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Psychic and intuitive information feels and presents differently for everyone. Sometimes people miss their most natural abilities because they try to develop their gifts in the way they think they “should” look.

In practice, working with psychic information is very natural.It’s usually more helpful to allow more to come and attend to what is already happening than to try to open previously non-existent abilities.

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If you want to develop your own psychic abilities there are a few key things you can do to start working with your own natural gifts by simply working with the ways you already perceive the world.

Here are some you can try today:

1. Relax

This one is simple, but for people used to staying busy and trying to be productive, it can be very hard to do.

The more you can relax into an open and receptive state, the easier it will be for you to receive and flow with your intuition. There are many ways to do this, from meditation to simply sitting quietly and allowing your body to relax and then relax more. The important thing is not to distract yourself or numb out, but to stay present as you sink into deeper and deeper relaxation. Relaxation shifts your system into a receptive state.

If you want to practice relaxing, you can try tightening and relaxing different areas of your body or try the first lesson from my Introduction to Intuitive Practice course. You’ll learn how to think about relaxation for intuitive development and you can try a guided meditation to help you relax today.

2. Notice What You Feel

Start by simply paying attention to your own experience. Notice what you feel. Pay attention to even the most subtle sensations.

You can use this guided meditation to help you practice just tuning in and allowing yourself to notice what you feel:

If you start by noticing your own experience, you will be more tuned into different cues and open to your own individual intuitive or psychic language. The more connected you are to yourself, the more you will have access to different kinds of inner cues which can both enhance your psychic precision and keep you tuned in to what is good for you and what is not.

To get the benefits of noticing, you don’t have to do anything with what you notice. In fact, the more you can relax and notice without trying to interpret or make sense of it, the better. When you try to make meaning, it’s easy to add or invent information. The key is to spend time noticing and eventually the sensations and feelings start to make sense on their own.

3. Stop Avoiding what You Already Know.

It’s important to realize that your intuition will tell you what it wants you to know, not necessarily what you want to know.

Once you start connecting, you don’t necessarily get to pick and choose what you want to hear. Psychic and intuitive abilities are part of a whole inner language that communicates through your internal experience. Part of what this means is that if you know something that you don’t want to face, it can make it hard to connect to your intuition and psychic abilities more generally.

A lot of people with natural psychic and intuitive abilities shut them down because they do not want to face the truth about something. For example, for a long time I avoided connecting to my intuition because I knew it would change my life in dramatic ways and I wasn’t ready to deal with that. Sure enough, when I started to get in touch with my intuition, I ended up leaving a long-term relationship that I was very attached to. I also had to reconstruct my entire worldview. It was dramatic and disruptive, but it might have been less so if I hadn’t avoided it for so long.

The problem is that avoiding these things doesn’t make them go away. It’s hard to face things we’d rather avoid, but it’s actually easier in the long run. When we face what we know and do the things we know we have to, it’s ultimately freeing.

One way to clear the way to connect with your own psychic and intuitive abilities is to take action on things that feel pressing and scary. You don’t have to do this in an abrupt or disruptive way. Start by just spending some time noticing what you feel. It’s very likely that you already know what you are avoiding and what you want to do about it. So, unless it’s going to cause harm to yourself or others, just do it.

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4. Use Body Checks to Help You Make Decisions

It’s not just our thoughts and emotions that can tell us how we relate to something, even more subtle sensations can be informative.

When you have a decision to make, try checking what you feel all over your body and notice what you feel.

For example, if I am trying to make a decision between two programs of study or two directions I could walk in, I might check what I feel in my abdomen and heart space. If one potential choice feels tense or tight and the other feels open or calming, then I take that information into consideration. Our intuition often communicates through precisely these kinds of subtle signals. If we don’t check, we might miss them.

Intuitive Walking is a great way to practice this skill. Click here to try it.

5. Talk to your Intuition

Your intuition communicates through all kinds of feelings and sensations and the communication goes both ways. You can get intuitive answers by simply directing a question to yourself and then allowing the answer to arise naturally.

You can ask anything from “What do I need to say to so-and-so?” to “How can I take better care of my health?” to “What am I missing about such-and-such situation?”

Just ask the question and set an intention to receive the answer in a way that you will understand. Then let it go. You might want to sit quietly or meditate for a few minutes, but don’t try to force an answer. Be open to any form of communication. Just stay open and attentive and let it come to you in its own way and in its own time.

TRAIN WITH ME

Developing intuition is not about chasing experiences. It’s about building a relationship with your inner language. That is the foundation of my Introduction to Intuitive Practice Course.

If this approach makes sense to you, I would love to work with you inside the course.

One common approach is to look up whatever it is you are seeing as a way to decode the message. There are many resources available to help you interpret angel numbers, the spiritual symbolism of animals, and more. These can be very helpful, but they aren’t the only way to work with signs.

When you are trying to connect with the language of these messages, it’s helpful to practice a more general attunement. You can think of signs and symbols as one way of communicating with your broader inner, intuitive language. What you notice is one way your intuition brings things to your attention and everyone’s intuitive language is a bit different. So a great way to make sense of signs and symbols is to allow your intuition to do the work.

To find out what a sign means, you can follow an intuitive process of allowing its meaning to reveal itself to you by simply relaxing and noticing what associations and feelings come. This will allow you to discern not just what a sign might mean, but what it does mean, to you in this specific moment.

This approach of dropping into the intuition can especially help if you tend to overthink or get stuck trying make sense of these things in too direct a way. External symbolism can give you possibilities, but your own intuitive response will tell you what meaning is alive for you in the moment.

Read on for an intuitive approach to figuring out what signs you are receiving from the universe.

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Pay Attention to Sensation

Start by noticing what you feel and where in your body you feel it. This is the most powerful step you can take to determine what this symbol is showing up to tell you in the moment.

It is helpful to notice whatever you are thinking and feeling without judgement. Did you feel any sensation of resonance or recognition? Notice any associations that come up. The sensations you feel can be as informative as the sign itself.

