Are You Psychic?: Find the answers you've always been looking for

My teachers, however, were less accepting of my behaviour. I had gained a reputation for daydreaming, insubordination, telling lies and playing truant: overall, my teachers suspected that I had a problem with reality. It was because of this that the school had requested that my parents take me to a psychiatrist, which led to my extrasensory abilities being recognised.

My mother had always been my confidant and I talked to her about God and my other spirit friends. She was psychic too, and often read tea leaves. After I had been ‘diagnosed’ with ESP (and not a mental illness, to my mother’s relief) my sensitivity had a name, but my mother asked me not to talk about it to others. She did not want me labelled or ostracised. Her protectiveness was understandable given the experiences of her sister, my aunt Lottie. Lottie had similar abilities to me and talked to her guides openly. This was in the 1950s and in those days people who talked to ‘themselves’ were seen as exhibiting signs of mental illness. Because of this, for a short period, Lottie had been placed in a mental institution. I had seen Lottie’s guides myself, and when I had told her this she was horrified and asked me to keep quiet for my own sake. Perhaps because of the pressure to conform, I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t want Spirit around me much at that point in my life, either. So I kept my sensitivity secret for a time. But it has always been there – it’s who I am, and how I see the world.

I’ve been called a psychic and medium, but a ‘sensitive’ more accurately describes my nature and what I do. For me, sensitivity is about ‘Spirit’ talking to me through my senses. I use my senseitivity to tune in to energy. I think of this as conversing with Spirit, or my spirit guides, whom I hear, see, smell and feel every day. As I talk with my clients, I listen to Spirit. Spirit teaches me, and through Spirit, I communicate with those who have passed over, and with those still living.

The ‘Gift’

Many people assume that to be psychic, or sensitive, is a gift at birth – you either have it, or you don’t – but this isn’t the case at all. Although I have naturally communicated with Spirit all my life – for more than fifty years now – but I have still had to learn a great deal along the way. Developing sensitivity is something that is open to everyone. It is simply a matter of learning to recognise your senses at work, and fine-tuning them to revitalise the connection between you and the other energies around you. I believe that when you reactivate your senses, you then become open to higher communication. You become sensitive, and live sensationally again.

We are all born with heightened sensitivity but most people become closed off from this as they grow older. As children, we are open to imaginative adventures and invisible friends; we often love nature and are fascinated by animals. Some children, as I did, are able to see Spirit, but we all experience amazing sensitivity when we are small. In fact, children see Spirit more than we realise, because they are so much more open and accepting. Often a child will say something that seems beyond their age and comprehension. What is really happening is that they are repeating information they have received from Spirit. This may also be coupled with the child’s ability to recall ancient memories. If asked, sometimes a child will talk to an adult about their ‘invisible’ friends. If they do, never ridicule them as it will make them feel slighted and stupid – and it may close a beautiful world to them. When she was little, my daughter, Tanya, had a spirit friend called Emma, who came with her little dog, Toby. If we were going out in the car together, I would make sure I left the car door open for a few moments after Tanya had got in to make sure there was time for Emma and Toby to climb into the back seat with her. I encouraged and accepted Emma and Toby in our lives, and I believe that if children are supported to enjoy their relationships with their friends in spirit, they will grow up to be caring adults, sensitive to the world around them. After all, children are the future and they may grow up to bring wonderful changes to the world.

I hope this doesn’t sound too serious. Psychic ability doesn’t require gravitas – although I take what I do seriously, I don’t take myself seriously. It’s an important distinction, because with sensitivity comes responsibility and joy. Expanding your senses means you can enjoy your experience of life all the more. At one point I went through a phase of wanting to be perfect in some way and I began to take myself very seriously; some might call this a sense of humour failure, which to a degree it was. Through this I learned that I didn’t have to live in an austere way in order to be spiritual. My humour is an important aspect of the way I communicate – my guides often laugh with me, like friends. Living with sensitivity is about being who you are now.

Sensitivity sabotage

Our sensitivity may lay dormant for years due to the work we do, the relationships we form or the general pattern of our life experience. Our reconnection with Spirit – our essence – may be subtle or dramatic, and it may come at any time of life, from our twenties to our seventies and beyond. What matters is that reconnecting with Spirit puts us back in touch with the truth of who we are.

I know that traumatic experiences can appear to sabotage happiness. Like many people, at one time or another I have suffered the loss of someone very close to me, illness and financial crisis. Yet the way we have lived prior to such an event may have been sabotaging our sensitivity and true life path. In some cases, trauma is the only way that Spirit – the energies that psychics work with – can get our attention. We receive a wake-up call that transforms our lives.

