What it feels like to be a medium
Understanding the five clairs
Hello dear reader,
This is a post that I wrote for my (aptly named) Medium.com page about a year ago that has gotten over 4.2k page views - a lot for me. Since it has gotten so much traction, I thought maybe it would be worth sharing with a new audience in case you may find it useful or interesting. Let me know what you think.
When I say to people that anyone can be a Medium, they look at me with skepticism. Until only recently I would have agreed with them. I had always understood communicating with the spirit world to be something only the chosen few did, people that saw ghosts when they were very young or who had a natural ability like the Tyler Henrys of the world. I assumed that any connection I as a muggle had was tenuous and came to me by chance.
What I learned is that I had misunderstood what mediumship feels and looks like, and as a result, I failed to recognize my own natural mediumship abilities. After taking classes to understand further what it is to communicate with the spirit world, I was surprised to discover that like any skill, connecting and communicating with the spirit world can be honed.
The secret is the spirit world which includes your guides, ghosts, angels, and other energetic entities, are around us all the time. Even your thoughts take on an energetic frequency that can be channeled by others through psychic ability.
Reading energy is natural and has most likely come through evolution. You do it when you walk past a stranger on a street late at night, or go to a party and try to figure out who you should talk to. My first hint that energy work and mediumship were connected was when my reiki healer, and past The Side Woo guest Erica Wallace Moore, who otherwise claimed special mediumship skills, saw my grandmother during our session. It made me wonder — if a reiki worker who deals primarily in energy can see ghosts, then maybe ghosts are just another form of energy?
Not only are spirits just another form of energy they can emit a range of frequencies depending on their current state, earth-bound spirits, which people typically know as ghosts, exist at a lower frequency. Whereas your guides and angels will come in at a higher frequency which feels lighter and less pushy — which means they can be hard to notice if you aren’t paying attention.
The Clairs
Let’s say you are on board with everything I have said above. I will now break down the ways that mediums get information, also known informally as the clairs. Clair as a pre-fix in mediumship suggests a sensory perception beyond the physical world. To demonstrate what the different clair-abilities feel like, I will take you on a little guided visualization.
Clairvoyance
Imagine yourself on a secluded beach. The sun is shining. You feel safe and happy. You are all by yourself walking along the shoreline. You see the water going in and out with the tide by your feet. You watch as the wet sand squishes between your toes.
If you were able to picture yourself on the beach as you read that, you would have seen a number of images pop up in your mind. You knew they weren’t real, but rather they appear as if they are images on a movie screen or a thought bubble. This type of visualization is similar to the way one receives information through clairvoyance or clair-seeing.
While some people can actually see spirits, angels, auras, and the like with their own eyes- the way we see the physical world, what is more common is for the information to come in as described above — like pictures in your head.
As a visual artist, I naturally gravitate towards clairvoyance, which allows me to receive pictures as information. During one reading, for example, I was shown a series of action sequences like in a movie, including a silver bracelet jangling on a wrist. When I told the querient about it, she said that it was a reference to a bracelet her mother had given her daughters before she passed.
Part of the challenge, once you get more comfortable with clairvoyance, is decoding the visuals that are sent to you in order to translate them to others.
Clairaudience
Now imagine that you are on that same beach, and in addition to seeing the sand, sun, and sea, you can hear the gentle rhythm of the waves crashing on the shore. You can hear a bird crying as it flies overhead, and the sound of your feet splashing in the water as you walk.
Notice how these sounds take place in your mind? The sensation of “hearing” them is noticeably different from hearing the sounds that are happening outside you, like the garbage truck down the street or your cat meowing to you.
This kind of information is known as clairaudience or clair-hearing. For those who are clairaudient will “hear” spirits as clearly as if they are having their own thoughts. Like with any clair ability, mindfulness and trusting your intuition will help you discern between your own thoughts or imagination, and what is coming in from an external source.
For me, I notice that any outside information will carry a different vibration or energy than my own thoughts. I highly recommend meditation to become familiar with your own energy versus the energy of others. If you have undeveloped psychic abilities or are an empath, this can be very tricky — so it’s helpful even if you are not planning on developing your mediumship ability.
Clairsentient
You are back on the beach, and this time you see an unfamiliar dog running towards you. Within a split second of looking at the dog you can feel how happy he is to see you. Joy fills your heart, expanding across your chest and through each of your limbs. Your stomach rumbles and you sense that he is hungry. As he approaches you, you get a sharp pain in your foot. You kneel down to pet the dog and see he has a thorn sticking out of one of his paws. You pull it out, and the pain goes away.
All these sensations are examples of clairsentience, or clair-feeling. As described above, my experience is that clairsentience can feel like a wave of unexpected emotion, often stored in a specific chakra or part of the body, a physical sensation of pain, or some other physical response that is meant to draw your attention to a point of tension in another person. For example, a tightness in your forehead could signify that the person has a blocked third-eye chakra or a headache.
Claircognizant
You are back with your new friend, the dog. You see his name tag. It says Bubbles. Looking at the name etched on the dog tag, you suddenly know that his owner Janet, a real estate mogul from Manhattan, is on vacation on this same beach after a bad divorce from her husband who owns his own woodworking shop in Brooklyn. (Dammit, Janet. That’s rough, you think.) You get confirmation of this a few minutes later when you find her sunbathing on the beach and strike up a conversation.
Claircognizance, or clair-knowing, can happen in tandem with the other clairs. Often when I am meditating or doing a reading, my guides will show me an image or send me a sensation. Then, with it, comes a flood of information about it. The download happens faster than it would take for words to explain, but just as clear. Like the example above, an image of a dog tag can come with a whole download of information about the owner in a matter of seconds — a knowing that is so sure once you learn to trust it that it’s similar to the certainty of knowing your own name.
Conclusion
While I don’t believe every person should be a professional medium, I believe that every person has their own unique connection to the spirit world, and can strengthen their clair-abilities and their intuition through practice. Reading energy is as natural as walking, and that’s all the spirit world is — energy that we have to learn to read beyond the use of our five senses - although some supernatural phenomenon also comes with five sensory feedback like temperature change, noises, or even the ocassional poke.
Not all mediums and psychics have all the clair-abilities, and even for those who do, some are stronger than others — just like not all humans have 20/20 vision or perfect hearing.
There are many classes out there that can help you get in touch with your intuition, and develop your clair-abilities in a safe, group environment.
If you’re not ready to take a class, there are a few things you can do to become more aware of the spirit world. The first is to become more mindful in general, both of your thoughts and of the energies around you. Take time to meditate, even 10 minutes at a time can make a difference. Find peaceful moments throughout the day, take regular walks, and calm your nervous system in whatever way suits you. I also personally find that cutting back on caffeine, sugar, and alcohol has helped me be more present.
The ultimate point of developing your clair-abilities is that it should be fun and helpful. As soon as it doesn’t feel that way, take a step back and take care of yourself until you have a new perspective.
If you’re interested in further dialogue about mediumship and tangential subjects, check out these episodes of The Side Woo with guests who are mediums:
Very interesting and helpful to understand how mediumship is received. Surprising to myself, I realize that I have had messages through Clairaudience in the past. (Surprising because I consider myself a visual person, more than audio). It’s reassuring to know that’s a real thing.