Lead With Spiritual Intuition ✨: Nature-based Ways to Exercise Your Intuitive Listening Muscle

We’re all intuitive. But not all of us are tapped in.

In a video conversation I had with First-Gen Latina Therapist, Claudia Parada way back in 2019, we spoke about communicating intuitively and how we’ve been conditioned to quiet our intuition as a symptom of colonization. 

In the coaching practice, our ability to intuitively connect with our clients is key to facilitating transformation. And listening is a foundational part of tapping into those intuitive muscles. Are you really listening to what this person is saying, meaning, and experiencing in the story share?

As coaches, we’re simultaneously listening to what our clients are saying while intuitively listening to how our mind, body, and spirit are receiving it. Sometimes (most times) we share the same sentiments, maybe even trauma that our clients present. So we self-manage our own emotions so we don’t bring our baggage to the session. We’re listening on multiple levels & dimensions, and that’s actually hard work! 

So how can you strengthen your intuition? Let’s start with listening intuitively. 

Listening is more than just hearing words. True listening requires presence, openness, and trust in our inner knowing. In our fast-paced world, we often forget how to listen—not only to others, but to ourselves. As natural care-givers, people pleasers, and nurturers we often listen to respond to where we can help or fix things for others.

Nature offers us a timeless teacher.

When we step outdoors and listen deeply, we remember how to quiet the noise and receive guidance from both the outer world and our own intuition, i.e., our inner voice.

Here are 3 practices to strengthen your intuitive listening skills the next time you’re in a deep conversation. Remember nature’s lessons to help guide you towards a more impactful conversation.

Listen with More than Your Ears

If you're out in nature, notice the sounds around you—the rustle of leaves, the hum of insects, or the silence between bird calls and start to tap in. Then, expand your listening. Feel how the air touches your skin, sense the stillness of the earth beneath you. Intuitive listening is multisensory; it’s about receiving information with your whole being. Try this when you’re listening to someone share a story - listen with all your senses, even your spiritual/energetic sense like the vibe of the conversation, and name that vibe!

 Listen for the Unspoken

As you sit or walk outdoors, tune into what isn’t immediately obvious. Is there a tension in your body that speaks? A thought that repeats like a refrain? A pull toward a certain place in the conversation? Intuitive listening often comes as whispers, nudges, or sensations rather than loud or even verbal answers. What emotions are leading this conversation?

 Let Silence Speak

Allow yourself a few moments of complete silence—no talking, no rushing, no expectation. Silence in nature can feel uncomfortable at first, but it’s often in those still moments that your intuition surfaces with clarity. When big emotions arise in conversations, try inviting silence rather than responding or making a statement of validation. 

A Gentle Reminder

Intuitive listening is about slowing down enough to hear what is always present—within you and around you. Like a muscle, it grows stronger the more you practice. And nature provides the perfect space to cultivate this skill.

If you want to go into a practice with us, consider the next NATURE-BASED COACHING SKILLS COURSE and sign up for our Intuitive Listening Skills Course.

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Strengthen Your Relationship to Land With These Resources

Morro Bay, CA. the site of the first landing of filipinos onto turtle island on October 18, 1587.

My practice offers many resources and cultivates stories of communities healing themselves with the support and guidance of nature’s lessons. And I think its an important topic to center wellness with nature, but I’d be remiss if I did this work without bringing in the opportunities to heal WITH the land we occupy and benefit from, whether that’d be learning the historical events and impacts on and from the Native community or partnering with communities to leverage what we can offer to be in solidarity to their sovereignty. So, in short what I’m saying is that it’s an important value I hold in my work have the Native perspective especially if we’re working directly with the land such as in stewardship, education, or movement building. This upcoming year is going to be my intentional effort to cultivate more direct relationships with groups and local descendants as best as I could.

Ultimately, this work is about healing our relationship to land. So I'd love to share some resources I found critical in shaping my decolonization journey, my relationship to nature and this land of unceeded Huichin Oholone Territory that influences so much in how I guide others to reclaim an identity to their own nature.

