I was reflecting on how to consciously train this mysterious skill of intuition and in doing so I began reflecting on my own journey. The inner nudge was then to share my journey to date, to help inspire and encourage you with the exploration of your own 6th sense.  

Open minded ‘muggle’ household

I didn't grow up in a mystical or alternative household. There was no one in my family known to have intuitive gifts or psychics, as some do. The skills I have now did not simply ‘present themselves at birth’. The intuitive skills I have now were trained and developed over time - even if I was ‘gifted’ being highly sensitive or with natural channelling abilities.

I do however consider myself lucky with my upbringing as my mum has always been very open and not dogmatic when it comes to religious inclinations.  Neither did she express opposition to my exploration of holistic or alternative practices or inclinations.  I have always felt free to explore my interests, there was no suppression, which is not the case for all. I have felt able to choose my path, explore my interests and explore my gifts. 

Unpredictable home life 

I did, however, live in a household for the first 10 years with a traumatised emotionally unpredictable father.  Due to this I begun unconsciously developing my intuition since birth without realising or talking about it.  As the environment felt unsafe at times and so much went unsaid, my intuitive awareness and somatic empathy became the tools I used to read the room.  Needing to ‘mind read’ and sense people’s feelings through the subtle became 2nd nature. For many highly sensitive people this is a common experience, that our sensitivity becomes heightened to safely navigate threat at home in one form or another.

The setback in consciously developing this intuitive skill was when I communicated what I was picking up or asked a question, I was met with denial of the truth I was sensing, due to their shame or trying to protect us, or wanting to deny it to themselves.  Smiling and saying everything was ‘okay’ or telling me not to be silly, when I could sense intense rage or depression or so on.  I therefore felt I couldn’t trust my experience, I doubted myself and this had the impact of me not having confidence in what I was intuitively picking up.

Opening the door - first mentor 

In my early teens, Marion arrived.  She was my first intuitive mentor - without me realising it and I feel incredibly grateful for her.  When Marion was a young woman, she almost became a nun.  She and a friend arrived at the convent, giggling their heads off, asking for entry to start what they saw as their vocation.  Mother Superior however, took one look at them and said she needed to turn one of them away as the nunnery would be a riot if the two of them joined together.  So she went home, leaving her friend behind to become a nun. 

She then ended up becoming a nurse and marrying a policeman and having three children.  But her religious convictions remained, she had an incredible connection to the angelic realm and a library, literally, of alternative books on a wide range of esoteric subjects.  Her garden was littered with fairy statues blowing you kisses as you walked past and hanging crystals were hung in every window, sending rainbows on the walls of the shaded bungalow like a cave of wonders.  

She was portly and shuffled with her ethereal white blonde hair draped by her hanging cheeks.  She would tease, erupting into a joyful blast of laugher, whilst her sky blue eyes trailed after you twinkling in the aftermath with a rye smile.  She was my first esoteric teacher and her presence taught me a great deal as much as our conversations opened my mind.  She was incredibly spiritual, had contact with ethereal realms and yet was in the world, grounded and incredibly pragmatic. She was earthly and angelic.  

She spoke often of angels which in my early years was a little bemusing as I couldn't see them, but I knew she could. However, once I had started my Shiatsu training in my 20’s, I developed my 2nd sight and entering her house for a visit, felt like walking into heaven as I could feel and see them everywhere.  She told me in later years that she knew as a child that I was clairvoyant, but didn't feel able to train me properly as she didn't want to favour me over the other three children she was looking after, one being my sister.

However, when we were on our own or during side conversations, she would introduce me to little gems of knowledge. She took me to my first Mind-body-spirit fair, she subtly taught me to start to tune into people's aura by asking what colour I could see around everyone in the family she gave me my first crystal  as a gift.  She would ask me to hold an object and sense what I could see.  She told me stories of giant angels she saw during a pilgrimage that stood on the shore of Iona.  When I was having an existential questioning about life - that to me, one life didn't make sense, she told me that other cultures believed in reincarnation - which for me was a huge revelation and opened the door to Buddhism. 

At the time, she was simply a supportive presence, nudging open the door of intuition for me, that I wasn't really ready to look through as I had other things going on in my life.  But she became a significant teacher and source of information from my 20s onward as I began to develop my clairvoyant skills slowly, but surely.  She died a few years ago, and I often drive past her house in Horstead and think of her fondly.  She taught many people in her own, subtle, quiet and angelic way. 

Dabbling, doubt and fear 

As a young teenager, I remember beginning to dabble - Reading a book on Buddhism, and realising I felt I was a Buddhist, but I was never gonna live in a cave and meditate my whole life, so I might as well give up on that!  An absolutist view.  

