S1 EP14: Intuition vs fear: learning to tell the difference

In this episode of School of Shamanism, Giada continues the theme of Walking Between Worlds by exploring one of the most essential skills on the spiritual path: intuition.

After introducing visible and invisible worlds in the previous episode, Giada explains how intuition acts as the bridge between them. It is the subtle guidance system that allows us to receive signals from the unseen while navigating the practical demands of everyday life.

Drawing from both shamanic tradition and her own lived experience, Giada reflects on what it truly means to walk between worlds. For many people, this means balancing two parallel lives: the grounded responsibilities of work, family, and society, alongside the quieter inner life of spiritual practice, soul guidance, and intuitive knowing.

The episode also explores why trusting intuition can be so difficult. In a world that prioritises logic, proof, and measurable outcomes, intuitive knowing is often dismissed or ignored. Over time, many people learn to silence that quiet inner voice, especially in professional environments where instinct rarely counts as valid evidence.

Giada breaks down the difference between intuition and fear, explaining how these two signals can feel similar but arise from very different places within us. She also shares practical ways to begin strengthening intuitive awareness through stillness, observation, and small everyday choices.

Because intuition is not something mystical reserved for a few people. It is a natural ability we all possess; the quiet language through which the soul communicates with us, and learning to trust it is one of the most powerful ways we can reconnect the visible and invisible worlds within our lives.

Connect with Giada Gaslini:

• Website: www.schoolofshamanism.co.uk
• Instagram: @‌schoolofshamanism
• Facebook: School of Shamanism
• Youtube: School of Shamanism

About the Host

Originally hailing from the vibrant city of Milan, I’ve spent the past two decades traversing the globe in a quest for spiritual and personal growth and combined with 25 years of international corporate work experience. From navigating the vast landscapes of Australia in a campervan to finding tranquility living in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, my journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Along the way, I’ve delved deep into Buddhist teachings, yoga, and shamanism, becoming Shamanic Teacher,  Forest Therapy Guide, Esoteric Numerologist, Shamanic and Integral Yoga Teacher and Ikigai Coach. In 2013 I settled in Edinburgh, where  I founded the Art and Spirituality Centre, a social enterprise and the School of Shamanism, where I passionately help others on their own transformative journeys.