As a second-generation Pinay my parents immigrated to the Bay Area/Ohlone Territories in the late 70's. I was born and raised here and most of my life I've been a settler in this lovely West Coast. Being drawn to the nature around me and drive to have a career working in some capacity with nature, I have a special relationship to this landscape. But it wasn't until I really had to figure out my true path, did I start thinking about how much I felt like I did or didn't belong here.

Growing up in the South Bay (San Jose/Muwekma Territory) I experienced a lot of hurt and violence. So much so, I thought "the land" didn't want me there because every time I tried to lay down roots more hurt came. A dear healer friend of mine reframe this as, "perhaps the land was telling you to flee from the hurt and violence instead. Knowing how much you care for nature and love it, it may have been looking out for you."

Have you ever felt that sense of the a place "claiming you" as in, called you to come be there and it felt right?

Now that I've found a true sense of belonging and purpose here in Oakland/Confederated Villages of Lisjan, and lead most of the healing hikes around here, I try to deepen my knowledge of this place, connect to it's people, history, and land back efforts. But building relationships with native communities no matter where I am is important to me and to my relationship to any land I walk on. Because all land we walk on is native land.

So, some of the resources I'll share below have been places where I find resonance and a confirmation of my spiritual connection to nature. It makes me feel like I've been validated with the feelings and inner knowledge I hold within me, particularly about my love and advocacy for nature. Many of the teachings I've come to know from my dreams and life experiences feel like they have a home when I tap into these stories. It also activates the healing around my own lineage and search for similar stories and teachings about my own ancestral lands. 

This winter as we reflect on our lives, honor and mourn the stories of our native relatives' violent loss of their lands, I hope you find that time to create connection and resonance with your own migration story, your lineage, and to the lands you occupy today. Connect to the resources and native communities in your own area as I'll share the resources that help me.

Book Recommendation: Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long As Grass Grows, The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock, 2019
This book is really full of some critical and historical points that connect the fight for sovereignty of Native Americans to the culture of environmental justice, with reference to the events of Standing Rock. I think its also important to mention the author also offers the way forward and what that needs to look like for both natives and non-natives. It's definitely worth the read and offers details of the historical injustices that mainstream media might not include in their storytelling. I recommend this for your winter break!

Webinars: Indigenous Education Institute
I love, love, love listening to these talks while I take my lunch breaks or short walks. Knowing who the indigenous scholars and elders are and what teachings they have to offer help me get into my mind thinking about similarities I can see across other cosmologies and especially those I learn about my own lineage. Sign up for their newsletter to get notified of the latest talks to warm yourself into Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).

In Person Event/Ceremony: Alcatraz Sunrise Ceremony
This might be sold out by now, but its good to know this happens as an opportunity to practice solidarity and participate in the Red Movement with our local native relatives. If you can't make this commitment (and I usually can't) I encourage you to think about your own version of honoring this land and the fight for native sovereignty and sit in a private ceremony of your own at sunset on the 24th.

Local Park: Coyote Hills in Fremont, CA
There's a reason why this is a frequented park for our healing hikes. I've mentioned this in other issues, but this park is still actively managed by its native community. The designated 'archeological site' is a protected sacred site of the community in which you can visit peripherally on the Chochenyo Trail. Every hike we visit the site to offer blessings and reflect on our relationship to the land and its people. The park is heavily visited but it's really easy to miss the location of the sweat lodge. If you do find it, make sure to make at least an energetic offering of gratitude and blessings for sovereignty.

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The Greatest Threat to Colonization is the Indigenous Woman: Part 1, Black Liberation

To understand a world in the midst of racial, social, and environmental transformation we must look into the belly of the beast and work to understand where these negative forces come from, how it functions, and its agenda. The forces of colonization and white supremacy are those forces. And the greatest threat to that is WHO WE WERE BEFORE those forces came in. Here’s part one of how I’ve lived through and view this battle.

