The voice of this pioneering physician is carrying intuition and spirituality into mainstream medicine. Her newest book, Intuitive Healing, is a powerful guide for accessing your own deep inner resources.

 

To go in and get the answers internally . . . I think it is the voice of spirit and that if we listen to it, it can work through us to lead us to the truth of our lives.

The Monthly Aspectarian: Judith, could you briefly describe your life path up to the present. What are the highlights, the important things that brought you to where you are?

Judith Orloff: My journey to incorporate intuition started in childhood, and in my first book, Second Sight, I write about my struggles to come to terms with my intuitive abilities and how long it took me. I was raised by two physician parents in Beverly Hills, California, and I had all sorts of premonitions. They were usually negative . . . death, illnesses or earthquakes. My parents never encouraged me to develop my abilities - and in fact, when I was very young, told me never to mention them in my home. So I grew up believing there was something wrong with me. My healing path has been incorporating my intuition into my own humanity as a woman, as a physician, and teaching my patients to do it.

TMA: Didn't you tell me, when we spoke previously, that there were some twenty-five physicians in your family?

JO: Yes, quite a lineage.

TMA: Not exactly a predisposition to believe in such things.

JO: No, not at all, but for me it wasn't a matter of belief, it was a matter of the experiences I had. At a very young age I had a visitation from my grandfather. When he was about to die, he came to me in a dream to let me know. So I had firsthand experience early on that visitations were possible and that it was possible to predict things before they happened, and to see into people and so I had all that firsthand experience.

TMA: But you received no validation for it. Would it be too strong a word to say you were ashamed of it?

JO: I think that's an accurate word. I was ashamed of my abilities and I thought there was something wrong with me.

TMA: How then did things progress through your adolescence?

JO: I went through my adolescence fighting my abilities and running from them - so much so that I got heavily involved with drugs. It was only after I had a near death experience that I began to be put into situations to help me come more to terms with my abilities. As a late teenager and in my early twenties, I began to work with Dr. Thelma Moss at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. I worked as an intuitive respondent and also a researcher. It was while I was working for Thelma that I had a dream that told me to get an M.D. in order to have the credentials to help legitimize the intuitive realm. It was this dream that propelled me through fourteen years of medical training.

TMA: At what point would you say you began to incorporate it into your practice as a doctor?

JO: I began to incorporate it in 1983. I had no intention of bringing intuition and spirituality into it. I had a patient named Christine who came in for depression and I prescribed anti-depressants for her. Yet, as she was improving, there was a point where I had a very clear premonition that she was going to make a suicide attempt . . . but because there were no clinical signs of it, I didn't even bring it up with her. And she overdosed on the anti-depressants and ended up in a coma for three weeks in an ICU. That was my wakeup call: I had to incorporate intuition and spirituality into my medical practice.

TMA: What steps did you take to start bringing them into your practice?

JO: I put a prayer in my heart . . . "Just please show me where to go and what to do." Soon after that I met a man named Steven Schwartz who ran a parapsychology group called the Mobius Society. He hired me as an intuitive respondent and taught me a technique known as remote viewing, which is a form of intuitive reading. As a result of meeting him - he was a mentor of mine - I learned to consciously hone my intuitive skills.

TMA: How did you begin to apply them?

JO: I began doing intuitive readings with patients before they came in to see me, and I would use that information as a help to get an overall history of them. I would correlate that with what they told me.

TMA: With or without their knowledge?

JO: Yes.
[laughter]
It was an experiment to see if my intuitions were accurate - and it turned out that they were. Now my patients know I work that way, automatically tuning into them. That's part of our agreement.

TMA: By using your abilities, I would think you can cut through to issues that might normally take months or even years to come to the surface. How has that worked for you? Are you generally making much faster progress with clients or patients than would normally be expected?

JO: Oh, inevitably. Because I'm able to see on their first visit so much more than what the mind can communicate, but I also use a lot of discernment about when I bring up what I see. It's not as if I see it and I blurt it all out to a person on the first session. Over a period of time, I slowly and gracefully integrate the intuitions that I've been given into the clinical work.

TMA: Especially since you see and know things they may not even be aware of themselves.

JO: Yes, or that they don't remember.

TMA: So then it would be a process of guiding them back to that place of remembrance.

JO: That's exactly it. Well put.

TMA: Now you've become so busy that you probably can see only a handful of people personally.

JO: Yes, I have a small private practice, about fifteen hours a week. I have about 5,000 people on a waiting list.
[laughter]
TMA: Some of them are going to wait a long time.

Your work has become more involved in training people to do what you do. I know that the society at large is much more open to these things than they used to be, but I think the medical community would be kind of a tough nut to crack, isn't it?

