What to Do When Your Intuition Goes Quiet: Five Ways to Return to Yourself

Have you ever felt like your intuition just… disappeared? Like the channel went dark and the signal you used to trust so completely has gone radio silent?

In this episode, we get real about a truth I've been living myself: your intuition never goes quiet. But sometimes you enter a phase where you need a recalibration of your inner pulse and to listen on a deeper level.

In this episode, I share five simple, grounded practices to help you return to your inner knowing, including the lay flat ritual I came back to just before recording this very episode.

In this episode:

• Why your intuition isn't gone, and what's actually happening when you can't hear it
• How scrolling and constant input quietly disconnect you from your own knowing
• The lay flat ritual: a body-based practice for releasing mental noise and letting wisdom rise
• Why a quiet after-dinner walk might be the most underrated intuition practice there is
• Three more simple practices you can start today, including one that takes a single breath

Work with me:
If something in this episode stirred something in you, if you felt that quiet pull of yes, this is what I need, trust it. DM me on Instagram to learn about 1:1 intuitive readings and private coaching. I'd love to hear from you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I want to ask you something and I want you to really feel into it before you answer. Answer honestly. No one else is listening. When did you last sit or walk or drive or even take a bath in complete silence? No phone, no podcast, no journal, no noise, and just listened. Because here's what I know about intuition. It has not gone quiet. It never goes quiet. It's speaking to you right now. The question is: are you in a place energetically, physically, emotionally where you can actually hear it and receive it? Because what I do know is that it does go quieter, but it never goes away. Welcome back to an intuitive life. I'm Elena Lipson, intuitive coach, psychic, and your guide for navigating this next chapter of your life with more trust, more clarity, more capacity to hear, receive, and act on your intuition, and a whole lot more of you. If you're new here, I'm so glad you found this. And if you've been with me a while, you know what we're gonna do. We're gonna dive right in, we're gonna go deep, and we always come back to the one thing that never lies, your inner knowing. Now, back to what I just said. Um, I want you to sit with that for a second about intuition about the last time you went really, really silent. Because I know that's probably not what you were expecting to hear, especially if you clicked on this up, clicked on the episode because you've been feeling exactly like your intuition has gone quiet, like the signal has gone dark, like the channel got scrambled, like that deep, reliable knowing that you are used to, used to guiding you has gone radio silent. And I get it, I've been there. I'm actually coming out of a small little blip, a phase of that right now, which is why I needed to make this episode today for you, yes, and for me too. Here's what I've come to understand: your intuition does not go quiet. You go quiet to it, right? There's difference. And even the experience of that silence, that frustrating, disorienting quiet is in itself a message. It's your intuition whispering like so lightly, like a feather, slow down, come back, be here. And the question isn't where did my intuition go? The question is where have I been like energetically? Where has my attention gone? Maybe, like me, you've been scrolling extra a lot, reaching for your phone before your feet even hit the floor in the morning, filling every small gap in your day with noise, podcasts, content, other people's thoughts, Netflix, whatever. Because sitting with your own thoughts feels uncomfortable right now. And it's not like we consciously do it, it's a very unconscious habit that we start leaning on more and more, especially when we're getting closer to our own truth. I'm gonna let that one sit for a second, because that's how it goes. I've been coaching women for over two decades and a few brave men. And I'm telling you, this pattern is so solid. Whenever we're getting closer to our own inner truth, to saying it out loud to ourselves, we start to dial up the noise on distraction. Why? Maybe uh because sitting with your own thoughts feels uncomfortable right now, right? And why does it feel uncomfortable? Maybe because you actually have gotten clarity, like real in your belly, in your heart, in your like, oh yes, this is what I want to do, on something that you want, something you need to do, a direction your life has been calling you toward, and you haven't moved on it yet. And that gap between knowing and doing creates this low hum of dissonance, like, oh, I just I don't feel right in my skin. And it's really even hard to articulate until like you're almost through it. It's very, very clear in 2020 vision, right? In that looking back. This feeling of being out of alignment with yourself feels uncomfortable, and it's easier to scroll than to sit with that feeling, even though that's how we know. We know that's where the answers lie. Or maybe the clarity hasn't fully come yet. And the not knowing feels like a failure. Like, I should know this. I'm always so like I'm a smart person, I'm ambitious, I've done this, I've done so much. You have like you have the receipts for all the things you've created and have done. Why isn't it coming now? Like you should have figured this out by now. Like everyone else has a clear path, and you're the only one standing in the fog. And I see you, I really do, because I have been there more times than I care to count. But here's what I want you to remember. You are a woman in her next chapter, not