Many people have their first experience of Spirit when someone they love dies. For the first time, we may hear a friend say that they are sure that their loved partner or relative is close by. They are sensitive to the signs around them. A client of mine experienced her sensitivity only after the death of her sister, feeling her presence for days after the funeral. It is important to understand that when someone dies or we experience trauma, Spirit are not punishing us, or exacting a price for sensitivity – they are just trying to tell us that the life path we’ve travelled up to that point now needs to change.

In my experience, trauma often coincides with increased sensitivity in other areas of life, because it can act as a trigger to put us back in touch with who we are. Many clients of mine, whether bereaved or reeling from the shock of redundancy or a relationship break-up, have told me how they had begun to ‘sense’ a place before visiting it. One client recalled seeing the trees in the garden and the layout of the living room of his daughter’s new house, weeks before he visited her. Such experiences can feel confusing for people who have been unused to taking notice of their senses. Yet this is the language of sensitivity. For instance, I know that a tingling sensation on my temple tells me a particular guide is talking to me – their way. When I can smell roses, I know my mother is sitting next to me.

All too often, I hear people putting these experiences down to being out of sorts, or worse, being oversensitive. The word sensitive has become virtual criticism – a sensitive child is a ‘problem’ or ‘difficult’ – and this may give us the message that it’s not safe to have finer feelings.

As adults, we often repress our senses because of the environment in which we live. We expend energy trying to block out the noise from traffic and neighbours; we learn how to develop a blind spot for the unsightly or disturbing; sometimes we wish ourselves invisible in the press of a crowd. We want to sense less, not more, because peace and quiet can feel such scarce commodities. But, just as you have chosen to suppress sensitivity, so you can choose to regain it. It’s a choice you can make. Your senses are your spiritual connectors, through which you can live a sensitive and spiritual existence. I have found that many people who have burgeoning psychic ability may want to ignore it, particularly if they are surrounded by friends and family who do not accept their sensitivity. At the heart of this is the fear of being labelled as a bit odd. Given that many children and adults resist being ‘different’, it’s not surprising that we try to suppress our sensitivity before someone notices that we don’t fit in.

Total sensation

Sensitivity is about using all the senses together. When Spirit communicate with me, I may hear them as sound, feel their presence as vibration in my body or sense them as colour in my peripheral vision. Because all my senses are heightened, Spirit can always find a way to talk with me. This is my personal definition of ESP: the cumulative effect of all five heightened senses working together to enable a ‘sixth sense’. Although the dictionary may define ESP as means of ‘obtaining information about the environment without the use of normal sensory channels’, in my experience, ESP doesn’t just come from nowhere. Psychic ability, or sensitivity, relies upon us using our everyday senses in every possible way.

Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to see an opera singer rehearsing her scales before a performance. I say ‘saw’ rather than ‘heard’, because I realised I was able to see the energy coming from her mouth as she sang. It was the colour of purple velvet. She had the most beautiful voice, and it was all the more magnificent because I could see and hear it.

The next time I experienced the sight of music was as the Glyndebourne Festival. Watching several performers sing together, again I could see the colour of a voice, but this time it was even more spectacular. I saw the energy pouring out of the singers’ mouths – the tenors were purple, the sopranos indigo; others were shades of mauve and some even yellow. And I could sense how the singers put themselves behind the high notes. When a long note resonated, I could see the tremor in the colour.

I have never understood why I saw those colours. Maybe it was because I could truly feel the music – the sound resonated so deeply within me that I was literally shown the beauty of music through colour. Looking back, I realise that sometimes I was seeing the colour of the sound before the sound itself, perhaps because light travels faster than sound. Psychic phenomena and modern physics may have more in common than we think!

Some of you may be able to see sound as colour as I do. When you next hear live music, try feeling the colours. You may see a faint aura of colour around a musician, or the colour of a note. Try half-closing your eyes and relax your mental focus – when you do this, sensitivity can come in unawares (see page 30 for more on seeing with peripheral vision).

Sensitive situations

We are often most in touch with our sensitivity when we are in emotional situations. If we feel deep compassion for another person, we can really sense their energy. When we fall in love, our energy is revitalised as our senses heighten. We feel temperature more keenly, and our sense of smell is often heightened. I do sense Spirit through smell at times, but more commonly I experience dramatic changes in temperature when I am reading for people. I get really hot, then I can become cold and, when Spirit come in, I can be really freezing. It is a particular, unusual kind of cold, which I’ve become used to recognising. When I am working with a client, Spirit just pour energy through me and, if I need to send a healing thought to someone, that heat comes through. Again, through years of practice I have learned to recognise this as the presence of Spirit.