Quick Google Search

What I’m about to share with you is what my eyes have seen, what words I’ve listened to, what life experiences have taught me about our humanity and the state of the world today. My views are a result of the guidance from many of my teachers and elders, schooling, educating youth, as well as my abilities to see things this way. I’m grateful fro all of those gifts and I welcome dialogue around this post.

MY LIVED EXPERIENCE

When I was in my mid-20’s I was dating a Black man. My father caught wind of this and give me the silent treatment for about 6 months. I had no idea what his reason was for the silence. Then my mother asked me one day, “Do you have a black boyfriend?” I confirmed. And the next thing she said shocked me, but didn’t throw me off completely. She said, “Well Dad’s not talking to you because he doesn’t want Black in the family.” My response was, “Wow, you both are racist!” I felt safe enough to continue with her by telling her, “I don’t get why you think this wouldn’t happen when you raised me here in the Bay Area.” Even though in the back of my head I knew racism was very much alive in the Filipino culture, and in particular, anti-Blackness. 

This was a “crucible moment” in my life that taught me that anti-Blackness was global. Because up until that point I was a brown girl navigating my life as a Filipino American. I wasn’t yet exposed to the histories and the stories of anti-Blackness outside of the United States. But it was clear to me in that moment in my parents’ faces, in their words, knowing their migration story, and the belief in anti-Blackness that it was an ideology they adopted from somewhere else. But where did they learn this? Back home in the Philippines? Or was it something they learned after immigrating here? I didn’t care to ask at that time. I was too disgusted and disappointed. 

We never resolved anything around this situation, but I knew that for myself, resolution was not even an option. I had to just continue on with my life however I chose because I chose my free will. 

OUR TRAVELING DNA

As a socially conscious educator and ecologist, my lens has always been one of curiosity and connection. I see things in terms of systems, inter-relatedness, and interdependence. So, personally as I went about my years teaching our youth, expanding my experiences, and getting to know me, who I am, and where I come from (because a lot of my work placed me in direct interaction with racism), I decided to take my own DNA test for ethnicity. This is where I began to understand my family’s history as well as our identity as it related to colonization. 

My initial DNA results

While I was waiting for my results to come in from Ancestry.com I began asking my parents how much they knew about our ancestors. To my surprise, neither of them could tell me much more past their grandparents’ names (my great grandparents). Not much was recorded. If I wanted to dig deeper into their stories I’d have to actually go to the Philippines, maybe go to the Catholic Church for records. What was also striking for me was to see that all of my relatives had Spanish names, not Malay or indigenous in origin. 

A sudden wave of emotion and information came to me and I realized

(1) they lost so much including the ability to retain indigenous names (i.e., because of assimilation), 

(2) what they endured compared to what I’m enduring in this life was so much more deeper and heavier on their soul and 

(3) what they endured brought me and my family to be here, now. I couldn’t help but be sad about this. But it also ignited more curiosity about ancestry, migration stories, and global race relations. 

Shortly after my results came in I picked up this book by Christine Kenneally, “The Invisible History of the Human Race”. It was common knowledge to me that all of us have that  <1% African DNA in us, but she confirmed it for me when she opens her Chapter 12 on The History of the World, 

“When you visualize the human tree, picture its trunk firmly planted in African soil. Modern humans emerged there several hundred thousand years ago and lived only there from 250,000 years ago for at least 150,000 years - much longer span of time than we have lived across the globe.” 

The chapter goes on to describe where this <1% comes from and how the band of humans that made the migration out of the land we know of as Africa remains in our DNA today. Kenneally goes on and says, 

“Around sixty thousand years ago a small band of them - perhaps not much more than one thousand to two thousand five hundred individuals- went traveling. We don’t know why they left or if they had any sense that they were going somewhere new, but we do know their decision kicked off one of the biggest events in the history of the human genome.

