Hair, Intuition, & YOur Nervous system
Recently, I shaved my head.
Not all the way down to the skin. There is still a thin layer of buzzed hair that feels oh so yummy to the touch. (For those of you who have shaved your head before, you know!)
The idea to do this came from a suggestion from my partner. Who saw me struggle with maintaining my long hair for weeks on end.
Being the Projector that he is, and given that I have deeply invited his guidance in my life, he offered me some direction. He actually said it quite flippantly to me one day while we were cuddling. Like why don’t you just shave your head?
He didn’t think I was actually going to take it seriously, but that comment lit my sweet Manifesting Generator sacral up! And I was like, omg. I am kinda scared, but I love that idea.
I sat with it, and in sitting with it, realized it was my truth to do so.
I have shaved my head one other time in my life and that was soon after my spiritual awakening when I was 18.
I had dropped out of a high academic pressure college to travel and immerse myself in alternative education and during that time, I decided to shave my head (completely this time— down to the skin!).
Shaving my head was a symbolic gesture of letting go. Letting go of who I had been and stepping into someone new.
It was an act of bold sovereignty. A communication to myself and the world that I didn’t need to adhere to socially dictated standards.
A woman with a bald head is a brave choice. It is not seen as “socially feminine”. It was at this time that I chose to stop shaving my legs and arm pits too. It was all a part of a bigger growth period I was navigating of finding who I really was, instead of who I thought I had to be according to my family and society.
Shaving my head this time also feels like that kind of rebirth.
Practically it is easier for me to maintain a shorter haircut right now and so that spaciousness feels like a gift to myself.
But, it also feels deeper than the practicality. I could feel how my long hair was carrying all of this weight.
It weighed on me to give it the attention and maintenance it deserved at this time in my life, navigating healing from chronic illness, running a business, and establishing long-term stability in my home space. There might be a time in my life where I have the capacity and desire to care for very long hair, but in being with reality, it feels healing to acknowledge that that time is not now.
It also felt like my hair was carrying the weight of these last few years for me. All of the change, the break-ups, the memories.
I was ready to let go of this past chapter of my life and step more fully into a new one. Cutting my hair again felt like a ritual embodiment of this for me.
Maybe you’ve heard people talk about the connection between length of hair and one’s intuition before.
I have seen many people online talk about how long hair=greater connection to your intuition and reference different indigenous or earth-based cultural traditions that revere or encourage keeping your hair long.
I have always found this interesting, but especially after shaving my head, I was interested to examine this folk wisdom more closely! Bouncing it off the wellspring of my own experience and intuition to see what is really true for me.
In fact, recently a Substack landed in my inbox that was detailing the connection between hair and the nervous systems of our bodies. Detailing a present, precious relationship between these two aspects of our physical selves. Painting hair as a continuation of our nervous systems even.
I totally see this to be true. Your hair can have a sensing quality to it. It helps you sense and pick up on information from the world.
What I do not see to be true is that if you lose your hair, you lose your connection to your intuition. Or it somehow makes it weaker.
This is what I want to debunk because I see it to be way more nuanced than that!
And let me just be frank: I am a trained clairvoyant and intuitive development teacher. I have spent the last decade of my life studying and cultivating my intuitive abilities! I use my intuition every day, multiple times a day, and for my work in the world. I did not experience any weakening of my intuitive abilities after shaving my head. Like not even in the slightest. That is just my direct personal experience.
When examining this, I can see how people would think that cutting your hair makes your intuition weaker if they are mistaking intuition for something physical.
But the truth is, your intuition is not physical. It is your connection to your spiritual and eternal self.
Saying your intuition becomes weaker if you cut your hair is like saying your intuition becomes weaker when you lose your physical body when it is time to die. Or if you were to lose an arm. Not true!
The powerful thing about your intuition is that you take it WITH you when you die. It is not beholden to the physical plane.
Your intuition is your connection to yourself as a spirit. It is not something you can lose, and if anything, what I observe over and over again in the women I work with, social programming is what disturbs your connection to it— not the length of your hair!
