How to Use Your Sixth Sense to Strengthen Intuition and Balance

Beyond hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell, this subconcious sense relies on gut feeling — and can improve with age. Here’s how to hone and nurture yours

Nicole Pajer,

AARP

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Published September 03, 2025

The sixth sense — intuition, gist and gut instinct — may be the brain’s quiet superpower, especially in those with decades of lived experience.

AARP, Josie Norton

Have you ever been driving and heard your inner voice tell you to take an out-of-the-way turn, only to find out there was an accident where you would have otherwise driven? Or met a new person and got a gut feeling not to trust them, which later proves true when you witness them betray a friend? This is what many refer to as having a “sixth sense.”

The mysterious concept of a sixth sense is more than just a spooky movie about a kid who sees dead people. Depending on who you ask, it has different meanings. And, like our other senses, it changes with age.

The sixth sense: gist, intuition and déjà vu

Some scientists consider the sixth sense as the ability to rely on a gut feeling or intuition to perceive something without sensory evidence. They say it’s often connected with both heightened awareness and intense instincts. Researchers describe this as a deeper connection to the subconscious. Or it can be the idea of a “gist,” as Laura L. Carstensen, professor of psychology at Stanford University and founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, describes it: “an advanced form of reasoning that is largely unconscious and develops with experiences.”

“You sort of get the general sense of something right, but are lacking details,” says Carstensen, noting that research suggests this ability can strengthen with age, allowing older people to size up a situation without needing to focus on every tiny detail. Age and experience help us find the signal and ignore the noise. In one study that Carstensen coauthored, older adults were less affected by negative emotions, which allowed them to make more accurate predictions.

Carstensen cites an example of additional research, where older physicians working in emergency rooms were observed as being able to better assess a patient and immediately sensed they needed urgent treatment, while younger physicians might rely on a checklist to reach the same conclusion. “It’s more a feeling like, ‘This is OK,’ or a feeling that ‘I need to do something about it,’” she says. More lived experience, adds Carstensen, likely fine-tunes this in older adults.

How Your Senses Change With Age

While episodic memory — the ability to recall details of memories — declines with age, gist can help to compensate. For instance, you may not remember exactly why you disliked a certain movie, but when a friend asks you to spend your Friday on the couch watching it, you’re able to save your evening by suggesting another film. Or when looking at a menu at a restaurant, you don’t need to remember that a dish had too much garlic, and that’s why you didn’t like it. Simply knowing it’s a pass is enough to save you from an ordering regret.

Carstensen says many older adults she works with often debate whether to make a geographical move or sign a lease at a senior housing community. “Sometimes they’ll say, ‘I didn’t like that place. And it’s not about the details,’” she explains. “They can’t retrieve all of that, but they can retrieve the sense of how they felt about it.” That sense of gist pertaining to how a place made them feel can serve as a surprisingly useful guide when making a big decision, she says.

But relying on gist does have caveats, as it can lead you to overlook specific details. Say you’re shopping for a car, and you instantly decide you don’t like the first car you step into. Later, when reviewing your options, you may decide heated seats are nonnegotiable. But when going back to that first model, you might be led to think it doesn’t have heated seats — when it in fact does — because you didn’t click with the car off the bat.

Unfortunately, our gut feelings don’t always serve us well. A recent AARP report found that 41 percent of American adults had money stolen due to fraud or sensitive information that scammers obtained and used fraudulently. Friendly people and lonely people are both more vulnerable to fraud. So before you part with any money, connect with someone you don’t know or start an online romance, double-check your instinct to dive in headfirst.

Carstensen’s advice? Trust your intuition, but verify where you can. “Gist can be wrong,” she says.

Strengthening your intuition

Spiritual professionals refer to the sixth sense as an intuitive ability. “The sixth sense is really that connection to the energetic part of us, the spiritual part of us or, like some would like to call it, their intuition,” says Christy Whitman, a spiritual adviser and the New York Times best-selling author of The Flow Factor. Everybody, she says, has this sense of intuition. “It’s whether we are nurturing it or we’re blocking off from it.”

Here are some ways to help tap into your natural intuition:

Tune in to your body

One reason older adults may access their sixth sense more easily is that age often brings the space to slow down, says Whitman. Retired individuals who are no longer juggling work and parenting may have more time to journal, meditate, breathe deeply and be present. Those types of grounding practices can help intuition surface, whether it’s through a feeling in your stomach or a sudden insight while journaling.

