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More Than We See is a grounded, practical conversation about intuition as a human sense and capacity.
Hosted by Natalie of Immersive Spirit, this podcast blends lived experience, nervous-system–informed insight, and real-world tools to help people better understand how perception, sensitivity, and intuition are experienced—and how to work with them in everyday life across kids, teens, families, and adults.
Episodes explore the many ways intuitive awareness is felt and understood—from curiosity and excitement, to subtle noticing, to moments that challenge what we thought we knew. Along the way, conversations offer practical perspectives, simple tools, and steady ways of relating to intuition so it supports daily life rather than overwhelms it. This is a place to land for people who are curious, overwhelmed, skeptical, sensitive, living intuitively, or simply paying attention in a new way.
No hype. No dramatizing. Just clear conversation, lived insight, and practical ways of working with what we sense—alongside the quiet truth that there is more than we see, and that understanding it can make life feel steadier, clearer, and more alive.
For more from Immersive Spirit, subscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@ImmersiveSpirit
We’re dedicated to empowering you, helping grow, and authentically connect with your highest self, helping you to Live Your Soul! Find out more at ImmersiveSpirit.com
There's a moment Most people can describe if you ask them to think back carefully enough. Meeting they walked into and something in their stomach dropped. Before anyone even said a word to him. A person they met for the first time. And something in their chest tightened before they had a single reason to distrust them.
A phone call they answered and their body went still…before they even heard what was coming. The body moved first and the mind caught up later. Most of us were taught to do that in the reverse order Get the information assess the situation, think it through, then decide how you feel about it. But the body doesn't work that way. And it never has.
Today we're talking about what's actually happening when your body reacts before your mind has a reason, why it happens, why we override it and what it costs us when we do. Welcome to more than we see I'm Natalie. And I'm gonna tell you about two different moments because I think together they kind of show how wide the range of this actually is. The first one is small…
and is common I walked into a meeting once, regular work meeting, nothing on the calendar would have suggested anything that was unusual. And the moment I stepped through the door a shift happened in my body. Nothing, like, super dramatic. Just kind of a change in the era kind of stillness that didn't feel quite right. And people were already seated and they were talking but something…was off about it like too careful, too surface level conversations, and my body registered it before I could name it.
So before I sat down, all of that's happening And before anyone said anything directly to me. It seemed something had happened before I got there or something was about to I just wasn't sure which. I just knew the room. And I was right There had been a conversation before I arrived. And it had left a lot of residue in the space.
The meeting was tense in that particular way, where everyone is pretending it isn't, you know what I'm talking about. And I didn't need anybody to tell me that My body had already told me. The moment I walked in. That's the small version the everyday version The one that happens more than we realize, and that we tend to dismiss as nothing. The second moment was a bit higher state.
I'm part of a panel of folks who do interviews. And we had an open position on the team We had been looking for a file and I'll tell you what the pressure was real to get that seat filled. We interviewed several people, and then this one candidate came in on paper…
strong. The experience is there the answers and the view were smooth like so smooth. My colleagues liked him. The logical case for making the offer was solid. And yet…
somewhere in that interview, my stomach dropped. Or you know I had that uneasy, queasy type of feeling. Not show stopping not like an alarm bell going off. Just a quiet kind of sinking feeling…that I couldn't point to or quite explained. Nothing you said was wrong.
Nothing I could put in a document or bring to a debrief. Just my body, doing something my mind hadn't caught up to yet And I overrode it…because…we needed somebody. Because the resume that he had submitted checked out. And everyone else seemed to be on board. And because I couldn't specify a no based on a feeling that I couldn't name.
We made the offer He accepted, and it did not go well. He caused real trouble, the kind that takes months to untangle the kind that affects other people on the team. The kind that in retrospect…
I had been warned about before he ever started. My own body in that interview zoom. And I'm not telling you is to be hard on myself I made a reasonable decision with the information that I had. But one piece of information I had was a sinking feeling in my gut. That I chose not to count.
Those are two moments. Different stakes. Same thing happened. The body knowing first. Before the mind have that language or the identity for it or a place to land it.
Before there was anything to point to. The difference was only what I did with it…So what is actually going on when the body reacts before the mind does? And there is a useful scientific frame here. And I wanna offer it not because science necessarily validates in tuition. But because sometimes having language for something makes it easier, to stop dismissing it.
Your nervous system is processing information at a rate your conscious mind cannot match. Neuroscientist…Antonio de Masio…spent years researching what he called somatic markers. Bodily signals that are tied to past experience. And what he found was striking. People who had lost the ability to feel those body signals through brain injury or neurological damage also lost the ability to make good decisions.
Now because they got less intelligent, their reasoning was intact The logic was fine. But they have lost access to data…
That data that their bodies had been storing for years. Data that normally arrives as a feeling as a signal as a sensation, before the thought. Your body is absolutely keeping a record. Every interaction, every outcome every time something felt off and turned out to be off. Every time something felt right, improved to be right.
Your nervous system? Has logged it It's got a scorecard. And when something similar shows up, it flags it So before your brain has finished processing it before you have the words for it, before there is a reason that sinking feeling…isn't random. It's pattern recognition. It's your entire…lived experience…speaking…in the only language available for it.
