obvious one that everyone knows about. But there are other things that we use in cranial sacral therapy that are really simple and obvious, and work really well. And it's using your body as a way to access. So it's focusing in kind of a meditation into your body. So you start with your emotion. So give me an example of something you might feel that would swirl you around.
Oh, my goodness. Well, I think we used this analogy last time we talked. I'm feeling like something needs to move, to shift.
And you're confused. I mean, if your intuition is really high, you'd say, "Oh, I need to move. I'm going to New York, and I'm going on Thursday." Right? You just get up and go. But that doesn't happen very often. We we usually have things blocking that. "Oh, I don't know. How am I going to do this? Where's the money coming from?"
Am I just running away from something? Or do I really need to go? Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
What's my motivation?
So we can feel our minds swirling. We just did it. Yeah, lost it.
We just went right into the brain.
Perfect example. So how do we get back into intuition? So we feel the body. So when we were talking about that, where did you feel yourself?
It actually so funny. I mean, it just went right in my head. Right? Like,
Right, yeah. And what was the sensation? So this is the key. So we're going from emotion and we're focusing down into the sensation in the body. In your head, what did you feel?
A rattle.
Yeah,
So you felt sound and movement? Like a baby rattle?
Sure. Yeah. Okay.
So I've just read expanding the awareness of what that swirling around sensation is, so a baby rattle. That was my word, but a kind of rattle. Yeah. Clank clanking around in your head. And what did it bring up?
Fear
Okay. So then I would add another layer. Fear. Where do you feel fear in your body? Right now?
Right now. Isn't that funny? Because just as you said it, I felt like a drop from my head down into my pelvic area.
Okay. So this again, we're just feeling the sensations: fear is actually dropping, it's in your pelvic area. Because you can feel it.
And it's, it's going with the very first...
installment. yes. So your intuition is actually very active right now. But we just make it very simple. We're breaking it down into tiny little things so that your brain can comprehend and be part of it. So now you're down in your pelvis, and you're feeling fear. What do you feel, what's the sensation?
There's a little throbbing.
Okay. And our original question was about, do I move? Right? So we're keeping that awareness, along with staff here, that's throbbing in your pelvis. So what else do you notice about your pelvis? And that throbbing? Does it have a color?
Ahhh. Let's see. The first thing that comes to my mind is blue. So cold, cold.
Okay, so cold. We could go on and on with this. But yeah, this is sort of the technique or the way that you can escape the conditioning and all the emotional turmoil, the swirling right, and drop down into the real, real deep, deep, deep meanings.
So I have this intuitive, gut feeling, I need to move, I need to change my location, I need to change my environment. And then I go into fear about it? Am I running away from something? Like, is this a real intuitive thought? And so the questions and the emotions start to rise or react from this intuitive thought? And then we need to get underneath that by going deeper into the body. Asking, where's this feeling coming from? What does it feel like? What is the sensation? And by asking our body to identify to us the origin of the feeling? We are informing ourselves and with the understanding, we gain knowledge about what's really happening for us.
Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So your home moving scenarios actually would take quite a while to get through? Because it's, it's like a stew. Right? Right. It's complicated. So we don't necessarily want to do that right now. But anyone can do this themselves in a kind of meditative state. For anything that's simple or complicated.
So if you have an intuitive thought, a gut, let's say, a gut feeling about something. And all of a sudden you go into this questioning about it, can I trust it? Is it real, then this method, and what you're describing is sitting with it?
Yeah, dropping into it, and then dropping deep, in to it and deeper and deeper until the awareness becomes obvious. And then your brain clicks in and can understand, rather than getting overwhelmed.
right. So if I keep going deeper, there's fear, the fear is associated with the unknown, the unknown, then I could actually realize that I'm actually feeling excited. But because it means leaving people I love then there becomes right...
and other emotion is in that stew, right of sadness, or,
and what it's doing, but that process that you're talking about, it's giving me an opportunity to validate some stuff that's going on for me, which is muddling the intuitive knowing.
Yes! So all that process we just talked about isn't necessary. If, if you trust your intuition right away, you'll just know. Right? So that is a secondary thing to do when you're feeling muddled.
Right. So a really great alternative or comparison example to this is I knew I needed to go to recycling to go to the free bookstore. Yes. And I didn't even have any recycling. I just knew in the morning that that was something I had to do that day. I had to go, there was a knowing because it was something so simple. There wasn't any emotion attached to it. It was just like, I'm going to the recycling.
doesn't make any sense.
No, no logic whatsoever, but I just knew it, and it aligned, and I like, you know, my daughter came with me and the car was free. And so that's how it aligned so that I could go do exactly what I knew I was going to be doing that day. And when I got there, I scored at a great collection of books and when I came home, and I laid all the books out on the table, every book, not only did every book that I had found was relevant to the things I've been talking about and things that I, you know that kind of like the theme of my month almost was displayed in these books.