Those who remained are the ancestors of most of the one billion people who live in Africa today. The small band that left are the ancestors of everyone else in the world, and the suite of NDA they carried was only a small sample of the variety of human genomes that existed in Africa at the time of their departure. Indeed, we know the migration occurred because even now we can see that the genomes of everyone in the world outside of Africa is a subset of the genomic variation still found in Africa.”

So basically what that book was telling me was that we all come from the land which we call Africa. Which means, WE ALL COME FROM A MOTHER FROM AFRICA. As trivial as it may seem, realizing it like this blew my mind!

ANTI-BLACKNESS

So, we all come from a Black mother. The DNA shows us that she is our most common ancestor, whoever that woman was on the land we know of as Africa. But this revelation always brought me back to this perplexing ideology of racism that globally, being Black, especially was bad. 

Why is it that you can find anti-Blackness around the globe and ingrained in the beliefs of many cultures? Because I couldn’t see that there were other examples of other races being seen as so inferior in the same way. Well, the first reason is probably obvious: colonization.

THE COLONIZED MIND

There’s no other way colonization can happen successfully unless you also control the minds of the people that come from that land. Not only in Africa, but in all colonized countries (most land masses) if you don’t have pride in yourself and the land you come from, you won’t fight for it. 

Colonization’s goal is to separate people from their connection to their land therefore severing a connection to themselves & their identity. This is how the colonizer can take all the power over that land and its people. 

For Africa, it’s our human origin. It’s where our expansion to create and populate the rest of the world comes from. 

There is a certain power that exists when you know you come from a story that began creating this world. 

And that’s the type of power the colonizer DOESN’T want you to have.

The second reason is our need to …

RECONCILE WITH OURSELVES

This one is the more spiritual and existential reason.  

It wasn’t until I had this frank conversation with a peer healer and Ancestral Healing practitioner, Dumbei Okonji, where I realized what the ultimate teaching was around anti-Blackness. I shared what I knew about migration, DNA, indigeneity, connections to our land and ancestry, and asked her frankly,

“But why Black? Why do we hate on Blackness so much and why is it uniquely global? I just don’t get it.” 

And her profound response, 

“Well when it comes down to it, we just don’t like who we are.”

Knowing this, I began to understand the deeply seeded weaponry of self hate. The more we choose to accept and adopt all forms of self hate, the more we perpetuate our separation from each other, fulfilling the colonizer’s agenda. 

BLACK LIBERATION

When the evidence showed me the origins of humans coming firmly from Africa, I began to understand the importance of Black Liberation. 

To support and advocate for Black Liberation is to connect us back to who we are as humans. 
And this can be a form of radical healing

Knowing the history of Black people over time, what they’ve endured, their ancestral story, and the impacts that continue to destroy and perpetuate destruction due to enslavement and colonization, lives within their bones, blood, and DNA of their descendants. WE are all their descendants. 

Over time, as our origin from Africa migrated out to populate the rest of the land globally, our lineages began with our own indigenous mothers, giving each lineage their own origin story. Each of our lineages have their own grandeur family tree deeply rooted and planted in the land that we each came from. This also helped me understand the importance of indigeneity as the greatest threat to colonization, but that’s for Part 2!

So, in partial conclusion, this exploration of my own individual identity has opened up so much learning and unlearning about who I am and how my identity can show up event in how we relate with each other.

I hope you’re able to gain a little bit more for yourself after my share.

Please comment and add to the conversation in the comments below!

In Part 2 we’ll go even deeper into the concept and cover:
INDIGENOUS SOVEREIGNTY & THE INDIGENOUS WOMAN

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Energetic Communication Video Series Part 4 - FINAL Wrap Up & Claim Your FREE Workbook!

HERE’S THE LASTOF OUR COLLABORATIVE ONLINE SERIES
TO HELP YOU LEVEL UP IN YOUR SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL AWARENESS!

Watch the full video to find out what’s included in the FREE downloadable workbook!

