913: When Science Meets Spirituality: How to Trust Your Gut and Grow Into Who You’re Meant To Be

When Science Meets the Quiet Voice Inside

There are moments when a feather on the sidewalk or a repeating number on a phone screen feels less like coincidence and more like a nudge. For many, that nudge lands as embarrassment or skepticism — a private pull they tidy away to make room for spreadsheets, meetings, and evidence-based explanations. But what if those nudges are a form of intelligence, one that modern neuroscience is finally able to describe rather than dismiss?

The modern reclaiming of ancient intelligence

Dr. Tara Swart has spent a career walking the narrow bridge between lab bench and lived experience. Trained in medicine and steeped in neural imaging, she takes seriously both cortical circuits and the low, wordless signals held in chest and gut. The story she tells is not a rejection of reason so much as an invitation to enlarge it: to accept intuition as a different kind of data that complements logic.

Why intuition got a bad reputation

For decades the workplace rewarded tidy, rational explanations. Saying “I acted on a gut feeling” rarely impressed colleagues or bosses; providing spreadsheets did. Without tools to visualize how bodily signals correlate with neural networks, intuition lived in the margins of professional credibility. Now, with sophisticated scanning and a deeper understanding of the nervous system, those margins are narrowing.

How the body remembers what the mind forgets

Trauma research reframes intuition as a distributed memory system. Experiences do not disappear; they get encoded in the brain, the nervous system, and even the fascia that holds muscle and organ together. This is not poetic shorthand but a clinical observation: the body keeps score. Where traumatic memories can silence language centers, physical practices — walking, chanting, dancing, gentle exercise — can release patterns stored beneath words and make inner wisdom accessible again.

Movement, rhythm, and the older human toolkit

Our Paleolithic ancestors drummed, chanted, and moved to survive and bond. Those practices strengthened pattern recognition, situational awareness, and communal trust. Today’s advice mirrors that ancient toolkit: intentional movement, art-making, and breathwork are not merely therapeutic indulgences; they are ways to access embodied knowledge that the frontal cortex alone cannot produce.

Practical ways to tune back in

The advice is deceptively simple and immediately useful: cultivate quiet, put time into nature, and practice body-centered routines that reset the nervous system. Even five minutes away from the laptop to listen to a bird or stare at a leaf lowers cortisol and restores perspective. Gentle exercise and art therapy can do what relentless high-intensity output cannot: they regulate, integrate, and return information to the conscious mind.

• Start with breath: slow, counted inhalations and exhalations settle the nervous system and prepare you to notice inner signals.
• Use movement: walking, gentle stretching, or rhythmic activities help unlock bodily memory and intuition.
• Make art: the act of creating improves mental health and can release stuck patterns, regardless of technical skill.

A short practice to hear head, heart, and gut

One method invites a three-stage question: ask the head, then the heart, then the gut. Begin by centering in breath, place hands on the head and note the logical answer, move hands to the chest and feel the emotional response, then rest hands on the belly and listen for visceral truth. The differences between the answers are informative; the practice is a quick calibration for decision-making.

Entrepreneurship, restlessness, and the nervous system

For those who have built businesses from the heart, the pressure to behave like a machine can be corrosive. High-intensity routines may spike cortisol and create chronic stress. Reframing success as a well-regulated nervous system, rather than constant high performance, invites different rhythms: time in nature, breath practices, and micro-breaks that restore clarity and reduce reactivity.

Loosening the grip without losing momentum

There is a practical paradox at play: structure and surrender must coexist. A loose grip is not passivity; it's the ability to act with intention while remaining open to emergent cues. Trust is a muscle. Gathering small, repeatable evidence that intuition reliably informs choices strengthens that muscle, making chance and strategy allies rather than adversaries.

Seeing beyond five senses

Western tradition often stops at five senses, but physiology and sensory science now map dozens of perceptual channels: balance, interoception (the sense of internal organs), and subtle cues embedded in skin, breath, and environment. Allowing those senses to register gives a richer dataset for living: when the skin prickles, when birdsong calms, when a particular symbol recurs, the brain is receiving inputs worth translating into action.

Closing thought

There is a particular courage in reclaiming what has been coded as soft or mystical and treating it as reliable intelligence. The work is not about replacing science with superstition, nor intuition with spreadsheets, but about creating a larger practice that honors both. To move forward with integrity, humans must learn to read the quiet signals — and to trust the subtle authority of their own bodies. In the space between breath and decision, an expanded intelligence waits to be heard.