Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: Five Steps
to Physical, Emotional and Sexual Wellness
A Conversation with Dr. Judith Orloff

by Sydney L. Murray

Introduction

“Life’s full splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all of its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by the right name, it will come.”
Franz Kafka

This quote articulates for me all of the wonders of spirit. Our spiritual nature is always with us, whether, we are aware of it or not. Developing this inner voice is much like developing any other skill: practice, experience some success and more practice. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Judith Orloff, M.D., an amazing woman, expert on intuition and psychiatrist. Orloff is part of a group of medical professionals who embrace the intuitive, spiritual and energetic properties of our bodies.

SLM: Would you mind articulating your thoughts on intuition?

JO: Intuition is a form of nonlinear knowledge that comes through by listening to the body, being open to sights, smells, images, poetry, knowing, songs, anything that comes through in a nonlinear way. It’s the antithesis of logical thinking. With logical thinking you analyze A + B + C. With intuition you put out your request, you stay open and you wait. Intuition, for most people, is a still, small voice inside that needs to be uncovered and honored, but gets drowned out by the mind, because the mind is so loud. Listen to your intuition, it is a potent form of inner wisdom not mediated by the rational mind. People often experience it as a gut feeling or a hunch, a physical sensation or a dream. What I hope to do in my book, Dr. Judith Orloff’s Guide to Intuitive Healing, is to train people to listen to this kind of intuitive input. Then they have a choice: to analyze something with their minds and/or include intuition into the decision making process. I don’t teach intuition as something esoteric, I teach it as something practical to be used in the world in which we live.

It took me seven years to write my first book, Second Sight, because I was afraid of what my colleagues would think. Yet, I’m encouraged and I’d like to integrate what is good in traditional medicine with intuition and spirituality. I have quite a love for traditional medicine. I give workshops for health-care professionals all over the country teaching them how to bring intuition and spirituality into patient care. This May, I will be speaking at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in Chicago on 'How Intuition can Enhance Patient Care.' It’s a breakthrough because the APA is a very mainstream, ultra-conservative organization and I may be the first intuitive psychiatrist to speak before them. In addition, the head of the psychiatric residency program at UCLA has approached me and asked me if I would allow myself to be studied by them. I would do intuitive readings (during sessions) with my patients and they (UCLA) would determine if they were accurate or not. I have a good sense that something positive will happen, hopefully it will be written up in a medical journal and will begin to legitimize this work.

There is a great need among people to be seen intuitively and spiritually by someone with a traditional medical background. People suffer tremendously and they don’t know why, but it’s because they’ve lost this critical part of themselves. The reason I wanted to outline intuitive development in five steps is that people are longing for a way to consciously integrate intuition into their lives. It’s really helpful to have some kind of strategy and plan. ‘These are five steps I use in my own life every day,’ Orloff explained. With that, I asked if we could go over each one and she kindly acquiesced.

I. Notice Your Beliefs
It’s so important for us to define what our beliefs are. I believe that people need to identify how much they believe in love. Because love is the force of healing and I think everyone on the healing path has to make a decision whether they’re going to commit their life to a life of love and do everything they can to achieve that. This includes love of the body, love of the self, love of others, love of the planet. They have to decide how important love is to them. And then understand that everything they do depends on this, everything.

II. Be In Your Body
In Western culture we’re raised with a loathing of the body. Most people are taught to function from the neck up, yet the body is a highly nuanced, intuitive receptor. If we begin to listen to the subtler signals the body sends, we can prevent illness. These signals can warn us about unhealthy relationships, help awaken us to our sexuality, or give us information about death, really about anything. I believe each person needs to know his/her own anatomy, yet most people are disgusted by the body, the body’s secretions: tears, urine, semen, menstrual blood. If you have these beliefs and you become ill, healing could be difficult. We need to reframe the beauty of our bodies. Intuition can allow us to do that. It often means redefining beliefs we’ve had since childhood. Getting in touch with one’s sexuality is part of our physical and emotional health. In our society we donít connect sexuality with the heart. What I hope to do is to redefine sexuality, combining sexuality, heart, intuition and spirit. This makes sexuality extremely potent and it has to do with being able to feel the subtle energies in our bodies and working with all of them. I had an experience in the 80s where I was doing a workshop on Kauai, Hawaii. We were about to enter a period of silence and fasting and I went down to the shore through this beautiful jungle and I put my hand on a tree as I was watching the sunset. I remember feeling this incredible erotic energy rushing from the tree through my hand into my body. And my mind was saying, “What’s going on here?” Luckily I didn’t analyze it, I just allowed this energy to flow and I experienced a total body orgasm from the erotic energy of that tree. It’s something I’ll never forget because what that taught me is that nature is a tremendous source of ecstasy and eroticism.