Join us right here on the Hike It Out Coaching blogosphere as I get into conversation with Energy Worker and Curandera, Claudia Parada. In this 4 part video series on Energetic Communication we’re going to take you through several energetic pathways to bring awareness and action to the ways we can get to know our inner emotional landscapes. As we go deeper every month on Energetic Communication, we’ll be examining what happens to us when we share space with other people and how that can impact your ability to be in relationship with ourselves and others.

In Episode 4 this is the finale! Listen in on the full episode 4 of our conversation as we recap the main takeaways of the series and give you your instructions on how to claim your FREE Guided Activity Workbook:

• Quieting of the Intuition discusses how our intuition can be silenced and ways to connect and grow our intuitive nature

• Interpersonal Vibration focuses on interpersonal energetic communication.  We talk about how to recognize when and how your energy is interacting with someone else's and what you can do

• Communicating Through Trauma discusses what happens to our energetic body when traumatized and the importance of community when moving through traumatic experiences.  

• Claim your FREE Guided Activity Workbook here!  This workbook is specially curated by the coaches to help you practically apply the energetic communication tools in your life.

It’s a wrap! A big thank you everyone who tuned in to our video series.  Follow us on social media to stay updated on upcoming events, classes, and giveaways.

Please leave us comments or questions below!

Where to find us:

IG @soylaclandestina
FB www.facebook.com/claudiaholisticlifecoach/
www.communitwellsf.org

IG @hikeitoutcoaching
FB Rino Consulting Solutions
www.rinoconsultingsolutions.com

And if you’re so inspired to get in on the dialogue, please do contribute your thoughts to the comment box below! We’d love to hear from you!

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Energetic Communication Video Series Part 3 - Communication Through Trauma

HERE’S THE DEEPEST LESSON OF OUR COLLABORATIVE ONLINE SERIES
TO HELP YOU LEVEL UP IN YOUR SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL AWARENESS!

STAY TUNED FOR OUR LAST VIDEO OF THIS PROFOUND SERIES
AS WE OFFER YOU A CULMINATING CONVERSATION NEXT MONTH!

Join us right here on the Hike It Out Coaching blogosphere as I get into conversation with Energy Worker and Curandera, Claudia Parada. In this 4 part video series on Energetic Communication we’re going to take you through several energetic pathways to bring awareness and action to the ways we can get to know our inner emotional landscapes. As we go deeper every month on Energetic Communication, we’ll be examining what happens to us when we share space with other people and how that can impact your ability to be in relationship with ourselves and others.

In Episode 3 this is it! We are deep down into this series and facing trauma head on! Here, we focus on is our ability to recognize the experience of our energetic bodies in the moment of trauma so we can get to a point of attuning to its impacts on us. Naming our trauma can help us identify a way forward, through it.

By now we hope you’ve been able to view episodes 1 and 2 as an awareness about your intuitive skills and your ability to recognize energetic vibrations between you and another person. By viewing these two before watching this month’s video, you’re sure to gain a solid grounding on energetic communication to be well on your way to a higher emotional awareness in your everyday!

In video 4 of 4, we talk about how we each view trauma in the context of an energetic experience and its importance in the work we do as practitioners. Acknowledging that there are many different ways and disciplines in approaching trauma, we offer our own experiences and insights for processing through these events. In this episode we cover:

• The work of trauma is important and so prevalent in our communities, AND we are always working towards the healing through it

• An important part of re-grounding from trauma is the process of reparenting and inviting back in the spirit that was lost from that trauma

• Being able to be seen and validated in the trauma and reach out to our communities for support empowers us to heal holistically

 

And if you’re so inspired to get in on the dialogue, please do contribute your thoughts to the comment box below! We’d love to hear from you!

•  What has been your experience with trauma?

• What were the key takeaways in this video for you?

• What have been some powerful examples of your ability to recognize your trauma and did you feel safe and able to process and heal through your experience(s)?

