Author: Jaya Hollohan

Why Gut Instincts & Intuition Get Confused

How Your Nervous System Shapes Intuition

Do you ever second-guess your intuition? That quiet, inner voice that whispers guidance about relationships, career moves, or life decisions. Sometimes you trust it. Other times, you wonder if it’s just fear, paranoia, or overthinking.

You’re not alone. Many people struggle to trust their inner guidance, especially if they’ve experienced trauma, stress, or difficult relationships. The truth is, there’s something fascinating happening inside your body that explains why this feels so complicated.

Your body is constantly scanning the world, reading environments, people, and situations, far below your conscious awareness. This survival system has kept humans safe for thousands of years.

But here’s the catch: when your nervous system is overwhelmed or dysregulated, its signals get confusing. Past experiences can shape how you interpret present-moment information. What feels like intuition may actually be a protective response. What seems like “overthinking” might actually be wisdom trying to break through.

Your inner guidance isn’t broken. The signals are simply mixed with old survival patterns your body learned along the way.

The Overlap of Protection and Wisdom

Few people realize this: the same parts of the brain that process survival responses also hold deep intuition and wisdom. This creates a tricky overlap. Protection and guidance can feel almost identical, making it hard to tell them apart.

The real challenge isn’t about “making better decisions.” It’s about learning to recognize the difference between authentic inner knowing and protective responses.

Why Traditional Advice Falls Short

You’ve probably heard phrases like “trust your gut” or “just listen to your heart.” That advice assumes your nervous system is already calm and regulated. But if you’re carrying unresolved stress or trauma, trying to force deeper listening can backfire.

Instead of clarity, you may feel:

Anxious or tense when making simple decisions
Doubtful of opportunities that others see as positive
Overwhelmed by too many choices
Tightness in the chest or shoulders when facing certain topics
Shallow breathing or physical discomfort around specific people
Oscillating between total certainty and complete self-doubt

Sound familiar? These are signs that your body is in protection mode, not wisdom mode.

The Missing Piece: Nervous System Awareness

True intuition flows best when your body feels safe. When the nervous system is regulated, inner wisdom becomes clear, calm, and trustworthy.

That’s why the missing piece in most intuition practices is nervous system regulation. Creating safety in your body allows your deepest knowing to emerge naturally—without forcing or second-guessing.

Practices to Reconnect with Inner Wisdom

Rebuilding trust in your intuition often means working gently with the body. Some people find this through:

Somatic practices that regulate the nervous system
Mindfulness that creates space between stimulus and response
Integration work that unblocks stuck emotions and body patterns

These approaches help you separate protective survival signals from authentic intuitive wisdom.

Your inner guidance system hasn’t failed you. It’s been working overtime to keep you safe. With support, regulation, and practice, you can access the clear and grounded wisdom that’s always been there.

This process takes patience, compassion, and often community. But the reward—living from authentic inner knowing—changes not only how you make decisions, but also how you relate to yourself, others, and the world.

If you’re ready to explore what becomes possible when your body’s wisdom leads the way, join our Monthly Somatic Integrations.

Together, we practice:

Recognizing subtle body signals
Creating safety to access deeper wisdom
Distinguishing protection from intuition
Honoring both survival strategies and authentic guidance

When your nervous system feels safe, your intuition stops whispering, and starts speaking with clarity.

To enjoy a brief video on this theme, and learn another somatic exercise to support your gut instinct, click here!

To help yourself turn inwards and connect to your gut, listen to my guided meditation entitled, “Coming Home” by clicking here.

For a related blog on how our gut feedback (interoception) can support rewiring our nervous system, click here!

Inner Rhythms: Heal Your Nervous System Naturally

When Trauma Disrupts Your Body’s Rhythm, and How to Restore It

Your body is a symphony of rhythms. The steady beating of your heart, the rise and fall of your breath, the cycles of waking and sleeping, all of these biological patterns keep your physical, emotional, and mental processes synchronized.

When these rhythms are intact, you feel balanced, grounded, and connected. But when trauma enters the system, the harmony falters. The effects ripple outward, touching every part of your being.