Sometimes moments of repetition and resonance serve to bring your attention to the moment or mark that you are in a state of flow. For example, I find that I see repeating numbers a lot when I am relaxed and in a more open state.

It’s also helpful to record what you notice so you can come back to it later. Sometimes, things make more sense when you can look back and see them as part of a bigger picture.

Allow Yourself to Discover the Context

You can also extend the process of noticing and awareness to the broader context. . Recall what you were thinking about right before you saw it. What were you doing? What was your state?

Also note if is comes up in the context of any ongoing “conversations with the universe” you’ve been engage with. Had you asked for any guidance? Are you in the process of manifesting anything this might relate to?

If you are seeing the sign repeatedly, notice the context and whether any patterns come up. It may not just be about an individual moment. Be open to letting a bigger picture emerge.

Once again, the key to to keep this exploration light. Relax and notice rather than forcing meaning or trying to fit it into a category.

Relax! (and then Relax More…)

Often when we feel confused it’s because we want something to happen or are attached to a meaning. When you are relaxed, receptive, and detached from the outcome, you will find yourself more clear and able to understand the meaning behind the message.

Instead of trying to interpret or make it make sense, just relax and see what you feel. You’ve probably noticed that intuitive insight comes more easily when you aren’t trying. You can consciously create the space for that insight to come through by relaxing instead of reaching for clarity. The more relaxed you are, the more clarity you are likely to feel.

Research the Symbolism

From books to websites, there are numerous resources available to research the sign or number that has been coming up for you.

You can use a book about Angel numbers, and encyclopedia of symbols, or go searching online. Using the search terms “spiritual meaning of” or “symbolic meaning of” your symbol will bring back a range of options. Choose one you feel drawn to.

As you look into the symbolism, don’t just read or listen with your mind. Notice what you feel in your body. Do you feel anything? Do any associations come up? Feel for resonance and let this inform you. Resonance is a form of intuitive confirmation.

Ask it to Come Back

Remember, you can talk back to the universe. You can ask for clarification.
If you are unsure if something is a “sign,” just assume nothing and ask for it to come back if it’s important. Ask for clarity and let it go.

Focus on relaxing and tuning in to your own inner signals and be ready to notice what comes up for you if/when it does come up again.

Trust What Comes

In any intuitive process, it’s important to simply trust that what comes through its part of the process. Don’t second guess yourself or dismiss what you feel.

Of course, you don’t want to latch onto a rigid interpretation too quickly either. Just stay open and trust the process. This is your own intuitive language, so just relax and let it guide you to what you need to know.

Want to learn more about working with your intuitive language? Subscribe to this Substack for tips and thoughts about intuition and how to work with it.

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And if you want to dive deep, check out my course in intuitive practice.

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When emotions come up it can be intense and overwhelming. When you pick up other people’s feelings, they can feel like your own. For many empaths, not knowing whose feelings you’re experiencing creates an added level of difficulty for managing emotions and energy levels. In order to understand feelings that come up and what to do with them, the first thing to do is determine whether the feelings belong to you or not. You can do this, just by noticing what you feel.

I wrote last week about just how valuable it is for empaths to simply notice feelings in order to understand what the feelings are and who they belong to. Today, I want to suggest three specific things that can help you discern whether the feelings that are coming up are coming from you or someone else.

If you’re feeling emotional, here are three ways to check if you’re feeling your own emotions or someone else’s:

3 Things to Check

1. Connection

Do they connect into your body? Do the feelings seem anchored in you, or do they float on top?

Your own feelings will often feel like they are linked to or flowing from you in a deeper or more substantial way than other peoples feelings. They are likely to feel more connected into the centre of you than the feelings of someone else. Other peoples feelings might feel connected to other people or like they are just floating in your energy field.

Example: You might suddenly feel a wave of sadness that sits lightly on your chest, almost hovering and not grounding into your body at all, it might not be yours.

2. Familiarity

Feelings have form. They move and flow and take up space within your inner world. Your feelings probably have certain familiar shapes, paces or structures. If something feels erratic, like it comes out of nowhere or runs in an unfamiliar pattern, it can indicate that it’s something that you are picking up from someone else.

Ask yourself if the feelings that are coming up feel familiar. Your feelings generally feel “like you.” If the feelings have an unfamiliar form or pattern, they might be coming from someone else.

Example: If you often experience anxiety in your chest that feels heavy and slow, but suddenly you feel a fast, jittery, unfamiliar anxiety spike around your head, it may not be yours.

3. Associations

What associations come with them?

Notice any associations that seem attached to the feelings or come up when you pay attention to them. These might provide more insight into where the feelings are coming from. You may even get direct information about where this feeling is coming from. If it’s your feeling, it will most often have a source or a reason that is connected to you, something that actually feels true for you or grounded in your own experience. You might even associate feelings that belong to other people with those people.

Example: If a sudden irritation arises and, when you attend to it, you start to think about the frustration your co-worker was expressing earlier, this can be a clue.

Try these techniques for yourself and see if they help you get clarity. The key is to stay relaxed and open. You don’t want to force or create associations and you don’t want to attach too quickly to anything that comes up. Allow yourself to gently discover rather that try to fix to quickly on answers. As with any inner noticing practice, pushing and straining can make it more difficult to get to clear, useful insight.

Over time, learning to recognize what is yours and what isn’t becomes one of the most empowering skills an empath can develop.

Also Read:

What Empaths Actually Feel

The Practice That Changes Everything for Empaths

When an empath starts to recognize that they are picking up other people’s feelings and exploring what to do about it, the first thing you will often come across is advice and practices to clear and protect your energy. These practices are definitely helpful, but they are not the starting point I recommend.

There is another, perhaps even more valuable step that is often missed or ignored: to simply notice what you are feeling. This step seems almost too simple, but in practice it changes everything. It is the first step to turning overwhelming experiences into useful information that can help you navigate your life.