her last one, her next one. And this next chapter doesn't run on pressure, it doesn't run on hustle, and it doesn't run on forcing yourself to have answers before you're ready. We we are over that pushing, we are over the creating from panic, right? This chapter runs on trust, on listening, trust in your own pace and timing, on creating the conditions for your own inner knowing to rise through. So today I actually want to share some tangible things, five things you can do right now, today, this week, after this podcast, to come back to yourself. And these are tools that you can use anytime to come back to your intuitive voice to tune back in. These are not complicated, and the best tools are never overcomplicated ever. They're so simple that our subconscious mind is like, nah, too simple, but trust, please, trust me on this. I've been teaching this for a long time. And this isn't like trust me, okay? Like whenever someone says that, I'm like, why would I trust you? But it's very simple. Try it for yourself. Don't trust me. Try it for yourself. They don't require a like a five-day retreat or a complicated life overhaul. They're simple, they're grounded, and they work. I know they work because I use them when I remember to. And I came back to them this week, like hard, because I needed them bigly. I really needed them. So let's go. This is the one that I had to do today in order to not spiral into well, this day is now wasted. I have no ideas. I'm just going to like sit and cry and scroll and watch like sappy, you know, pit bull videos and children's videos, and just let myself feel all the feels, which I did for a little while, too long than I care to even admit. But this is where I started today. This is literally how this episode came to be. The lay-flat ritual is something I've done for many, many years. It's a beautiful parasympathetic nervous system activation, meaning it just puts you into a real nervous system reset. And like a lot of the things we know work, I had drifted away from this very simple ritual and I came back to it actually yesterday because I needed to, because I was feeling scattered, slightly overwhelmed. We've had some major, really happy milestones in our family this week. And so I just I've been feeling all the feels. And like professionally, it took me to a place of like, I don't even know what I want to do anymore. So I couldn't quite land anywhere on any feeling. And I knew I needed to stop trying to think my way out of it because that will never, ever, ever work. So here's what you do: super simple. Find a quiet place. Like, please find a quiet place where you know you're not going to be interrupted. I usually do this in my bedroom. I was able to do it in my living room today because my dog is happily snoring on the couch. My husband's out, my son's out. The floor is best. Um, a yoga mat, a rug, whatever you have, not your bed, because your bed sends a different signal to your nervous system. The floor is grounding, literally. I use a blanket so I can stay warm. If it's a little chilly today, so I use a blanket. You just want to be comfortable and not moving at all. You absolutely lie flat, no pillows, because there's something about that positioning of your spine. Now, if you have any injuries or shoulder or back stuff or knee stuff, please do what you have to do. But the ideal position is lying flat and then you take care of yourself from there. Your arms are slightly away from your body, palms facing up ideally if you can. Um, and again, I put a blanket on and I imagine like a starfish, like a mini starfish, not all the way out, but just enough to like when you do like the dead, dead yoga pose, what is it called? I can't remember at the moment. Shivasana. It's like shivasana. And you just let go. You stop trying, you don't perform relaxation, you're not monitoring whether you're doing it right. You just let your body get heavy, you let it release into the earth beneath you. And you what I sometimes do in the first minute is I imagine the sort of like um a door window above me opening above me all the way, and like the shower of light rinses my entire body from head to toe. So, like, and I imagine this like pour stuff pouring out from my back through the floor, like anything that's just stuck there, stagnant, just starts to pour out. And that usually helps me get into a really, really cool, pleasant space. So you just let it release into the earth beneath you, and then you just breathe naturally. You're not directing your breath, you're just breathing, you're not directing anything, you're not trying to visualize. You're just if it makes it easier for you to get present, just imagine like the floor supporting you and just follow your breath. Just notice it without changing it. What I find, and this has happened, we've done this on retreats all the time, like before we do some more in-depth sort of like creation, and this might happen for you too, is that within a few minutes, something shifts. The mental noise starts to just quiet and dampen. And that in that dampening and that thinning of the noise, something quieter starts to speak. And this never fails. I have I have yet to have like a laydown session that I have not had some sort of like clarity come through, even one little thing. And I do it for 11 minutes. That's my sweet spot. I would I would recommend starting there. And what happens is you start to get like this knowing or a feeling or an image or a word or a sudden sense of, oh, that right so simple. The like the funniest thing is like you'll want to get right up and write it, write it down or act on it, but just let yourself go the full 11 minutes so that your body fully, you're not gonna forget it, I promise. Like I haven't had anyone forget it, right? So it doesn't always come as a voice. Sometimes it comes as a physical