Because spirits seem to exist in a different plane of being than our own, it makes sense that their messages might not come through the regular channels. It's not like spirits can pick up a phone, although Thomas Edison famously attempted to create one at the age of seventy-three. Natural Mediums in particular tend to incorporate both the five primary senses and the psychic senses. Again, not all psychics are mediums, but all mediums are psychics. Many people will discount psychic impressions because they are either skeptical of their existence or simply don't believe they have that ability. While it is true that some people are more sensitive to the unseen, the reality is that everyone receives psychic impressions. Feeling called to take a different route home and later learning you avoided a major traffic jam or the sudden urge to check in on someone you love only to find they were about to call you are examples of psychic pings. We often chalk them up to luck or chance, but they offer an opportunity to consider what it might be like to have those experiences more often. By becoming more aware of and in tune with the ways your psychic senses pick up messages, you will be better able to notice when spirits are present and what they are trying to convey.

Exercise for Understanding Your Psychic Senses
Think of a time when you had a strong gut instinct that proved right. Choose a memory that does not cause you distress.

• Did you follow the instinct or did you ignore it?
• What was the result?

Take a few breaths and allow yourself to call back that memory as fully as you can. How did this gut instinct manifest?

• Did you hear a voice or get a flash of an image?
• Did you experience physical sensations like chills or heat? Pain or tingling? Or perhaps smells or tastes you shouldn't have been experiencing?
• Did you just know what you should or should not do?
• Something else?

You will discover more if you repeat this exercise with other instances where your gut instincts proved to be correct. By writing down what you remember, you'll begin to create your own catalog of experiences. This will likely shed light on the ways your own unique blend of psychic gifts show up as well as areas where there is room for practice and growth.

The existence and reliability of the psychic senses that allow people to understand what spirits are attempting to convey will likely never cease to be a source of controversy or scorn from those determined to hold out for purely scientific explanations for the mysteries of what lies beyond our physical existence. However, learning to slow down and listen to our subtle senses can be one of the best ways to communicate with spirits. Let's first define those subtle, psychic senses, then go into the ways we can utilize them to communicate with spirits. Spoiler—it may be different than what you think.

The Clair Senses and Spirit Communication
Psychic senses are commonly referred to as the Clair senses. Clair is French for "clear," which provides the root for the following terms and examples. With the exception of clairvoyance, whose mention dates back to the 1800s, the following terms seem to have been coined in the 1990s and early 2000s. Although the terms vary a bit, these are some of the most common descriptors you will hear.

• Clairvoyance or "clear seeing:" Sometimes described as seeing a picture or movie in one's mind. It can feel similar to the images our minds create when we are reading a novel or recalling a clear series of events from our past. Clairvoyance doesn't always include moving pictures. Clairvoyant messages can also include images of words, letters, symbols, and more.
• Clairaudience or "clear hearing:" Sometimes described as hearing words, songs, and other sounds in your mind. It can feel similar to remembering a conversation or replaying a song in your mind. The voice may sound and feel different than the cadence and tone of your own inner monologue, but not always.
• Clairsentience or "clear feeling:" Clairsentience can refer to both physical sensations and emotions. Sometimes clairsentient messages come through as physical sensations in the body, such as pain, tingling, chills, and more. Other times, clairsentient messages involve emotions like sadness, joy, or anger that don't have a logical origin or that are different than what one was experiencing moments before.
• Claircognizance or "clear knowing:" This is the psychic sense most of us are familiar with—the inexplicable gut feeling that later is proved right. Claircognizance is most commonly described as just knowing something, even if you can't prove it in the moment.
• Clairalience/Clairolfactance or "clear smelling:" Ghost smells, anyone? Smelling perfume or tobacco smoke that isn't actually there is a common experience in many haunted locations. It's also one of the ways many people experience clairalience, or clairolfactance. Some people with particularly heightened clairalience describe a certain smell that accompanies the presence of spirits of the dead or elemental or earth-based spirits. Smelling sulfur or excrement is commonly associated with the presence of demons and other negative entities. Other times, clairalience serves as a kickoff for other Clair senses. For example, smelling a certain kind of soap may immediately call forth an image of the individual accompanying it (clairvoyance) or knowledge of the source (claircognizance).
• Clairgustance or "clear tasting:" As with the primary senses, psychic perceptions of smell and taste often go hand in hand. The scent of tobacco can fill one's mouth with the acrid taste of smoke. Time in a haunted saloon can leave you with an unexplainable taste of old booze. Much like with clairalience, sometimes these sensations serve as the jumping point for other Clair senses to step in.

How the Psychic Senses Connect with Spirit Communication
It makes sense that the ways we can connect and communicate with spirits would require senses beyond our five primary ones. However, it's also possible that spirits communicate in ways we don't understand, and our senses provide what is essentially a filter. The messages come through in ways that are unique to our strengths. For example, you may discover that you have strong clairvoyance and clairsentience skills that allow you to receive feeling in your body that are accompanied by mental pictures that together convey a story or complete message from a spiritual being. It may not be that the spirit is sending you pictures and sensations. That may simply be the ways you are able to sense them. This means that two people may receive messages from spirits that are honest and accurate, but wildly different.

This isn't much different from the ways two living individuals can share an experience at the same time but have very different memories of what took place. When relying heavily on the Clair senses for spirit communication, it can be helpful to focus on describing the information coming through the senses and not just the analysis and conclusions. This is especially true when practicing spirit communication for the intended benefit of someone close to the activity. For example, if you receive a mental image of a dog at a park, it can be more helpful to share a description of what you saw, rather than jumping straight to a conclusion such as, "Your dog that died wants you to know they are okay and playing in a field." You may find that the image of a dog at a park carries a totally different—and more accurate—significance to the other person.

Where Discernment Is Needed
All the Clair senses come with challenges when determining what is coming from external sources versus a call coming from inside the house. You may have noticed that some of the senses, particularly clairvoyance, clairaudience, and claircognizance, sound like imagination. In many ways, they use some of the same muscles as our imaginative mind, but there are ways to parse out what does and does not originate with you. Clairsentience, clairalience, and clairgustance can blur and blend psychic impressions with what we are feeling in our bodies if we aren't careful.

Cultivating discernment as you work with these senses requires keen self-awareness. If you plan to intentionally communicate with spirits and rely on your Clair senses, develop a method for taking stock of your environment and how you are feeling as the first step of your practice. If you aren't fully conscious of what is going on around you and what you are personally bringing to the situation, you may mistake the mundane for the mysterious.

Excerpted from Llewellyn's Little Book of Spirit Communication by Sterling Moon.