Your Gut Feeling Is Real

Your "gut feeling" is a very real thing.

You’ve felt it before—the uneasy stomach before a difficult call, or the small lift in your chest when something feels right.

The mind might still be weighing pros and cons, but the body has already spoken.

These moments often get called “intuition,” as if they belong to another realm.

In truth, they’re part of how your nervous system keeps you alive.

The body is a prediction machine, always scanning for patterns and adjusting before thought arrives.

That feeling in your gut is data.

How the Body Predicts Before the Mind

Every moment, your organs send signals upward through the vagus nerve—about heartbeat, digestion, temperature, breath rhythm.

These signals arrive in the insula, a small region of the brain that integrates internal sensation. The insula combines that sensory information with memory to predict what might happen next (Craig, 2020).

When a situation feels familiar, the brain doesn’t wait for logic.

It reads the body’s signals and generates a fast summary: safe, uncertain, or dangerous.

This is called interoceptive prediction.

If your body recognizes calm cues—steady breath, slow heart, open posture—it predicts safety. You feel confidence or ease.

If it detects tight muscles and shallow breathing, it predicts threat, and you feel anxiety or hesitation (Seth & Tsakiris, 2021).

Your “gut feeling” is a conversation between these two systems.

The vagus nerve reports.

The insula interprets.

The conscious mind gets the message last.

You can experience this process in real time.

Think of a choice you’re considering. Notice what happens first in your body—not your thoughts.

Often, you’ll feel a tightening or a small release. That’s your nervous system offering its opinion.

The Interoceptive Check-In

Try this whenever you need clarity or reassurance.

1. Sit quietly and place a hand over your abdomen.

2. Take one slow breath in through your nose.

3. Exhale gently through your mouth and pause.

4. Ask yourself the question that’s on your mind.

5. Notice the first physical response—tightness, warmth, expansion, or stillness.

As you attend to sensation, the insula’s predictive loop becomes conscious.

The breath slows, vagal tone increases, and your body’s signals grow clearer.

You’ll often find that tension accompanies thoughts of pressure or obligation, while expansion arrives with genuine alignment.

The goal isn’t to “trust your gut” blindly.

It’s to recognize when your body and mind agree—and when they don’t.

Letting the Body Speak First

Learning to read the body’s signals is not mystical work; it’s a form of listening.

The more often you check in, the more accurate your predictions become.

The nervous system learns to match present reality instead of old fears.

When you sense confusion, pause long enough to breathe and feel what your body is already telling you.

The mind will catch up.

Sometimes, peace is not the absence of doubt but the moment when your body and thoughts finally say the same thing.

Be Well, 

Jim Donovan.

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References 

Craig, A. D. (2020). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 21(9), 536–549.
Seth, A. K., & Tsakiris, M. (2021). Being a beast machine: The somatic basis of selfhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25(11), 937–950.
Porges, S. W. (2021). Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 15, 710.
Critchley, H. D., & Garfinkel, S. N. (2019). The influence of physiological signals on cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(6), 422–444.