Why is this such a powerful approach? First of all because noticing allows you to actually understand and work with what you are feeling specifically. The more you simply notice, the more information you can begin to make sense of. Noticing takes you out of the grip of the feeling and provides insight into what is actually going on.

It’s a great place to start both for understanding your own feelings and for determining what feelings are yours. We tend to think that feelings are just reactionary, and shouldn’t be “believed”. It’s true that they are “irrational” in the sense that they aren’t exactly well-reasoned arguments, but when you pay attention to them they do reveal information. When you attend to them, they stop being simply broad emotional experiences and become nuanced patterns and flows you can learn from. Feelings reveal maps of yourself. Other people’s feelings reveal maps of others. Noticing allows you to start exploring and understanding those maps.

We can take emotions seriously without assuming that the feelings are directly telling us true information about the world. By this I mean, emotions are often wrapped in accounts of reality that are not fully accurate. I might be sad and feeling like nothing in my life is working. I probably shouldn’t trust the emotional assessment of my life, but the sadness might still tell me something about myself — unless, of course, I’ve absorbed that sadness from a whole separate person.

So I can notice the feeling to see what I can learn about it. If I’m angry at you, it doesn’t tell me that you are a terrible person or even that you have done something terrible to me. It tells my that I feel angry. I might feel angry because you have genuinely done something terrible to me. I might feel angry because you are stressed and I’m stressed and the combination is overwhelming. I might feel angry because you are angry and I’m reacting to that. I might feel angry because what you did reminds me of something else that what truly upsetting for me and you’ve inadvertently poked at a sore spot in my psyche. Or I might just be hungry — in which case, the solution is to eat.

If I simply express or suppress the anger, I won’t learn or resolve anything. If I notice it, I might learn about myself in the context of this situation. Or, if it’s someone else feeling, I can discover that, because, often you don’t realize a feeling isn’t yours until you pause and pay attention to it.

How it Works in Practice

Here’s an example from my own life:

A few years ago, I was watching TV with my boyfriend one night and every time we would play the show, I would start to cry.

I was scheduled to have a surgery in ten days and whenever the show was playing, I was overcome with worries about how it would go. My mind would start to run through worries that my doctor would mess it up and that there would be a bad outcome.

I kept starting to cry and then my boyfriend would pause the show and ask me if I was ok. I would check what I was feeling and realize I was fine. I felt confident in my surgeon and comfortable about the surgery. Then we’d play the show and the distress would surge back in.

It was mystifying.

The next day, a friend I hadn’t heard from in a while reached out to me by text. After chatting for a bit, I learned that she was scheduled for a surgery on the exact same day that I was. Same city. Different hospital.

I asked her if she’d been worried about the surgery and specifically if she any concerns about medical errors, or feeling a kind of disorientation around going into surgery and what that meant for her body?

She replied that this had been on her mind since the day before. She was concerned about her doctor’s experience level and how the surgery would affect her body. The worries had even interfered with her sleep. It was the first time — but not the last — that this kind of thing has happened with this particular friend.

Noticing my own emotional experience revealed that those feelings didn’t belong to me. It took another day and her external confirmation to realize they were hers. But, even in the moment, noticing allowed me to determine that that the feelings coming up were not actually informative about my surgery or my relationship to it. They weren’t mine at all.

How it Helps

This is why noticing is so useful. Picking up other people’s feelings can be informative. In my example, I learned about my friend. This connected us because it prompted her to share in more depth about what she was experiencing and because it was an uncanny experience to share.

If I hadn’t been able to notice the difference between the feelings that kept coming up and my other feelings, I might have thought these were fears I had to actually face. Or I might have mistaken them for giving me some kind of useful information about my surgery, which could have led to prolonged distress.

Unlike your own emotions, other people’s feelings don’t give you information about yourself or your own responses to the world. They are information about other people, and that means you should treat them differently. You aren’t responsible for those feelings and you don’t have to process or manage them in the way you do your own feelings.

Noticing can also help you understand your own unique form of empathy, which can into provide useful insight into how to manage it. Every empath is going to have a different structure to how they perceive emotions. For example, some might be more sensitive to the experiences of people they know. Others might find the feelings of strangers to be just as present. Some might find other people’s feelings show up in them just like their own feeling. Others might find it feels more like moving through a dense swamp of emotional energy. Some might find they naturally tend to become emotionally reactive or upset when they get overwhelmed by peoples feelings. Others might shut down, block up their energy, or just get exhausted. It can also vary depending on the situation. The more you pay attention, the more you’ll understand about your own needs and processing.

In shirt, noticing what you feel turns potentially overwhelming experiences into information. It’s an immensely powerful practice. Noticing allows you to discover what you’re picking up so you can actually work with it. The more you notice, the more information you have access to — and the more things begin to make sense. Other people’s emotions stop being a burden and become extra information that can help you navigate your life. Simply noticing is how you start to transform your sensitivity into your superpower.

Next in this Series: How to Tell Whose Feelings You are Feeling

Previous: What Empaths Actually Feel

One grey morning in Vancouver, after a ferry trip back to the mainland from the Sunshine Coast, my cousin sent me off with her friend while she went to work.

I’ll call him Tweed. He had a beard and wore plaid, like a hipster, but his clothes were clearly lived-in and worked-in. He had a way of talking intensely, not at you, but with an openness that invited you to roll with him through his thoughts. My cousin told me he was a talented carpenter and he talked fervently about his plans to start a carpentry business.

I don’t remember exactly why it was decided I should go with him. I didn’t have anything in particular to do that day, but I often spend days alone when I travel. I’m guessing my cousin felt responsible for entertaining me. The idea was that I would hang out at his place for a while, and then we’d meet up again after she finished work.

When we got there, I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, so I suggested I do some writing and he could go about this day. He said, “let me get you a chair” and set about finding one.

It quickly became clear that I’d miscalculated.

Asking for a corner to write in was not the trivial request I’d hoped. He wandered around his place for bit and finally produced a beautiful, but broken, wooden chair.

