Part II Interview with Dr. Judith Orloff

When and how did you get involved with medicine? While working in Thelma’s lab I had an amazingly specific dream which announced, “You’re going to become an MD, a psychiatrist, to help legitimize intuition in medicine.” The last thing I envisioned doing was medicine. But because I was beginning to trust my intuition, I enrolled in a junior college just to see how it would go. So one course became two, became fourteen years of medical training--USC medical school and a UCLA psychiatric internship and residency.

Did you use your intuition doing your medical training? The irony was that during my medical training, I strayed far from the intuitive world again. Traditional psychiatry equates visions with psychosis. Working in the UCLA emergency room, I’d keep seeing psychotics who were wheeled in screaming, strapped to gurneys, accompanied by cops with billy clubs. These patients professed to hear God and to be able predict things. They also felt their food was poisoned, and that the FBI was on their tail. No one tried to sort through this mishmash of claims. Typically, patients would shoot up with Thorazine, hospitalized on lock-down inpatient units until their “symptoms” subsided. Seeing this so many times I doubted whether it was safe or appropriate to integrate my intuitions in medicine.

So what made you change your mind? In my private practice, I had a patient on antidepressants. I had an intuitive thought that she was going to make a suicide attempt. Because she was doing so well--nothing supported my hunch--I dismissed it. Within a week, she overdosed on the antidepressants I’d prescribed and ended up in a coma for nearly a month. (Had she not survived I would’ve been devastated.) The hardest part, though, was that I thought I’d harmed her by not utilizing a vital piece of intuitive information. This was intolerable for me. From then on, I knew, as a responsible physician, I had to integrate my intuition into my work.

Any words of wisdom for the reader? These days, no matter what I’m going through, especially when my heart is torn in a million pieces my intuition has sustained me. I hope that my journey in my book “Second Sight” can help you. One thing I’m certain of: if you follow your intuitive voice, you can’t go wrong. Stay true to it. Intuition is about empowerment, not having to conform to someone else’s notion of who you should be. It’s about being true to yourself, and all the goodness that comes from that.

Second Sight BookTour

March 21, 2009 Talk 10AM,
Workshop and Book Signing 12:30-2:30PM
The Ventura Center for Spiritual Living
Ventura, California (near Los Angeles)
To enroll: www.venturachurch.com or 805-643-1933

March 25, 2010 7PM Talk and Book Signing
Second Sight Book Tour
Mystic Journey Bookstore
1319 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, California
www.mysticjourneybookstore.com/ or 310-399-7070

Interview with Intuitive Expert and Psychiatrist-Dr. Judith Orloff

You probably have heard a number of times the saying, “If you have your health, you have your wealth.” Of course, we know that’s true. You can’t live a quality life, if you are spending most of your time in doctor’s offices, hospitals, or a large portion of your money is going toward medical bills and medication. Having been one of those people who practically lived in hospitals, not for myself, but for my disabled son, I know from experience what it means to seek and practice alternative healing methods and combine them with traditional practices. I am fortunate to have as a guest, Dr. Judith Orloff MD, a psychiatrist and intuition expert. She is the author of the new book Second Sight (Three River Press 2010) and Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life (Harmony Books, 2009) Her other bestsellers are Positive Energy, Intuitive Healing, and Second Sight. Dr. Orloff synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting edge knowledge of intuition, energy and spirituality. She passionately believes that the future of medicine involves integrating all this wisdom to achieve emotional freedom and total wellness. For more information visit www.drjudithorloff.com

What do you do as a medical intuitive? With patients and in workshops, I listen with my intellect and my intuition, a potent inner wisdom that goes beyond the literal. I experience it as a flash of insight, a gut feeling, a hunch, a dream. By blending intuition with orthodox medical knowledge I can offer my patients and workshop participants the best of both worlds.

When did you first know that you had this intuitive gift? I grew up in Beverly Hills the only daughter of two-physician parents with twenty-five physicians in my family. From age nine, I had dreams and intuitions that would come true. I could predict illness, earthquakes, even the suicide of one of my parent’s friends.

How did your parents react to your gift? This confused and alarmed me, as it did my parents who were entrenched in the hard-core rational world of science. At first they tried to write my intuitions off as coincidence. Finally, though, after I dreamed my mother’s mentor would lose a political election--which to my horror, came true--she took me aside and told me, “Never mention another dream or intuition in our house again!” I’ll never forget the look in my dear mother’s exasperated, frightened eyes, nothing I ever wanted to see again. So from that day on, I kept my intuitions to myself. I grew up ashamed of my abilities, sure there was something wrong with me.

In Second Sight you talk about a pivotal point in your young life, could you tell the reader what happened? In the sixties I got heavily involved with drugs in an attempt to block my intuitions out—not something I’m recommending to you! Following a nearly fatal car accident at age sixteen when I tumbled over a treacherous 1500 foot cliff in Malibu Canyon, my parents forced me to see a psychiatrist. This man was the first person who ever “saw” me--not who he wanted me to be, but who I was. He taught me to begin to value the gift of intuition, and referred me to Dr. Thelma Moss, an intuition researcher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was to become my mentor and guide to developing my intuitive side.

Part II of Dr. Orloff's interview will be posted on 3/10/10.
March 10, 2010 7PM talk and Book signing

Second Sight Book Tour
Borders Books
1360 Westwood Blvd
West Los Angeles, CA
310-474-3444

March 12, 2010 7-9PM Talk and Book signing
Second Sight Book Tour
Awakening Second Sight
Seaside Center for Spiritual Living
Encinitis, CA (near San Diego)
http://www.seasidecenter.com/ <http://www.seasidecenter.com/>

Are you Intuitive?

Are you intuitive? I’m asking that question, but I already know the answer. Of course, you are. You’re born with the ability to sense, see, smell, hear and intuit information beyond this physical reality. It is the best kept secret in the world. Just like we only use a very small percentage of the brain, the same goes for the intuitive faculty. Imagine what this world would be like, if we used our intuition to diagnose our own health problems and healed them, made career choices based on our intuition and not money, selected our mates according to our sense of knowing the person on a soul level, and knew if someone was telling the truth or distorting facts. How powerful is that? Next week’s blog will feature, Dr. Judith Orloff, M.D., a psychiatrist and intuition expert. She is the author of the new book, Second Sight: An Intuitive Psychiatrist Tells Her Extraordinary Story and Shows You How to Tap Your Own Inner Wisdom (Paperback-Three River Press edition). You won’t want to miss this interview as Dr. Orloff talks about her unique journey from being an intuitive child to become a renowned psychiatrist who came out of the “intuitive closet” to defy medical taboos.