sensation, like a release of tension in your chest or a warmth, a sense of expansion. Your body is your original intelligence, it knows things your thinking mind has not caught up with yet. One time I did this and I got an entire downloaded money meditation. It was called the money box meditation. It's still one of my most popular meditations. It's on my podcast. People still listen to it. If you want it, like hit me up on the DM and Instagram, I'll send it to you. I have like a like a full recording of it. Um, it just arrived and I'm like, oh my God, the whole thing just like unfolded in my brain, and I recorded it right afterwards. It became a signature money meditation that I used years ago. But that's what's available to you in that stillness. And that's what waiting on, that's what is waiting on the other side of the noise. So try it for 11 minutes. Just lie flat, let your body do what it knows how to do, and let me know if you try this. Okay, we're just gonna go right into number two because I want to give you as many tools as possible today. The quiet walk after dinner. Now, not only is this good for your blood sugar, all right, darling, it's really good for your blood sugar, but I've started doing this one almost every night over the last several weeks. And I started it because of the blood sugar thing. I'm like, I'm just gonna take a walk after dinner instead of sitting down and watching our show and having my little like Greek yogurt popsicle. I will go for a walk and I feel so much better. I crave less snacks when I come back. I feel proud of myself. And it's like one little habit that I added that's been very, very, I would say transformational, but also like just I'm proud of myself for doing it. I'm I'm you know, I work out every morning, like that's cool, but this is a little different for me. So and it's become something I genuinely look forward to. My husband said he's gonna start joining me, which I'm like, seriously, it's my solo time, but it's okay. I can do two walks, which surprised me in the most beautiful way because really that's how we inspire people, right? Not by telling them what to do, but just doing it and sharing sort of what happened because of it. So I'm I love it. Um, I love learning, I love like creating new habits. So um anyway, I I like the quiet walk because I I really enjoyed the quiet of it because I'm someone who loves audiobooks and podcasts. I love learning, filling my mind, but I really challenge myself to go quiet on these walks. And it takes about 20 to 25 minutes. And the last couple of nights, I have been listening to an audiobook, which is already telling me that I was already starting to like dampen my own intuition, my own listening, because something's coming up, and we had all these like really big emotions these last week, like good emotions. But again, it was like it was a lot. So I almost wanted to like unplug. But here's what I noticed: when I walk after dinner with no earbuds, no phone in my hand, nothing to consume, something does open up, even if it's just an inner peace that I needed, like to just settle the day. My body starts to process everything that happened, thoughts start to surface that would not have surfaced otherwise. Not anxious thoughts, but intuitive thoughts. Thoughts that feel less like my mind is churning and complaining and more like something being handed to me. Right? There's something about walking specifically that helps with this. It's bilateral movement, left, right, left, right. And it gently activates both hemispheres of your brain. There's actually a really cool book, cool book that my husband's read maybe a year ago. Can't remember what it's called right now, but if you want it, I'm happy to get the link for you and show you. Um, maybe I'll I'll grab the link afterwards and put it in my in the show notes. Um, it's been used in therapy for processing and integration for good reason. When you walk without destination energy, without trying to solve anything, your nervous system downshifts. And that's the frequency where intuition lives. Now, I used to teach something called walking with your mentors, which is asking a specific question, walking through a portal, and then kind of walking to get the answer. That's a really cool tool as well to connect with your intuition, but this is a little different. You don't need a beautiful trail, you don't need a quiet neighborhood, even 20 minutes around the block, even with the phone in your pocket, of course, be safe, with your eyes softer, breathing easy, being really present and just noticing, noticing the leaves, noticing the changing season, noticing the air on your skin. It gets you present. And you can let the walk be your medicine. Let it be a moving meditation and let whatever wants to arise, arise. All right. Now, another one, number three. This is called the one question journal. And journaling is one of those things for me, when I'm journaling less, I know that I'm distracting more. So I try to keep it super, super simple to not like almost like to trick my trick my subconscious mind into getting present and just starting the journaling process. Now, I know because I've been teaching journaling for many years, it was a it was a huge part of like different classes that I taught. It was a huge daily practice in my membership. And it was just one of those things where I taught it from many different directions. And I know some of you have a complicated relationship with journaling. Maybe you've started and stopped a dozen times. Maybe the blank page feels like pressure, like one more thing you're doing wrong or need to do. And I'm not asking you to like start being a journaling person. I'm just asking you to answer one question, okay? Before you go to sleep, or the first thing in the morning, if that's more natural for you, or just