Apparently he planned to fix it. He also showed me a wooden chest he’d collected and intended to restore. He hadn’t gotten around to either of them yet.

I was wildly familiar with blocked writers, but until then I’d not known it could also happen to carpenters. Restoring wooden furniture clearly meant something to him. Fixing the chair had become much bigger than simply fixing the chair.

It’s so much easier to do things you don’t care about.

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Why It’s So Hard to Fix the Chair

The transition from one year to the next is a natural time for reflection and thinking ahead. This might mean that we become more aware of what frustrates us, where we feel stuck or dissatisfied. We might become optimistic that this change of the calendar will be a moment where it’s possible to decide who we want to be next.

There is something beautifully idealistic about the process of making resolutions or setting goals. It’s a celebration of potential, a statement of faith. And yet, there can also be something almost cruel in it. We might want to fix what we see as broken or frustrating. In the hope that a better version of ourselves will show up, there can be an implicit rejection of the person we are now.

Years ago, after a long bout of mono, I was out of shape and struggling to workout. I was tired and unmotivated, so I decided to hire a trainer to help me get my fitness back, hopefully better than before.

At our first session, as he repeated my goals back to me, telling me how fit I was going to be, I remember feeling this jarring sense that he was confirming my suspicions that there was something wrong with me. I went home and cried. I wanted to achieve, sure. I also wanted to have been okay before, to have always been enough.

Setting goals is as much about our relationship to who we are now as it is about the person we want to be. The gap between how we see ourselves and our current state can be a source of pain, and it’s often this pain that motivates us to make resolutions and set goals. But that pain pre-exists the salve of the promise to change, and it can seep into the process of moving forward.

There’s a fine line between moving yourself forward and rejecting yourself, and it can be hard to sustain action that feels like punishment for being who you are now. The body and the mind rebel.

Like the blocked carpenter, we have the biggest feelings about things that matter the most. It’s all too easy to turn a goal into something we judge ourselves against. Our self-worth may be entirely tied up in our idea of writing that novel or cooking a perfect meal — even if no one else sees us as a novelist or a cook. In fact, the fact that no one else cares can make that even more painful. We feel unseen. Misunderstood.

Self-identity is not objective; it includes a complex web of past, present, and potential selves. We attach to goals because of how we want to be seen, how we see ourselves, and what we believe those goals will do for us. Sometimes, pursuing a goal simply makes manifest the ways we already see ourselves.

A Different Way Forward

I want to suggest an approach that honours and includes the whole complexity of how goals relate to identity and the ways we want. If the pain that motivates our goals can also sabotage them, then the question becomes not just what we aim for, but how we aim, from what inner posture.

Personally, I am a big fan of ambitious, audacious goals and a big fan of being present, guided by intuition, and responsive to the needs of the body.

I don’t think you have to choose whether to challenge yourself or care for yourself. In fact, I think challenging yourself works better and is much more sustainable when you actually respect your limitations and follow the rhythms of your physical, emotional, spiritual, and social needs.

The best way to achieve goals is to create goals that you want to achieve — to start from alignment and stay in touch with yourself.

Often the answer offered is don’t set resolutions! Alternate ways of moving forward might be suggested. Do rituals! Commit to practices! Just be present!

The key is knowing what is right for you in this moment. People are different. The same person might even relate to different goals or areas of their life differently at different times. Needs change and approaches should to. So I want to suggest a process to help you find an approach that works for you right now.

In honour of the changing year, I’d like to suggest some intuitive practices for reflecting on the year past and setting intentions for the one to come.

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Intuitive Practices for the New Year

Practice 1: Reflect and Integrate.

1. As you reflect on this year, whatever that process is for you — perhaps you ask yourself a few questions, journal, or simply let memories surface — take a few moments to notice how those reflections settle in your body.

2. If it helps to have a frame, you might ask yourself:

   1. What moments or experiences stand out most right now?

   2. What felt enriching or alive?

   3. What felt heavy or draining?

   There’s no need to answer these fully or logically. This is not about accounting for your year. Trust that what comes up is what you need to connect to now.

3. Take your key moments or experiences one-by-one, allow yourself to notice how they settle in your body.

   1. Feel how they’ve changed you.

   2. Feel the state of your body now.

   3. Feel the memory of how the things that you experienced this year were — whether they were beautiful, difficult, sad, joyful, or something else.

   4. How did they come into your body?

   5. How did they shape your inner experience?

4. Notice, by feel, who you have become and who you are in this moment. You don’t have to put this into words — just allow yourself to be present with the sensations of who you are in this moment, going into the new year.

Practice 2: Feel Into Your Goals

Before you commit to any goals or resolutions, check how they feel in your body. The process is simple.

1. Simply name or think of the thing you’d like to do — e.g. “Finish my novel,” “Get in shape,” “Feel more free.” For this process, it’s less important that you have clear, measurable outcomes than that you have a clear feeling of what that would mean to you.

2. Notice and record what comes up for you. What do you feel in your body? What do you think of? Does it feel stressful? Closed? Tight? Like pressure or stress? Open? Free? Exhilarating? Overwhelming? Some combination?

3. If it feels good and open, it might be a good goal. If feelings of stress, overwhelm, or tightness come up, notice what you can about these feelings. You might ask yourself questions like:

   1. How do you feel about the resolution or goal?

   2. Do you really want it?

   3. Does it feel like something you feel you should want?

   4. What do you truly want?

   5. Do you not believe it’s possible?

   6. Are you carrying residual stress from having failed at this in the past?

   7. Does it feel associated with judgment from yourself or others?

   Try to answer by noticing what you feel, rather than by answering from your mind.

4. If something feels truly important and positive, but stressful, explore how you could reframe it so it feels better in your body. Consider different ways to phrase it or different ways to structure your approach. Consider setting an intention to move forward in that direction rather than an outcome-based goal. Consider committing to checking in with yourself about this regularly. Notice how different options feel in your body, and choose the option that feels pleasant, positive, open, and supportive.

