Intuition Play & Interplay

by Jaimen McMillan

Intuition is a word we have for the elusive ability to understand something directly, without the need for prior conscious reflection, reduction, or reasoning. To write about intuition then may seem counter-intuitive. This short essay will attempt, nevertheless, to shed some light on the elusive phenomenon of intuition by showing how one might engage with intuition in such a way so that it will not run away.

Jaimen McMillan

Spacial Dynamics can offer some insight into intuition by looking at it as a spatial phenomenon. The discipline of Spacial Dynamics studies the spatial components of movements in sport, movement therapy, physical education, work-place effectiveness, and presence in a business meeting, for example. SD also studies less tangible movements such as sensing, perception, awareness, and understanding. Intuition is one of these refined movements that are so subtle that it can be overlooked. What if this was because intuition does not happen where we are aware of it? What if intuition was a movement that took place outside of the body first, and we were then subsequently aware of it inside the body? If this is true, no wonder we would have a hard time finding it if we were looking for it in the wrong place.

Our present western civilization has largely accepted the theory that the mind is located largely, or even solely, in the brain. Questioning this presupposition may open doors to new ways of knowing. This article acknowledges that the brain is incredibly important for self-awareness. But what if the major function of the brain is to mirror our activities, and then allow for self-reflection? A mirror is not the source of the activity it reflects. Looking into the mirror before we have done a new activity would be a formula for becoming jaded, perhaps even opinionated, because any observations would be based upon seeing something only one way. Minding only the mirror would then never allow for anything new to appear in the mirror. One could postulate that the location of the mind could be anywhere a person, consciously or unconsciously, places his/her awareness.

“Mind your step!” is an old-fashioned way of telling people to place their attention somewhere else. It is an expression that lets us know that we could “in-deed” put our minds, our awareness, somewhere else besides our heads, which are the seats of self-reflection, not effective stepping.

“You Can’t Get There From Here!”

A major stumbling block in trying to find intuition is that we may be searching in the wrong place. Years ago I was searching for a horse riding stable in Michigan. I stopped and asked a gas station attendant for directions. He knew the stables well. He started to give me directions by beginning with one explanation, and then stopped in the middle, and tried another, and yet another. Perplexed, he stopped in his tracks. He finally said with conviction: “You can’t get there from here!” I never forgot these words. As ridiculous as it may sound, he was somehow right. In order to go somewhere else you have to be able the leave the place where you are, and also be at the place where you are not yet. The attendant who was at a loss to find his way to the stables might have been more successful if he had begun at the riding stables and worked his way backwards towards where we were stuck at the gas station. In a similar way, intuition can start with the end and then begin. Intuition has to do with letting go of what we already know. Moving away from our own old standpoints literally gives us space to be able to see things new, from different points of view.

To Learn Something Inside Out

When we are aware of intuition, it is already over. Intuition takes place outside the body and we reflect and record it inside. It happens with a playful interaction with the outside world. The inside reflection is what we often call intuition, but perhaps the conscious awareness of the intuition is the end result of what went on outside.

An experience of intuition can be deeply moving, and we often call such soul-moving experiences “inner experiences.” Through acute observation, however, we may experience that many strong feelings that we have—interest, fascination, awe, and surprise, for example—begin outside the body. Our body-brain based vocabulary and worldview may well call these “inner experiences,” even though they were spawned outside. Similarly, intuition can be seen as an outer movement that can lead us to an “emerging knowing”: insight that doesn’t start from the observer, but from interacting with what is being observed, where it is being observed.

First-Hand Experiences

Our extremities, particularly our fingertips and tips of our toes, are particularly sensitive and are possible organs for intuition. An example: I had the honor of working with children with special needs, who in addition to having cognitive challenges, were also without the sense of sight. Witnessing their ability to perceive through their hands made me aware of the importance of the hands as sense organs for the unknown. Not burdened by the intellect, these individuals were able to intuitively make sense of the world through their hands. This limb-wisdom can be trained through any artistic activity such as sculpting, painting, eurythmy, handwork, and Spacial Dynamics, all of which can enliven the hands and legs, and help one to go outside of one’s body in a healthy way. One can learn to go out of the body through the fingertips or toes the same way one’s gaze can span distances without the observer losing the ability to reflect and record.

