Body-First Healing Podcast

Somatic Practice: Connect with Your Intuition

• Britt Piper • Episode 47

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If your intuition feels unreachable, this practice is for you. In this guided somatic episode, Britt offers a different way to understand intuition: your inner knowing did not disappear, your access to it did, and those are two very different things. When your nervous system is busy scanning for danger, managing everyone else's emotions, or proving your worth, there is not much attention left to notice the quieter signals underneath. Rather than chasing answers, this practice helps you create the conditions where clarity can arrive on its own. You will settle your body, set down the questions you have been carrying, and gently practice becoming available to your own wisdom without forcing it.


Related episode: Somatic Practice for Overthinking, Rumination, & Mental Loops


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Welcome

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week, I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing. You have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Body First Healing Podcast. I am your host, Britt Piper, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, author, and somatic and trauma-informed trainer. All right, guys, I am looking forward to today. It's going to be a little bit different, but you guys love, love, love these episodes and the kind of rare moments that we do it.

Why "just trust your intuition" is incomplete

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I am excited because today we are going to be doing a somatic practice. Now, let me give an introduction here. Okay. If you have spent any amount of time in the healing world, you've probably heard someone tell you to just trust your intuition, right? To follow your gut, to listen to your inner voice. And while I understand the intention behind that advice, I actually think that it's incomplete. Because for so many people, especially those with histories of trauma or chronic stress or just years of adapting to survive, that advice can feel incredibly frustrating, right? Because what if you can't hear that voice? What if there isn't some loud inner knowing speaking to you? What if all of those decisions feel really cloudy and every choice just feels confusing and uncertain? In those moments, it can start to feel like everyone else has access to something that you somehow lost. So today I want to offer a different perspective. Okay, because I don't believe that your intuition disappears. I think that your access to it does. And those are two totally different things. One, on one hand, it suggests that something inside of you is broken or missing. And then on the other side, it suggests that your nervous system has simply become so busy managing that it no longer has enough capacity to notice those quieter signals beneath all of it, beneath the noise.

The body knows before the mind has words

SPEAKER_00

Okay. But something fascinating that I want to share with you about the nervous system is that long before we create language around an experience, our bodies have already begun organizing around it. So as an example, before we think like this doesn't feel right, our breathing may have already become shallow. Perhaps before we realize, you know, I actually don't want this for myself. Our shoulders may have lifted towards our ears or collapsed forward before we consciously recognize this relationship is no longer aligned for me. Maybe our stomach has been tightening for months. Right. So the body often knows before the mind has words or before we are willing to accept what the body has been whispering to us. So survival has a way of turning down the volume on those quieter signals. Because when your nervous system is occupied with scanning for danger, with anticipating conflict or managing someone else's emotions or, you know, staying productive, proving your worth, you know, all these patterns that we get stuck in, there isn't much attentional capacity left to notice those more subtle internal experiences. Now, you guys know I love analogies, so I'm going to give you an analogy here. Think about trying to hear someone whisper across a crowded stadium, right? The whisper hasn't disappeared, but the environment of the stadium has simply become too loud. And so when I think about our intuition or our inner knowing, I think that's what happens for so many of us. We mistake the absence of access for the absence of wisdom. And then we start to think that we have lost ourselves. But, and this is the challenge, okay, maybe we haven't lost ourselves at all. Okay, maybe we've simply become disconnected from the conditions that allow us to hear ourselves. And that's really important. Because if intuition isn't something that we have to manufacture, okay, if if authenticity isn't something that we have to create, then that means that healing becomes a lot less about, quote, finding ourselves. And it becomes so much more about removing the noise that has made ourselves difficult to hear. So all that to say, that is one of the things that I love most about somatic work and somatic experiencing in particular, it's that it shifts our attention away from forcing answers in the mind and toward creating conditions in our environment, both externally and internally. Because we know the nervous system cannot be forced into clarity, right? Like just like you can't force yourself to fall asleep, right? You don't decide to fall asleep, you create the conditions where sleep naturally begins to arrive. And so think of clarity kind of in the same way. The more pressure that we place on ourselves to figure everything out, the more our nervous system often mobilizes around getting it right. And then once we're mobilized around that, then certainty becomes even harder to access. And this for me, I feel like shows up, and maybe it shows up for you in this way too. Like, have you ever noticed that the answers that you spend weeks chasing, that they often arrive like in the most mundane and unexpected moments? Like it's gonna happen while you're driving, while you're taking a shower, while you're walking your dog, or you know, for me often it's like when I'm sitting on an airplane. And it's not because those places or experiences have like this magic to them, like the secret formula. It's because for a brief moment, okay, just think about this, your nervous system softened enough that what was already present could finally emerge into your awareness. And so, yeah, I think that we have drastically misunderstood intuition. Like we imagine it as lightning, as um certainty, or some like booming voice that is going to tell us exactly what to do. But more often, intuition is going to arrive in these really quiet and subtle ways. And it's going to sound a lot less like certainty and more like, oh. Right. And sometimes I'll admit, what I've been finding is it it's almost like disappointingly simple, right? It feels very ordinary and it isn't loud. It's only when survival becomes louder that authenticity becomes more difficult to hear. And so that's what today's practice is really going to be about. We're not going to be searching for answers, searching for our intuition. We're not going to try to figure out our career, our relationship, our next decision. Because if we make this practice about finding the answer, then your nervous system will, again, almost immediately be performing. So instead, we're going to start with searching and we're going to practice becoming the kind of nervous system that can reorganize truth when it appears. Okay, and we do that by not forcing it, as I always say, but making space