Practice 3: Ongoing Check-ins

As you go forward, rather than pushing, try to work with your own rhythms. This is a practice, not just for New Year’s, but for every day. It’s a good way to find out what’s working and what’s not, and how to adjust your approach.

1. Simply notice what you are feeling now in your body. Notice physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Just let yourself be aware of all these things coming up.

2. Ask yourself, “What do I need now?” and then notice what comes up. Pay particular attention to anything that seems to come from the center of your body.

3. Experiment with aligning your actions with what you feel. If something feels important to do that you can do safely (for yourself and others), try doing the thing that comes up.

⸻

Wishing you a very happy New Year where you come into loving relationship with the things that matter most to you.

It' might appear first as a heaviness over the chest that feels like a weight. It might feel swirling and disorienting. Or it might feel like a drive to express the unexpressed emotions of others. Regardless of how it presents, the constant perceiving of other people’s feeling deeply shapes how these people feel about and navigate their lives.

Emotional empaths aren’t just “in tune” with other' people’s feelings. You don’t just understand how someone else feels — in fact sometimes you might not be able to understand it at all. Instead, it will feel like you are actually feeling other people’s feelings. Other people’s sadness, anxiety, or joy can show up in your chest, your mind, your body, your energy field — just like your own feelings do.

The way this works is different for different people. Sometimes it feels like a person is absorbing the emotions of others directly into their chest and carrying them. Other times, it’s more like the person is swimming through a dense field of emotions and energy. The common thread is that empaths deal with extra emotional information. They just happen to be sensitive to it and it requires an extra level of processing. It can be intense, disorienting, and exhausting.

#EmpathProblems

When you are picking up other people’s feelings and don’t know how to discern what’s yours and clear what isn’t you, it can lead to a range of issues. You might find yourself:

• Feeling overwhelmed by constant emotional noise

• Feeling drained from having to process so many feelings

• Feeling overly responsible for other people

• Taking on others people’s problems or work to manage the feelings of others feelings for them

• Finding it stressful when other people suppress or hide their emotions

• Acting out emotions that aren’t yours, sometimes without realizing it

• Being seen as the “emotional one” because you express the emotions other people bottle up

• Struggling to connect to your own wants and needs because others’ feelings are louder

• Carrying emotions in your body as tension, heaviness, or unease that don’t belong to you

• Feeling weighed down, blocked, or stuck

If you identify as an Empath, there is a very good chance that at least some of these experiences will be familiar to you. I find them to be common experiences among my clients.

Awareness is Power

We live in a society that tends to understand people as discrete units who have their own individual and separate inner experiences. This means that most of us are never given the language or taught the techniques that would help us navigate our actual live experience. Instead of teaching people to notice and discern the different kinds of feelings they are picking up, internal experience is often denied and dismissed. Empaths are gaslit and sensitive people are left to just figure out coping strategies, without really understanding what they are even experiencing.

This is why it’s such a revelation when people finally discover the category “Empath.” It puts words to an experience. It gives a framework within which people can understand why they might feel so emotional, even when they aren’t upset about anything, why they get so tired after being around people, why it’s so frustrating when someone won’t admit what they are really feeling, and more strange experiences that make sense when you realize you are constantly feeling other people’s feelings.

Without awareness, people often end up finding workarounds to managing the experiences. They might limit their contact with people, tense of their body to control what they feel, numb themselves with screens or substances, become emotional volatile, or any number of inelegant solutions.

Awareness, on the other hand, opens the door to understanding and working with this sensitivity. When you know that you are feeling other people’s feelings, you can start to develop processes to protect yourself, process the feelings, and use the information to actually help yourself navigate your life. Empathy is a form of extrasensory perception. It’s literally a superpower. It doesn’t always feel like it, but when you learn to work with and not against it, you can learn to harness it as a gift, instead of living with it as a burden.

Next in this series: The Practice That Changes Everything for Empaths

During the winter holidays, I celebrate the Solstice, Christmas, and New Years and each holiday has a different significance.

When I was little, Christmas was the big holiday of the year for my family. We would visit my grandparents, have lots of food, exchange presents, and spend a lot of time together. To this day, Christmas remains about family for me. New Years is usually a day for reflecting on the year that has passed and celebrating the new year with my husband.

As I’ve become more spiritual personally, I’ve wanted to take some time to connect to that during the holiday. I've chosen the Winter Solstice to be the day I focus on my spiritual practice.

When you develop your own practices and rituals, there is a need to be very tuned in to what is helpful. My own spirituality uses rituals and standard practices, but is very focused on being responsive to the spiritual needs of the moment.

Intuitive Practice is a way of tuning in and noticing what you feel and sense in order to access deeper insight. It’s a foundation practice that is the basis of all my psychic readings. It’s also a way of discovering what you need now and accessing inner guidance.

The basic practice is simple. You just Relax, Notice, Describe and Repeat. The key is not to try to force understanding or “make meaning” from what you notice. Just allow the insight to reveal itself to you.

Use Intuitive Practice Shape Your Practice

There are many ways you can use Intuitive Practice to help you hone your practice, design a ritual and set intentions. I'm going to share three basic ones with you here.

Check What Feels Aligned

The first practice is to simply check what you feel about practices and intentions.

Make a list of things you are considering including in your ritual. For example:

• Lighting candles

• Different kinds of incense

• Meditation or breathwork

• Setting intentions

• Eating certain things or fasting

• Taking a cleansing bath

• Making offerings

• When to do the ritual

It's particularly helpful to note things you are trying to choose between, such as what kind of incense you might light or what time of day to do the ritual.

If you are using the Solstice to set intentions for the new year, you can make a second list of intentions you are thinking of committing to for the coming year. For example:

• To call love into your life

• To align your career with your highest purpose

• To be more present in daily life

• To deepen connections with loved ones

• To focus on gratitude

• To deepen your spiritual practice

Once you have assembled your lists of things you want to check your intuition on, find a comfortable place to relax and get started.