But there was one piece that my daughter who came with me gave me she found it at the bookstore. And it was her treasure that she found that was the key to what I've been looking for. Right, and I was amazed. So that's an example of how when you know that you know that you know.
Yah, you just follow it? Yeah, that's really excellent. Yes. The muddling is unfortunate. It comes from all the emotions and conditioning that we have. So that's an amazing example, if we could live like that all the time. Yay.
Right, right. Yeah, we'd be in a flow.
Yes. And maybe parts of our life are in a flow, and parts are muddled. So it doesn't mean that you're always all muddled. You know, you might be very clear about your your work, but not so, so clear about your relationship.
Yeah, I like that. Thank you. Because it also changes to like the story that you shared with me earlier. Here you are, in a practice 20 years of doing this work, and yet still stuff comes up. And you're being reminded through your intuition to pay attention. Would you mind sharing that story? Sure,
I would, I would. So, because I'm a craniosacral therapist, and I've been doing it a long time, people kind of know that. And so I get a lot of requests for, for that kind of thing, or attention on people who are under under stress.
So in the last couple of couple of weeks ago, there were a lot of people wanting something from me. Doesn't matter really what it was, but there were intense things. One is stay with me wanting my attention wanting me to help the children. And my intuition was, no, I can't do this. But it wasn't really clear. It wasn't No, it was a "no... but."
So I was kind of struggling a bit with it. But I knew somehow I shouldn't or couldn't say yes to all these people. And then it was a Friday night, the phone rang. And my friend, my dear old friend called me. And she told me about her son who had just killed himself. Recently. It was kind of shocking to talk about it. She was under a great amount of stress. I listened because I'm really good at that. She cried. And I could feel her deeply and I knew them well, so I could feel myself deeply. And by the end of our conversation, and we were kind of giggling and laughing and she was relieved. She said, "Oh, Cathy, thank you so much. I feel so much better. I'm so glad I took the risk and called you because I thought I wouldn't be able to talk."
And it was beautiful. And we hung up and I continued on with my things that I was doing. But I woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. My hip was killing me. More or less. I tried, when I got up. I couldn't stand on it. I was limping. I had a lot to do that day. And it was relentless. I thought I was crying like oh my god, this is so painful. What's happened to me? What have I done? But I couldn't think of anything that I'd done. I hadn't fallen or tripped or there was no physical reason. So I thought, Okay, I'm going to give this 24 hours and then I'll do something about it go to the hospital or something. And 24 hours, it was still killing me. So I thought no, I'm going to find my cranial sacral colleague, and I'll get her to help me to see if we can see what this is about. I found her and she said "Ya, sure! Come over in a couple hours. No problem." I hung up. I walked away from the phone and the pain and the limp was completely 100% gone. Wow. So weird. I was like, my brain was like what?
Yeah?
What? And I'm walking around my kitchen going "Is this possible?" And then I kind of really clicked in. Okay, I get it. I took on a lot of emotion recently, especially from that friend whose son had died. And I hadn't even realized that I'd done that. But when I did, and knew I could have some help about it. It disappeared. It's very clear, like, intuitive hit. "Cathy, don't say yes to all these people, because you're going to need yourself. This going to be a lot for you to take in."
Until I figured that out, it was gone. And that was two weeks ago, and I have had no pain in my hip since.
Wow, thank you. That's a perfect example of the body trying to communicate to us. And by listening to that, and giving it some time to sit with it, or to limp around with it was your body just saying, hey, you need to have some boundaries, you need to remind yourself about where your boundaries are. And that you can't take on everybody's energy and where they're at.
And also, by not accepting, saying yes to the people that needed me, I had space to process my own little grief about this loss of this boy, right? Which was really important. If I had had a bunch of people in my house, or I was looking after really strong cases, that would have put me right off. So it was really cool to have my body talk to me that way, because my brain wasn't listening.
Or perhaps even. I mean, that's the trick when you're empathic and can sit with people in their emotion and their woundedness and hurt, to not take it on. That's really, really challenging.
So I did a little meditation after that, to understand what, how to keep my boundaries clear and not have to have my hip hurt me like that in the future. And I saw myself with kind of like a barf soap. And I was rubbing it all over my skin. So it was kind of like some kind of, you know, psychic material, as a barrier, as a cleaning or protection so that I wouldn't get stuck to other people's stuff. That was just this little thing that came in to me in my meditation. So I just every now and then I just imagined myself rubbing myself with this little bar of boundary soap.
