Today I'm here to educate about intuition and intuitive skill development in such a way which focuses on my own path and experiences. As mentioned on the home page of the website, I am an Ayahuasqera — a master healer of the ancient traditions of the Shipibo-Conibo medicine culture. The mention of experiences I've had in my life which have involved the use of intuitive skills have been becoming more and more necessary to my statements as my writing expands in The UNITY LIFE Branch Archive. It's come to my attention that many people haven't been at all familiar with the term and could use a basic definition, while others are familliar but in very conflicting ways. Instead of just providing a quick definition for those unfamiliar, I wanted to bridge and form cohesion between the various schools of understanding — focusing on what it means to me uniquely when I speak of this in my autobiographical arts. My unique background with the medicine may offer a lens which inspires and supports enriching new perspectives.
What is Intuition and Intuitive Development?
Intuition through the lens of psychology, embodiment, and my own background in traditional ecological knowledge systems
Intuitive development refers to the process of strengthening, refining, and learning to trust one’s intuitive perception — the ability to understand or know something without conscious analytical reasoning. At its core, it’s about recognizing and working with forms of perception that arise outside linear thought. Intuition is often described as pattern recognition happening below conscious awareness — rapid integration of sensory, emotional, and experiential data — or in more philosophical/spiritual frames, direct knowing, non-linear intelligence or perception through connection rather than analysis.
In the West, the term is best known from the spiritual or philosophical perspective as a form of higher perception beyond the intellect — a mystical artform connected to nature, consciousness or a larger field of intelligence. In psychology, however, intuition is not considered “mystical” by default — it’s often understood as rapid pattern recognition. By this definition, the brain processes vast amounts of information unconsciously, detects patterns based on past experience and delivers a “feeling” or “knowing” before you can explain it. For example, you “just feel” something is off — and later realize subtle cues had led to that. Research shows intuition is often felt in the body (gut feelings, tension, ease) and connected to the nervous system.
This is a very agreeable take on intuition for me, although I personally don't ascribe to Western psychological models for how I view the workings of the mind. I don't believe in a separate "subconscious mind". From my perspective, the mind, body and spirit are best seen as one — these, I refer to as the self. I often speak of all these spritual, mental and emotional matters as taking place on a genetic level at their root — the body. In that sense, I primarily view the "self" as the body, inclusive of all that makes up a person's perception.
Though I am a Westerner, I have much more deeply invested my life into the healing traditions of South American medicine culture and their cosmological worldviews — which inform their picture of the human mind — than even my own North American background such as the standardized Jungian psychological classic "the subconscious". Amazonian plant medicine traditions (such as my own, the Shipibo-Conibo) view intuition as trained by plant teachers, not something you are born with. It is developed through discipline, sensory refinement and relationship with ecology. It's often described as learning to listen to life or learning to perceive patterns in nature, sound, and energy.
Across all disciplines there are some similarities. Intuitive development often involves strengthening perception by noticing subtle cues (visual, emotional, environmental). Pattern recognition is also a huge element — learning to see connections across seemingly unrelated things. Also "tuning in" to the inner self is emphasized, in order to learn how to distinguish between genuine intuition and the common, everyday types of fear-based thought (which we all sometimes experience) such as projection or wishful thinking. The process of development involves building confidence in regularly testing intuition against reality and responding to those reflections by working to refine accuracy over time. It also involves learning to self-regulate by slowing down the system enough to register any possible intuitions as they come up.
Western Fields of Intuition ◊ A Widely Branching Movement
Schools of "Medical Intuition", Clairvoyance Trainings & College & why our modern culture is embracing this
What people call “intuition” today actually shows up across multiple parallel streams. Perhaps the most socially accepted is the "mindfulness & inner knowing” movement, which is an adjacent to mainstream psychology. Influential voices like Jon Kabat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle have taught intuition — avoiding mystical language but still cultivating the same skills — with a focus on presence, awareness and "inner guidance".
Lesser known but well worth mentioning, there are also schools of medical intuition. These do not replace a doctor's diagnosis but are a training-based program that teaches individuals to develop intuitive perception in relation to the human body and learning to identify energetic and physiological imbalances through structured methods. It combines elements of anatomy, energy awareness, and pattern recognition to cultivate a disciplined approach to a fully comprehensive intuitive health assessment designed to be followed up on with a doctor.
Some examples include The School of Medical Intuition, Caroline Myss (energy anatomy, archetypes) and Donna Eden. They focus on sensing imbalances in the body, linking intuition to health patterns and blending anatomy with symbolic and energetic interpretation. This is one of the most structured and “professionalized” forms of intuitive training.
There are also much more estoteric psychic / clairvoyant training programs such as Arthur Findlay College (UK, very established) and Berkeley Psychic Institute. These focus on clairvoyance (seeing), clairaudience (hearing), energy reading and aura perception. These systems often use structured exercises, not just belief.
This is becoming a much stronger movement in the West, perhaps because of radical modern cultural forces which are converging. The digital, information, AI and surveillance age has signified a dual process. On the one hand, people struggle with information overload and are constantly seeking stillness and inner guidance practices in order to cope — while on the other hand, the intensive pattern exposure that screen life involves has people constantly scanning, interpreting and connecting dots, which trains intuitive pattern recognition unintentionally.
Increasingly too, modern, increasing distrust of institutions causes the search for inner authority to take prominence when dominant authority is willing to be challenged. This has coincided with the rise of wellness culture.
A Lesser Known Intutive Field ◊ Light Language
A unique Ayahuasca perspective on "light language" — an intuitive format of the visual, movement and musical arts.
