by Caron B. Goode

Intuition is what your brain knows how to do when you leave it alone.
Dr. Paul MacLean, former Chief of Brain
Evolution, National Institute of Mental Health, 1988

Renaissance for Intuitive Intelligence

In today's world, we focus on the child's natural core genius. Intuitive intelligence is part of children's core genius. This natural intelligence can grow into a unique talent. Children with intuitive intelligences are ready to take their place in the world. Our job is to assist them

Intuitive intelligence is an essential part of the human mind, which includes our conscious processes and unconscious processes—thought perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination. Intuitive intelligence involves nurturing self-awareness of the inner world, the outer world, and the connection between them.

Recognition for the intuitive mind with its way of discovery and knowing has advanced significantly in the last decades.

What started with Carl Jung's concept that people have four primary paths for processing information has evolved into the intricacies of brain mapping in the field of neuroscience. We know how we learn, which part of the brain is involved and how to reprogram patterns that don't work through the concept of neuroplasticity.

The renaissance of intuitive intelligence has arrived. Let's trace the progress of intuition over the last several decades as it made its way into mainstream thought and awareness. Only recently has western, modern society accepted and found intuitive intelligence useful.

Breakthroughs in Understanding the Brain

A significant breakthrough in 1972 involved Dr. Roger Sperry, who differentiated the specific functions of the left-brain and the right brain. His groundbreaking work earned him the Nobel Prize and gave a physical basis to the ability to work with images, intuition, and holistic thinking in the right brain hemisphere. Human capacity was explored and brain research provided a biological foundation for intuitive intelligence and thinking.

Further brain research in the 1970s by Dr. Paul MacLean introduced the idea of human brains developing along an evolutionary tract.

We don't have one brain; we have a series of interconnected sub-brains, the "triune brain."

Each sub-brain displays its own form of intelligence, motor functions, sense of time and specialized tasks.

1. Reptilian brain is the brain stem, so named because it includes structures of a reptile brain and developed five hundred million years ago. It governs vital survival activities like our breathing, heart rate, body temperature and balance. This brain also gives us the basis for instinct, which we can separate from intuition as people confuse human instinct with intuitive intelligence.

2. The limbic brain grew in small mammals about one hundred and fifty million years ago. It governs emotional states, produces emotional memory patterns, which assign values based on cultural and relational influences. This brain developed in response to increasingly complex relationships in mammals.

3. The human neocortex expanded the brain capacity several million years ago and contains the two brain hemispheres. Brain functions included abstract thought, language, and consciousness. Human capacity for learning has grown into the cultures we experience today.

The reptilian brain processes instinctual responses that include the gut brain. Intuition has roots in the gut brain but is processed in the emotional brain, or the limbic system. The neocortex is the thinking brain, choosing information we should listen to and act on from the reservoir of our memory.

Intuitive intelligence involves the interplay between the limbic system and the neocortex. The right hemisphere has richer neural connections to the limbic system than does the left, and it draws information and perceptions from time and space. This is how we make sense of our world.

So how do we make sense of intuitive intelligence within our left-brain culture?

Our logical mind addresses stable patterns, snapshots of reality stored in our memory banks, for the practical living. The holistic or holographic side of our reality, intuitive intelligence comes from within. By focusing our attention on how intuition presents, we act from deeper understanding.
Here is the story of how intuitive intelligence has along with the advances in brain science and information processing.

Gardner Expands The Single IQ Myth

In 1983, a Harvard Education professor, Howard Gardner, proposed a theory of seven intelligences to explain a broad range of human aptitudes. Gardner has defined intelligence as "the capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting."¹ The definition implied that intelligence is based on its utility and value within its culture.

This major breakthrough in education and psychology moved educators beyond the single intellectual quotient—IQ. The concept of intelligence expanded to value children's talents in broader areas.

In the following list of Gardner's intelligences, schools value linguistics and logic. The arts and sports value spatiality, physical skills and musical skills. And the interpersonal skills and intrapersonal awareness underlie emotional ability, social skills and natural intuition.
Gardner's Seven Intelligences: