Have you ever had a feeling about something before it happened, a quiet inner knowing that turned out to be exactly right? Or sensed that someone who had passed was close by, and then wondered if you were imagining it?
You weren’t imagining it. And today I want to show you how to develop your psychic abilities so you can trust those signals, understand what they mean, and learn to work with them intentionally.
I sat down with one of the most respected psychic mediums in the world — John Holland — for a conversation that genuinely blew me open. John has dedicated his life to studying and teaching the mechanics of mediumship and intuitive development. He’s trained in England. He’s led countless people to their first real psychic experience. And in this episode of Dear Guides, he led me — and our entire audience — through a live chakra meditation called Raising the Power.
If you’ve been feeling a pull toward this work, this is your episode.
Everyone Has Psychic Abilities — Here’s Where to Start
Everyone has psychic abilities. All of us. It’s not a special gift reserved for a handful of rare people. It comes standard with having a soul.
“If you have a soul — which you do — it comes with a package,” John told me. “I don’t think the divine would send us here without a little help.”
So if you’ve ever thought I’m not psychic, that’s not for me — I want you to let that story go right now.
What John and I have both noticed is that more and more people are waking up to these abilities at this particular moment. The world is turbulent. Our external foundations — political, financial, social — are being shaken. And when the outside world stops giving us the answers we need, we naturally begin to look within. As John put it: “There’s no other way to go but up.”
Your soul is the one thing that never changes, no matter what’s happening around you. Developing your psychic abilities is simply the practice of learning to listen to it.
The key word John offered for this journey is unfoldment. He learned it from a teaching he received while training in England: “Your gifts are like a rose unfolding. You cannot force the bloom.”
The Difference Between Intuition and Imagination
One of the most common questions I hear is: How do I know if what I’m feeling is real, or if I’m just making it up?
John has a beautifully simple answer. Ask yourself: Is this coming to me, or from me?
Here’s how to tell the difference. A true intuitive hit lands. It has a quality of stillness to it. It doesn’t waver. You might feel it in your gut — a steadiness, a knowing. On the other hand, if you’re imagining something, it flickers. It jumps around. It changes shape the more you look at it.
John’s test: imagine you keep getting the feeling that you should call your brother. You think about it, then push it aside. I talked to him last week. I’ll do it tomorrow. But the feeling comes back. Then it comes back again, louder.
That’s intuition. It keeps knocking on the door until you answer.
Imagination, by contrast, dissolves the moment you redirect your attention. It doesn’t persist. It doesn’t grow. It simply goes away.
“Intuition will keep coming back,” John said. “Imagination just goes away. Trust that.”
The next time you receive a hit — to call someone, take a different route, say no to something that looks good on paper — notice whether it fades or stays. That’s your answer.
The Four Clairs: Finding Your Psychic Strengths
Once you accept that you’re psychic (and you are), the next step is understanding how your gifts come through. John describes four main channels, often called the four clairs — and most of us have one that’s naturally dominant.
Clairsentience: The Gift of Feeling
This is my strongest clair, and it may be yours too — it’s the most common. Clairsentience means inner feeling. You sense energy through your body. You walk into a room and something feels off. You meet someone and your gut clenches, even though they said all the right things. You feel emotions that don’t quite belong to you.
The center for clairsentience is the solar plexus — that area just below the sternum. John’s advice: before any big decision, pause and put your attention there. How do I feel about this? Your body doesn’t lie.
Clairvoyance: The Gift of Seeing
Clairvoyance means inner seeing. You receive impressions, images, symbols, or words visually — often subtly, not in dramatic cinematic visions. You might see the word SLOW DOWN in your mind’s eye before a meeting. You might sense a color or a symbol when you tune in to someone’s energy.
Clairvoyance is connected to the third eye chakra, located at the center of the forehead. John noted that clairvoyant people often reveal themselves in everyday language: I don’t like the look of that or something doesn’t look right here. Pay attention to the words you naturally use.
Clairaudience: The Gift of Hearing
Clairaudience is inner hearing — picking up sounds, names, music, or voices beyond the physical. Have you ever heard your name called when no one was there? Woken up with a song stuck in your head that you hadn’t heard recently? Had a high-pitched ringing in your ear?
