INTENTION: The first requirement for consciously awakening intuition is a clear intention to do so. Intuition is already within you, but to awaken it you have to value it and INTEND to develop it.

TIME: Your willingness to devote time to tuning in to your intuition, making a space for its unfolding in your life, is part of valuing and developing it.

RELAXATION: Letting go of physical and emotional tension gives intuition the space to enter your conscious awareness.

SILENCE: Intuition flourishes in silence. Learning to quiet the mind is therefore part of the training for awakening intuition. Various meditative practices are useful in learning to maintain the necessary inner silence.

HONESTY: Willingness to face self-deception and to be honest with yourself and others is essential. Creating any kind of smokescreen interferes with clear vision. Giving up pretenses is a big step in awakening intuition.

RECEPTIVITY: Learning to be quiet and receptive allows intuition to unfold. Too much activity or conscious programming gets in the way of intuitive awareness that emerges when a receptive attitude is cultivated.

SENSITIVITY: Finely tuned sensitivity to both inner and outer processes provides more information and expands intuitive knowing. Sensitivity to energy awareness and the quality of experience is particularly useful.

NONVERBAL PLAY: Drawing, music, movement, clay, and other forms of nonverbal expression done in a spirit of play, rather than for the purpose of goal-oriented achievement, provide excellent channels for activating intuitive, right-hemisphere functions.

TRUST: Trusting the process, trusting yourself, trusting your experience, are the keys to trusting and developing your intuition.

OPENNESS: If you are afraid of being seen, you may close up and then be unable to see. Being open to all experiences, both inner and outer, gives intuition the space it needs to develop fully.

COURAGE: Fear gets in the way of direct experience and often generates deception. Your willingness to experience and confront your fears will facilitate the expansion of intuition.

ACCEPTANCE: A nonjudgmental attitude, an acceptance of things as they are, including self-acceptance, allows intuition to function freely.

LOVE: Opening your heart to feelings of nonjudgmental love and compassion allows you to see into the nature of things. Emotional empathy and intuitive identification are facilitated by love and compassion.

NONATTACHMENT: The willingness to let things be as they are, rather than trying to make them be the way you would like them to be, or the way you think they should be, allows intuition to emerge. You can see things as they are only when desires and fears are out of the way.

DAILY PRACTICE: Intuitive awareness grows with daily attention. If you discount or neglect it most of the time and only want it to perform occasionally, it may not respond.

JOURNAL KEEPING: Keeping a record of intuitive flashes, hunches, insights, and images that come to mind spontaneously at any time of the day or night, can help stabilize and validate them.

SUPPORT GROUP: Finding one, two, or more friends with whom you can share your interest in the development of intuition, as well as your successes, failures, hopes, and fears, can facilitate and accelerate the process of development. Sharing experience with someone who is willing to listen without judging or interpreting is very useful.

ENJOYMENT: Following intuition does not always feel good. At times it may seem difficult and entail arduous work. At other times it may be effortless. Enjoying the creative resources of intuition is based on the intrinsic satisfaction of expanding consciousness, taking responsibility for your life, and surrendering to your own true nature.

Source: Awakening Intuition by Frances Vaughan