JO: Yes it is, but slow but sure progress is being made. I supervise a psychiatric resident at UCLA, an assistant clinical professor, and I teach her to do what I do in terms of bringing intuition into patient care. They're looking at this as a pilot program; if it goes well, I'll get more psychiatric residents.

TMA: So that's in a formal setting that you're able to do it. Less formally, what have you been able to do?

JO: I give workshops for healthcare professionals on how to integrate intuition into patient care as part of the New Age Journal Body and Soul Conferences and various alternative health conferences around the country.

TMA: In May, you're speaking before the American Psychiatric Association.

JO: That's right. I'm going to be speaking to other psychiatrists on the role of intuition and patient care.

TMA: What will you be telling them?

JO: I'll be telling them that intuition is a powerful therapeutic tool, and that if we listen to our intuition, that still, small voice inside will be able to help our patients so much more than if we just linearly diagnose them.

TMA: Of course, we know that if you listen to the still, small voice, you can help yourself do almost anything better in life.

JO: Oh yes, absolutely.

TMA: What ways are you teaching people to access this for themselves?

JO: I'm teaching them, using the five steps in my new book, Intuitive Healing. I teach them to notice their beliefs, be in their body, sense the subtle energies, ask for inner guidance and listen to dreams. I go through those five steps in my training seminars.

TMA: Can you take us on a brief trip through those five steps?

JO: First, Notice your beliefs. The most powerful one is, Love is the most potent healing force in the universe. And two, we need to make a commitment not to lead or fear through the mind. And three, that healing may mean wellness, it may mean illness or it may mean death . . . a very wide scope of healings. Those are three beliefs to meditate on in intuitive healing. I bring them through those beliefs and I listen to what their resistances are or where they agree and help them find a philosophical belief system of their own.

TMA: That third point is something that I realized some time ago. Healing does not always mean surviving. A successful death can be more important than living through something.

JO: That's right. When the time comes, you help somebody over, and that is the healing. Part of what I've done in Intuitive Healing, in chapter five, is that I take people through a death meditation where I ask them to invite death in so they can get a firsthand experience with it so that their fear can be alleviated. Until we confront our fear of death, we can never live life fully. We need to know that our spirit lives on. This intuitive knowing of death that I present in the book will help people to get over their fear and sense the firsthand experience of what death is -- and be quite relieved by it.

TMA: People tend to fear almost all transitions because to an extent, they all represent death.

JO: That's very true.

TMA: Step two?

JO: Step two is Be in your body. That means not to just live from the neck up. It means listening to your body's intuitions which will tell you about people. Your body will tell you if you like somebody or not. Your body will tell you if it's feeling off before many significant illnesses show up, and if you listen to the signs of the body early on, you can ward off a certain number of illnesses. In terms of intuitive sensing, the body gives you a certain integrity, it gives you a baseline. Being in the body means more than just surfaces; it means getting to know the insides of the body, the anatomy, and to re-program any self loathing of the body we have toward secretions - semen, menstrual blood, urine, tears. With any secretions that most people loathe, we need to re-program that so that we can develop a love of the body. A love of the body is the underpinning of intuitive healing.

TMA: People do seem, by and large, to be at odds with their body.

JO: Yes, it's true. Step three is Sense your subtle energies. This refers to the fact that we're made up of these flesh and blood bodies, but we're also made up of energy fields that penetrate the physical body and extend many feet beyond it. These energy fields can be sensed in ourselves and in others and can help us detect subtle changes in the body before major symptoms occur. In the book, I take people through a guide on how to recognize the subtle energetic changes in our body so they can begin to realize illness before it manifests in more significant terms.

Another thing subtle energies can teach us is how to read other people. For instance, a subject people usually can relate to is energy vampires. There are people who affect your drive, your energy - and you can feel them. You can stand next to one of these people and all of a sudden your energy bottoms out or your feel nauseous, you have a headache . . . and this is a good way to understand the impact subtle energies can have. In the book I go through centering and protection techniques to describe how to deal with people whose energy is negative for you.

TMA: Those centering and protection techniques are valuable whether or not somebody is encountering a vampiric personality.

JO: Exactly. It's valuable for everyday life.

TMA: Step four?

JO: Step four is Ask for inner guidance. This is the ability to be quiet inside using breathing to be able to talk to that still, small voice inside that will give you guidance. It's a technique of learning how to ask for guidance, then waiting and listening for any intuitive images or impressions that might come to you.

TMA: If people can just learn to silence the mind even for a second, they find themselves.

JO: That's right, that's exactly it.

TMA: I really think that's the first great initiation.

JO: Yes, I do too. I think that is the most important thing to find yourself, and that's what intuition is. When you're asking for inner guidance, who are you asking? You're asking your deepest self, your highest self. The intuitive training is about finding the self.