Guided practice: arriving and settling

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for it. All right, my friend. So let's start off by just finding a position that feels supportive. Okay, maybe you're sitting, maybe you're lying down, perhaps right now you're walking or you're driving in your car. Okay, there is no correct posture here. More so just a question. Okay, can your body be just 5% more comfortable than it is right now? And even as I say that, I'm wearing um sandals. I'm wearing these strappy sandals right now because I was out running errands and doing kid drop-off, and now I'm like, you know what? I want to take off my shoes. Why am I wearing these still? All right, so just check in with yourself. Okay, and we're not trying to get in the perfect position, right? Like I said, not completely relaxed, but just supporting ourselves a little bit more. That feels better. Here we go. Okay. And now I'll just invite you to allow your eyes to just soften. Okay, if that feels available. Or just kind of simply let your gaze become less focused. Softening the eyes softens the body. Now just notice the places where your body feels like it's already being held. It could be the chair, it could be the floor, the bed beneath you. Okay, without changing anything. Just simply allowing yourself to receive that support that's already here. And as you do this, begin to notice your breath. And notice that I said notice. Right? We don't need to change the breath. No need to deepen it, to slow it or regulate it. Again, just noticing that your body is already breathing without your help. Right. And sometimes when I think about that, like I'm just reminded that there's this quiet intelligence to that. In the same way, you can consider like your heart has been beating all day without asking your permission. Your lungs have been expanding, your cells have been exchanging oxygen. Life has been moving through you without effort. Even as I say that, I'm feeling just some gentle, like welling behind my eyes, and just some reverence and gratitude for all the ways that our body shows up for us. Let's stay here for just a few breaths. Alright, so now can we just imagine for now? Can we just imagine setting every question that we've been carrying just beside us? Okay, remembering that we don't have to solve them right now, but we can just place them down. The decision, the future, the relationship, the timeline, the the uncertainty, the pressure to know. Just imagine that you're placing them down next to you. And then see if just for these next few moments, your body doesn't have to carry them. And as you sit with that reflection, just notice what changes in the body. Even the smallest of changes. My breath feels deeper and more nourishing. My eyes feel more lifted up. More open. Okay, so bring your attention inward. From here again, we're not searching, we're just listening. As though it kind of picture, it's like you're sitting beside someone that you deeply love. In those moments you wouldn't interrogate them. You would simply become available to them. So can you offer your body right here, right now, just that same quality of attention and attunement. And as you're doing that, just notice the sensations again that are already here. Maybe warmth, coolness, expansion, movement, stillness, buzziness, heaviness, lightness. There's nothing that we need to interpret here. Nothing to fix. There is nothing that we need to make happen. We are just noticing. So now I'm gonna invite you to imagine something. Okay. Imagine that for the next five to ten minutes, there's absolutely no one that you need to impress. There is no one to care for, no one to reassure, no one to prove yourself to. Okay, there's no one waiting for an answer or needing any kind of version of you. Just for this moment. Allow your nervous system to experience what it might feel like to belong only to yourself. Notice what your body does. Me, I'm noticing that my jaw is softening. My breath feels deeper. My stomach has more spaciousness, more lightness to it. And for you, what do you notice? Do you feel restless right now? Do you feel sleepy? I'm feeling a little sleepy. Maybe emotional. Alright, whatever arises, can you just welcome it? Remembering that we're not looking for um authenticity. We are watching what happens when performance has somewhere to rest. And just take another slow deep breath. And from here, just notice if there's any place in the body that's asking for something just small. Incredibly small. Okay, not a life change, not a dramatic decision. Just something simple. Maybe your shoulders want to roll, maybe your neck wants to stretch, your hands want to uncurl. I'm noticing for me that my lower back wants a bit more support. I want to place my hands here. Oh, and there's a yawn, which is usually a sign of settling in the nervous system. Maybe your feet want to press into the floor. Yeah. Just allow whatever impulse is emerging slowly. Okay, without rushing. Oh, big yard. Without questioning whether it's right. Okay, you're trying to make sense of it. Just let your body complete what it's been quietly asking for in the background. And then just notice how that feels afterward. Maybe you're not noticing anything, and that's okay, but maybe there's something subtle. Like a little more space. Warmth or breath. Maybe a little more presence. That's what I'm noticing for myself, as I'm feeling more present right now. Okay, so this is how authenticity arrives. It just starts to trickle in in these tiny moments where your body no longer has to argue with itself.