Perfect. The one thing that I I loved about my session with you was the prompting that you gave me. That helped me tune into my first instinctual reactions. So you asked me, What is this? What are you holding here? And it was all about going with the very first thing that came to my mind. And I would go with that, and it would lead us somewhere else. And it would lead us somewhere else. And it was all about going with the very first thing that came to my mind.
And so our first session that I had with you, I didn't quite understand the process. So I didn't know really what I was being asked. And you had been knocking on my shoulder. And you had said, and which was ironic, because that morning, my shoulder had been out, you know, when you sleep on your arm funny and it hurts and you just know that it's a kink. It'll work itself out, right?
And you'd been knocking on my shoulder that afternoon. And I totally was not connecting the two things. But I thought it was ironic that you were finding the shoulder that I had had this kink in and you said, "Oh, there's somebody knocking? Who's knocking?" And at first, I thought that was the most ridiculous question in the world. And then I went into it. I saw this picture of the famous painting of Jesus holding the lantern knocking at the door covered with rose vines. Yeah. And so here I saw that image of Jesus with the lantern knocking on the door. And I thought it was so funny. It was like Jesus is knocking at my door.
And then within with just in that ridiculous awareness, because I mean, where did that come from? Right. I realized that the issue that something had happened the day before that I've really disrupted myself like it was around loyalty. And I was feeling a bit burnt. Yeah, and hurt. And I would you know, and then amazingly, the next day, I'm on your table and you're like, Who's here? Hello, and I'm like, Jesus is at the door. And I realized in that moment, it was Christ Consciousness was wanting in. And when I realized that I needed to take Christ consciousness and apply it to the situation
that was burning you
It was burning me. It dissolved, because I let go of my attachment to the need for the loyalty. So even going with the most craziest thing that comes to your mind or to your intuition, like that, there we go, it sounded so crazy in the moment to my mind. But it held the nugget of truth that I needed,iet helped me let go of what had happened the day before.
So opened up the availability to speak with your soul.
Yes. And it wasn't necessarily rational, which is what you're saying the brain is. The brain is rational and intuition is not rational. I think that's an interesting point to make.
So what I would add to that, just why that works, that I knew, how do I know to go to your shoulder when I'm working with you, if I'm really highly intuitive, in that work, to know where your body's sending little, you know, electric radar, boom, boom, boom, so I can feel that I don't really know what is happening there. But I'm sent there. So it's, I don't give you the answers. I'm not given the answers. But I can, we can go to the right spot, and open up the box. So your opening up the box using both of our intuition.
I like that, because that speaks to why it's such a valuable thing to give yourself the gift of working with someone. It's not that they are going to heal you No, no, no, but they can help you heal yourself. Right?
And an open mystery mysterious places
that you probably wouldn't ever have thought of on your own.
Right, because your brain gets in the way.
Uh huh. Perfect.
I just want to see if we have touched on all the questions. This is important. Let's just go let's just touch back on the anxiety that comes up. You know, we, because this is a big one, right? We have anxiety, it is a really big issue, I think because maybe we're talking about it more these days. And there's more language around anxiety.
I sat with my daughter, and we were talking about anxiety with our, our general practitioner. And she showed my daughter an app on her phone that she can access called mind shift. And as I'm looking at this app, I start to cry. Because here I am 45 years old. And I'm realizing that all through high school, I suffered from anxiety, but I had no idea what it was called. So I'm looking at this app, and they're like asking questions, and I'm like, I've lived with us all my life. And so anxiety is a real big kicker, you know, it makes us second guess ourselves so much. Why is it? Do you think that we're so afraid to really trust ourselves?
Well, don't you think the expectations of the world are so high these days? Yeah, you must do this, you must do that, you must not do that. You have to act this way. You have to look this certain way. You have to go to this certain school. You have to be this certain way fit in fit in. It's hard to be your unique self, if you have to fit into someone else's expectations.
So that might be a very good question to ask when anxiety comes on? Who am I trying to fit in here?
But before you got to that one, I would find where does anxiety live in your body? Okay. And go very gently in, slowly in, rather than blast with big questions. Because anxiety is 10 tenths. You can probably count out to those big questions. Yeah. But be gentle to it. First find out who it is and what it looks like. It's probably could when you go into it. Oh, it's in my gut. Oh, oh my goodness. It's a little child. Oh, it's me. Oh, I'm only three. Oh, this has just happened. The memories of your life are in there.
Right. Thank you.
And that speaks to the crap that muddles.
Yes. Right. This conditioning experiences.
You had said three. emotional stuff.
Well, I think fear, shame and grief come to mind as the strongest muddlers.