I remember trying to meditate by focusing on a candle, but freaking myself out as the candle turned purple in my vision, and the room started melting.  So I decided not to try meditation for a number of years after that! Ha. 

I would also go off in what I realise now, was channel mode and try to communicate with my spirit guides, which now I look back, seems like it may have been a bit unusual. The voice that came through was ever loving and angelic but I struggled not to believe I was ‘just making it up’. So I would pick up the practice and put it down over the years. 

So I was curious and trying spiritual practices or techniques, but I would hit a wall of fear or doubt. 

Intuition from teens to twenties 

I have playfully been called ‘a witch’ because of all the ‘spooky’ coincidences I would pick up on. This went on for so many years that it reached a point where friends would reach out to me and ask what my ‘witchy sense’ as they would call it, felt about the situation to help them with a decision or suss out a person. I will list some of these experiences in case they reflect your own:

Random

• Knowing who was calling on the landline before I picked up the phone

• Humming a tune to a song and then turning on the radio and its playing - the chorus I’m singing 

• Animals stopping whilst walking with their owners to ‘tell me’ they're sad or    suffering from an injury, so I can communicate it to their owners

Places

• Not liking or avoiding buildings only to find out there are tragic stories behind them

• Seeing ghosts in a hotel, describing them and then being shown a photo of the person I described, and so on…

People knowing 

• Knowing the exact insecurities of relative strangers in a bar, and if they started hassling me or a friend, being able to point them out, to get them to back off (Not my most compassionate use of my intuition!) 

• Knowing people were going to break up, but not knowing them well or knowing why, then suddenly they do 

• Knowing someone fancies my boyfriend, even if they both deny it, but then we break up and they have a fling (I mean, this one I'm sure has happened to many of us…) and so on

Before I was 28 years old, I had no formal training in anything other than mainstay education - nothing alternative, or esoteric. I have no idea why I knew these things, or why I was picking them up, or why they turned out to be true. It was just happening. 

Consciously training the knowing

Now it was after a long-term relationship break up at 25 years old that I much more consciously, rather than unconsciously, began to be interested in my intuitive sense.  I had been a ‘head over heart girl’, in many ways but it was my gut that overruled my pleading head and my heart in the decision to leave that five year relationship, and I needed to learn more about that knowing, so I could learn to listen to it sooner in my decision-making. 

So I read ‘women who run with the wolves’ which poetically through storytelling explores intuitive knowing. It spoke of the wild woman's knowing which was important knowledge for me at the time to break the ‘good girl’ spell I was under. 

From this I wanted to align with my intuition, to become intuitively led so:

• I began to take my intense and vivid dream life seriously. The decision to end my first serious relationship had been communicated to me through the symbol of repeatedly cutting off my hair (the dramatic post breakup hair change)

• I made space for creative outlets

• I picked up (what I realise now) was a poor book explaining the the Four Clairs (clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Clairsentience, Claircognizance). 

I began to take interest and became receptive to my intuitive knowing, rather than ignoring it, or denying it because I knew where that got me - Not very far, down a dead end or feeling unhappy. 

Further reading:

The importance of rewilding for highly sensitive women 

Eight books that marked turning points for me as an intuitive empath 

Therapy and research for clarity 

Alongside this journey, I was learning about myself, and who I am. In my mid teens, I was diagnosed as dyslexic, which for me was a big relief as I realised my brain just works differently. That I saw and experience the world differently, and that was okay. 

When I began my Shiatsu training (at 28 years old), it was suggested to me that I was highly sensitive. I've never heard that term before. I went and researched it. Again a world of realisation opened up to me about my experiences to date, including why I had found it so hard to be in the world when everyone else seemed ‘fine’, as well as why I found it easy to pick up on subtle information. 

I began my Shiatsu training in part to try to heal my own subconscious patterns through the body (as talk therapy hadn’t changed my emotional triggers and thought patterns as I had hoped). In practicing Shiatsu I realised my levels of anxiety weren't ‘normal’ and this is when I stumbled across trauma theory and began to learn about it, this again made sense of my experience. 

In clearing my trauma symptoms, I learnt to navigate my high sensitivity as well as work with my neuro difference.  Filtering intuitive information became 100 times easier because there was no longer a thunderstorm inside of me. Therefore I gained greater clarity over the information I was picking up, as past experiences weren't being triggered and I realised this had previously made matters very confusing. Our personal healing journey can be really fundamental to supporting our intuitive development in my experience. 

Formal training begins

From 28 years old I began training in holistic practices and buddhism.  All of this training contributed, inspired or informed my intuitive development and ability to connect to the subtle realms. Formal training to date includes: reiki, qigong, yoga, meditation, Shiatsu, EFT, Hypnosis, nlp, silva method, trauma training and Buddhist philosophy. 

