Practice intuition with doodling and painting like a child.
Intuition is a useful gift for many big and small decisions in everyday life. To feel our feelings at the right moment and to be mindful of our body reactions. Often the inner voice senses where the journey is going and makes itself felt in us in this subtle way and can be a useful guide.
Probably for this reason, there are a variety of intuition exercises, because here too, practice is the path to mastery: for example, practicing observation and then naming your feelings trains your intuition. Most people perform this exercise with words. I now suggest a different way of expression: Painting. Our intuition expresses itself particularly readily and easily in pictorial language. Because with imagery we can express ourselves without first having to enter the mind to search for accurate words to describe our emotional life.
“But I can’t paint at all,” they say. Then many say. Do you really think you can express yourself adequately on paper only in words? … I would doubt that.
Just try this intuition exercise as a painting exercise:
Get yourself a black or dark felt-tip pen, ballpoint pen, wax crayon, pencil and a sheet of paper. A4 or A3 is usually sufficient. You should take paper that you can fill up without fear of loss. In this exercise you observe your feelings and promptly put them on paper. You can scribble, quickly, slowly or gently glide over the paper, everything is allowed. You can also paint something representational, all that is currently showing is good.
A tip: If you want to draw something representational and quickly block because you think you can’t put it on paper. You can proceed like a self-confident three-year-old child. This one draws a doodle thing and knows for sure this doodled thing is a fire truck. Yes, of course, what else.
With more complex elements, such as a lioness, you can first pause and start with only one part of it, for example, the eyes, then feel inside yourself what is now next, for example, the paws, it does not matter what the final result looks like, it could also be a “torn apart lion”, or half or wildly scattered parts of it, or the lioness becomes a giraffe yet. It’s about training intuition, so: what do I feel NOW and what do I see NOW and that’s what you put on paper. It is not about being able to recognize or understand what is painted. It is solely about learning what I feel just inside me, to build a connection to it, and to hold it (in this case with painting) first. No more and no less. It is an exciting exercise that actually requires some letting go.
Therefore, it is worth repeating the exercise more often. Just keep a pen and a sheet of paper ready at a place in your home. If you then mindfully register a feeling in you, you can immediately implement it pictorially. By the way, writing words is not forbidden. If a word comes first, put it on paper. Everything we hold back in this exercise would “block” the intuitive channel, so it is important to put on paper without exception everything that wants to show itself.
If you are interested in training something as valuable as access to your intuition with such simple means, practice regularly. This exercise does not wear out, does not require much time or material. Repeat it as often as you can, preferably when you are emotionally agitated, then you will additionally benefit from the healing effect of this exercise. You bring the restlessness inside you to the outside, give it expression and the feeling does not get “stuck” in your body. I can tell you about the enormously healing effect of soul painting another time …
Tip: If you have already practiced this exercise a few times with the pictorial expression, you can change over and bring your feelings only with words on paper. Decide for yourself what feels better to you.