Keep an intuition journal

Bonnie Buckner, founder and CEO of the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery and author of The Secret Mind, suggests keeping a record of when you felt those sixth-sense moments. “Write it down with the date, and then later, when it comes to pass, or if we make a decision not to listen to it and it doesn’t come to pass, write that down, too,” she says. Reviewing the times your intuition guided you in the right direction, Bruckner adds, can help you to build trust in it and tune in to it more.

Don’t wait for a big sign

Some lottery winners have sworn their gut told them to buy a ticket. (Although many more may have that same gut instinct and lose their money.) But following your intuition doesn’t have to be as grand of a gesture. “A lot of times, people think it’s going to be a really big sign, but pay attention to the everyday moments,” Whitman says. When you’re about to leave the house and hear an inner voice say “Grab your umbrella,” even if it’s sunny outside, this is an example of your intuition in action.

Make it a habit

Think of yourself as being in a relationship with your intuition. Like any relationship, you have to nurture it, says Whitman. “The more you listen to your intuition — even if it sounds weird or crazy, and that you’re supposed to go left but your intuition is telling you to go right — the more you’re going to trust it.”

The physical sixth sense: The ability to recognize our body within space

Another interpretation of the sixth sense is proprioception, the body’s ability to sense where it is in space and time. It’s what allows Simone Biles to spin through the air and still land on her feet, and it’s what enables you to touch your nose with your eyes closed. This version of our sixth sense comes courtesy of a network of sensory receptors and neurons. Another way to look at this sense of body awareness is as the body’s internal GPS.

“It works by special sensors in your muscles, joints and skin, called proprioceptors, sending messages to your brain about how your body is moving and positioned,” explains David Hamilton, co-lead of the musculoskeletal health research group at Glasgow Caledonian University. These sensors measure things like muscle stretch, speed of movement, joint angle and pressure. They send electrical signals through the spinal cord to the brain — specifically the somatosensory cortex, for touch and body position, and the cerebellum, for balance and coordination. “The brain interprets these on its mental map of where you are in time and space, and refines how it wants the body positioned by sending messages back to the muscles through the motor nerves,” Hamilton says.

Our sense of proprioception does diminish with age, although that change can be accelerated by insults to our nervous system, such as traumatic brain injury, peripheral nerve damage or a brain tumor or hemorrhage, says Dr. John Shand, medical director and chief medical officer of behavioral health at PerformCare. A declining sense of proprioception can make you more prone to falls and household accidents. But some of that loss can be reversed.

“The good news is you can absolutely train and improve it,” says Louis Ezrick, owner of Evolve Physical Therapy in New York City. He does this by having patients stand on foam surfaces with their eyes closed, or perform single-leg stands while turning their head — exercises that force the proprioceptive system to work harder. He says that for his older clients, “I often start with simple heel-to-toe walking or standing with feet together, eyes closed.”

Ezrick cites the following as an example of how this physical sixth sense can be restored. “One of my patients in her 70s couldn’t walk confidently after a mild stroke affected her proprioception. After eight weeks of targeted balance training — including standing on unstable surfaces and practicing movements with visual input removed — she regained that spatial awareness and returned to her daily walks in Prospect Park.”

Additional ways to improve this sense

Tai chi or yoga

“A structured physical activity or sport is ideal,” says Hamilton. And if you do it regularly, it may even help to refine your sense of proprioception.

Walking barefoot

Walking barefoot can help increase the sensory feedback through the feet, says Hamilton. He recommends ditching your shoes to tread on different surfaces, such as carpet, hardwood floors and grass.

Balance work

Try balancing on one foot as long as you can, aiming for a full 30 seconds. “Start with the eyes open,” says Hamilton. “If you can do that, close them.” To progress, he suggests using more unstable surfaces, like standing on a pillow. Once you can do 30 seconds, try to hit 60 seconds. You can also purchase a balance board and try different variations of work on that, starting with two legs and then going to one.

Closed-eye limb work

“Eyes-closed drills for the upper limb are useful,” says Hamilton. Close your eyes and touch your nose with both hands. “Most of us are OK with this, but try with elbows and shoulders at different heights,” says Hamilton. Then try raising one arm to any height and trying to match it with the other arm; open your eyes and see how well you have done.

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