Working with a decision, releasing urgency

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Okay. So now just kind of transitioning. I'll invite you now to just imagine one decision. Okay, that you've been carrying lately. And we don't need to solve it right now. We're not even gonna like think about it, rationalize it. But maybe just simply imagine that like the decision, like again, we're picking it back up and we're kind of holding it out in front of us, we're placing it in front of us. Okay, and from here, just notice what your body does immediately. Does it tense? Does it brace? Does it speed up? So for me, I'm noticing I'm feeling more mobilized, my heart rate increased. Just took a breath to almost like catch my breath. And now just imagine, okay, from here, that no decision has to be made today. And then again, just notice what happens. So again, when we remove urgency from the equation, things can naturally fall into place because urgency is often confused with clarity. Okay, but they're they're such different experiences. Like sometimes the nervous system only reveals what's true after urgency has settled. Okay, so stay. Stay with that. Stay with breathing. Stay with listening. Stay with receiving. Again, we're not trying to manufacture, manipulate our own wisdom here. We're just practicing becoming available to it. And maybe, you know, maybe that's enough for today. Like maybe today's healing isn't discovering the answer. Maybe today's healing is remembering that you don't have to chase every answer. Ooh, that was for me. Yeah, sometimes the deepest wisdom it emerges in the space that opens up after we stop forcing it. Okay, so take one more slow breath. Notice your body. Notice the room around you. Notice the sounds. The light. The air against your skin. And just begin to gently allow yourself to reorient to this moment. When you're ready, you can begin wiggling your fingers, wiggling your toes, maybe stretching, taking one deep final breath.

Reorienting and closing reflection

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All right. So before we finish today, I just want to leave you with one thought. I don't believe healing is about becoming someone who always knows exactly what to do. I think healing is becoming someone whose nervous system is no longer so consumed by survival that it can recognize truth when it quietly arrives. Okay, we do not need to force clarity. We don't need to pressure ourselves into certainty or earn the intuition that we are so desperately seeking. Our bodies have been gathering information every moment of our lives. So our authentic self hasn't disappeared. It has simply been waiting for enough safety and spaciousness and enough presence to just be heard again. All right, my friend. Thank you for letting me be with you today. Um, if this practice resonated with you, I would love for you to share this episode with maybe someone who you feel could really benefit from it. As always, feel free to share on social media, tag me, reach out over Instagram, let me know how this landed with you. And if you're looking to deepen this work and learn how to regulate your nervous system through a body first lens, I would love to welcome you into the Body First Healing Program. We do somatic practices like this as a group every Monday together. Until next time, you guys, take good care of yourselves. And as always, I will see you next week here on the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning into the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week, and until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.