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Transcript

Giada 0:00

Your intuition is your soul's guidance system. So it's the invisible world communicating with you while you navigate the visible one. And when you ignore it, you are essentially telling yourself, your soul, I don't trust you, I know better. And the soul doesn't fight back, it just waits and aches. Last time we went to the main topic of this season: what is the invisible world? What is the visible world that we know? And why, for example, we are all connected with feelings, signs, dreams, which is the invisible worlds, but we can't merge it into the reality, the middle world, we would say, in shamanism, which is around us. The bridge for that is your intuition, because it's exactly your most important skill, probably in this past, but also one of the hardest ones, not because the intuition is complicated, and this is the topic of today, but because it's incredibly simple, but we don't trust it. So let's just step back one uh second and say again, before we go deeper, let's uh go back again to walk in between walls, because I've been using this phrase a lot throughout the season, and it holds uh two meanings that are equally important. The first is the traditional shamanic understanding. In shamanic practice, we recognize that reality has two dimensions: there is the visible world, the physical material realm, what we can see, touch, measure, and prove, and which is the world of bodies, the physical reality in which we are, and invisible world, the realm of spirit, energy, ancestors, uh, guides, dreams, and the world that operates beneath and beyond what the eyes can see. So the shaman is someone who walks in between these two realities that can actually bring back healing, guidance, and wisdom, hopefully. And that's the ancient understanding. But then there is also another meaning, um, which is uh holding two lives, which is what I've always and I'm still doing in my life. The life in the real world, your job, your responsibilities, your being grounded, the things to do, your nine to five, or even more my case, activities, the practical, the practical stuff, and then the soul life, your spiritual practice in the morning, in the evening, when you're teaching, when you feel the deep calling, and normally they don't match together for lots of people. Sometimes they do. And when they do, it means you are simply very much online. But over the um 25 years when I was working in corporate, I had one foot in meetings and boardrooms and the other foot in sacred circles. And it was very difficult to say and take into the meetings actually, my intuition is saying you had to prove that actually, with data, with elements, then whatever you were saying was saying had a validity, something that was real and tangible and measurable. So your intuition is the bridge between these two worlds and how the invisible world speaks to you while you are living in this visible one. And it's how your soul guides you while you are navigating the practical demands of the modern life. So that's why trusting your intuition matters so much, because it's the thread that connects both worlds, and without it, you would probably live just in one reality and not in the other one. So intuition is knowing without knowing how you know. Sounds easy. So it's that gut feeling, that sense of for that something is right or wrong, that voice that says, don't take that job or leave that job, uh, leave that relationship or start that relationship and you don't even know why. It doesn't, of course, come with a logical explanation, it doesn't come with a PowerPoint with the bullet points. It's just there, it kicks in and starts arguing with your mind. Because if your intuition says, Oh well, don't trust that person and you don't know why. And then your mind says, Oh, but that person is too lovely, why shouldn't you trust her? It's you're just paranoid. Your intuition says that opportunity is doesn't feel right, and your mind says, Take it, it's a good offer, just stay in the comfort zone in the prison. Or your intuition says something needs to change, and your mind says, just don't be dramatic, just keep going, things will be fine. So, why don't we trust our intuition? That is part of our conditioning. We grow up in a world that worships logic and dismisses anything that can be explained in a rational way, and intuition isn't logical. You can't prove it, you can't justify in a meeting or defend it to your family, so we learn to override it. And this is especially hard when you are walking between worlds in that second sense. So you are holding a professional life alongside the spiritual uh reality, but the physical life doesn't trust the intuition element. You can't say my gut told me in a strategy meeting, as I said, you can't put I just knew it. How? What's the proof? So you learn to silence that voice at work, and then it gets harder to hear it in the whole part of your life, so it's affecting you. And trusting your intuition often means making choices that don't make sense on paper, leaving that secure job, ending that relationship that looks perfect, and then your family wants, your friends want, walking away from something that everyone thinks you should want. And that's scary. It's much easier to follow the logical path, even if something inside you is screaming. Part of it is experience. And maybe you trusted your intuition once, things didn't go very well, and so you are reluctant in trusting it a second time. And so you prefer to rely on an external practical guidance instead of your inner master inside your gut or your heart. And also, we live in such a loud world: constant information, constant opinions, constant simulation, and the intuitive voice is quiet, it gets droned out easily. If you are never still, you will never hear it. And so, how do I know if it's intuition or just fear? Because the two things can be the same, because sometimes they can feel very similar. And both might say, Don't do this, both might create hesitation, but there is a difference, and learning to tell them apart is essential. Fear is loud, it's frantic, it comes with stories, case worst case scenario, spinning thoughts, it's in your chest, in your throat, it's constricted, and it's usually about the future. What might happen, what could go wrong. Intuition is quiet, is calm, it doesn't argue and explains anything, and it's the in the lower part of your body, your gut, your belly, and it's not attached to any outcome. It's just clear. And fear says don't do this because something terrible might happen and you'll regret it, or you are not ready. While the intuition uh doesn't speak about any drama, uh doesn't say uh doesn't come out with a list of reasons, you just know it full stop. It's very simple. So to trust yourself, even when you can't see the whole part, is the only possible things to do. Because the cost of ignoring yourself and ignoring uh your intuition can have for sure uh bad consequences, can uh turn out into choices that you should have not made in illnesses because you are ignoring a voice. So you say yes when everything inside you is saying no. So you are going beyond an internal will, and even if at the beginning it seems fine, you convince yourself you made the right choice, you push that intuitive knowing down, and you just get on with things, but it doesn't go away, it just goes underground, and then it starts showing up in a different way as anxiety, that vague sense of unease that follows you around, tension, fatigue, uh, illness, as I said, resentment, sadness, sense of guilt. Your intuition is your soul's guidance system, so it's the invisible world communicating with you while you navigate the visible one. And when you ignore it, you are essentially telling yourself, your soul, I don't trust you, I know better. And the soul doesn't fight back, it just waits and aches. So I've ignored as well my intuition several times, and every single time I paid for it eventually, sometimes quickly, sometimes years later, but always there is a moment in which you think, I knew it, I knew it. So why didn't I listen? Because of fear, because everyone around me was saying the opposite. So, how do you trust your intuition? First, you have to create space to hear it, which means stillness, silence, time away from the phone, time away from the noise, even if just five minutes a day with no fuse, no music, no phone, no podcast apart from this one, no conversation, just you and your inner world. And this is where you start listening just by spending this time with your inner voice, and you need these moments, and then your inner voice starts communicating also with external images, things synchronicities that come to you that confirms that that inner voice was right, and then you have to start acting on small things, just don't wait until you have a huge life decision to practice, trusting your intuition, just start with the little stuff, just get an impulse to take a different route to work, follow it. You feel drawn to reach out to someone you haven't spoken to in months, do it. You have a sense that you should rest today instead of pushing through, honor your body. And just these small acts of trust build the muscle, like in the gym, they create the evidence and they show your intuition. I'm listening now, I'm taking you seriously. And as a third element, you just keep track or write down when you get an intuitive hit if you have time. What did you sense, what did you do, what happened over time? You'll start to see patterns and you'll notice how often your intuition was right. And of course, it doesn't mean that you have to be right all the time, you just need to learn how to decode its own language and learn how to distinguish intuition from fear without having a proof apart from that inner voice that is inside your gut and that resonates with your heart.