The Practice

Steps:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.

2. Relax. Take a few minutes for this. You can meditate or just take a few deep breaths and centre yourself.

3. Starting with the first item on your list, name it aloud or in your head.

4. Relax and notice what you feel, sense and think of. Do you have a positive or negative sense? Does it make you feel open or closed? Energized or drained?

5. Pay attention to where you feel things and how they feel as well. Pay particular attention to the abdomen and chest areas.

6. Does anything else come up?

7. Note how you feel about this item and then move onto the next one on the list.

8. Repeat steps 3-6 for each item.

By doing this practice you will discover what practices feel right and good for you at this time. Developing a personal spiritual practice should feel expansive and energizing, not draining. Some practices or intentions might seem be a good idea in general but not what you need in this moment. Focus on what will serve you and your practice the best.

Discover What is Calling to You

The second practice you can try is a bit more open ended. The idea is simply allow yourself to intuitively answer questions. It is a very rich way to gain insight into what practices and rituals are calling to you at this time and discover new possibilities.

You can make up your own questions based on what you are curious about. Here are 5 to get you started:

1. What practices will connect me to my higher self/my spirituality most right now?

2. What do I need right now?

3. What intentions will serve me best in the coming year?

4. What is calling to me now?

5. What would feel most fulfilling to do in honour of this holiday?

Once you have your questions, you are ready to get started.

Follow these steps:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.

2. Relax. Take a few minutes for this. You can meditate or just take a few deep breaths and centre yourself.

3. State your first question aloud or in your head with the intention to receive an answer.

4. Relax and notice what you feel, sense and think of. If nothing is coming, relax more and just notice.

5. Pay attention to where you feel things and how they feel as well.

6. Record what comes up. You can write it down, record audio or use voice-to-text.

7. Do not try to understand as you record it. Just notice and record.

8. Repeat steps 4-7 for all your questions.

9. Review your answers and see what you discover. Stay relaxed and try to allow the meaning to emerge as a sense of discovery rather than making sense of your answers with your mind.

The more you practice simply noticing and describing the easier it will get for you to understand your inner language. It can be difficult at first because most of use have been taught to discount inner information, but this practice is truly very powerful if you take the time to work with it. Your intuitive language will not be quite like anyone else’s so give yourself time to let it reveal itself to you.

Guided Action

The third practice is a more embodied approach.

1. Set an intention to honour your spirituality through practice.

2. Start by connecting to your body and intuition with a meditation. You can do any breathwork or attention practice or use use this guided meditation to connect:

3. As the meditation completes, sit quietly and simply feel what comes up, what comes to you.

4. If you are distracted by other tasks or nothing comes up, you can suggest options (see list above or choose your own) and simply notice what you feel about each.

5. Repeat this process as you move through your practice. Allowing yourself to flow by feel through a sequence that feels right.

This will be completely natural for some people and quite challenging for others. The key to this process is to let go of the need to “do it right” and trust the process. As you practice moving by feel, you are building connection to your intuition and learning to understand your embodied guidance. If this is different for you, it might take some time to feel comfortable with the process.

Wishing you all the best for this holiday season.

Happy Practicing.

If you’re interested in re-awakening your intuitive and psychic gifts and making them functional, grounded, and useful, then The Intuition Circle is for you — a 6-week journey to unlock your psychic-intuitive abilities.

If you’re local to Hamilton, I’ll also be offering the course in person at The Witch’s Fix from January to February

What to Expect

This isn’t a series of pre-recorded webinars — it’s a live, interactive program with real-time teaching, individualized support, and a small, dedicated group. You’ll receive direct insights, check-ins, and a personalized plan to help you get the most out of the experience.

Book Your Spot

In this course, you will learn how to:

✨ Relax into your intuitive process with confidence
✨ Understand your personal intuitive language
✨ Work with the energetic and intuitive information you naturally pick up
✨ Strengthen and trust your intuition through practice
✨ Build a sustainable intuitive practice tailored to your goals and strengths

What You’ll Receive

• 6 live, interactive Zoom sessions with psychic-intuitive Gada Jane

• Step-by-step guidance for developing and trusting your intuition

• Practical exercises to tune into the energetic information you already sense

• A supportive community of like-minded participants

• Session recordings to revisit anytime

• A printable workbook with journal prompts and exercises

• Weekly Q&A time for personalized guidance

• Techniques for integrating intuition into everyday life

• Lifetime access to course notes for continued practice

Each week combines guided exercises, hands-on practice, and space for discussion so you can build your intuitive foundation step by step — with real support.

Book Your Spot

📅 Course Schedule

Tuesdays at 7 pm ET on Zoom.

• Jan 27

• Feb 3

• Feb 10

• Feb 17

• Feb 24

• Mar 3

Course Fee

$230 CAD for 6 sessions
or $195 CAD if you register by January 5th.

Spaces are limited to keep the group intimate — reserve your spot today!

Book Your Spot

I work with people to re-awaken their intuitive and psychic gifts and make them functional and useful – adding both clarity and a sense of magic to their lives.

If this approach resonates for you, then my new program, The Intuition Circle is for you. It’s a 6-Week Journey to Unlock your Psychic-Intuitive Abilities.

Learn more

This is not a series of webinars — it’s a live, interactive online course with real-time teaching, personalized guidance, and support from a small group. You’ll receive one-on-one insights, check-ins, and a personalized plan to help you navigate the program.

In this course, you will learn how to
✨ Relax into your intuitive process with confidence
✨ Understand your personal intuitive language
✨ Work with the energetic and intuitive information you naturally pick up
✨ Use practice techniques to strengthen and trust your intuition
✨ Develop a practice tailored to your own goals and strengths.

