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Women's Intuition: Unlocking the Wisdom of Your Body

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Paula M. Reeves, Ph.D. says intuition is "that sudden inexplicable insight that tells us we know something we had no idea we knew." She adds that "while it's true that everyone has intuition, not all of us have the same capacity to use it." She wrote Women's Intuition: Unlocking the Wisdom of the Body to help women learn to recognize and use their own intuition.

Dr. Reeves maintains a private practice, as well as leads workshops in psychology and relationships between the mind and the immune system. She has developed a technique called "Spontaneous Contemplative Movement" (SCM), which allows women to hear the messages their bodies have for them. SCM, done in a controlled environment, involves letting what is deep in the mind tell the body how to move, and then interpreting those movements.

She says that intuition is based in our bodies and adds that "body wisdom contains the essential truths about what matters most to a woman and ultimately to the human race as a whole. " Our bodies are constantly sending us signals, but we've forgotten how to read them.

Dr. Reeves describes how our bodies speak to us, what those messages mean in general, and how to interpret what they mean to us as individuals. She provides specific instructions for SCM. Essentially, it's a very simple process which involves paying attention to your breathing, allowing your body to move, and then contemplating the movements. She also includes chapters on soul talk, learning to love our bodies, and trusting our intuition. She finishes with a discussion of the role of intuition in healing.

Dr. Reeves also provides 13 exercises for developing and using your intuition.

She says that "it is my deep desire that through [her book], you will learn to trust your body's signals and learn to read them before they become symptoms of illness or distress." Readers will find that Women's Intuition contains the information they need to learn to recognize, trust, and interpret the messages their bodies are sending them.

I have long been interested in the study of the connections of body, mind, intuition and consciousness and have found most books on the subject to be fairly abstract and intellectual. This book by Paula Reeves gives very practical keys for personal exploration of the inner realms where physicality and consciousness meet and co-create our experience. She gives us many ways to explore "bodymind", not just appreciate the concept.

This guidance is of equal value for men and women.

The book is beautifully and sensitivly written, and was a great pleasure to read.

Paula Reeves' book is a map, a language, and encouragement that trusting body wisdom is a golden prize. I am a recovering daughter of the patriarchy who accepted my body as an inconvenient, fallible vehicle to get me to the library. I assiduously treated the symptoms of tension headaches for 30 years, feeling sabotaged and inept. Now I see that these headaches were like nightmares: wake-up calls to pay attention to my intuition and live congruently.Learning to listen rather than to override my "gut feelings" seems now an act of self-respect, not a cop-out. My own intuitive life force, through my body, wants to express itself to survive, create and connect on an honest level. Paula's lectures, workshops and book have rewarded me by being grounded in scholarship while noting the relationship between personal wisdom and one's body. This book unites what I'd thought paradoxical: body and soul. Reeves weaves "silvery webbed bridges of spiritual steel across the divide between consciousness and instinct..." (p. 110) Her writing is fine and rich with intelligence, practicality and wisdom. So here we are: embodied, ensouled, incarnated, intuitive.Thank you, Paula.

An outstanding combination of the psychological and physiological basis for enhancing the body's natural healing tendencies while learning to appreciate the unique language of movement and symptoms that describe the deeper wisdom of the voice within. An imperative read for those who want to reintroduce or discover their intuition regardless of their gender, previous experiences or ease with the subject of soul.

The reader is at once engaged and intrigued by this powefully moving coceptualization of the body-mind in relationship to the feminine. While the personal disclosures are interesting the academic and scientific well underpinnings are well grounded in logic-even when approaching the whispy topic of intuition. Dr. Reeves has found a nerve that needs to be stimulated for both men and women. A good read which could also serve as one's spiritual reading for the day. A book to be relished not hurried and, of course, returned to as needed.