• What’s important to you in learning this ABOUT YOURSELF that can elevate your ability to SUPPORT OTHERS?

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Energetic Communication Video Series Part 2 - Interpersonal Vibration

EPISODE 2 GOES DEEPER INTO THIS COLLABORATIVE ONLINE SERIES.
LEVEL UP YOUR SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL AWARENESS!

Join us right here on the Hike It Out Coaching blogosphere as I get into conversation with Energy Worker and Curandera, Claudia Parada. In this 4 part video series on Energetic Communication we’re going to take you through several energetic pathways to bring awareness and action to the ways we can get to know our inner emotional landscapes. As we go deeper every month on Energetic Communication, we’ll be examining what happens to us when we share space with other people and how that can impact your ability to be in relationship with ourselves and others.

In Episode 2 we get into the understanding of what it’s like to listen and manage your field of energy when you’re in contact with another person. Interpersonal Vibration is that dance we do when we’re in community with others. Paying close attention to your own vibes and what’s going on inside of you in a situation may just as well be hard enough, but insert a situation where at least one other person’s vibe is influencing the feel of the room? What do we do then?

In video 2 of 4, we talk about these “vibes” in the room and what happens when we’re listening to each other energetically. Listen in on the full episode of our conversation as we hit three points:

• From the lessons of listening to your intuition from Episode 1, we can start recognizing what is your own energy vibration and what is the other person’s vibration and story

• How we can cultivate our agency in each interaction so we are empowered to decide how we want to hold interactions in our life

• Move forward in the relationship with clarity and intention while protecting your energy

And if you’re so inspired to get in on the dialogue,
please do contribute your thoughts to the comment box below!
We’d love to hear from you!

• What’s your vibe like?

• What do you notice about your own vibe in tricky situations?

• What have been some powerful examples of your ability to discern between your vibe and others’ vibes to utilize your awareness and hold the conversation with agency?

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Energetic Communication Video Series Part 1 - Quieting of the Intuition

WE’RE STARTING 2019 OFF WITH A COLLABORATIVE ONLINE SERIES
TO HELP YOU LEVEL UP IN YOUR SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL AWARENESS!

HERE IS PART 1 ON “QUIETING OF THE INTUITION”

Join us right here on the Hike It Out Coaching blogosphere as I get into conversation with Energy Worker and Curandera, Claudia Prada. In this 4 part video series on Energetic Communication we’re going to take you through several energetic pathways to bring awareness and action to the ways we can get to know our inner emotional landscapes. As we go deeper every month on Energetic Communication, we’ll be examining what happens to us when we share space with other people and how that can impact your ability to be in relationship with ourselves and others.

We begin our series with a talk about what a “QUIETING OF THE INTUITION” means, how we’ve noticed it’s presence in our work, and what simple solutions we can offer to begin awakening our inner wisdom.

We all have intuition. It’s the part of us that says, “fight or flight”. It’s that gut instinct that sends you a message about something you’re observing or experiencing. When it comes to creating ways to navigate situations, create boundaries with others, it’s often intuition that tells you what you should do. But, more often than not, if we don’t recognize this message from our bodies, what are the consequences.

In video 1 of 4 below, we talk about the various reasons for our intuition may be quieted down, which can often lead us to make decisions that are either misguided, or divert us from a decision we originally wanted to make. Listen in on the full episode of our conversation as we hit three points:

• How can we recognize when our own intuition is quieted, dimmed, or dismissed?

• How we’ve learned from real life situations when we’ve quieted our intuition.

• Awakening of the intuition is something we can implement as a practice of empowerment.

 

And if you’re so inspired to get in on the dialogue, please do contribute your thoughts to the comment box below! We’d love to hear from you!

•  How has this quieting shown up in your life?

• What do you notice about yourself when you decide to NOT go with your intuition?

• What have been some powerful examples of your intuition allowing you to thrive in who you are?

THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO VIEW THIS CONVERSATION.

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