THE WORD “INTUITION” CONJURES IMAGES of fortune tellers and clairvoyants of all mediums, and by the author’s admission, “Some intuitives find that they work better using techniques such as the I Ching, tarot cards, astrology, or even tea leaves.
For those of us without a penchant for cards and tea cups, Laura Day, author of Practical Intuition, claims to have helped “thousands of people tap into their intuition” promises to help the rest of us through interesting and practical exercises (“readings”) we perform for our own benefit.
Practical Intuition is a self-help book written to teach readers how to recognize, enhance and use their inherent intuitive ability. To sharpen skills or learn how, the book is a mixture of brief introductions, practice exercises, sample responses, explanations of the reading and accented with helpful hints and anecdotes.
Before the author establishes trust, some anecdotes seemed far-fetched.
At first, some of the anecdotes appeared to be a little far-fetched, kind of ridiculous, mainly because they appear too early in the book, before the reader has a chance to completely buy-in to the premise.
We don’t yet trust our instinct, or the author. And it is not until Chapter 25 that the difficulties of the exercises are clearly addressed: “Again: It’s important that you realize I have intentionally made a natural process (that is, intuition) more difficult so that you become conscious of what you already do unconsciously.”
Though I did not find the exercises difficult, it took some effort to interpret the images and symbols that appeared as intuitive impressions and to translate the imagery into logical thoughts and coherent responses. Additional clarification would have been useful to me earlier on.
The complexity of the concept requires its method of repetition.
It is due to the complexity of the concept of intuition, that the author’s method of repetition works so well. Her conversational tone, a naturalness to the style makes you want to ‘listen’ to the author as she explains what intuition is, how it works, and how you can make it work for you, repetition without monotony.
Additionally, the text is presented in small chunks— mostly in one or two paragraphs, with bold headings summarizes the main point, making it easy to understand. This also allows the reader to easily read in intervals.
A quiet, relaxed atmosphere where you can concentrate, without interruptions (specifically during the readings), is essential to glean all you can from this book.
Skeptics are invited to intuit gold prices, and to choose a winning race horse.
Practical Intuition is Laura Day’s second book on the subject of intuition and seems an alternative to attending one of her seminars or a reading, which she has been performing for the past ten years.
Skeptics should at least try exercise numbers 12 and 16. I correctly intuited the drop of the price of gold on the NYSE and chose a winning horse from a list provided. It was then that the anecdotes no longer seemed unrealistic to me. Besides, as Ms. Day points out, “ . . . that you shouldn’t use intuition as the sole guide in your life . . . ”
While the exercises are insightful and interesting, you’ll probably get the most enjoyment from performing readings for friends.