It was blackberry season, so with pots in hand, my brother Trevor and I made our way to the thick berry bushes where the wetlands met the dunes. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Gulf Shores, Alabama, was mostly unsettled with vast stretches of open beaches and vegetation that reached down to the Gulf of Mexico. We were two small boys picking berries along the dirt road near our family’s cottage in the dunes when suddenly, we found ourselves running for our lives.

They called it the “pamper pole” because you might need a diaper while climbing it. At a men’s spiritual retreat, I attended in the late 1990s, a 40-foot telephone pole was a test of courage and trust in oneself and in others. We were secured with ropes and harnesses, yet fear still had its grip. The goal was to climb to the small platform at the top and leap toward a trapeze bar hanging several feet away.

When the sexual syntony, or one-to-one instinct, is primary, life revolves around a deep one-to-one connection. The focus is on the bond between two people. It is a relationship marked by intimacy, trust, and mutual knowing. This may be romantic, but it can also take the form of a profound friendship, family tie, or partnership of purpose.

When our dominant instinct is social, we are finely tuned to the order and flow of relationships around us, such as our place in family, friendships, community, and organizations. We sense hierarchy, rank, and the subtle shifts of acceptance or exclusion. Those with this as their dominant instinct can feel the energy of a room, sense who holds influence, who feels left out, and where they themselves stand within the circle.

Our gut-level feelings are most acute in one of the three primary instincts: self-preservation, social, or sexual syntony (one-to-one). We are sensitive to all three, yet each of us favors one, making it the most developed and instinctively trusted.

Recently, at the gas pump, I realized I left my credit card at a restaurant in a town an hour away. My mind raced with worry that the card had been taken. Because of the perceived loss, I was under stress and forgot to pause to enter my body. My ego kept telling me that the worst-case scenario would occur, which only heightened my concern. As soon as I remembered to drop into my body, things changed. I became aware of a gut level feeling that everything would be okay. My worry evaporated. Turns out that, unlike the ego’s predictions, the card had been turned in and the manager had it in safe keeping.

From time to time, we may say to ourselves or someone else, “I have a gut-level feeling about this.” Sometimes our minds are unclear, and even our hearts hold mixed emotions. But the gut speaks with unmistakable clarity. We feel its message viscerally, deep within our core. The viscera are the soft internal organs of the body, including the heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, stomach, intestines, and reproductive organs. When they are affected, we know it. These vital organs hold our most primitive and instinctual feelings.