Angel clouds remind us to take ourselves lightly.

My daughter calls these angel clouds. They are a great reminder of a simple truth: when we rise above a problem we look at it with different eyes. Suddenly, we can see the big picture. We can actually see beauty where perhaps before we just saw stress and sadness.

Look at this picture, taken last week over Southern England. Everything is beautiful if you look at it from a higher perspective.

Intuition is about not trying to force your way through a locked window or door.

“I don’t trust my intuition” is something I hear again and again from new clients. It’s not really surprising – when we were growing up it was standard practice to teach children to ignore their innermost feelings, in favour of what they ‘should’ be thinking.

Luckily, times have changed. In-tuition – our internal tuition – is now highly valued by many of the world’s most successful people. To give one example, not long before Tim Cook became the CEO of Apple, he gave a talk to young graduates at his old university, in which he urged them to work hard, be prepared… and then trust their intuition over logic or plans.

“There are times in our lives when the careful consideration of cost and benefits just doesn’t seem like the right way to make a decision,” said Cook. “There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate – when a particular course of action just feels right. And interestingly I’ve discovered it’s in facing life’s most important decisions that intuition seems the most indispensable to getting it right.”

In fact, if you want to be successful, you need your intuition. Period. So how do you trust it? Here’s how.

Stop being a busy bee hitting your head against a window

How many times have you seen this? A bee has flown into the room. It’s trying to get out through a closed window. Again, and again, it buzzes angrily and bangs its head against the glass.

The glass is the barrier to a solution. The busy, buzzing bee is your brain. If you are stuck for a solution, walk away from it. Stop thinking about it. Sleep on it. If you don’t have time for that, sit still, focus on your breath, and meditate.

When you calm your busy brain, you allow the answer to bubble up in your consciousness.  For the bee, the solution is an open door that happens to be near the frustrating window. For you, it’s an elegant new solution that you would never have reached by going through the same old thought processes.

Intuition is about having the courage to step back, to find a new open door.

Spot the ‘Ah-ha’ moments

When the right solution, or pathway, bubbles up in your mind – it’s an ‘Ah-ha!’ moment. Make a note of that feeling – every time you feel it. Eventually, with lots of practice, you’ll spot the ‘Ah-ha’ feeling in its earliest stages, so you won’t necessarily have to go to sleep or meditate.

When you get really good, you’ll just have to switch attention away from the problem or dilemma, take a deep breath or two… and let that ah-ha moment pop up.

With practice, you can even feel where the ‘Ah-ha!’ moment first appears inside you.

Can you guess where intuition originates in you?

Yup, it’s in your gut.

Heidi Sawyer, head of the Institute of Psychic Development, has taught thousands of students how to recognize their intuition: “You will feel a slight upwards movement in your solar plexus when it’s your intuition speaking,” she explains. Conversely, if you feel a downwards movement, it’s more likely to be ego.

Another way of spotting the difference is this: ego is often edged with fear. Intuition is not.

Clean up your psyche

Imagine that our buzzing bee does eventually decide to fly away from the closed window. But the room is absolutely full of stuff: furniture and junk. The bee gets stuck in a corner somewhere, buzzing sadly away, its wings all dusty, between a cushion and a drawer… how will the bee ever find that open door?

Imagine, now, that the room is sparkling clean and full of space. The bee flies about it easily, and finds the open door very quickly. The junk in that room is actually the stuff that we carry about with us: old, stuck emotions and memories… We’re talking about the difficult, painful experiences from childhood onwards that we have blocked off because we didn’t know what to do with them at the time, so we just stuck them in a drawer somewhere in our psyche.

If you want to trust your intuition, you have to clear the room that is your psyche – regularly. Give it a really good spring-clean, and then vacuum and dust it regularly. How do you do that? There are many ways:

• Find a notebook or an art pad and start expressing your thoughts and feelings.

• Keep a dream journal and record all the dreams that you remember – dreams are the psyche’s natural way of sorting out all the junk.

• Detox the body physically with a healthy diet and regular exercise.