sometime during the day where you're like, okay, I have I have some time, I'm just gonna sit and do this. Instead of watching something, instead of scrolling TikTok, just this, I promise you, this is so much more fruitful for you. Just a simple notebook, or even in your notes app. Um, and you write one question at the top of the page. Here's the question. What do I know right now that I haven't let myself say out loud yet? I'll say that again. What do I know right now that I haven't let myself say out loud yet? And then you write. Now, I have a past episode on this, it's about like unconscious writing. And actually, how was it an episode or was it a real? I can't remember now. But you just write. It's it's like automatic writing, it's a really cool intuitive tool. So just you don't have to do an intuitive writing with this, but just put on a timer for at least five minutes to give yourself just a space. And then you write without editing, without reading as you go, without trying to sound wise or coherent. You just let the pen move and you follow it. You write for five minutes, that's it. You don't have to share it with anyone, you don't have to act on it immediately. You're just creating a container for what's already there. Because so much of the time, the knowing is there. We know. We just haven't given ourselves permission to acknowledge it, even privately, to say it out loud, to give it energy, like you just haven't. Right. And your intuition speaks in these quiet gaps in the margins in the moment before your critic arrives to edit the sentence, right? This practice meets it right there. One question, five minutes, pen and paper, that's all. Super simple. Okay, number four. This is called the one breath return. This this one is the most micro and in some ways the most powerful because it meets you in the middle of your actual life, wherever you are. You don't have to carve out time, you don't have to wait for a quiet morning or a peaceful evening or your house to be empty like I do sometimes. This practice lives inside your ordinary day as you're moving through it. And here's what it is every time you pick up your phone, every time you open a new tab to search something else, every time you feel that pull toward distraction, you pause. You take one slow breath very consciously, you feel your feet on the floor, or your butt in the seat, or whatever you're doing, or even your phone in your hand, and you ask yourself quietly internally, what do I actually need right now? Not what do I want to consume? Not what am I avoiding? What do I need? What does my body need? What does my soul need? If you can you want to refine it like that, if you want to. Sometimes the answer is rest. Sometimes it's water. Sometimes it's to make the phone call you've been putting off. Sometimes it's to feel the feeling you've been scrolling away from. The breath is that bridge to your conscious mind. It's a one-second return to your body, to the place where your intuition actually lives, not in your head, not in your feed, not in your body. Or I'm sorry, in your body. In your body. And I'll be honest with you, like this one is hard for me right now because the pull towards distraction is strong when you're in that in-between place, that liminal space where you know something is shifting, but it hasn't fully landed yet. Right? It feels very uncomfortable. And the phone is so freaking easy. The scroll is frictionless, it's addictive, it is insidious, it is fucked, right? Let me just say it. Like it just really is. Every time I take that breath, every time I choose to feel where I am instead of escape it, I come back to myself a little more. And each return builds that muscle, making the next return easier and easier to climb out of that place. And listen, we've all been in that place. And it's okay to be there. It's okay to fully, fully feel it, feel the fear, feel the overwhelm, let it go through your body and leave. It's in the avoidance of it. The scrolling is the avoidance of it in the presencing of your breath in that moment. Sometimes you need to have a good cry. Sometimes you need to call a friend and just complain for 10 minutes. Sometimes you need to go help somebody. Sometimes you need to just take that freaking next step, right? So one breath. That's the whole practice. Asking yourself, what do I actually need right now? Instead of scrolling or distraction. Okay. Five. This one, you're gonna not like it very much because I don't like it either. Like I really avoid this one, but it's probably because it's the best, most powerful one to do. Right? It's called the intentional input fast, like fasting. This one might sting, like I said, because it really does for me. And it's a deliberate window of time. I suggest starting with where you are, just one hour a day could be right for some of you, where you consume nothing. No podcasts, no audiobooks. Scrolling, no news, no content, nothing coming in. Sometimes you need a whole weekend, sometimes a week. Sometimes I know someone who built her entire business by getting off of social media and staying off, and now her whole entire business is off of social media. And like I'm so jealous because I'm like, wow, how I love it, I hate it, I love it, I hate it, right? I could find a I have to find my own way with it. Because here's the thing we are living in the most information saturated moment in human history. I mean, do you remember Saturday morning cartoons? Like we would look forward to that, or like the Thursday night, you know, whatever episode we were looking forward to. That's when we watched it. If you missed it, you're done. Like that was it. It was so much more special. Now, every minute of the day, there is something available to fill the silence. And we have trained ourselves beautifully, efficiently to fill the silence constantly.