💫 What You'll Get When You Join:

• 6 live, interactive Zoom sessions with psychic-intuitive Gada Jane

• Step-by-step guidance to develop and trust your intuition

• Practical exercises to tune into the energetic information you naturally pick up

• A supportive community of like-minded participants to share and reflect with

• Session recordings to revisit anytime and deepen your practice

• Printable workbook/journal prompts to track insights and exercises between sessions

• Q&A time every week to get personal guidance on your intuitive journey

• Tips and techniques for integrating intuition into everyday life

• Lifetime access to course notes so you can continue your practice after the 6 weeks

Each week combines guided exercises, practice, and space for questions.

You’ll build your intuitive foundation step-by-step, with support from a small group.

📅 Course Schedule
Wednesdays at 7 pm ET

• Oct 15

• Oct 22

• Oct 29

• Nov 5

• Nov 12

• Nov 19

Course Fee: $180 CAD for 6 sessions or $150 CAD if you register by September 30th. Spaces are limited to keep the group intimate. Reserve your spot today!

Learn more

Want something more flexible? You might enjoy my self-paced online course Introduction to Intuitive Practoce. Sign up here.

Intuitive Practice is a mindfulness-based method that helps you relax into your natural intuitive abilities, guiding you to connect with the energetic information you're already tuned into.

Sign up on Meetup

(Don’t use Meetup? Comment or DM me ‘zoom’ and I’ll send you the link directly.)

This Month’s Focus: Manifesting with Intuition

This session will focus on Manifesting with Intuition. Through a series of practical exercises, you’ll learn how to use your intuition to manifest.

This session is perfect for both beginners and those looking to deepen their intuitive practice.

Class Details

• Date: September 17

• Time: 7 – 8 p.m. ET (active practice)

• Q&A + Sharing: 8 – 8:30 p.m. ET

• Location: Zoom (link provided after registration)

No prior experience needed. Just bring an open mind, a notebook, and your curiosity.

Sign up on Meetup

(Don’t use Meetup? Comment or DM me ‘zoom’ and I’ll send you the link directly.)

Instead of rigid systems and endless to-do lists, you’ll learn how to plan in a way that feels aligned with your inner wisdom and the natural shifts of the season. This is for you if you’re ready to embrace structure without the stress, ambition without burnout, and presence without paralysis.

Book Your Spot

In this live Zoom session, you’ll be guided to:
✨ Align your goals with your true purpose
✨ Feel into what wants your attention now
✨ Let go of pressure, perfectionism, and overplanning
✨ Create a vision that makes space for joy, mystery, and magic
✨ Tap into your own intuitive intelligence to organize your life with ease

This workshop is perfect for:
🌿 Sensitive, creative, and ambitious souls
🌿 People who crave clarity but resist control
🌿 Anyone feeling stuck between “doing it all” and just giving up

You’ll leave with a new framework for the season ahead—one that honors both your vision and your inner voice.

Book Your Spot

Come as you are. No planner required.

📍 Location: Zoom (link sent after registration)
🎟️ Tickets: $15

Q: What is psychic ability, and how does it work and help in normal life?

A psychic ability is the ability to perceive things that are not immediately around you or perceptible by your five senses.

There are two key aspects of psychic abilities.

1. They involve tuning into and receiving information to get information that you couldn’t get through your physical senses.

2. The information you received psychically appears in your inner world through your psychic/intuitive language.

To understand how they are helpful, it useful to understand a bit more about how they actually function.

There are many kinds of psychic abilities and they present in different ways for different people. You can think of it like being tuned to different channels with different communication styles. So one person might find it very easy to pick up information about the inner worlds of other people while another person might be more deeply connected to nature or the physical world. The first person might, for example, know when something is wrong with a friend they haven’t spoken to or seen recently while the second person might pick up more easily on things like the location of a lost object.

People will also have different inner languages that might present more visually or more like sensation, or as a sense of knowings, or it might come through as words words or phrases.

None of these channels or communication styles are mutually exclusive. Everyone will have various patterns and tendencies that shift over time. Think of it less like a checklist where you have certain abilities turned on or off and more like a constellation that takes on different shapes, depending on a person’s preferences and channels, and current practices.

So how do psychic abilities help you in life? In general, psychic abilities will provide you additional information and insight that you can use to navigate your life. As you develop your gifts and come to trust the information you are getting, it becomes like a heightened ability to navigate your life.

The specifics of how that can help you depend on your unique constellation of gifts and interests. If you are very tuned into people, for example, this has immense potential to help you in your social interactions and your relationships. Having more information and being able to intuitively organize and understand the information you’re getting will help you make better decisions and take more into account than you could consciously work with.

It’s not always easy to harness your psychics strengths though. Sometimes psychic sensitivity to people can complicate social interaction if someone if picking up a lot of information but feels overwhelmed by it or doesn’t know how to work with it. Imagine feeling everyone’s feelings in all your interactions. It can be a lot to handle and sometimes it makes people act emotionally erratic or simply shut down. In these cases, the person needs to actively learn to integrate and manage the information before the ability becomes truly helpful.

Q: People say you are born a psychic. How do you learn to become a psychic, or is it not possible?

Everyone is psychic in the same way that everyone is an athlete: to various degrees. Just as mostly everyone can participate in some sort of physical endeavour, mostly everyone has some degree of psychic abilities.

However, in much the same way that certain people have greater natural athletic ability, some people have greater natural psychic ability. Furthermore, people also have specific interest and tendencies that shape how those abilities present in, much in the same way that some people might be more physically suited to certain sports than other people.

And much like sport, development and practice matters. Everyone has access to psychic information and abilities, but even if you are born very open to psychic channels, it takes training, practice and staying open to develop and sustain the gift.

As for how to train, there are a few key things you can do. First of all, adopt a practising of noticing what you feel what you notice and simply allowing yourself to be in that state of awareness. Notice but don’t try to interpret or make it make sense. That state of awareness is where you will begin to feel and sense psychic and intuitive insights. It’s important not to try to interpret them with your conscious, rational mind. Simply notice, detach, allow.