• Visit a holistic practitioner, such as a healer or intuition consultant who specialises in clearing emotional junk and helping you to reconnect with your inner knowledge.

The work is worth it, because your intuition is an invaluable, golden friend, a guide that can take you to your most authentic desires – and give you loads of fun along the way.

Tim Cook again: “In turning important decisions over to intuition one has to give up on the idea of developing a life plan that will bear any resemblance to what ultimately unfolds. Intuition is something that occurs in the moment, and if you are open to it. If you listen to it it has the potential to direct or redirect you in a way that is best for you.”

Try it and see.

You can hear Tim Cook’s speech about success and intuition here. 

You can find out more about Heidi Sawyer’s Institute of Psychic Development here. 

And you can find out more about Suzanne Askham’s intuition consultations here. 

Not using your intuition is like walking around in a cloud.

Being intuitive is an essential survival skill. It can help you to find and keep a good partner, friends and career. It can help you to be healthy, wealthy and happy.

Intuitive people can read other people and situations clearly. Not choosing to use your intuition is a bit like walking around with your head in a cloud. You can see, but only  a bit.

So here are some easy strategies to help you. Remember: the more you practise, the better you become.

Get out of your own way

Sarah, a lady I know, has no luck with men. She would love to settle down, but boyfriends never stick around for long.

The trouble is, she has an internal voice that constantly tells her she’s not good enough. This voice comes from a mother and a sister who bullied her: she was always viewed as the clumsy, unattractive one.

Intuitive people see the reality that lies beyond the clouds of illusion.

Sarah’s low self-esteem means that she accepts dates from anyone who asks her. She tries too hard to please, and blames herself when the relationship fizzles out.

So Sarah needs to address the core problem and throw out the outdated program that says she’s not good enough. She needs to stop listening to her own self-defeating internal voice, and start noticing what’s going on around her.

Then she will quickly understand a lot more about the men she meets. She’ll see which ones have a kind smile and interesting conversation… and she’ll start making much better choices.

Notice your inner critic

We all have a self-defeating inner voice that likes to comment on everything we do – it’s the voice of our ego. The best way to identify it is to sit still for 20 minutes and do a listening meditation. Simply listen to all the sounds you hear, within and around you.

Before long, you will become aware of some very noisy thoughts. These are often stressed, critical thoughts. That’s your inner critic. It’s not real, and it gets in the way of true perception. Once you recognize it, the inner critic will lose its power to influence you.

Become great at spotting an atmosphere

I have a friend I love to visit. There’s something about her house that makes me feel calm and happy. I know another lady whose house has the opposite effect. Although she, and her house, appear tidy and  nice, the atmosphere is prickly and rather unpleasant.

Noticing atmospheres around people and in buildings is really important. If you don’t already, make a habit of it now. The atmosphere tells you what’s really going on in another person’s life, underneath the social smiles.

You can become very good at spotting if someone is happy or stressed. You can even tell if they talk about others behind their back. You can then make an informed decision about your friendship with that person: whether to help them – or perhaps spend less time with them.

The same holds true for the atmosphere in a work place, or course. Noticing a bad vibe in a job interview can save you making a costly career mistake. On the other hand, spotting a great atmosphere in a company offering less pay could end up being better for your bank balance.

It all comes down to practice: build up a vocabulary to describe the different environments you encounter, and over time you’ll become an expert.

If you’d like to enhance your intuition even more, and perhaps lose a bit of emotional baggage in the process, take a look at the 1-2-1 sessions I offer over the phone in my consultancy practice.

Old stone walls create a micro-climate.

Someone I love faces a difficult medical decision: accept invasive treatment or follow a more holistic route?

This person looks to me for guidance, and I have none to give. My mind has seized up with indecision. What on earth is the best way forward?

I head to La Seigneurie Gardens on the island of Sark for inspiration. Here, old stone walls create a micro-climate which is surely good for humans as well as plants.

There happens to be a maze in the garden, and I decide to use the maze to help me reconnect with my own inner guidance.