According to John, these are all potential signals. A song that won’t leave you alone is often someone — a guide, a loved one, your own soul — trying to get your attention. Look at the title. Look at the lyrics. Someone is knocking.
Developing clairaudience, John says, takes deliberate practice in listening. Sit outside or near a window. Stretch your hearing outward — take in the birds, traffic, distant sounds — and then bring it back in. You’re training the ear of your soul, not just your physical ear.
Claircognizance: The Gift of Knowing
This is the most mysterious of the four: a sudden, complete knowing that arrives without any logical pathway. You just know. It’s above the head — that giant aha that can’t be explained. Many people experience claircognizance and dismiss it because there’s no evidence to point to. But that certainty, that instant clarity, is its own form of psychic intelligence.
John’s advice: start with whichever clair feels most natural to you. Don’t chase the one you don’t have. “Start with what you have,” he said, “and they start to work in partnership.”
The Soul Shift: A Simple Technique for Accessing Your Psychic State
One of the most practical tools John shared is called the Soul Shift — a technique taught to him in England and later named by his colleague Pete Sanders, who gave John permission to use the term.
Here’s how to try it:
- Hold your hands out at the edges of your peripheral vision, fingers spread, arms relaxed at your sides.
- Stare softly ahead. Without moving your eyes, stay aware of your hands at the outer edges of your vision.
- Now slowly lower your hands. Stay in that wide, open, spacey, daydream-like awareness you just created.
- Gently move your inner attention above your head — not by rolling your eyes, but by placing your thoughts above you. Imagine the larger part of your energy floating just above the crown.
John describes it this way: most of our soul’s energy is not contained in the body. It’s like an iceberg — the largest part is not the part you can see. The Soul Shift invites you to make contact with that expanded part of yourself.
This is where clairvoyant impressions begin to come through. Not as dramatic 3D visions, but as subtle images, words, and feelings in the periphery of your awareness.
Try it before a meeting, before a conversation, or simply as a daily practice. And let me know in the comments what you notice.
Watch the episode to be guided through this practice.
Why Technology Is Blocking Your Psychic Abilities
I want to be honest with you about something. Technology is one of the greatest barriers to developing psychic ability that exists right now — and most of us are swimming in it all day long.
Every buzz, ping, and scroll pulls your attention outward and into the logical, reactive mind. Psychic ability lives in the quiet, imaginative, inner-directed mind — and that part of you gets crowded out.
When John was training in England, students were asked to go without television for up to three months. The reason: external visual stimulation does all the imagining for us, leaving the inner eye with nothing to practice.
I meditate for a full hour every day, and part of why I need that full hour is simply to undo the overstimulation of screens, Zoom calls, and constant input. I come back into my body, back into my felt sense, back into my psychic awareness.
My honest recommendation: if you want to develop your psychic abilities, try leaving your phone in another room for two to three hours each day. Whatever works for your life — just start creating the silence that your inner knowing needs to speak.
How to Protect and Manage Your Psychic Energy
This is something I feel strongly about and I don’t want to skip over it: as you open up, you have to learn how to manage your energy.
You’re not a sponge. You’re a channel. And you call the shots.
John describes three types of people when it comes to psychic sensitivity. The first has no awareness that they’re psychic at all — they absorb other people’s energy without realizing it, feel unexplained emotions, and have no framework for what’s happening. The second knows about energy but isn’t practicing. The third — the person we’re building toward — knows the mechanics, does the work, and becomes the master of their abilities rather than the abilities becoming the master of them.
To get there, you have to know when to close down.
John’s method: simply imagine your aura pulling in close to your body. You don’t need a ritual. Your aura follows your thought. On a plane, in a crowd, after doing healing work — just bring your energy in.
For clearing after deep psychic or emotional work, John’s go-to is nature: walking barefoot, getting into the woods, time near the ocean. “As long as I’m in nature and breathing,” he told me, “that’s what I do.” Others find salt baths, sage, or sound clearing helpful. Find what works for your energy [LINK https://youtu.be/ZI5sGb6oEI0].
