Intuition is not something mystical or strange. It is our first body sense, necessary for survival. We know what is on someone's mind, an outcome before it happens, what our body needs to heal, what our children need to maintain wellness, by the power of the inner voice. This is the art of intuition.

My grandmother knew things beyond the familiar realm of the senses. When I was a child, I asked my mother, "But how does she know?

How did she know what time we'd arrive today, when we didn't tell her we were coming?"

"She just knows." My mother responded.

Grandma lived on a cotton farm in the middle of Georgia, without a telephone. We lived in the mountains of North Carolina, a good ten hours away. Our visits were always random and spontaneous; she never had any advance warning that we were on the way.

In an attempt to surprise his mother, my father would frequently shut off the engine into her driveway. It didn't work. We never caught her unprepared. She always knew when we were coming, and she was ready: fresh sheets on the beds, dinner cooked, and Grandma waiting on the front porch. This scene played out year after year until she died.

My grandmother also knew when someone was in trouble. She said there was a knock on the cabinet door. I never heard the knock, but I believed her. And I believed her when she spoke of magic, ghosts, spirits, and fairies that danced in the rain. During every visit, I would sit on her knees, mesmerized, and ask her to repeat her stories of the unseen.

Sometime during my college years, between Psychology 213 and Logic 101, I let the real world of "If you can't taste, touch, or feel it, it doesn't exist"--take over. Snugly settled into an educational system that valued analytical reasoning, I forgot my grandmother's world of the unseen. I chose to spend my time and my energy building a career in the mental health field.

But in 1983 my carefully designed world of psychology and mental health flipped upside down. Working as an analyst for the state attorney general, I had a precognitive experience that was so detailed and accurate that it changed the way I saw reality.

One morning my boss requested a list of some documents needed for an upcoming trial. Without a second thought, I wrote down the titles and document numbers, handed the list to my secretary, and returned to my work.

She came to my desk shortly afterward and said, "These are not what Karen asked for. These are random letters that I recently boxed up to be sent to the archives this morning." I could not believe my ears. Confused by my error, I quickly wrote down the correct titles and document numbers and went off to lunch.

My parents, grandparents, and my aunts, with their stories and support, played an important role in creating the person I am today. Like many settlers in the southern mountains of the USA, my grandmother (and her children) used intuition, "telepathy" as the researchers called it, without being self-conscious. Nearly all of Grandma's telepathic/intuitive communications involved the well-being of her family.

Using only her thoughts, she could call the men in from the cotton fields for dinner and sense the whereabouts of her children. She also said that she often talked with those who had recently passed on.

I spent a significant amount of time with my grandmother when I was four years old. At about that age, a growth spurt occurs in the brain, creating more neural connections.

These connections contain our potential to develop intuition and musical ability. I majored in music at Undergraduate. Music is more easily developed, as it's often a welcome part of everyday family life.

Unlike music, intuition is almost never consciously developed and is frequently misunderstood. Still, it crops up continually in children, like the five year old who announces the arrival of a letter from Grandpa before the mail carrier brings it, and the four year old who describes his birthday present before he opens the package.

Intuition and imagination seem to fade around age seven, if they are not developed. My parents nurtured my imagination by reading or telling stories to me at bedtime. They supported my creativity in numerous ways, allowing me to decorate my bedroom with Christmas lights, build tents with old quilts in the living room, draw, cut, color, and paint; if it could be imagined, I did it.

And my mother's simple reply, "She just knows," taught me that it was acceptable to access information in ways we don't always understand. The knowing my grandmother used was her intuition, although she didn't call it that. Often defined as "the power of knowing" or "knowledge obtained without reasoning," intuition is wisdom that comes from within.

It is our ability to perceive information that is not obvious to the physical senses. It is what tells us when something simply doesn't feel right, the gut feeling that reveals something wrong with our child, or a friend, when for all practical purposes they look and sound fine. Said another way, intuition brings forth all sensory information from the environment. One way of beginning to trust your intuition is to act on it.

Intuition is like a muscle: The more we use it, the stronger it gets. Be willing to be flexible, change plans, or get a second opinion, when your intuition shows up. If a thought makes its way into your awareness, check it out to see if the information is valid. Feedback is very important in learning to trust oneself.

Intuition speaks softly, is patient, and will sound the same message several times like a gong. An intuitive thought could pop into your head while you are driving home from work or out jogging. Intuition often speaks when you least expect it; our responsibility is to learn to listen to this inner voice.

The author is a licensed therapist, a medical intuitive - one who uses her mind to scan a body physically, mentally, and emotionally.

E-mail: winter@winterrobinson.com