At the entrance to the maze, I ask the question in my mind: surgery, or holistic route?

I become aware of my own fears for this person I love. The fears are frankly getting in the way of guidance. So I consciously put them to one side and hand the question over to the Universe. I let go of any attachment to a particular outcome. I know that the person I love will be looked after. I begin to feel calmer.

The first thing that happens is that I get help.

The maze has a small wooden castle right at the centre. Three girls have reached the castle and climbed it. They have a good view of the maze and they shout out instructions to me: “Turn right, turn left; now straight on…

Monsters are usually more scary in our imagination.

“Watch out for the monster around the next bend,” they add. This sounds faintly alarming… until I see the  monster. After that, I reach the centre very quickly.

The second thing that happens is that I feel slightly disappointed. Being told exactly how to reach the centre takes away the sense of adventure. It’s actually fun to take a wrong turn and then discover the way forward.

The third thing that happens is that I decide to explore the maze for myself. Deliberately, I go the wrong way, again and again. And guess what I find out?

There is more than one route through the maze. Actually, there are several – including some natural gaps in the hedges.

The fourth thing that happens is that my head clears and I can see the way forward for the person I love.

The three girls are like the medics: they have found a route through the maze, and they want to help others follow exactly their path. In fact, the girls are so persuasive, when you follow their instructions it can seem that theirs is the only way forward.

But life is simply not like that. There are always more options available and the right one for you is the one that feels right.

The monster can show us the riches of our soul.

And the monster in the maze? Well, in dreams the monster frequently represents some aspect of ourselves that we have walled off, believing it’s not acceptable. But when we face the monster, we discover it’s not nearly as bad as we feared. It just wants to be listened to, and then it will transform.

So the monster is a reminder of the more feared aspects of our own psyche… aspects that can contain the riches of our soul.

As I leave the garden I know exactly the guidance I will give the person I love and, if they choose, they can repeat the same words to their persuasive medics:

“There is more than one route through the maze.”

Elderflowers: fragrant and good for you

We are busy gathering elderflowers for cordial right now. The fragrant flowers are all around us in the hedgerows, and easy to collect. Each head is a frothy summer’s bowl of wellbeing.

Elderflowers have been used for centuries for their health benefits. Elderflower water is mildly astringent and has traditionally been valued for the complexion. Make your own fresh elderflower toner by steeping a head or two of the fresh flowers – remove the pungent stalks first – in half a cup of boiled water, then straining. Apply on cotton wool, or spritz on to your skin. You can use it over a couple of days if kept in the fridge.

Elderflower cordial is an uplifting summer tonic – delicious with sparkling water on a hot summer’s day. If you have a cold or flu or feel run down, a hot drink of it in the evening is comforting and healing. Elderflowers are diaphoretic – they help the body during a fever by inducing sweating.

The recipe: we take around 25 elderflower heads, with the stalks removed, and add them to a big bowl in which 1.3 kg of sugar have been dissolved in 1.8 litres of just boiled water. We add a couples of lemons, sliced, and a couple of oranges (or limes, for a more sharply refreshing summer drink). If we have any around, we add 50 g of citric acid. We mix the whole thing up, cover and leave for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, strain the liquid through a muslin cloth. I like to suspend the tied-up cloth above the bowl overnight, with cloths all around it to protect it. Then, next day, decant  into clean, sterile bottles. The cordial will keep for a month in the fridge, or for up to a year in the freezer.

We also gather the flowers to make herbal tea, which has all the health benefits of cordial, without the sugar. Leave the flower heads to dry. When dry, crumble the flower heads (discard the stems) and place in an airtight container. This will keep for a year, until the next elderflower harvest. To make your tea, put one teaspoon of flowers in a cup of boiled water, brew for three to five minutes, then drink. You can add a slice of lemon or orange and maybe a spoonful of honey… and, like its fresh counterpart, it makes a fine toner for the skin too.

Cardamine pratensis in a Wiltshire meadow.

