Nurturing Your Mediumship Over the Long Haul
Mediumship is taxing. It requires a lot of energy from the medium, especially if you are committed to practicing evidential mediumship. If you want your gift to keep growing, it is important to honor your spirit and take good care of yourself as you serve others. It is a good spiritual practice to regularly release the energy you have taken on from others.
As a medium you are naturally sensitive to other people’s energy, emotions, attitudes, thoughts, hopes, and feelings. I do not believe that mediums take on the condition of the deceased’s former physical experience, because the spirit body is perfect. However, as a medium you are a spiritual healer; thus you are vulnerable to the physical and emotional drain that comes with serving the bereaved and those experiencing major life turmoil.
Sensitive people often carp about their susceptibility to negative energy, but they don’t realize that even when they feel great about the way they were able to help someone, they can still get bogged down with the other person’s energy, even if that energy was upbeat. That is because other people’s energy, whether positive or negative, is simply not available for your use, and when it accumulates in another person’s energy field, it clogs spiritual channels.
Below are two processes that will help you release the energy you might have taken on from others. A third process will aid you to recover personal energy that you have scattered in the universe.
You can use these processes as often as you like. For example, you can monitor how you feel throughout each day. If you are going through a stretch where you are feeling stressed or drained, use these. Because I interact with a lot of clients during the course of my day, I tend to conduct these processes at the end of my workweek, any time I feel sluggish, or when I feel that my accuracy is off.
Take a Spiritual Cleansing Bath
A spiritual cleansing bath is a powerful way to remove the psychic sludge that has accumulated in our energy fields. Please note that this bath is not for cleaning the physical body. If your body is dirty, take a regular shower before you proceed with the spiritual cleansing bath. Also, don’t add soaps, bubbles, fragrance, or oil to this bath.
Start out with a sparkling clean bathroom and bathtub. Light a couple of white candles to lift your spirits. As you fill the bathtub with warm water, adjust the temperature for your comfort and add:
To make the sage tea, boil several sprigs of white sage, including the stem, in 3 cups of water. When the water has reduced to about 2 cups, the tea will be ready to put in the bath.
Here is another process you can use when it is not possible to take a spiritual cleansing bath or if you just don’t care for them.
Releasing Other People’s Energy
Recall Your Energy
As we go about our daily lives, we tend to give away our energy. Every time you worry or fret about something, you give away your energy. When you work hard on a project, you also invest part of your life-force energy. The same is true when you have an argument with your partner or when you are helping others. As a medium you cannot help giving away some of your energy to your clients. Over a period of time, you become depleted and exhausted. It is good to periodically call back the energy you have scattered in the universe.
Maintaining Your Energy
Don’t Schedule Too Many Readings
How many sitters a medium can handle varies between individuals, and it changes over time in the same individual. Mediumship is very much like a muscle that gets stronger with use. When you first go public with your gifts, you might find that your limit is one reading per week. An experienced medium might handle fifteen readings per week without compromising quality. What matters is that you honor your limits and that you don’t overextend yourself. When you have worked comfortably at a given level for some months, you can increase the number of readings you give.
Have Healthy Boundaries with Sitters
It can be hard to say “No” when a distraught person calls you after hours and begs you for a reading now. I strongly suggest that you honor your need for downtime so you won’t burn out. Just because you are a medium does not mean that you need to be on call 24/7.
Healthy boundaries also involve sticking to the scheduled length of a reading. Occasionally you are going to have a sitter who books a thirty-minute reading with you, but has enough questions to take up at least two hours of your time. Because energetically there are only so many readings that one can handle in a week and still maintain high quality, it’s important to keep track of time and remain within the scheduled limits. To help you adhere to your schedule, get in the habit of asking your clients five minutes before the reading’s end if they have a final question for the spirit people. This signals that time is just about up and prevents you from falling into the trap of “Just one more question.”
Set a Limit on How Often You See the Same Sitter
Some people might fall in love with your work, and they may want to see you all the time if you let them. The problem is that this creates an unhealthy dependency in the sitter as well as a huge emotional and energetic drain on you. No matter how much we miss our departed loved ones, we have to learn to live without their physical presence. Mastering loss and bereavement is part of life, and your ability to connect with specific departed spirit people loses its beneficial effects for the living people who are so desperate for connection. I do not read for my clients more than twice per year. If necessary, however, I explain that too-frequent sessions diminish the experience.
Release the Readings You Have Given
It is only natural that we want to remember the highlights of the evidential reading we have given. However, it is best to let each reading flow through you just as water flows through a straw. When the reading is done and your sitter leaves, release the memories of the sitting and the astounding evidence the spirit people have brought. In this way, the next time the person comes to see you, you will be able to work with a fresh spirit link instead of having memories from the previous reading get in your way.
I begin the letting-go process the moment I make the closing prayer. When I blow out the candle I lit at the beginning of the sitting, I release all memories of the reading. Within thirty minutes of blowing out the candle, I only remember a small fraction of what came through, and after an hour I don’t remember anything. Sometimes this is confusing to my sitters, who might see me again and refer to something that was said the last time we met. Or if I read for friends, they assume that I know things about them that I actually do not. Be sure to explain these circumstances, because this ensures that the sitter’s experiences are private, even if you are there in the moment of transmission.
Spend Time in Nature
There is nothing like the healing power of nature to restore body, mind, and spirit, and facilitate the awakening of the spiritual senses. If possible, go on a hike, or simply work or sit in your garden. It’s good to be in the woods, regardless of the season. Nature has many lessons to impart. Let the wind blow away your worries, and let the sunshine lift your spirits. Lie down on Mother Earth, and let her recharge you.
Avoid Becoming a Spiritual Junkie
No one can live around the clock in the higher vibrations of the spirit world. When a medium’s spiritual gifts begin to unfold, they often take workshop after workshop without allowing time in between to absorb the material that was presented. It’s easy to become a spiritual junkie, searching for one spiritual high after another. This kind of pursuit cannot sustain itself and detracts from the experience you are trying to have.
Enjoy Your Life
We are on earth to enjoy life in the physical realm. So do give yourself periodic downtime, a break from all things spiritual. I am not saying to abandon your spiritual practice. You should never abandon prayer and meditation! But be sure to make time for outings with friends, enjoying family, going to the movies, reading a novel, sleeping in late, and going to the beach. Just be a person, not a medium.