You can practice dropping into this kind of state of awareness and openness through meditation practices. Many types of breathwork are effective. It’s also helpful to work with energetic opening practices. Practice visualizations for moving your energy and opening chakras. I train people to tap into their intuitive and psychic abilities, and these are the basic underlying practises I use to get people started.

Q: I'm worried my anxiety makes other people anxious. Can this happen?

Yes, this happens. People pick up feelings from other people all the time. The first thing to know is that it’s okay and it's not your fault. People are interconnected and not really the discrete, distinct individuals that we have been made to believe we are. In fact some portion of your anxiety might even belong to someone else.

Not everyone will feel your anxiety. Some people feel other people’s feelings constantly, others might pick up your anxiety in particular because they are close to you. You are not responsible for you how people manage their experience of other people’s feelings.

The best thing you can do is focus on helping yourself and learning techniques to deal with your anxiety. Your anxiety is not your fault anymore than other people’s experience of it is, but it is more within your domain.

One thing you can try is paying attention to when the anxiety shows up and what it seems to want to tell you. Just notice the feelings. Where do you feel it in your body? What associations come along with it? Sometimes anxiety is connected to not listening to what you feel and need at a deeper level.

If your anxiety is coming up around people, you might be picking up their stress or anxiety. If this is happening, it will be helpful to practice telling the difference between your feelings and those of others. Again, just noticing what you feel, seeing what you associate with it and what comes attached to it will be helpful.

People often say "just trust your intuition," but what does it mean and is it actually good advice? For a lot of people, it’s not actually helpful advice because working with intuition is not as simple as this sentence makes it sound.

Before I explain why, let me give some context. I am a strong believer in the value of intuitive processes. Of course I am. I'm literally a professional intuitive. I rely heavily on intuition to make my own life choices and I teach other people to do the same.

However, I came to this work and this way of life with a lot of skepticism. Raised by skeptics for whom every situation that came up was considered an opportunity for careful analysis, the last thing I wanted to be was irrational. I had been indoctrinated with the idea that intuition might be real, but it was a sort of vague and personal thing that could easily be overvalued.

This meant that the first several years of my intuitive practice involved a lot of experimentation and testing. I would have a feeling or see something in a reading and then I would wait to see whether this experience that seemed to be intuitive insight corresponded with outer reality. I was very, very careful about allowing myself to believe or trust.

This skepticism has been foundational in my development and my approach to working with intuition. It has forced me to be very careful and demand a high level of precision and accuracy from myself. I have examined every tiny feeling to discern the most subtle differences and what I learned from all that careful work is that working with intuition is a complicated process that involves a lot of subtlety. It’s not all strong, clear, sudden insights.

For example, does one simply always know the difference between an intuitive hit and an emotional feeling? I work with many very intuitive people who struggle with this kind of distinction. It takes time and practice to learn to understand and it's especially hard to get clarity when we are personally invested in a situation. Too often I hear people trying to get a clear intuitive answers about something really important like whether to marry, whether to break-up, or what job to take without doing any other work to develop their relationship with their intuition. Yet these are the hardest kinds questions to answer. When you care about something or when the stakes are high, it's very difficult to distinguish between what you know intuitively and what you want to be true.

This is why I recommend training your intuition in order to trust your intuition. Intuitive practice means practicing on small things to learn how to listen, perceive, and interpret intuitive information. Sometimes it’s hard to discern what is intuitive information. You might, for example, meet someone and feel uncomfortable. Is this intuitive information that the person is not for you? Are you experiencing resistance? Are you feeling the other person’s social anxiety? Or does your discomfort have nothing to do with the other person? Likely, each of these things will feel different if you notice the feeling more precisely. Working with intuition is actually a complex process of learning to understand your own inner language.

But the complexity doesn’t end there. It can also be hard to decide how to integrate even clear intuitive insight into one’s life. For example, you might have a strong feeling that there is something about, say, Cincinnati that is important to you. You feel pulled there. Does that mean you should move there? Does it mean you should visit? And if so, when? The temptation is often to try to put together a plan using your rational, planning mind, but this pulls the insight out of its intuitive content. A better approach is usually to stay in the intuitive process and let your intuition reveal more on its own terms.

So, when I say trust your intuition is not helpful advice, I really mean that it’s not a very helpful description of the process of working with intuition. It’s risky to trust feelings when you don’t know what different feelings and thoughts mean or how to work with them. It’s simply not helpful to blindly trust every strong feeling that comes up. It works better to approach intuition with openness and curiosity than fixed faith. Listen, notice and develop a relationship with your intuition over time and let your intuition reveal to you how it communicates. Don’t force trust, but rather build trust over time by learning which types of feelings are useful and informative.

The more precisely you can notice subtle differences in feelings and the more time you have spent relaxing into an open and intuitive state, the more you will be able to reliably tell the difference between intuition and other feelings. When you develop skill, you become able to trust not just the information that comes, but also your understanding of that information.

It’s not as simple as “just trust your intuition,” and yet trust does matter. In fact, trust is essential to working with intuition because of the nature of intuition. Intuition is not like sensory perception where you can literally see or hear or feel or smell where the information is coming from. It's also not a rational process where you can lay out every step. Intuition, by definition, is information with invisible origins. You can't check your work like you might when doing a math problem. You simply decide what to do with the information that the feeling or experience reveals. This means that intuition often feels difficult to explain or justify. At this point, trust becomes essential to the process.

Once you know with types of feelings or insights are reliable, you can learn to trust them even if you can’t fully explain them. Imagine, for example, you are working on a project and it’s not going well. Perhaps you are trying to win a contract for work but the odds seem stacked against you. You have to decide whether to put the effort in to continue or not. If you check your intuition and feel confident that your intuition is telling you it’s worthwhile, meaning that you have a kind of feeling that you recognize as informative and reliable that pulls you to go forward with the project. In this case, the feeling becomes information you can decide to listen to, even if external circumstances don’t align. This is what trusting intuition looks like in practice. It’s not about blindly following feelings. It’s about integrating your intuitive insights into your decision making with discernment.