When I clairvoyantly look at the energy of indigenous or earth-based cultures who hold this kind of belief, I see the hair as a physical representation of one’s culture and connection to memory and the spirit world. The culture has decided to hold the hair as a representation of these things. It is a cultural agreement; it is not a universal truth.
I do see that we can carry energy in our hair, just like we can carry energy anywhere in our physical bodies. Washing your hair or cutting your hair can be a kind of energy healing. A physical mirroring of what is occurring on an energetic plane.
But, I see that the kind of energy you are cutting your hair from matters more than the actual physical act of cutting your hair.
Are you cutting your hair from a vibration of fear, anxiousness, stress, or distraction?
Or are you cutting it from a place of conscious awareness, choice, symbolic ritual infused with whatever kind of intention you choose?
Cutting your hair is a ritual act; there is no denying that.
But it is how we arrive to the ritual that really matters.
In the article that I read on Substack, it mentions a well-known study that talks about how during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army conducted an unofficial experiment comparing tracking skills between Native American soldiers with long hair and those with buzz cuts to test the claim that hair loss diminished their tracking abilities.
The solider with the long hair successfully evaded capture in a simulated jungle environment, while the solider with the buzz cut was caught quickly, leading the army to permit long hair for Native American soldiers to preserve their unique skills.
A few thoughts on this:
This experiment initially just sounds so weird to me, and I hope consent was involved. But who knows.
Fully support Native American soldiers winning the right to keep their traditional haircuts, which was the outcome of this experiment.
The author of the Substack article I read used this as a justification that long hair=stronger intuition, and I just don’t see this as a clean cut example to prove that.
When I look at the energy of this event (lol using my intuition), I see that as a part of a cultural agreement and tradition, the Native American soldiers involved in this situation were storing energy aka information in their long hair. That was a part of what they had been taught by their culture.
It also looks like because this was such a strong cultural agreement, when the hair was cut, it was more than just a loss of that information. It was deeply emotional and almost like an identity crisis. The cutting of the hair was not a ritual letting go; it was more of a forced violation. This creates a different experience.
The thing is: you can store that information in other places than in your hair. That is just what the cultural agreement was for that particular tribe or tradition. You don’t even have to store it in your body. A lot of people have all kinds of information stored out of the body in your akashic records from other life times.
This is how you can access weird knowings or even life-saving skills without knowing where you received that information from in the moment. It is because that information is coming from your Akashic records, from another time.
This belief “longer hair=stronger intuition” is often separated from its cultural context these days. People who aren’t a part of these traditional cultures are taking on that belief and not even questioning if it is true for them. This is a part of a prominent pattern I notice these days where we are devoid of culture and particularly ancestral traditions and so we romanticize the past. Or we cling to folk traditions without really understanding or being a part of that community.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with adopting things from the past or cultural exchange… but I am personally interested in present time. What is true right now. What is applicable right now. I don’t think just because it was the past means that it is better.
And the truth is: longer hair=stronger intuition can be a pretty invalidating belief outside of its cultural context. It can make someone think that there is a right way to have your hair. Or instill a fear that if you cut your hair, you will have less intuition or connection to your nervous system. When I just want to say: that is sooo not true. There is no right way. There is what is right for you right now. In present time.
While there may be a connection between your hair and your nervous system (because the body is so deeply interwoven and interconnected!), the truth is your nervous system is not where your intuition comes from. Your intuition is connected to you as a spirit, and it speaks through your nervous system, but it does not originate there.
And there is nothing wrong with resetting your nervous system by cutting your hair. Again, it is the energy in which you do a physical thing that matters, more than the physical thing itself.
This is the essence of the statement: as above, so below.
So, in summary: Wear your hair however feels true & good to you.
There is no one right, morally superior way.
It is more about the meaning you assign to it, or the cultural agreement you are agreeing to than it is about the thing itself. (Think: monks and nuns in many traditions often have a different agreement around hair— seeing hair as a physical attachment to let go of, and a bald head is seen as closer to the spiritual realm).
The length of your hair does not have an impact on your connection to your intuition, and you can develop strong af intuitive abilities regardless of your hair length.
You can choose to infuse whatever kind of meaning you want into your haircut!