The answers the coaches provided are not to be perceived as scientific proof, although they are an indication of the understanding and practice of how coaches define their intuition, connect with it and use it to strengthen the coaching process.
As the survey included a case study question, the identities of the participants are kept secret to protect their coach-client confidentiality. The coaches and clients are always referred to in masculine. That is only for grammatical reasons and has nothing to do with the actual gender of the coaches and clients in question.
How Coaches Define their Intuition
When asked to define their intuition, three of the coaches talked about it being a gut feeling and other three talked about it being a feeling that gives direction. Intuition as inner knowing and as universal wisdom, was also mentioned along with intuition as an inner voice and as inner guidance.
One of the coaches said that intuition is not necessarily opposed to a rationalized behavior but it is almost some kind of ‘thinking in suspension’. It is some kind of an instinct at the level of the emotional and spiritual.
Another coach described intuition as direct perception of truth independent of any reasoning process.
Roger Wolcott Sperry, a neurobiologist that conducted research on the connection between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain, concluded that intuition is a right-brain activity, while factual and mathematical analysis is a left-brain activity. In light of that, it is interesting that five of the coaches placed their intuition in their heart place or close to the heart. Three of them placed it in the solar plexus region (gut). Four coaches placed their intuition in their mind or their subconscious mind. Four of them placed their intuition in more than one place, including the “third eye”, and one said it is placed “within [his] total being”.