How to Develop an Intuitive Signal

By Michael Flatley

Blocked at the Start

At age 19, I discovered something unsettling: I had no noticeable access to intuition.

I remember holding a crystal in my hand, hoping to read it energetically like someone had just demonstrated and feeling absolutely nothing. Zero signal. But I believed what I saw in that demonstration. I didnt chalk it up to performance or delusion. I simply decided that I needed practice. Patience. Time.

I was right but I had no idea how much time. It took 10 to 12 years of exploration before I achieved what I now consider minimal competence.

A Slow Initiation

If I hadn’t been introduced to energy medicine in my early twenties, I doubt I could have unblocked. A two-day seminar in Polarity Therapy at age 22 changed my trajectory. A year later, I found myself in a class that introduced me to meridian theory and muscle monitoring. These were like oxygen to a smothered flame.

At 24, I repeated Polarity Therapy with a different instructor. But for years it was a side interest, a hobby until age 29, when I went professional.

My twenties were spent mostly in Fairfield, Iowa, immersed in the Transcendental Meditation community. I earned a BA in Business Administration from MIU and lived there until age 30, practicing TM and hoping that reducing stress might unlock my mind.

You see, I carried a strange paradox: above-average intelligence paired with a persistent, undefined learning disorder with slow processing, restricted bandwidth, and mysterious delays. Add to that supernatural nightmares from as young as age five, and you get a soul driven to figure out what went wrong, and how to fix it.

Learning from the Body

Divination systems. Metaphysical bookstores. Bodywork training. I tried it all. But what helped most was getting out of my head and into physical touch.

Practicing bodywork taught me how to read and interpret energy, not as theory, but as felt sense. Even still, my progress was glacial. In my 30s, I began working with hypnotherapy-derived systems that required intuitive discernment. One instructor even tested my signal quality before accepting me as a student.

Around that time, I also studied vibrational remedies with Australian naturopath Ian White. I lived in six different states before launching Chicago Touch in 2006: Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Nevada.

By late 2024, I knew my signal was finally fully formed. The feedback I receive now often stuns me. But the climb to get here was decades long.

Neutrality Is Key

The secret to accessing intuitive feedback is neutrality. If you have too much emotional investment in the outcome, the signal gets scrambled. That’s not a flaw, that’s human nature. But it means you have to work at developing states of internal quiet, openness, and trust.

For me, something shifted significantly around 2019-2020. I began to notice levels of neutrality I hadn’t had before. It allowed my intuition to stabilize and clarify. At age 66, I can now surprise myself with the sharpness and consistency of the signal I receive.

Yes Feels Lighter

Everyone’s signal works a little differently, but one of the most common intuitive cues is the feeling of lightness. A ‘yes’ can feel like expansion, upward motion, or a warmth around the heart. A ‘no’ often brings contraction, dullness, or energetic drop-off.

Some people use visual indicators, imagining a screen in the middle of the forehead and waiting to see an image arise. That works too. But interpretation is always part of the process.

For me, a ‘yes’ feels like being lifted. A ‘no’ brings a subtle drop in energy.

Nonverbal Rapport & Yin Sensitivity

My years in bodywork gave me deep experience with nonverbal rapport. You can sit next to someone on a flight for hours, never speak, and still develop an energetic connection. Thats rapport and it’s mostly subconscious.

I’ve also observed that women tend to develop intuitive skill more quickly than men. What took me 20 years to grasp often comes in two years for certain women. Yin energy is inherently more sensitive than Yang. And within Yin, Kidney Chi is the most delicate thread. It governs chills, awe, and that electric tingle down your spine when something true hits you.

In moments of awe, our life force often pulls more of our essence into our personal space. Intuition rides in on that wave.

Following the Energy

From a mechanical perspective, intuition often works through the principle of ‘follow the energy.’

Take a storyteller choosing what comes next in a plot. They have 16 options A through P. One of them, lets say H, just feels charged. More alive. They don’t stop to analyze, they just go with H. Thats intuition.

This also explains why altered states matter. Often the next piece of your puzzle is gathered in sleep, in dreams, in trance and it will be uploaded to waking consciousness later.

You can even set this process in motion by going to sleep with a question in mind. Ask for insight. Ask for a new perspective. Then trust that the answer will emerge in your waking hours through image, thought, conversation, or subtle impulse.

Your Subconscious Is Waiting

You can learn to interview your subconscious. You can build trust with your own signal. And as you do, it becomes a tool for:

• Artistic creation
• Problem-solving
• Relationship healing
• Spiritual guidance

None of this is about becoming psychic. Its about becoming coherent and aligned with the parts of you that already know.

It may take time. But it’s worth every step.