Often I find that it is the simple day-to-day experiences that bring me sensory gifts – from the sound of the rain to the mist in my garden, anything that is beautiful can massage my senses back to life, even when I’m feeling tired. In the same way, when you are not feeling tuned-in or at home with yourself, it can be revitalising to remember your sensitive experiences. You can also practice the Centring exercise (see page 32) to help ground you when life feels frenetic. It’s important to understand that developing your sensitivity can mean being more sensitive to your own needs as well as those of others.

My sensitivity gives me information about other people. I try not to judge what I sense; I simply register it for what it is – information. As well as listening to Spirit, I pick up information from a person’s emotional body, or energy – we all do this, and usually call it ‘instinct’. More precisely, this is soul knowledge at work, with one soul picking up information from another without conscious awareness. It explains why we may take an instant like or dislike to someone. In a positive sense, we often express this as ‘love at first sight’.

I usually sense passionate emotion visually and vibrationally. When I am in a room with someone who is angry for example, I experience their emotions as shards of glass pricking my body, and sometimes I’ll see intense colour around them. If I encounter someone who has just had an argument, their energy feels spiky. Sadness always feels heavy, and looks grey. And if someone unconsciously enjoys being a depressive, you can feel them for a long time after you’ve been in their company. They stay connected to you out of their own need – unknowingly, they have become energy leeches. In the past I have experienced this simply by thinking about them and feeling my energy levels drop. So, honing your senses can help you tell the difference between someone who is habitually down, and a person who is reacting to difficult circumstances. In this way, you can take note of those whose energy is invigorating, and enjoy the stimulation of their company and, where necessary, distance yourself from those who drain you.

Second sight

‘Second sight’ is often used to describe the abilities of psychics and mediums, but taken literally it explains how you can first experience a visual connection with Spirit – by using your secondary awareness. I believe that when your focus is distracted elsewhere, Spirit come in through the corner of your eye. What you see through your peripheral vision is often Spirit getting your attention, not just a trick of the light.

Those in spirit don’t want to frighten you and so they will only communicate with you in a way that feels natural, rather than disturbing. If you are unused to seeing Spirit, imagine how you would feel if suddenly you saw an apparition standing right in front of you! The reality could be shocking. Because I am accustomed to seeing Spirit, or my spirit guides, they will appear to me in any way they choose. I have seen people in spirit directly before me, just as if I was in the room with a friend. From the corner of my eye, I have seen images above and below a person and, in some cases, superimposed over them. On one occasion, I mistook a spirit image for the person in the room, and only realised this was the case when the appearance of my client altered before my eyes – the form of the person in spirit would look as solid as my living client, but when the spirit began talking, their form would start to fade. I asked these spirits not to manifest, not only because it confused me, but because they would use up all their energy in remembering their physical bodies. I asked: ‘Look, if manifesting takes up too much of your energy, just give me a sense of your character, let me hear you and feel you.’ Consequently, fewer spirits manifest during a reading. Those that do not manifest are able to stay with me longer during a reading. I can still talk to them – I can even tell if they are pulling a face – because I can feel it, and I can describe their appearance, because I have learned to see without seeing.

So how do you start ‘seeing?’ It can begin with the sense that someone is standing next to you. Commonly, this can happen when you’re engaged in conversation with someone else. Sometimes you may feel that someone was standing there, but had moved away just seconds before. This is Spirit making their presence known in a gentle way. It is never their intention to scare you or harm you, as this would cause you to retreat rather than become more open to communication.

When I think about Spirit around me, I believe that Spirit stands as an invisible presence on the edge of our senses. When you accept Spirit at your side, subtle visual contact often follows. And when you come around to the idea, Spirit literally comes around to you, moving from the edge of your vision to the foreground. Spirit will only communicate in a way that is comfortable for you. When you are ready, the messages will become stronger – you will see more, feel more. Whatever you see or hear, you will recognise the presence of Spirit by a sense of warmth in you, an inner knowing. You feel love inside, because love is the reason that Spirit will come to you. I have never experienced Spirit in any other way.

Although I communicate with the deceased every day, I can never assume that Spirit will contact me in a particular way. This is even true of close friends and family who have passed over – I knew them in life, but it doesn’t mean that I will know how they may want to attract my attention after death.

When my father passed away several years ago, I asked the priest if I could say something about him at the funeral. Even so, I was really unsure if I could cope with standing before everyone and keep my voice steady. I really wasn’t sure what to do. So, the same day, I asked my father in spirit for guidance; and he told me to make my speech.

