Expansive vs Contracted: The Intuition Body-Check
To tell intuition from fear, close your eyes and feel whether a yes makes your body expand or contract
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 85%
Forleo's simple test for distinguishing intuition ('don't go this way') from mere fear ('I want to stay safe'). Considering a decision, close your eyes, feel into your body, and ask: does saying yes make me feel expansive or contracted? In a nanosecond you'll feel something — a lightness, a leaning-forward, even joy (expansive, a yes) or a heaviness, a dread, a closing-down (contracted, a no), even if your ego wants to say yes. Crucially it's a visceral, full-body sensation in the gut or solar plexus, not a thought-generated feeling — she notes that thoughts about travel can manufacture fake dread, so you must feel the body, where 'the body holds the score', not think.
Origin
Forleo developed the check from years of ignoring her intuition when 'desperate for approval and success', saying yes to contracted things until the accumulated pain taught her to trust the body signal.
Core principles
- 01Intuition and fear can be told apart by body sensation.
- 02Expansive equals yes; contracted equals no.
- 03It's visceral (gut/solar plexus), not a thought.
- 04The ego may want a yes the body rejects.
How to run it
- 1
Pose the specific yes
Bring to mind the exact decision — a deal, a speaking gig — you're considering saying yes to.
- 2
Feel the body, not the thought
Close your eyes and notice whether the body expands (lightness, joy, leaning in) or contracts (heaviness, dread, closing down).
Pro tip Locate it in the gut or solar plexus — a visceral signal, not a mental story.
Watch out Thoughts can manufacture fake dread (e.g. about travel); distinguish that from the body signal.
- 3
Let the signal guide the decision
Treat expansive as a yes and contracted as a no, watching out for a short-term carrot the ego is chasing.
In the wild
Forleo describes the biggest opportunity where the ego shouts yes but a part of you closes down and feels dread — the contracted signal is intuition steering you right.
→ Learning to heed the body signal spared her the pain of chasing contracted 'yeses'.
Common mistakes
Reading the thought instead of the body
Confusing thought-generated tiredness or dread about logistics with the true visceral intuition signal leads to the wrong read of a decision.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone facing decisions where fear and intuition are hard to tell apart.
Not ideal for
Purely analytical decisions where a gut check adds no information.
From the transcript
“does the idea of saying yes to this make me feel expansive or contracted”
From the episode
World Leading Life Coach: 3 Steps To Figuring Out ANYTHING You Want: Marie Forleo
World Leading Life Coach