It is important to remember that an intuitive experience can involve this spatial outreach, before we are aware of this intuitive engagement. We have to learn to live into and linger with what we are observing. We could call it “staying awake in the dream.” We have to live in that dream-state long enough so that new connections are made and can gel sufficiently for them to be reflected so that we are able to reflect, formulate, and remember them. In the subsequent quiet that we give ourselves, we allow them to become conscious. Awareness of this process within the brain follows the outer dynamics of intuitive interaction with the world. Thinking that the brain creates intuition is like adoring the mirror as the producer of what it is reflecting.

Intuition can be further developed through learning how to use one’s body and what is around one’s entire body. The entire gestalt itself can become an organ of perception. Each part of the body can become a key to unlock untold secrets. If we were to go around the world with only one key trying to open every door, we would be standing in front of many locked doors. There are people who because of their limited success in getting out of their locked head-thoughts make the mistake of maintaining that there is only one key, and very few doors. Intuition offers new keys for countless doors.

The Gestalt as an Organ for Intuition

Intuition can result from using our entire bodies, our gestalts, to explore with, and they can become sense organs. In Spacial Dynamics there is an emphasis on learning to experience the phenomenon of figure/ground. Most people look at a figure and they say that it is the figure, the object, alone that constitutes the form. In one way that is right. But when one looks at the whole picture more intuitively, one might say that a figure is what it is, because everything else in its surroundings is not that figure. Otherwise we couldn’t distinguish it. If one interacts with objects where they are, then intuitively one realizes that objects are made up of what they are, and what they are not.

In a very simple Spacial Dynamics exercise called the “Silhouette,” a person is helped to become aware of the form of his/her body through the help of another person who firmly outlines the form of the partner’s body.

Person A places both hands on the head of person B, and traces the shape of person B’s body all the way down to the feet and toes. This can provide an entire body experience of the gestalt. Simultaneously, as an answer to the firm pressure, Person B learns to expand beyond the limits of his/her “figure” and enter into the surrounding “ground,” slowly experiencing the surrounding space as an extension, and later a sense organ to use in the perception process of intuition.

One of the challenges of the process of intuition is to hold onto it long enough to remember it, and not to kill it by making an abstraction of it too soon. There is plenty of time to test it. As poetic as the intuitions may be, if they are true, they will later become even clearer in light of true scientific processes. It is important not to minimize the role of memory and intellect in the intuitive process. The goal is to keep the process alive in a way to be able to create a living reflection of the intuitive process.

Conclusion: Always Beginning

Intuition is pure movement that transpires in enlivened space. Born out of selfless interest, it takes place outside of one’s body. Intuition, when properly nurtured, can be a never-ending source of discovery, revelation, and inspiration. It is a type of space travel that paradoxically involves going out of one’s body, without ever leaving it. Our own limbs can become organs for intuition through “first-hand” experiences. Intuition does not come from seeking answers; it involves living in the questioning. It is a gentle reaching out for engagement in a way that allows for something to reveal slowly its secrets as it flows back towards the questioner. It is learning to be content without content.

Intuition challenges us to learn to live with not knowing. Intuition does not have a goal of collecting knowledge; it is the gift that comes from mindful interest. It involves a dreaming consciously into a perception, while “staying awake in the dream.” It is a tender process of engaging with people or situations where they are, as they are, independent of any preconceptions. It is a meeting that is open ended. It is always a beginning. These words of T.S. Eliot describe the intuitive state in an intuitive way: “And the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.”

Jaimen McMillan is founder and director of the Spacial Dynamics Institute and developer of the Spacial Dynamics® method, directing trainings for movement professionals since 1980 and in private practice working with a wide range of clients, and lecturing in academic and business settings. He received an advanced degree from the Bothmer School for Gymnastics in Stuttgart, Germany in 1980 and then served as co -director of the School for 21 years.