TMA: When you're in true silence of the mind, you find that you're still there.

JO: Very much so. That's another realization that's so important. Asking for inner guidance is a technique for going inward over and over again [until you get it], asking whatever question is meaningful to you in your life. To go in and get the answers internally. I consider this inner voice as being intimately connected to spirituality. I think it is the voice of spirit and that if we listen to it, it can work through us to lead us, really, to the truth of our lives.

TMA: People ask how they can tell whether what they hear is the inner voice or their own mind.

JO: The inner voice either comes through with neutrality, which is a giveaway, or it comes through with compassion, or you get a sense, sometimes, that you're a witness watching a scene unfold. There's a sense of detachment from it. Those are criteria to really affirm and pay attention to.

TMA: The inner voice is not the one that says, "Dummy, you shouldn't have done that." That's the false personality

JO: Yes, exactly.

TMA: And step five?

JO: Step five is Listen to your dreams. Dreaming is a very powerful connector to intuition because it bypasses the ego and the mind. Dreams are my most intimate connection to intuition. What I advise people to do is to get a dream journal, keep it by their bed and keep a pen there. Then, before you go to sleep at night, ask a question, whatever is on your mind or in your heart: How can I be a better person? How can I get physically well? How can I relieve my depression? How can I make our relationship better? Whatever your question is, you ask it. Then you go to sleep. The next morning, you don't wake up too quickly, you stay in bed five minutes and luxuriate between the sleep and waking realms. During that time, you write down any images or impressions that come to you that are related to your question.

TMA: I had to laugh at the part in Intuitive Healing where you say that sixteen hours a day is all you're willing to give to the waking world.

JO: That's my commitment! Being here on earth that long, and then I have to dream. I have to get into the world of symbols and images and let my body go and fly and not have to move my mouth to talk to people. To telepathically communicate as most communication is in dreams.

TMA: I think that by and large, humanity has something very important backwards. People tend to have a sense that we're from here, in the waking world, and we can go there. When the fact is, we're from there and we come here.

JO: I think the aboriginals would agree with you on that. They revere dreamtime higher than the waking reality.

TMA: Is there anything you'd like to talk about that we haven't so far?

JO: Just that everybody can develop their intuition even if you've never done it before. If people go though the five steps that I suggest, I think it will be an awakener for them.

TMA: Anybody can do it, although people tend to think that only special people can be psychics.

JO: But that's not true.

TMA: What's cutting edge for you right now?

JO: I think maybe a priority for me is I'm very much in love with someone now that's bringing intuition and opening up my heart into the realm of relationship.

TMA: Where could be more important than to use it in relationship.

JO: That's right.

TMA: Have you learned anything that you want to share out of your next book?

JO: My next book?

TMA: It sounds like what we're talking about now is going to be your next book.

JO: You're actually pretty accurate on that. This man and I share a love of dreams and what we're able to do is communicate in the dream realm. Sometimes we ask for dreams in which we meet. We're beginning to explore that in terms of how we can travel together there. It's very intimate and it's very exciting.

TMA: You've successfully linked up in dreams and been aware of it?

JO: Yes.

TMA: That's very interesting.

JO: I talk about that in Intuitive Healing in the Sexuality section. It's about how you can meet up with someone, but you have to be very close with them and it has to be an intimate relationship to be able to meet in dreams. You have to slowly but surely work on it where you can both intend to meet in a dream and then you do. And then you can intend to be more specific. It takes a little while to be able to get to that point . . . but you both have to want to.

TMA: Judith, do you have a closing statement of essence?

JO: My hope is to teach people to believe in themselves and to believe in that higher self inside that is directly connected to spirit - and make that a viable part of their everyday existence.

Dr. Judith Orloff's work as in intuitive includes more than a decade of participation in intuitive research projects. Here work has been featured in Life, Elle, McCall's, New Woman and Good Housekeeping, and on CNN, PBS, A&E, and Lifetime. She is an international lecturer on the topic of spirituality and intuition, speaking at venues ranging from prisons to medical schools, health conferences and educational institutions. In addition to Dr. Orloff's 14 years of private practice in Los Angeles, she serves on the clinical staff at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She is a participating member of the American Psychiatric Association and the Southern California Psychiatric Society and is the author of Dr. Judith Orloff's Guide to Intuitive Healing and Second Sight.

For a schedule of lectures and workshops, connect with drjudithorloff.com, or call 800/741-7353. Dr. Orloff is giving a workshop May 12 through 14 at the Apollo Institute in Lexox, Massachusetts on The Power of Your Intuition to Heal.

---

Next Article

Return to This Month's Index

Go to Homepage