✶Explainer
Instinct vs intuition: why they're not the same thing
Swart distinguishes intuition, wisdom built from life-long pattern recognition stored deep in the limbic system, from instinct, a primal survival shortcut geared toward loss avoidance. Instinct will work harder to keep you safe than to let you take a healthy risk, so it can steer you wrong. That's why she insists intuition should always be run alongside logic and, ideally, a trusted friend's perspective.
- Intuition = judgment from patterns picked up over a lifetime of experience
- Instinct = primal survival shortcut with a loss-avoidance bias
- Instinct works harder to prevent loss than to allow healthy risk
- Run intuition alongside logic and a trusted outside perspective
“intuition is wisdom and the ability to use your judgment that's based on patterns that you've picked up through life lessons”
“it'll work much harder to keep you safe from losing something than it will to allow you to take a healthy risk to get a…”
#intuition#instinct#neuroscience#decision-making
✶Explainer
The serotonin hypothesis: how wisdom is stored in the body
Up to 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut and can't cross the blood-brain barrier, so mood is one of its minor functions. Swart explains serotonin's name comes from serum and tone, its real job is constricting and dilating vessels supplying tissues. Just as trauma gets laid down in the body's fascia, she argues hidden intuitive wisdom can be stored physically too, showing up as visceral reactions like goosebumps or shivers.
- Up to 95% of serotonin is made in the gut, not the brain
- Serotonin acts on vessels and tissues, not just mood
- Trauma is stored in the body's fascia via stress-driven constriction
- Intuitive wisdom may be stored bodily the same way trauma is
- Visceral cues (goosebumps, chills) may signal intuitive resonance
“up to 95% of serotonin is produced in the gut or at least outside of the central nervous system. And that serotonin can't cross the…”
#serotonin#gut#trauma#embodiment
✶Explainer
Why chronic stress puts your brain in 'low power mode'
Swart traces brain fog and poor decisions to inflammation, driven by the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol causes widespread inflammation and dehydration, and even mild dehydration degrades decision-making. Under high cortisol the brain stops sending blood to higher functions like cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation, diverting it to survival, what she calls low power mode, which shuts down intuition.
- Inflammation is the root of brain fog and clouded thinking
- Cortisol drives inflammation and dehydration in the brain-body system
- Even small dehydration harms decision-making; thirst arrives too late
- High cortisol diverts blood from higher functions to survival mode
- Cortisol and oxytocin sit on a seesaw, one rises as the other falls
“if we've got high levels of cortisol, then the brain actually stops sending blood flow to those higher functions and keeps it for survival mode.…”
#cortisol#stress#brain-fog#inflammation
✶Explainer
Optimizing your gut is how you optimize your brain
Because intuition runs on the brain-gut-microbiome axis, Swart says the best way to reach a brain you can't access directly is through the gut, via diet, hydration, fiber, and pre/probiotics. Chronic stress sabotages this by driving sugar and caffeine cravings, dehydration, and magnesium depletion so severe you may need to supplement. A twitchy eyelid, she notes, is a common sign of magnesium deficiency.
- Intuition depends on the brain-gut-microbiome connection
- Reach the brain indirectly through diet, water, fiber, and probiotics
- Stress drives sugar/caffeine cravings and depletes magnesium
- One round of antibiotics can badly hit the gut microbiome
- A twitchy eyelid can signal magnesium deficiency
“you can't access your brain directly... a good way to try to optimize your brain is through your gut, and that's through what you eat,…”
#gut-health#microbiome#magnesium#nutrition
✶Explainer
Your partner's smell, immune systems, and mate selection
Swart shares that people who live and share bodily fluids influence each other's immunity, the stronger immune system donates cells to the weaker. A partner's smell reflects their immune profile via the major histocompatibility complex, and we non-consciously prefer the scent of someone with a different immune system because children benefit from a 'bilingual' immune system. She also flags that H. pylori can be passed between partners, so both must be treated at once to avoid reinfection.
- Cohabiting partners' immune systems influence each other
- Body smell signals immune profile via the MHC
- We non-consciously prefer scents indicating a different immune system
- Children benefit from two very different ('bilingual') immune systems
- H. pylori spreads between partners; treat both simultaneously
“the way that they smell is a reflection of their immune system through something called the major histocompatibility complex... children benefit from having what's called…”
#immune-system#smell#mhc#relationships
✶Explainer
Why talking therapy has limits and the body must be involved
Swart explains that trauma shuts down the brain's Broca's area, which articulates speech, so there's a ceiling on how much talking therapy and journaling (both thinking-based) can achieve. Research shows body-based modalities, yoga, dance, craniosacral therapy, certain massage, can release trauma held in the body rather than in the brain's PTSD circuits. Even absent trauma, getting the body involved in gratitude and journaling work matters.
- Trauma shuts down Broca's area, limiting talking therapy
- Journaling and talking are both thinking-based and capped
- Yoga, dance, craniosacral therapy and massage release bodily trauma
- Trauma can live in the body, not just PTSD brain circuits
- Embodiment matters even without trauma
“trauma shuts down the Broca's area of the brain, which is the part that articulates speech... there is a limit to the effectiveness of talking…”
#trauma#embodiment#therapy#ptsd