Flowers make the best subjects to focus on when meditating. Their delicate and symmetrical beauty are great at quietening the mind. And if you want to do some work on the crown chakra – the place at the very top of your head that may, sometimes, tingle when you are inspired or feel connected with the universal – then may I offer you this image of  Cardamine pratensis, also known as Ladies’ Smock, or Cuckoo Flower?

The thing about Ladies Smock is that the flowers are absolutely at the meeting point between lilac and white – the perfect colour to depict, or represent the crown chakra. And yet it avoids the commonest problem when meditating on this colour: being ungrounded.

The commonest crystal for the crown chakra is the amethyst. And yet, I admit I have a problem with amethyst. Though beautiful, it makes me feel ungrounded, too much ‘in my head’… just too purple. In contrast, Ladies’ Smock is very connected with the ground: it’s long graceful stem leads downwards, to good roots. And the vibrant green colour of the stem and leaves, not to mention the neighbouring countryside, is the perfect antidote to too much purple.

The whiteness – there is more white than purple in this example – connects us more to the universal than the individual, so it’s easier to let go of the ego and all those ego insecurities.

Good enough to eat

And, as a bonus, Ladies Smock does also have very practical health and nutritional benefits – once used widely as an alternative to watercress, the flowers and leaves make a tasty addition to salad. The leaves taste amazing, though maybe a tiny bit chewy for modern taste. The flowers have the same mustard and cress flavour, and are easier to eat. The plant is rich in Vitamin C, and also in mustard oil compounds, so they are pretty good for the circulation and chasing phlegmy winter bugs away.

So, Cardamine pratensis is a beautiful subject for meditation, and you can eat it as well… a small amount is its own flower remedy, warming and reassuring.  Ladies Smock likes damp meadows, in temperate zones. I photographed this close by the Dream Botanicals Studio, with a lovely long lens to enable us to focus on the flower, and not a cluttered background  - the essence of meditation.

Cowslips are beautiful tiny medicine chests

If you are lucky enough to have cowslips growing in your garden or nearby, nurture them. These small, quirky relatives of primroses aren’t so common nowadays, and they carry with them the peace and slower pace of a more rural past – and a few related health benefits.

The Dream Botanicals garden is old farmland, and so the cowslips never really left it. But it’s easy enough to sow seeds in any garden and wait for them to appear.

Just looking at them is instantly calming and relaxing. However, when you have an abundance of them, you can do much more than that…

Herbal medicine

Herbalists use cowslip flowers and roots as a nervine, to relax and calm; to help dispel chesty coughs and nervous headaches; and to promote restful sleep. Collect the flowers between March and May, and the roots before flowering time, or in the autumn. Add the flowers to herbal teas; or make a decoction of the dried root: 1 teaspoonful to a cup of water; bring to the boil and simmer gently for five minutes. Then drink three times a day.

Healthy salad

The tiny, sweet tasting flowers are a really pretty addition to salads; you can eat the young leaves too, though we have yet to try them here. In the old days, many households made their own delicious cowslip wine from the flowers, which helped to clear winter coughs and was a popular night cap.

Flower therapy

But the best reason to grow them is probably just to look at them. Each flower is a tiny trumpet of five connected vibrant yellow hearts. Gaze into one, and take three deep breaths, and you will receive a small but potent dose of happiness, I guarantee.

Wild violets by the healing studio.

Vivien, a very good friend of mine, rang me from London to say she wanted to see me. Her cancer had returned, this time in the form of a tumour at the top of her spine, pressing very painfully on nerves between discs T1 and T2. The hospital organised a course of five radiotherapy treatments straight away, and I travelled to London to take her to the fourth treatment.

We talked in the hospital waiting room, and as we did so, I was aware that with Vivien’s words, an energetic release was taking place. I saw, intuitively, that this cancer journey for Vivien was about finding herself.

On the way back to Vivien’s sunny garden flat, she told me about her tiredness. “I feel overwhelmingly tired, much of the time,” she said.

“Are you tired in any particular parts of your body, or tired all over?”