unknown 22:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

And your intuition, your inner voice, it's like, dude, where are you? It's still there. It's small, it's quiet, it never yells, right? It's not gonna compete with a podcast at one and a half speed. It doesn't fight through a hundred Instagram stories. It just waits patiently until there is space to be heard. It's like that very confident, like cool friend. Like it's not gonna come looking for you. It's just always there, ready when you show up, right? It's so an input fast is you creating that space on purpose. You can go for a walk, like practice number two, you can do the lay flat like practice number one, you can sit on your porch without a phone, you can wash dishes in silence, you can drive without a podcast or music. And yes, music is also a distraction. It can be, it can be, right? You can just choose to be with yourself. I mean, you're amazing. Why wouldn't you want to be with yourself? With your own thoughts, with whatever arises. And yes, what arises might be uncomfortable at first. It might be restless, it might be the feeling you've been avoiding, but underneath that restlessness, if you let yourself stay, is something much quieter and much more true. It's your life, right? We're not distracting ourselves and watching other people's lives and being entertained by them. It's your life. Your inner compass is always pointing somewhere. But you have to be still enough to read that compass, right? So five practices, one breath, one question, one walk, one hour of silence, and 11 minutes on the floor. It's like choose your adventure. Do one of them, do all of them. None of these require you to have anything figured out. None of these require you to be somewhere else or be someone else or on a different quantum timeline, right? They just require you to be willing to get quiet enough to hear what you are already knowing. And I want to say one more thing before I let you go. If you've been frustrated with yourself for not taking that action, for not having clarity, for not being further along, I want you to hear this. The fact that you're listening to this episode and you've gotten this far means your inner compass is still working because it brought you here. You're not here by accident. People who find me are into knowing more about how to connect with their intuition, period. Like learning how to turn those dials way up on those clairs, on that intuitive knowing, on that psychic ability. It's looking for the signal. It hasn't given up on you. Your intuition never went quiet, you just got really, really busy. Right. So I invite you to come on back because she is waiting for you. And as always, if you want support and getting back to her, like real one-on-one support, I work with women privately, whether it's an intuitive reading or deeper coaching work that goes on for more like goal project-based, getting you moving into clarity, there is something available for you. So just DM me on Instagram or wherever you find me. I do have a special vision strategy messaging session available on Instagram. You can take a look at my bio, but I do have custom coaching packages as well based on your specific needs. So just tell me you listened to the episode and you want to know more because I would love to connect. It's not a bot, it is me. So I really hope you found yourself getting a little more like excited, even a little fearful, but excited about one of the practices. Try one, try all. Let me know how it goes for you. I love to hear feedback. There's also a little blue heart in the episode show notes. If you're listening on Apple, you can just click on that and you text directly to my phone and I will answer. So thank you so much for being here today. If you're here, like I'm here, we're here for a reason together, because we both needed to hear what I had to say today. That came from my own laying flat ritual. So I went from like, oh God, what am I going to talk about today? to oh, that's what I need to talk about today. And that is exactly how it feels when you take time to connect with your intuition. And with that, I will see you on the next episode of an intuitive life. So much love to you.