Fear, shame, and grief and grief. And these are the three things that we're only just starting to talk about. Grief, especially. Grief has been a taboo hush hush subject that has impacted all of us in so many ways. And yet, we're only just starting to talk about that now.
So fear, shame and grief. And so, if we're having a hard time trusting ourselves, maybe this is the three good points to just consider. Where are we experiencing fear, shame and grief, and allow ourselves some safe space to look into that.
I would, I would say they're kind of like blankets that cover over intuition and cover over our, our inner self, our inner knowing, our soul. And if you can lift those blankets off, then your true self gets to see the light of day. So the part that is work is, how do you lift those blankets?
Right. Okay, so that's, that's the work. So in growing your intuition, this is the work. In building your trust in yourself, we have to create healing around those areas. And so this kind of feels like it's a good segue into the next phase of intuition, when we're actually not inhibited by fear and grief and shame. But when we can actually when we feel safe, there we go. Yeah.
So if we're feeling unsafe, intuition, will jump in to protect us. Right out that door now. Boom, right? Stay away from that guy. Walk away. That's our intuition working on a safety zone. So when we're safe, when all those; fear and shame and grief and conditioning is less, and we feel happy and relaxed. Intuition turns into inspiration. And then, when you're dancing, it's like, oh, laying my arm this way. Oh, so beautiful. Paint my rock this way. Oh, look at it. Sing my song this way. So it's elevated.
I like that elevated. And it becomes inspirational. Yes. So it's not necessarily just reactionary. It can be responsive.
Isn't that exciting?
Yeah. That's beautiful. And when we're in that creative flow, and I'm just remembering myself, like there, for me, gardening is where my intuition, and I are doing a dance? Because I don't always know, in my brain, what the plant needs. But somehow, intuitively, I know. Right? And so there are some plants, for example, that I don't have a clue what they are in my garden. But I do know that it's not getting enough water, I can see its reaction. You know, there's the deep, it's a deeper knowing that comes from intuition.
Your soul, and your interaction with that plant, lifeforce too. Everything has a life force, and we're interacting or connecting with.
So I would think that a good thing for someone who is wanting to build trust and grow their intuition is to find something that you experience flow in.
Yes. Where your intuition is already free.
Yes.
Grow that. And it'll start rubbing off on the areas where it feels more inhibited. Gardening, dancing. washing the dishes, if that makes you feel happy, right?
Working out. Simple things.
Yeah for me, it's painting stones. I love doing that. And my intuition just pours out of me, I can make beautiful things really easily that way. And it bounces off other other areas of my life that might be more inhibited.
Because when you're informing your brain, what it's like it then can...
It can trust and practice. Exactly. Trust is incremental, right? It's not just a leap, usually. You build, we talk about building trust. It takes a long time to feel safe and firm with that.
That's so powerful because this in relation to spirituality and my definition, which is the quest to know yourself. This is all a part of of learning how to, to be in our authenticity, how to be in our truth, is to be able to sit with things that may come with some disruption, you know, with thoughts that let's say, do bring up anxiety, Okay, then let's take a look at where the anxiety is coming from, it may not necessarily be the intuitive thought it could just be the shit that that's muddling, the ability to move on it.
It makes me think, too, if you really find your intuition when you're gardening, and you've got a problem that you're trying to figure out that's muddled, such as, do I move? Maybe you contemplate that while you're gardening, and then the calmness of the gardening will, will soften your brain.
I'm so glad you made that comparison, because that happens all the time. Absolutely. So if I need to get clarity on something, that's where I go, I go right to the garden. So finding the thing that you experience flow in can be a great way to process.
Yes. And clear the mud.
Because you're putting yourself physically in an environment where there is flow. Yeah.
Your brain can make sense of that. That's rational, right? So then we engage all of our parts, not just making it out the bad guy up there.
Or something we have a fight against, right? Yeah. This is about surrendering to the deep inner knowing.
Laaaa.....
Beautiful.
I think that's probably a good time to wrap up with that quote that my friend shared with us on Facebook, where I'm going to quote him, I thought it was perfect. He said, "Intuition is like a woman. The more you pay attention to it and listen to it, the more it will reveal itself to you."
Isn't that beautiful? I think that's true.
And that speaks to the card we pulled on Tuesday, which was Blossom.
Yes.
Well, thank you for joining us. I hope that our conversation illuminated some of the questions that you may have around intuition.
I hope that you find that safe place where you can develop the trust in your own intuition. If you have any questions for us, we would be happy to continue the conversation with you. I'm going to leave Cathy's information contact information on the page here but if you would like to reach out to her, you can email her cathie@gmail.com. Her website is saltspringtherapy.com. And I am Krista at kristathornhill.com
Please reach out. We'd be happy to hear from you. And yeah, thank you and may you continue to blossom.