” All over. It’s like a thing all around me – maybe like a cloak, or a cocoon.”

I mentioned that when someone is tired, it often signifies that they don’t want to be doing whatever it is they are doing at that time.

“I’m tired of life,” said Vivien.

Back in the flat, we settled down for an intuitive healing session. Vivien lay down (though clients often do simply sit in a chair for this) and I sat in a chair beside her. “We’ll use your tiredness as our route in,” I said.

I asked Vivien which hand felt most tired. Vivien opted for the left hand. I then asked her to picture herself as a little point of consciousness, and to take that consciousness outside her body to her left hand. “So now, in your mind’s eye, look at your hand from the outside,” I said.  ’Notice what it looks like.”

Vivien then, at my suggestion, entered the hand and travelled up inside her arm and into her shoulder. “Let’s give you a choice,” I said. “Would you like to travel upwards, to the brain, or downwards, to your heart?”

Journey to the heart

Vivien opted to go towards her heart. I asked her to notice what it looked like from the outside, then pointed out a door in the wall of the heart to her and asked her to open the door and enter her heart.

Vivien walked in and found herself in a vast chamber, with dark red walls, and the vague suggestion of pieces of furniture, quite a few of them. She thought they had been there for a long time. They were not used, but they were not dusty either.

Vivien walked towards one, and it came into focus: it was a big sideboard made of good walnut wood. But Vivien didn’t want to stay there. She became aware of some stairs ahead of her, and had a strong urge to go up the stairs. As she proceeded she said that the narrow staircase led nowhere – she couldn’t see a door or anything at the top of the stairs, there was just darkness.

Meeting the mother

So we went up the stairs, and on to a narrow walkway. I felt a strong presence of her mother (who is no longer with us). So I asked Vivien to visualise her mother. She saw her clearly and described her mother seeming to be very anxious – seeing her wringing her hands and fretful.

Vivien could do this easily, but now something curious happened. “I can’t turn around towards her,” said Vivien. “I can hardly move. I’ve become a big, heavy wooden statue.”

I asked her to see what her mother was doing. “She’s very worried,” said Vivien. “She’s extremely worried.”

“Ask your mother to go downstairs to the sideboard and open the cupboard door. There should be something in there for you.”

“There’s nothing in the cupboard.”

“Tell her to open the drawer above the cupboard. She will find a red rose in there. Ask her to bring it to you.”

Vivien’s mother brought the rose back to Vivien and placed it on the wooden folds of Vivien’s wooden clothes, by her neck.

“There is a change,” said Vivien. “The left side of my face has become flesh and blood again.”

The transformation stopped, leaving Vivien still mostly a very large, wooden statue. Vivien’s mother was wringing her hands together, still very worried and anxious.

“Give your mother the red rose now,” I suggested.

Barely able to move her big statue hands, Vivien did so. She passed it behind her, with her left hand, without turning to her mother. Her mother took the rose and cradled it, like a baby. Suddenly, her mother was released from her fretful state. Her whole body language changed as she cocooned ‘her child’. Vivien felt that she was now released energetically from her mother and felt free to move on. There was not the pull of ‘need’ from her mother. Her mother had what she needed and was at rest.

Vivien now very strongly wanted to go on and through a door which was now visible at the end of the walkway.  We walked into another large chamber, much lighter and welcoming. Vivien immediately saw that the wooden cloak dropped from her and she became lithesome and agile, like a sprite – as if dancing around and carefree. She saw her colour change to pale, light blue.

The healing temple

I asked Vivien what she saw in the inner chamber. She replied that she saw a pale, blue heart the same colour as herself. It was alive and fluid: a beautiful heart shape, with full rounded edges. We entered the heart and Vivien realised she was in a temple of healing, one that she had visited many times before. The space was light and airy, and there was a stunning garden there, full of beautiful colourful flowers, and birdsong.

Vivien saw an altar of healing. “I can feel white feathers all over my back and covering the altar,” she said.

