Lecture Series: Spirit School Mediumship Q&A
Podcast
Episode:
Lecture Series: Spirit School Mediumship Q&A
by Danielle Searancke
One of the benefits of being in the free Spirit School community is that I enjoy going live to connect with you. This episode is from the Mediumship Q&A I did in that space on January 14. Most of the questions were submitted ahead of time and there were some that came up live. Come join us for the next one and enjoy the other free development experiences we have to offer!
The Initiation 8-Week Mediumship Foundations Experience includes self-study, live classes, practice readings and Q&A calls. This is a robust course for anyone in their first three years of mediumship development.
Episode:
Lecture Series: Spirit School Mediumship Q&A
Spirit School Podcast
Questions from the episode:
Difference between mediumship vs channeling. Will the Initiation/Collective develop both?
Distinguishing gender and avoiding mis-gendering - have you been able to discern non-binary souls?
What do you do when you get stuck in a reading? My logical brain gets in the way when I ask questions to Spirit.
Have you had any impactful sensory experiences in Indigenous ceremonies? (with elders, pipe carriers, etc.)
How can I best apply mediumship development to working with groups and Indigenous organizations? I rarely receive messages for individuals
How do you discern and ethically communicate to a sitter what is spirit messages versus personal/psychic insights?
As a therapist, I have fear around professional reputation if I talk about my mediumship abilities. Any advice on integrating or sharing with others?
How has your process in mediumship readings evolved after years of professional readings?
What can I do if the sitter can’t place a spirit I’m connecting with?
How do I not lose focus if they remember later who I was talking about?
If they resonate with a description but a photo they show isn't what I pictured, is it me or the sitter filling in blanks in our minds?
Honouring the ebbs when it feels like you’re taking steps back
In a public setting for readings, how have you encountered and handled people challenging you?
Spirit School Links
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View full transcripts of podcast episodes at https://www.squamishmedium.com/blog
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Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Spirit School. This one's going to be a little bit different. I'm doing a 90 minute Q and A. So let's just get started. And I just want you to know, too, as part of like the teaching of mediumship and spirituality and psychic development, I truly believe that as teachers we can really only teach you what we have learned from someone else or what we have experienced ourselves. Now, I do tend to be an experiential teacher, so I like to teach from the lived experiences that I've had and how I understand them at this time. So it is important to stay flexible when you listen to mediumship teachings because if you read old books or listen to old lectures from some of the veteran teachers, philosophies evolve over time as we evolve over time. So this Q and A today, and the way that I respond to some of these questions, will sound very different than in a year from now. And it sounds very different than it would have a year ago because I experience so much year after year after year, not just teaching mediumship, but being in the arena of doing readings. So my teachings will continue to evolve and they already have over time. So I just invite you as well to embrace the same flexibility around your own philosophies and your own understanding of the spirit work, because you're gonna have very firm beliefs, but then as you have more experiences, you might have an expansion on the understanding of those beliefs. So I like to premise it with that.
I also really like to let you guys know, and just like put it out on the table, like, I'm not perfect. I try my best to be, and I have made myself sick over the years trying to be everything to everybody, but I can't. I can't do that anymore. And so I just want you to know that I always try to show up and say exactly the right thing and exactly the right way, but it might not always come across amazing for everybody. So just see me as a human. I'm completely flawed, but I have a huge intention to help expand, all of you in your mediumship and spiritual development. And I'm just hoping that something I say today, and the way that I say it will spark something within you and even expand an understanding that you currently have for yourself. I know Sylvia Brown used to always say in her books, and I always love that saying, you know, take what you want and leave the rest behind. but it'd be interesting to see what comes up for you today as I share my experiences, my teachings around some of these questions. Okay? So hopefully you'll feel good with that.
So the first question was, what is the difference between mediumship and channeling? And will the Collective help develop both? So the truth is people who channel, so I'm thinking of my good friend Malibu Medium, who does Akashic Record channeling, and she teaches channeling. There's actually in the Development Vault in the Spirit School Collective, she did a whole channeling series on how to channel. When I showed up as a teacher for her, I would insist that mediumship is not the same as channeling because I didn't see the work that she did and I did necessarily the same. But people who call themselves channelers and identify as channelers, definitely say that mediums are channels. So it's really just a linguistics thing in a way that people kind of identify with their spiritual gifts and abilities. I think that you can go any which way with it.
