Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing: 5 Steps to Physical, Emotional, and Sexual Wellness Paperback - 2001

First line

The twilight shimmered violet, bathing the New England hills.

From the jacket flap

"We are the keepers of an intuitive intelligence so powerful it can tell us how to heal." In her groundbreaking new book, Dr. Judith Orloff leads readers to the heart of a radical revolution in health care: the union of medicine and intuition, of body, mind, and soul. We're all born with the gift of intuition; many of us have long ago blocked that "indisputable sense of rightness" which is our truest inner compass.
Dr. Orloff's guide will show you how to recapture, nurture, and affirm your intuitive ability, so that you can utilize it to help heal yourself. Intuition plays an indispensable role in self-diagnosis, pain control, immune response, and recovery from acute and chronic illness; it can lead you to breakthroughs in anxiety, panic, depression, and other emotional blockages, even when traditional psychotherapy has failed. Intuition also offers insights into the use of medications and the selection of the right healer for your needs. Further, it is integral for sexual healing, since sexuality is a potent connector and energy source for clarifying spirituality and improving vitality.
Dr. Orloff introduces five practical steps she uses in her own life and teaches to patients which illustrate how to harness the power of intuition to heal. You'll learn to clarify your beliefs, listen to your body's messages, access inner guidance, sense subtle energy, and interpret your dreams. Practicing these steps you'll recognize early warning signals and act on them to help prevent illness. You'll have skills to uncover important information from meditation and remote viewing (a way of intuitively tuning in) to make sense of confusing signals. The insights you'll gain from these tools willlend reason, compassion, and meaning to events such as illness, loss, or despair. Following Dr. Orloff's simple, clear instructions, illustrated with examples from her own experience and psychiatric practice, you'll recapture a sense of vision that will bring vibrance to all that you do.
"Our intuition can open us up to our spirituality and show us how to be more healthy and whole," writes Dr. Orloff. "If you're in good health, you'll want to know about intuition because it can help you stay well and recognize messages that prevent illness. If you or your loved ones need healing, you'll also want intuition to show the way." Written with abundant warmth, humor, and compassion, this guide is your companion to a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Excerpt

What Is Intuitive Healing?
A First Look at the Five Steps

The intuitive messages you receive can be life-changing. Please listen. Only good can come. Even so, I know how easy it is to fixate on what you're already pursuing, what you've come to feel is right for you. I have this struggle all the time. I'm asking you simply to allow for other possibilities, as I've learned to do. Reserve judgment. See how your future unfolds. There's often a synchronicity; opportunities may present themselves. If so, go with them. Watch where they take you. Change of this kind always has a component of the unpredictable. It can be mysterious, beguiling. Be prepared to smile.

In this spirit I now want to present your road map for the journey. Here's a first look at the five intuitive steps that can transform your health and life. They provide the structure I'll refer to throughout the book. Each step represents an indicator that can help you avoid illness, replenish energy, and bring insight into any problem. In every chapter I'll take you through each step thoroughly. Utilizing this structure will enhance your intuition, or enable you to find it.

Step 1. Notice Your Beliefs
Your beliefs set the tone for healing. Positive attitudes accentuate growth, negative attitudes impair it. Honesty is required to flush out counter productive perceptions so ingrained you may not realize how pernicious they are. If we examine our beliefs, we won't be subject to subterranean undermining influences. Our beliefs trigger biochemical responses. No organ system stands apart from our thoughts. What you believe -- what you really believe -- programs your neurochemicals. I'm not suggesting that you be Pollyannaish or put on a happy face to please, but that you be absolutely true to yourself. This will liberate you from unconscious impulses that impede your healing.

Step 2. Be in Your Body
Your body is a richly nuanced intuitive receiver. You must be in it completely to heal. This may require some adjustment. We're trained to function from the neck up, denying the rest of our bodies. I want you to reorient yourself, to respect the intellect but delight in your physicality as well. Being aware of the sensuousness of the body can open intuition. This may mean noticing the early signs of pain so you can act on them, trusting your gut about relationships, or awakening your sexuality. We can't afford to ignore such life-informing signals. Being attuned to your body is a treasure.