Vivien enjoyed being there for a little while. Then I suggested she take one white feather and return down the stairs with it. Vivien did so. She found her mother in the room where she’d left her, still holding the rose tenderly. “It’s time to let your mother go,” I said. So Vivien let her go, and we continued down the stairs, to the first vast chamber.

I showed Vivien that there was a simple, beautifully plain bowl on the top of the sideboard and suggested that she put the white feather in the bowl. Vivien did so. We then went through the heart chamber door, back into the rest of her body.  We made our way back towards the shoulder.

Hearing the message

“Actually,” I said. “Let’s visit T1 and T2 while we’re here.”

So we made our way to the space between the spinal discs, to her tumour.

“What can you see?” I asked.

“It’s hard, and mirror-like, black, almost like obsidian.”

“Give it your love and blessing. Give it your respect. Let it know that you respect its reason for being here and ask it what its message is for you.”

“Oh, there’s a word I don’t like – it’s passing through – something I have to deal with. The word is ‘Pride’.”

“Tell the tumour you hear the message and you respect the message; thank the tumour.”

“Oh, it’s getting smaller. It’s getting smaller all the time. It’s getting smaller and smaller… even while we’re talking… it’s vanishing. It’s gone!”

“That makes sense,” I said. “It’s delivered its message. It doesn’t have to stick around. Job done!”

Vivien was very struck by seeing the tumour vanish.

“Is the space filling with anything?” I asked.

“The divine love and light of God.”

Vivien travelled back down the arm and back to the hand, remarking that the arm and hand generally seemed softer and more relaxed than on it had on the way in. Then she popped out through her hand and into the air again, and her journey was complete.

I thought Vivien might want to rest, but she seemed to be full of a new energy, and I left her looking very sprite-like in her front garden while I drove the hundred miles home – taking a couple of wrong turns along the way. Memo to self: make sure all are grounded before travelling!

Grateful thanks to Vivien, for consenting to have this intuitive healing session recorded, and also for sharing in the writing of the account.

Interestingly, the healing altar that Vivien encountered on her journey was originally misspelt ‘alter’ – which is of course a function of a healing session: to alter illness to wellness.

If you would like to find out more or book a session, visit suzanneaskham.com.

On the in-breath, think: ‘I am’; on the outbreath, think: ‘Sunlight’. Before long, your whole body feels imbued with sunlight: golden, liquid, warming, sustaining.

Afterwards, my day was simply… on track. I felt totally comfortable in my body: my limbs and thoughts were liquid sunlight. Later, from the Studio, the sun was setting divinely in the sky, and I noticed the sun was almost dancing, with a beam of light coming up from the centre. Blissful.

Sky is a challenging word: how can we keep our minds on something vast that is constantly changing? And if we do manage to hitch a ride on the lightwaves, how do we stay calm and centred?

Actually, it’s a great word for meditation. And here are just some of the reasons why…

Looking at the sky with our mind’s eye is like looking at the skyscape of our own minds. Calm our thoughts, and the sky we conjure up in our mind becomes calm too… and yet always changing.

Meditating on sky helps us to understand the constantly changing currents of humanity… and find our own still point within the constant change.

Looking down at land from the sky, everything looks so ordered, and patterned, like a vast, intricate woven carpet. We know that the people way down below are a seething mass of emotions. We know we are too… and yet, from one mile high, it looks as though everything is just the way it is meant to be.

And then we may discover something interesting: what if our own lives are like intricate, hand-woven carpets? From our usual vantage point, on the surface, it feels like we’re struggling, sometimes getting nowhere, sometimes meeting a dead end and having to retrace our steps.

And yet… from the sky’s point of view, our lives look perfect, with colours, themes and motifs all placed exactly right. The U-turns we take and the mistakes we make may actually look like beautiful flowers from the air. The times we ambled along may look like silken mountain streams bringing much needed water to the flowers. And our most wonderful moments may look like bright woven diamonds, a stunning motif that recurs at exactly the right moments to help the pattern to look complete.

For ideas on how to meditate, do take a look at our quick guide.