My Shiatsu training with the Shiatsu College in particular was monumental for me, as it was teaching me to tune in to a person on different energetic levels - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, my confidence in what I was able to pick up on grew enormously. Finally I was training, my subtle awareness. 

I have also learned lots through simply receiving different forms of treatments or sessions. I have read lots on various topics linked to the esoteric and science of the mind-body including: the subtle body, the subconscious mind, shamanism, neuroplasticity, healing intention and so on. 

I am curious and I am constantly learning, building a wider picture and understanding of what is possible with the mind. I have been blessed with gifted and kind teachers and mentors who I have known personally or known through their courses or books. Each opened me to a new aspect on my learning journey.  (I started listing them but it was too much!)

Intuitive play-training 

I remember after doing my Shiatsu training, I began to push the boundaries further with connecting to my intuitive intelligence.  I wanted to live in an intuitive flow.  I wanted to know how to connect to knowledge or answers beyond the conscious mind.  Training my subtle awareness gave me more confidence to do this.  

I began my own exploration, building on both the commitment I made after the break up in my mid 20s to taking my intuition, seriously and listening, as well as capitalising on the confidence and skills I have developed in my different trainings. I wanted to know how to be intuitively learnt from moment to moment in my life. 

I began to play with the following:

• Intuitive decision making - from day to day appointment scheduling, or what route to take home, to the big decisions, such as what course to buy or where to move to (exploring different methods of tuning into intuitive answers).

• Trusting the no, without needing answers - whether that was a no to attending an event, or an inner growl I had when I met someone, I would simply trust it without needing to know why (although it always revealed itself further down the line)!

• Learning when I was picking up on someone thinking about me - This might be the angry presence around me, or a friend repeatedly coming to mind and then they text me. I learnt to trust what I was picking up, not thinking I’m paranoid.

• Experiencing the feelings of others - I learnt to decipher when I was picking up on someone else's emotional state, trusting what I could feel, not doubting myself

• Learning to feel confident in the information about others coming to me through my dreams - Dreaming of friends crying and then messaging them, to be told that it was true and so on.

Further reading:

Six reasons your intuition may be leaving you in the dark 

Six reasons you're struggling to make intuitive life decisions 

Channelling 

At 40 years old I was introduced to Luc Benhamou who is a medium and does Psychic Surgeries with clients.  I asked him about my sensitivity, and what on earth was that about?  He told me that I was a Channel, a medium which threw me.  He then proceeded to activate my 28 chakras telling me that it would be life changing, which I didn’t believe if I am honest, but it was.  I went from receiving ‘intermittent information from higher light levels’ to continual access. 

After assimilating this change and digesting it, I decided to lean into the idea that I was a channel by doing short ‘channelling experiments’ with regular clients who trusted me, and who I feel comfortable with.  I would connect with their psyche and their guides and hold a space for healing to happen, simply as a witness verbalising, what was happening.

I ‘threw out’ all the practice models I had learnt and just let myself be open to an intuitive sense of what I needed to do. Soon clients found that this approach was more powerful for them and they wanted to focus on receiving the channelled healing, then they told their friends and it grew. But the channelling work I do now, no one ‘taught me’ (although I have foundational years of various trainings and support) and my guides say it is an ‘ancient art’ so I suspect I learnt the techniques I use in another lifetime. 

My knowledge and understanding in this area, even a year in, is still evolving today and includes loved ones' who have passed stepping forward to perform healing, past life trauma healing, activations, reconnecting energy circuits or levels of consciousness - who knows what next week!  My whole practice is based on my intuitive sensitivity and connecting with the other realms.  With intuitive knowledge, I have always been refining a knowing, learning what symbols, certain feelings etc mean to me, learning through practice, trust and play. 

See for further reading: 

Four different ways of intuitive channelling for HSP’s

Why connecting with spirit guides is easy as a highly sensitive person 

Your story

My passion for intuition, the subtle realms, the nature of mind and self knowledge became my work.  My interest in the body-mind connection, in soul purpose and the connection to intuitive intelligence, still fascinates and drives me.  But developing your intuition doesn't need to be the basis of your work for it to have great value in your life, particularly for highly sensitive people or souls with a mission.  Read: Six reasons why your intuition is your most valuable life tool to learn why it is so important. 

For me, developing a strong intuitive sense was about being deeply authentic, wanting to live in line with my soul's calling and wisdom, connecting with the magic in the world, learning to lean on my intuitive intelligence for answers to navigate practicalities of making day to day decisions and bigger questions, allowing my intuitive knowing to guide my healing and so on. How your intuition speaks to you will be unique, as will how it serves you in helping you to evolve in life, guiding you and supporting you to live to your full potential. 

Enjoyed this blog? To read more join my e-letter to receive my blog and personal reflections to your inbox.