At the funeral service, I stood with my family awaiting the priest to beckon me to the pulpit. I turned to look at the coffin, decorated with a wreath of poppies and a union jack, and there I saw my father, crystal clear, having a whale of a time. I was astonished and nearly burst out laughing – he was practically lounging on his coffin, one leg draped over the other. His customary pint of beer was set down next to him. With a whisky chaser in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a smile all over his face, he nodded at his coffin then looked right at me. ‘Nice’, he quipped.

I didn’t see my mother at her funeral. I was only twenty-seven when she died, and I was terribly upset. I didn’t know if I could expect to see her or not, but she didn’t appear to me. This was unusual, because I have always seen the deceased at every funeral that I have attended. The recently deceased are always joyful. At one Quaker funeral for a close friend of mine who had sadly died from cancer, I saw my friend in spirit dance down the aisle, free of pain and so happy. I believe that everyone attends their own funeral in spirit: they are always present. I now believe that I didn’t see my mother, because she had already communicated with me in her own way.

In the days after my mother’s death, before the funeral, I wondered if I would see or hear her in spirit. That day I was missing her terribly. The answer came the next morning, and the two mornings after that. She called the whole family – all five of us – at 7am. I’ve always been hopeless at getting up in the morning, and used to rely on my mother to rouse the household; she would open the door and call up the stairs every day. That morning, when I first heard her voice, she named all of us, just as she used to – me, my husband Michael, my son and two daughters. I momentarily forgot that she had died, and rushed downstairs only to find that she was not there. But then the realisation dawned that this was her way of saying that everything was all right and that things were as they should be. What was particularly unusual, though, was that all the family heard and recognised her voice. Usually, only one person senses someone in spirit, but this was communal.

So, you can’t always know how Spirit will come to you. It may be the spirit of a loved one, your spirit guides or those of someone close by. You may hear, see, feel, smell or even taste their presence. The key to sensitivity is to be open to communication through every sense you possess.

Spirits stand at the edge of your vision; whatyou see out of the corner of your eye is notimagination, it is someone letting you knowthey are there.

THE EXERCISES

The following exercises demonstrate the sensitivity techniques that I use in my workshops. I know that they have benefited many of my clients. The exercises are remarkably simple – and they work. Sensitivity doesn’t need to be complicated. Each of you reading this book will experience the exercises in a way that is unique to you. You may find it useful to keep a diary of sensitivity over the coming weeks to help you chart your changing awareness.

When making this spiritual journey, make sure you are not going to be disturbed. Lights on (if it’s evening), and no distracting music (even meditative music), as the essence of the exercises will be lost. In silence, the pictures, sounds or feelings that you may experience will then be pure.

1 Sensing energy with your hands

Healers generally work with the one of the three principal energy fields surrounding the body in three layers: the emotional field, the auric field or the etheric field (see Chapter 4, page 147).

The emotional field forms the largest and outermost layer around the body and mirrors a person’s emotions. For example, it can be tight or expansive, bright or dull, depending on how they are feeling. It explains why we instantly connect with some people on ‘sight’, but not others. You can also make a soul connection through the emotional field – when you instantly trust someone you’ve just met.

The aura is the second layer beneath the emotional field and is the reflection of the wellbeing of the physical body. I do see people’s auras, although not consistently. The colour and quality of the aura, which extends as far as the fingertips, usually tells me if someone has any health problems.

The etheric field is closest to the physical body. It acts as the memory of the physical body, such as when someone loses a limb and they still sense its presence. The etheric is the body that a returning spirit puts back on in order to appear to the living.

Sensitivity is a response to the energy of all three of these fields. You can use your hands to sense a person’s energy and read it. When you do this, you are aiming eventually to sense all three fields – their emotional, auric and etheric fields – and be able to interpret what you are sensing from that person.

For this exercise, you will need a partner to work with, someone you are comfortable with. You should practise the exercise facing one another.

1 Stand facing your partner, and stand well back from one another – 6–8 feet or so. Let your arms rest loosely by your sides. Open your palms outwards.

2 Now focus your awareness on your palms. Now walk very slowly forwards towards your partner. You may feel a slight tingling in your palms and fingers; it’s very subtle.

3 As you walk closer towards the other person’s energy fields, you may feel a change in temperature. As you make contact with the other person’s energy field, you’ll feel a buoyancy, as if you’re pushing a bubble of air. Stop walking and move your palms back until you feel that resistance again.