Step 3. Sense Your Body's Subtle Energy
Tapping into your body's subtle energy can heal. From an intuitive standpoint we are all composed of vibrantly colored energy fields (whose centers are called chakras) that emanate from us. These can be sensed. They contain truths about our physical, emotional, and sexual needs. Energy has different manifestations, from erotic to psychic. Invisible to most people, it can be sensed with intuition. To heal you must first learn to identify energy. Then you can direct it to specific parts of the body. Feeling energy can be very sensual. I assure you, it won't be all work!

Step 4. Ask for Inner Guidance
A range of answers lies within you. To access them I'll focus on two intuitive techniques: meditation and remote viewing. Meditation is a state of quiet that amplifies the intuition. It is the foundation of my spiritual practice. In practical terms meditation lowers blood pressure, relieves stress, can help reverse heart disease, even retard aging.

The method I'll show you is to focus consciously on your breath, to contact a soundless inner pulse. This is your intuitive core. Your breath will take you there. Once you're accustomed to the quiet, you can use remote viewing, an intuitive technique to move through both time and space. It enables you to tune in to the past, present, and future, or to visualize a person, place, or situation, even at a great distance. With this knowledge you can help diagnose illness by picturing the body's organs, predict proper treatment, appraise current therapies -- all mandatory when conventional medicine seems unable to find a cure. Remote viewing also reveals emotional and sexual blocks; it can even let you check someone out before you get involved. All this is possible: College students have been taught basic remote viewing in a few sessions.

Step 5. Listen to Your Dreams
Intuition is the language of dreams. We speak it every night, during the REM state, the phase of sleep when our brain waves impart secret healing formulas. This mystic symbology -- images, messages, scenarios -- has rules different from those in our waking life. A dream's tone can be as restorative as its content; the nonverbal often presides. Also, in dreams revelations about illness and relationships are conveyed. Dreams do heal, but first you must retrieve them. During sleep we experience a kind of amnesia. To the intellect dreams are alien, language that does not compute. Dreams cannot be captured by the rational mind alone; intuitive memory is needed. As you learn how to remember and interpret dreams, you'll be able to draw on this form of healing.

YOU CAN APPLY these five intuitive steps to every health challenge in your life, as well as every emotional or sexual issue. I live them everyday -- in my medical practice, my relationships, dating, choices about health or new directions. As you read on you'll see how the steps pertain. They are yielding, expansive, reflecting possibilities. Try not to cling to any one too tightly; simply allow them to illuminate. You maybe more compelled by one step than another. For example, since childhood I've been a prolific dreamer -- every night dreams articulate my inner truth like nothing else can. Find the most natural outlet for your intuition. Have fun. Give yourself permission to explore.

Media reviews

"A wonderful contribution to the field of human consciousness. Dr. Orloff's work is not only needed by the social mind in order to understand the future of health care, but it is also a masterpiece of educational data."
-- Caroline Myss, Ph.D., author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Why People Don't Heal and How They Can

"A powerful, step-by-step guide for helping you tune in to your own intuition and power to heal on every level."
-- Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"Wise, accessible, compassionate, funny, and authentic, this book can help you listen to the voice of intuition, live a more satisfying and joyful life, and connect with the body's natural powers of healing."
-- Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind

"An excellent resource for those ready to explore their role in health, wellness, and living."
-- Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine & Miracles and Prescriptions for Living

"Judith Orloff brings intuition into the healing arts. Her book is a great contribution to our deeper understanding and transformation."
-- Marianne Williamson

"Clear, accessible advice here on how to make this fundamental and life-opening shift from the anxiously controlled life to one that is open to opportunity and creativity."
-- Thomas Moore, author of The Soul of Sex and The Care of the Soul