I still prefer to call myself a medium rather than a channeler, but funny enough, sometimes I think about things and then I'll go Google it, like after I think about it. I've done my whole spiritual development like that. I will literally sit with it, journal with it, contemplate on it, and then I will go Google it after. And the definition literally that comes up is of a person who serves as a medium for spirit. So if we go by like the general definition that the world recognizes, yes, mediumship and channeling is very much the same. I've been seeing it more as being like a director of energy. That's a term that spirit really brought to my attention. Even just like last month they've been talking to me like that. It's like, where do you wanna direct the energy? Right? And I can notice that when I'm in a session as well, it's like where I place my intention with the energy behind me is what I'm able to pick up from the guides, or the angels, or from departed loved ones, or psychically from your own soul and spirit. So in that essence, I would say that they are very much the same.
So yes, in the Spirit School Collective, we focus on mediumship development. I hosted a psychic development class yesterday. I also love teaching on spiritual entrepreneurship because I really want to see light workers thrive in this work if that's what their desire is. So we cover everything in the Spirit School Collective, but in The Initiation is very specific. It's the only very specific mediumship development program that I currently have. So that is all mediumship. Now I am releasing The Initiation 2.0 Beta right now. There's only four spots left, but that is like next level in the sense where we will be talking more about psychic development and the discernment between psychic and mediumship. I think you really have to have a good foundation of your mediumship gift before we can start that discernment process. Like what's psychic? What's mediumship?
So there is a second level coming. And the Beta just basically means it's my first time running it. So it's a stripped back experience. It's half the price, it's gonna be evolved based off of the feedback and the experiences of the participants. And it's very limited participants. So I'm only taking 22 on for this first round and the Spirit School Collective has taken up, I think 18 spots. So there's like four spots left. So hopefully that helps answer that question around the mediumship and the channeling. And then the Collective, too, is just like a practice arena. So no matter what you're practicing, we have people practicing astrology and Human Design, animal communication, angel connections, you can put your name forward to practice with somebody in the circle or somebody who has volunteered from the public. And you could practice whatever modality you're practicing.
Now I love this question, and it was around distinguishing gender and avoiding misgendering. Have you been able to discern non-binary souls? So, this is a fantastic question, and this is something that I have actually been thinking about a lot in the past year as I myself have been trying to learn and hear from different advocates in this space on how I can make my space more accommodating and more inclusive. Now, if you listen to the Collective, even a couple years ago, I used to call them Sister Circles. I would say, you know, hi ladies. I wasn't very inclusive with it. So I've been working on my own vocabulary in opening up my awareness and adding more inclusivity into the spaces that I create.
So, in that learning, I have built a lot of references, right? Because I've been studying, I've been listening, I've been digesting a lot of the wisdom that I've been learning from some of these advocates in this space. And so, because I have been immersed in that studies, it does come up a little bit more, but it comes through with like a thought. It's like I might be thinking about something someone said and that will lean me towards like, I feel like this person was maybe a little bit more gender fluid. Right. I've also heard people describe, and this may be the beginning phases of like understanding how spirit is communicating this through you, but I remember my first ever professional reading, it was actually the first time I ever got energy sick was this reading. I talk about it a lot because it was like a huge teacher for me, this one session. And I do remember that this person's loved one in spirit was showing me a rainbow. And I just knew sometimes the rainbow does represent a child who has passed. But in this sense, I actually just knew that it was somebody who identified as, you know, same sex orientated in their life as gay. And so I did say that and she was like, yeah, she was gay. And it was like not common. Like they lived in Denmark. And she's like, it wasn't common. It wasn't really talked about, but she was.
And so what I have recognized, if this is something that you really want to incorporate and expand upon with your language is immerse yourself in the studies which you already have. Let the world of spirit know that you're interested in bringing this through for your sitters, for people who are witnessing and watching you work and evolve. And then just see how it ends up coming through you. How I've seen people probably describe this as they are beginning, and you guys will probably be like, yeah, I may have done that in the past, is they'd be like, okay, well I feel like we have a child and it was a girl. And they'd be like, no, it's a boy. Okay, but I feel like they're very feminine in nature, right? There's this like trying to find the vocabulary and the words to describe the essence of how this person is representing themselves.
