By far, the largest portion of our brain gathers and processes information outside of our focused awareness…
The other day I stumbled on a fascinating documentary on intuition and its importance for us. Titled “Inn Saei,” Icelandic for intuition, it begins with the story of a woman who burns out of her highly demanding job. In seeking to re-balance her life, she explores the role and value of intuition in our lives.
In the documentary William W. George, a senior fellow teaching leadership at the Harvard Business School, defines intuition as letting your whole brain flow, as opposed to staying with the rational, focused part of our consciousness only. He suggests that learning and practicing to allow whole brain flow helps to integrate disparate pieces of information and to see problems and situations holistically. Unfortunately our culture, and Western cultures in general, rely on the rational, linear, time – constrained mind of separate bits of information as the way to achieve. One speaker in the documentary noted that 98 % of our brain, the “relational mind,” does not use language or logic while it processes incoming information. The linear mind that we rely on so heavily with our to-do lists and logical thinking is 2 % of our brain.
Many of the contributors to the documentary suggest that the ability to solve seemingly intractable problems is to cultivate our intuition and allow it to work on solutions. According to William W. George, “At the highest level all decisions are intuitive.”
Perhaps this means engaging both the relational and the logical processes of our brains. Albert Einstein encapsulates this with his quote, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind is a faithful servant.”
Because of the bias of our culture, cultivating and enhancing intuition requires commitment and a little bit of time. The exercises are nothing new or surprising. Essentially they entail using and noticing the world through our senses for a few minutes a day. Here are two examples, conscious breathing exercises, and from the documentary, spending a few minutes in nature taking in and noticing the world through sight, sound, physical sensations and smell while letting go of thoughts. Of course, meditation is also a path to cultivating intuition. Many more exercises can be found by googling mindfulness exercises. The contributors to Inn Saei suggest that consistently strengthening intuitive awareness through exercising these capacities and inviting a broadened sense of awareness will allow more creative solutions and ideas to evolve.