III. Sense Your Body’s Subtle Energies
We have these bodies of flesh and blood, but we also have energy fields which permeate the body and extend many feet beyond it. In Chinese Medicine it’s called chi. It’s also called Shakti, the basic life force. With intuition you can feel this energy. As a psychiatrist, I read my patients’ energy every time I see them, because how people hold their subtle energy tells you a lot diagnostically. In terms of subtle energies, there’s a law that we attract what we are: Love attracts love, fear attracts fear, kindness attracts kindness. If you have a lot of fear, you might attract that which you fear. You attract what you fear so you can learn from it, not as a form of punishment but as a learning experience. Some people whom you meet give off tremendous heart energy and they are wonderful to be around. They’re giving off love which we feel mid-chest, which is the heart chakra. Other people give off very little of that energy and itís very difficult to be around them. If I was to sense that lack of heart energy, that gives me a clue as a psychiatrist to help this person open his/her heart.

IV. Asking For Inner Guidance
Asking for inner guidance is a way of turning to your intuition and asking for advice. The most important way of doing this is through meditation, which requires silence and breathing. When thoughts come, let them go by like clouds in the sky. Focus on the
breath to find a place of silence. Once in that place of silence, you can ask for things: “Please guide me to open my heart in this relationship;. Please guide me how to heal this illness; Please guide me on how to heal this depression. “Then you wait for messages or impressions, knowing, sights, smells, sounds,don’t analyze them when they come in, but when you’re finished meditating, write them down in a journal. The hardest part for most people is to act on what they're told. So many times people get this great intuitive information, but because it’s impractical or difficult, they don’t act on it. And if there is one thing I can impress upon you, is to please act on it (this information) and trust it, because it can only give you goodness. Years ago when I first started to develop my intuition, I had a dream that told me to become a psychiatrist, to become an M.D., to have the credentials which would help legitimize the intuitive realm. If I hadn’t listened, my life would be very different. I wouldn’t have found my dream. I give this example to encourage everyone who reads this article to please listen (to your intuition) and at least give it a try. You don’t have to commit a hundred percent to what your dreams and/or intuition tell you, but at least put it into motion to see if there is something there for you. I think it’s a revolutionary stand to trust your intuition.

V. Listening To Your Dreams
Remembering dreams is a form of awakening. As a psychiatrist and in my workshops, I teach people how to remember their dreams because it is a potent form of intuitive awakening. The trick to remembering dreams is to have a dream journal and pen right by the bed. Make it as easy for yourself as possible and before you go to sleep ask a question. When you wake up, the secret is not to get up too fast, just lay there in the hypnogogic state between sleep and waking. If your answer doesn’t come through, keep trying it for a week and stay very patient. Sometimes people need help with dream interpretation and that’s where a therapist, or someone who works with dreams would be helpful. I don’t believe any dream is insignificant. People have repetitive nightmares for years and the point isn’t to torment you. The point is that your intuition is
turning up the volume.

I loved a line in Dr. Orloff’sbook that said intuition like healing, has an aesthetic to it. I asked her to expound on this. Orloff proclaimed, “The language that I most liken to intuition is poetry, because there’s a beautiful aesthetic that blends with nature that is very poetic, and I ask you to begin to get in touch with the sensuality of intuition. How it feels in the body and how it relates to the clouds in the sky. Often when I ask for intuitive advice I look up at the night sky and I ask the stars because there is such a close connection between our intuition and all of nature. “The way I teach intuition is to get in touch with one’s heart, the loving kindness for oneself and others. Love is the force that can heal. And when we connect with that in ourselves, or we give it to someone else, it can accelerate the healing process. Always come from your heart, you can’t go wrong. I’ve committed myself to a life of love and I’ll do everything in my life to achieve it.”

For more information please visit her website at www.drjudithorloff.com.