Sensation…
Now I wanna be careful here because the body isn't always right. Sometimes what we feel…Like a warning is actually an old fear. Or a pattern from a different situation, a different person a different time a different view, being applied to something new that doesn't quite fit. Trauma does this. Anxiety does this.
If you grew up around unpredictability, your nervous system learned to flag everything as a potential threat. That's not intuition. That's a wound doing its job. So I'm not saying trust your gut blindly. I'm saying don't dismiss it automatically…because there is a difference between a body signal that comes from…fear of something new, and a body signal that comes from recognition of something familiar.
Fear tends to be broad and diffuse. It floods the whole system It's loud and anxious and it wants you to run. Recognition, tends to be a little more specific. It low locates itself somewhere Like the stomach the chest, maybe even the back of the neck. And it has a a quality of quiet clarity to it not panic not dread Just that study is something's here Pay attention…
That's the signal we're learning to read…
In a professional context, especially…
Your override is almost automatic. We are rewarded for being rational. And for having reasons for being able to defend our decisions. Right? With data and evidence and logic.
A gut feeling doesn't really go in the slide deck It doesn't hold up in a debrief. If someone asks you why you passed on a candidate, And you say, well you know I just had a bad feeling. You will get a very specific kind of look and may be uninvited from that interview team. So we learn to translate. We look for the rational explanation…that matches what our body is already telling us.
And if we can't find one we assume the body is wrong. But here's what's actually happening in that gap. The body often has information that the rational mind just hasn't yet assembled. It's not that the feeling is irrational. It's that the reasoning hasn't caught up yet.
Your nervous system process something a micro expression, a shift in tone, an inconsistency…too small to consciously register. And it sent you the summary…
before your mind it had finished reading the entire file. That's not a malfunction. That's efficiency, baby. And in the time it takes the mind to catch up, or in the cases where you override it before it gets the chance. Decisions get made.
Offers go out contracts get signed. And sometimes you spend months cleaning up something in your body, tried to flag to you in a twenty minute interview…
I think a lot of people listening to this have a version of this story. Totally totally get it A moment where…you knew physically or specifically…quietly and chose the logical argument instead. Because the larger logical argument…has backup. Because the feeling doesn't. And sometimes that works out fine and sometimes it doesn't.
The question isn't whether you should feel things The question is whether you're willing to count them as information that your body's sharing with you. So here is something practical. The next time you're heading into a situation that matters, and lots of life matters. But in your meeting a conversation, a decision, before you start thinking about it take ten seconds and check-in with your body. Not daring Not doing Do this before.
Notice what's present. Not what you think about the situation Just notice what's present. What your body is actually doing right now. Is there a tightness anywhere? Is there a sense of ease or resistance…
Something in your stomach your chest your shoulders…
You don't have to interpret anything. You're just establishing…a baseline, um before. And then after. After the meeting, the conversation, the decision check-in again. Does anything shift…Did your body settle Did it contract?
Did something that maybe had felt open…start to feel closed? Something that felt uncertain, get some clarity. That's the delta. The difference between the before and after…is your data. It won't always be loud and it won't always be immediately clear But over time, if you keep checking in you start to build a picture of what your body is actually tracking.
And if you wanna take it one step further, you know for us I'm gonna tell you I write it down just a word or two My body felt open tight on certain clear off not to analyze it immediately just to have a record. Because what you're doing is learning the language that your body speaks. Unlike any language, the more you practice in reading it, the more fluent you're gonna become. And there will be times you check-in and feel nothing particularly notable. That is useful too.
Neutral is data, ease is data. The absence of signal tells you something just as much as the presence of it. You don't have to trust it completely on day one. You just have to stop ignoring it completely. That's where it starts.
So I wanna be honest about something, even knowing what I know. You have worked with this for years. I still override it sometimes. The pressure of a deadline, the pressure of the team, the desire to make something work. The difficulty of saying no when everyone around you is saying yes.
That doesn't go away. But what changes, what has changed for me anyway, is that I notice when I'm doing it. I feel the signal, and I know in that moment that I'm choosing to override it…
That's different from not hearing it at all Right? Because when you can feel yourself overriding it when you're conscious of the choice, You can at least do it with your eyes wide open. You can build checkpoints You can stay alert to early signs…
You can be less surprised when things play out the way your body said they would. And sometimes, you override it and you're wrong to worry because you know everything works out fine The hire is great. The meeting was fine The decision was the write one the contract read perfectly everything is coming up you…
And you add that to the record too. Because this isn't about the body being infallible. It's about giving it a seat at the table. Your rational mind is good at a lot of things analysis planning logic, language, building a case defending a position. Your body is good at other things.
Speed subtly, pattern recognition. Picking up what hasn't yet assembled itself into an argument. And you do need both. The goal isn't to throw out your logic Please, yeah don't do that, and to just you know go on your feelings. Legal is to stop treating one half of your intelligence…like it doesn't exist at all.
When you walked into the room something shifted that was real. When your stomach dropped in that interview…
my examples, it was real. When you chest tightened around a certain person and you couldn't say why, That was real. The body was paying attention. It is doing its job The question is just whether you're ready to let it be a part of the conversation…
At this episode brought up a memory a time that your body flagged something before you had a reason, I want you to sit with that. Not to replay it or relitigate it, just to acknowledge it, your body was paying attention It still is. And notice what it's doing right now. And I'll see you next time on more than we see