And always — always — be intentional about what you welcome in. When I begin any channeling or meditative practice, I say: I welcome only the guidance of the highest truth and compassion. That intentionality is your protection. Call the shots. Be specific. You are in control.
Raise the Power: John Holland’s Guided Chakra Meditation
At the end of our episode, John led me and our entire audience through a practice he calls Raising the Power — a guided chakra meditation designed to open you to your own psychic awareness.
I want to walk you through it here, and I strongly encourage you to watch the full episode above to experience it with John’s voice guiding you.
How to practice Raising the Power:
Begin with a 4-count inhale, hold for 4, and slow exhale for 6. Let your body fully relax.
Then, with each breath, imagine drawing light up through your energy centers — beginning below you as a sea of shimmering light, pulling that light upward through each chakra:
- Base (red) — grounding, safety
- Sacral (orange) — creativity, feeling
- Solar plexus (yellow) — clairsentience, emotion
- Heart (green) — love, joy, all that is held and released
- Throat (blue) — truth, clairaudience
- Third eye (indigo) — clairvoyance, vision opening like a lotus
- Crown (violet) — connection to the universe, to your soul’s essence
At the crown, let the energy flow down through you again, merging above and below. You are a channel. You are the vessel. You are in control.
To close the practice, gently bring your awareness back down through each center — not shutting them, but softening them. John keeps the base and crown slightly open so energy can continue to move through you throughout your day.
“This is what it is to be intuitive,” John said as the meditation closed. “This is where you can have your answers.”
You can experience the full guided version in the episode above.
Resources
- 📘 John Holland — Bridging Two Realms — John’s book goes much deeper into mediumship, psychic development, and how to connect with those on the other side. Get it here →
- 🎟️ Dear Guides Live — New York City — Join us in person for a live Dear Guides experience. Limited seats. Get details →
FAQ: Your Questions About Psychic Development, Answered
Can everyone develop psychic abilities? Yes — everyone has them. John Holland is clear on this: if you have a soul, you came equipped. Some people are born with a stronger natural aptitude, but the capacity is in all of us. The work is simply the practice of developing what’s already there.
How do I tell if a psychic hit is real or my imagination? Ask: is this coming to me, or from me? Intuition persists. It keeps returning, getting louder, no matter how many times you try to dismiss it. Imagination fades. If a feeling, thought, or knowing keeps coming back — that’s real. Trust it.
What are the four clairs in psychic development? Clairsentience (inner feeling), clairvoyance (inner seeing), clairaudience (inner hearing), and claircognizance (inner knowing). Most people have one that’s naturally strongest. Start there — the others develop in partnership over time.
Is there a technique for shifting into a psychic state? Yes. John Holland’s Soul Shift [link to episode] is one of the simplest entry points. Hold your hands at the edge of your peripheral vision, stare softly ahead, then lower your hands and stay in that open, daydream-like awareness. Move your inner attention gently above your head. That expanded state is where psychic information comes through.
How does technology affect psychic ability? Technology keeps the logical, reactive mind dominant — which crowds out the quieter inner faculty that intuition depends on. Limiting screen time, creating phone-free windows in your day, and building a daily meditation practice are the most direct ways to reclaim that inner space.
What is an easy way to experience my own psychic abilities? John’s Raising the Power meditation is one of the most accessible starting points. It uses breathwork and a guided chakra visualization to open your energy centers and help you feel what it’s like to be in a genuinely expanded, receptive state. Watch the full episode above and practice alongside John.
How do I protect my energy as I develop psychic abilities? Learn to consciously pull your aura in when you don’t want to be receptive — on planes, in crowds, or after energy work. Spend time in nature, walk barefoot, and ground yourself after any deep practice. Be intentional about what you welcome in. You are not a sponge. You are a channel, and you decide what comes through.
About Gabrielle Bernstein
Gabrielle Bernstein is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, spiritual teacher, and host of the Dear Guides podcast and YouTube series. Her books include Super Attractor, The Universe Has Your Back, Judgment Detox, and Happy Days, among others. Gabby leads sold-out events worldwide and has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, and more. Visit gabbybernstein.com to explore her books, meditations, and live events.