Lesser known, but increasingly visible in online spaces, is what is often referred to as the “lightworker” community, which includes practices such as energetic healing arts and channeling. Channelling is a practice which involve entering a receptive state in which insights, messages, or forms of communication are expressed with minimal analytical filtering. Generally, within this stream, intuition is framed not only as perception, but as a form of direct transmission from spiritual sources — where individuals act as conduits for information, sound, or symbolic expression that is understood to originate beyond the personal mind.
A huge chapter of my development over the course of my formative years involved indepth personal involvement with a practice from this culture known as "light language" — a method of healing. This refers to a form of language-like expression — usually vocal, written, or gestural — which doesn't follow conventional linguistic structure, but is understood by practitioners as a carrier of meaning, energy, or information beyond linear language. It often includes spontaneous vocal sounds (tones, syllables, flowing speech-like patterns), symbolic writing or glyph-like markings and hand movements or embodied gestures. It is not meant to be “translated” in the usual sense, but felt, received, or intuitively interpreted. I have practiced all of these intensively for many years.
This practice is commonly associated with intuition as it often involves heightened intuitive impressions during the light language practices, which are very often discussed as a way of integrating from the experience. Ultimately, this type of intuitive work coincides so deeply with the musical, movement and visual arts that it has caused me to identify with art itself as fairly syonymous with intuition. This connection is not often noted of, but art can most certainly falls into the category of intuition — within my genre especially, which is visionary and psychedelic intermedia art.
In my later years progressing deeper into my training with Ayahuasca through the traditional Shipibo-Conibo practice of Vegetalismo, I was acknowledged in my light language background by the medicine — on a profound level. Ayahuasca taught me that light language is something which also takes place on their spiritual plane — not just in the human activity of these gestures, vocal work or visual arts. They taught that the union between human and plant spirit medicine taking place for me within the container of Ayahuasca ceremony should provide much more insight into these forms of language than just where the information is sourced from or weather this is transmission or from inside my own mind, somehow.
In deep and bonded relationship with these plant teachers, I was offered a way of understanding the healing work that they do specifically in light language context, which went indepth. They told stories of the ancient language of Quechua, the language of Peru previous to Spanish colonization, and how its influence from the plant teachers was deep and ancient enough to create a light language functionality to it, even as a learned and spoken, conversational language. As well, my traditional healing music which is sung during ceremony — a gift given by the plant teachers to any Ayahuasqera — were framed in light language context.
This was an especially personalized gift from the medicine to honor my background of healing arts in this area. It served to acknowledge that my intuitive choice-making throughout my path of spiritual and healing arts development (this "lightworking" channelling culture that I had been so drawn to, and the way I found specialty there) had been in total alignment with my future as an Ayahuasca master healer.
Intuition and The Healing of Mental Health Stigma
Learning to depathologize ◊ Experiences that can be reshaped through context are — by definition — not disease
The process taught throughout the Western movements of intuitive development mentioned here destigmatizes mental phenomenon which is associated with psychosis. They reframe certain unusual perceptual experiences in a way that is structured, normalized, and trainable, rather than automatically pathologized. Instead of the raw clinical language and framing, such as "hallucinations" (seeing/hearing things others don’t), "delusional" interpretation of meaning or simply "loss of shared reality reference", they speak of "vivid inner imagery", "hearing internal voices or impressions", "strong pattern recognition or meaning-making" and "sensing presence or energy".
This supports the avoidance of misdiagnosis. Psychosis is actually very different from intuition. It is formally distinguished by certain factors such as intrusive, uncontrollable and distressing mental phenomenon — the type of ungrounding experience which disrupts daily functioning entirely, and often comes out in extremely aggressive-defensive behaviour. These schools broadly challenge the assumption that unusual perception automatically equals pathology. It is viewed as a raw, unprocessed potential skill.
This ties in with a larger movement where psychology is beginning to recognize spectrum models of perception. Some researchers are exploring “non-ordinary experiences” without immediately labeling them as illness and there’s growing awareness that context, meaning, and support shape outcomes. In other words, a potentially shaped or recontextualized experience is — by definition — not a disease.
This has some overlap with the views on psychology and healing taught to me by the medicine. Specifically, Ayahuasca does not work from bunching symptoms together into categories and defining them as illness, then proceeding to prescribe. Instead, the medicine views the human mind as whole and healthy, something which they do not be dissect from a negative frame such as symptom analysis. The healing of symptoms then builds naturally from foundations of this type of supported self-realization of innate wholeness and wellbeing by reshaping relationship on many levels, just as plants are relationship oriented within ecology.
As much as I've strived to relate this perspective of the fundamentally healthy nature of the human mind by use of Western philosophy to define it, I've found even the best attempts ultimately fall short of the point I'm making here about Ayahuasca. What these plant teachers offer is not just a philosophical belief system but an incredibly ancient and deeply integrated way from another part of the world which is very different from the Western mindset yet offers the world an important and valuable perspective.
In Conclusion
It was an overwhelming task to write this archive, due to the incredibly vast nature of this topic and the many swirling inspirations I've been gently considering for such a piece for months — which did not yet fully articulated. The necessity of providing some additional clarity to support my use of the term "intuition" in my autobiographical writings forced me to come out with something quickly for that one purpose immediately. I'm certain that there are more items that I'd like to someday add here. It's been a dream of mine to write this archive for so long, and I see many potential uses for it beyond just this one demand which finally manifested this version. For that reason, I'll be later returning to it to edit, add sections and make it more multi-applicable as a resource.
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