Trauma and the Nervous System: The Breakdown of Rhythm

Your body’s rhythms are regulated by the nervous system. When it functions optimally, you naturally move between alertness and calm, activity and rest, effort and recovery.

But trauma interrupts this coordination. Dysregulation follows, leaving you feeling disconnected from your body’s innate wisdom and flow.

As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, famously wrote in The Body Keeps the Score:

“Rhythm is essential to the structure of life… Trauma is the ultimate interrupter of rhythm.”

Hyperarousal and Hypoarousal: The Two Survival States

When trauma hijacks your system, you can become stuck in survival mode. Instead of smoothly shifting between activation and rest, your body defaults to extremes:

Hyperarousal (fight/flight): Your sympathetic nervous system is overactive, showing up as racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, hypervigilance, shallow breathing, and insomnia.
Hypoarousal (freeze/shutdown): The dorsal vagal system dominates, leading to dissociation, numbness, fatigue, and emotional flatness.

Many people swing back and forth between these states, wired one moment, numb the next, never quite reaching the balanced middle ground where true regulation lives.

The Science of Disrupted Rhythm

Trauma alters the body on a deep physiological level:

Brainstem & limbic system: These survival regions become overactive, trapping you in stress cycles.
Heart rate variability (HRV): Trauma reduces HRV, a key marker of resilience and adaptability.
Cortisol cycles: Elevated stress hormones throw off sleep-wake rhythms and repair processes.
Interoception: Your internal sensing system—awareness of hunger, breath, muscle tension, fatigue—often goes offline, leaving you feeling cut off from your body.

This is why trauma survivors often feel “stuck.” Their biology is literally out of rhythm.

Rebuilding Interoception: Your Inner Compass

Take a moment right now. Can you sense your heartbeat? Feel the rhythm of your breath? Notice if your muscles are tense or soft?

This simple act of tuning inward is called interoception. Trauma disrupts it, but somatic practice can rebuild it—like tuning an instrument back to pitch.

Somatic Practices: Medicine for Your Nervous System

One of the most accessible ways to restore rhythm is through your breath. Breath is both automatic and under your control, making it a direct line into your nervous system.

Here are two science-backed practices you can try today:

Coherent Breathing: Slow your breath to 5–6 breaths per minute, keeping inhales and exhales equal in length. This has been shown to regulate HRV and balance your autonomic nervous system.
Extended Exhale Breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 6 counts. The longer exhale stimulates your vagus nerve, signaling safety and activating the body’s natural “rest and digest” state.

These are just the beginning. Rhythmic movement, guided interoceptive awareness, and somatic practices all act like medicine for the nervous system—helping you restore flow, balance, and resilience.

An Invitation to Return to Flow

Trauma may have interrupted your rhythms, but your body still remembers how to return to harmony. With practice, you can restore the natural ebb and flow that supports healing, connection, and vitality.

💫 Inside The Collective, we explore somatic teachings like these every month—practices designed to re-regulate your system, rebuild resilience, and return your body to its natural state of flow.

Because healing isn’t about “fixing” what’s broken. It’s about restoring the rhythm you were always meant to live in.

For a brief video on this theme and more related somatic practice, click here!

What bodily rhythms are asking for your attention today?

– Anonymous, Public Servant, Ottawa

“My first appointment with Jaya was one of the most amazing experiences of my life; I could feel energy flow through me that caused me to twitch and shudder. During the session Jaya identified what could be the cause of my anxiety, and set out a plan to deal with it. I normally tend to be skeptical of alternative methods of healing, however, I do trust what my experience teaches me, and it has taught me that Jaya’s treatments are having a real effect.”

– Ellen, Government, Ottawa

“Somatic energy therapy sessions with Jaya provide a powerful space to focus on energetic structures that are at play just below my awareness. Jaya acts as an amplifier that helps me to see the patterns that are present in my body and mind and are influencing my choices, as well as, physical, emotional and mental states. Awareness, combined with these techniques, help to identify, shift and reorganize these longstanding energetic patterns. Things that were unconscious are now becoming conscious, which I am confident will lead to different choices in future.”