Reeves gives us a map for finding the "happiness that is good for the immune system." In a fundamental way this book is for both men and women since men must also become familiar with the Feminine Inutition that dwells in all matter. By weaving neuro-immunological and psycho-spiritual theory with practical insights and exercises she has created a substantive user's guide for what she calls SPONTANEOUS CONTEMPLATIVE MOVEMENT (SCM). SCM IS "A NON-INTERPRETIVE WAY TO HONOR THE INTERACTIVE RELAITONSHIP BETWEEN THE CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS IN THE BODY...IT EVOKES INSIGHTS INTO THE NEGLECTED BUT EVER-PRESENT KNOWING THAT WE ALL HAVE"-that is our EMBODIED INTUITION. "Your body's natural impulses will inevitably guide you toward the intuitive resolution that will help you untangle the emotion that has you in its grip. Don't bother with interpretation. A good keen intellect is only an impediment here. You can assassinate bodymind's wisdom by attempting to interpret logically what is happening. The natural rhythms are all the interpretation you'll need. Deep sighs, bowel motility with soft rumblings and the breaking of wind, a sense of relaxation are but a few of the many ways you'll begin to recognize your embodied sense of 'Yes!'" Pretty earthy work! Like any apparently simple contemplative or meditative process, SCM demands continuous, devoted attention, embracing an often circuitous route. The road begins with a desire to reconnect to our body wisdom (Ch 1), learning to read the map (Ch 2), and speak the language of the body (Ch 4). On the way we encounter and relate to ignored aspects of our inner life such as memories, demons, self-betrayals (Ch6) and the infamous Loathly Lady (Ch7). The path is not free of discomfort though it is imbued with the pleasure of knowing that one is on a journey to "authenticity, which breeds security, self-confidence, and contentment." The process of SCM consists of becoming aware of the remarkably dreamlike reactions we continually have to particular occurences, thoughts, images, feelings or emotional states. Through a process of concentrated and contemplative attention, that reaction is allowed to express itself through whatever large or small physical sensations, movements and/or sounds that follow. Once the expression has run its course it is helpful to give it a more intentional, descriptive form through writing, drawing or speaking the story of its energy and associated memories. Then live as consciously as possible and see how your living has shifted. Body knows our deepest needs and will tell us if we choose to listen. "Beneath every mood, each symptom, dream image or feeling lies some unclaimed remnant of the true self, the original and as yet undiscovered, soul-filled Self." Too often we ignore or pervert psyche's messages in our pursuit of ego's desire. Eventually we experience symptoms-big or small, emotional, spiritual or physical-and we realize it may benefit us to listen. SCM is an invitation that welcomes rather than resists the knowing that is EMBODIED INTUITION. It is an invitation to cherish and attend to body as much as we cherish and attend to mind and spirit, and by so doing, the soul and spirit we think and talk about will have a more loving and conscious container. We will feel ensouled and embodied in a new way. It is an invitation we ignore at our own peril. When answered it promises great riches-including the "happiness (that) is good for the immune system."

A gripping read, it is hard to tear away from a book that helps women regain trust in our own intuitive bodies for the first time in over 700 years. Both the author and her writing are grounded in scientific search and spiritually rooted. In addition, a poetic rendering of practical exercises of a psychological, physical, and spiritual nature is a pleasure to read and easy to carry out. For women who are skeptical about the wisdom of our bodies (as we have been trained to be since childhood), this book is an easy read. I heartily recommend it to women and the men who want to understand us.

Paula Reeves superbly articulates and weaves together the embodied cultural, theoretical and experiential aspects of intuition, the language of the bodymind. She shares exercises and examples from her life and clinical practice which illumine and inspire. This book is a useful map for any woman who is finding her way through the territory of her own traumas, longing, and healing. As a psychotherapist and breast cancer survivor, I highly recommend this book, for it teaches one to listen to the language of one's symptoms and attitudes. Reeves shows us how to embrace the rejected parts of ourselves where we are sure to find many stories of love, grief, courage and wisdom that live in our cells, waiting to be told.

I felt that for the first time an author has been able to address an issue as important as body wisdom in a practical and down to earth "real" fashion. Dr. Reeves' approach is both scientifically grounded and spiritually meaningful. I would encourage her, when she writes her next book, to include men in a more direct fashion. Meanwhile, I will continue to recommend this book to both my male and female friends. Thanks for making this forum available.

I have to say, this is the most ridiculous book I have wasted money on, in a very long time.