So for me, the language that I've decided to land on at this very moment is like this fluidity, right? Like this fluidity between how they like to show up as gender or in their sexual orientation. And it's gonna be kind of up to you to decide your language and how you present that information in a way that honor spirit, but also, you know, helps the person sitting in front of you. I will also say what came up for me when I was reading this question, and I can't say in all honesty, like because this is still kind of new to me, it maybe has come up once or twice in a session in the past year. But I do remember a couple years ago, it was actually a really hard reading. And it was one that I gave like a refund to because it was like just, it was a tough sitter too. And she knows that. I mentored her after that for almost a year. But she was definitely like a tough case for me.
But her spirit person came through as light. I could not get a sense of any gender. It was just like light. They just wanted to show me themselves as light and I couldn't move beyond that. I was like, this is brighter than any angel I've even seen. And I knew it was connected to her and I was like, fumbling, fumbling. And this was a few years ago, so I've developed a lot even since a few years ago. And it turned out that this person who was coming through, the spirit communicator who was coming through, was actually non-communicative in life. Like they had disabilities that they couldn't actually verbally communicate in life, and I kept struggling bringing through anything that made sense, but they chose to show up as purely light. And that was like really kind of confusing for me at first, but ever since then, and that was like kind of a bit of a fumble reading, ever since then when I have had people show up, and spirit show up, as like just pure light and wanting to identify in that way, it has been because they have been non-communicative in this life or they had disabilities that they weren't able to express, like, I love you, right?
So then if you're trying to go for the typical information that you go for, they might not resonate with it. It doesn't mean that they can't communicate in the spirit world. But because they didn't have those phrases, they didn't have, that communicative relationship, that's just kind of how they chose to show up. I'm not sure if that's super helpful, but definitely if you're in the awareness of like the non-binary and wanting to honor people's genders, then it will probably come up for you in a session. And if you're not aware of it, they probably won't. Right. Spirit wants to set you up for success, believe it or not. So, but when you do become versed in that, don't be surprised if it starts happening more because one of my great teachers in spirit, Mavis Pittilla, always said once you kind of nail something, you become preferred from the spirit world and you will find yourself with the next few readings almost being lined up with very similar cases.
And then that's kind of like a way to like how I've seen it. It's almost like this bootcamp of like learning a new technique or like learning new skill and then having it integrated through repetition and then you might not get it again for a little while. Right? So when I first started really understanding how people pass from car accidents, like my next 10 readings were like all car accidents. And I was getting frustrated because at a point I was like, am I making this up? Like how could everyone have someone who had unfortunately lost somebody due to a car accident? The way Mavis described it to me was like, well, you've just become preferred from the world of spirit, and you will never forget that now. Even if you don't get a car accident for a whole two years, it's so ingrained in your knowledge that you will be able to recall it with greater ease. So now that we're talking about this, I wouldn't be surprised if it maybe comes up for you guys.
And then the last thing I just wanna say on that is, if this is something that you really want to include in your repertoire, ask Spirit and sit with them in meditation. Can you show me a symbol or can you make me sense something that would represent this? And then do that a few times so that you can like see the consistency in the sign or the visual or the sensation that you get. And then you'll be asked to put it into practice.
Okay. I love this question too. So what do you do when you get stuck in a reading? My logical brain gets in the way when I ask questions to the world of spirit. So I think that that's really important to identify for yourself because again, you know, spirit communication is not one size fits all. How it works for one medium is not necessarily how it's gonna work for another medium. So whereas asking questions for one medium may really support them in moving beyond that stuckness, that's not gonna be the case for every single medium.
So, there's one technique that I brought into the last round of The Initiation that I got a lot of feedback that it really did help people. When you're feeling stuck and you're like tense, you have to think about the energy around you. The energy around you is not moving, it's not flowing, right? you really wanna just add some movement to like move the energy around you. So I like to hand talk sometimes. And so like, you'll see me go like this or you'll see me talk with my hands. That actually moves the energy around me and it actually like opens it up a little bit more. I'm less tense for one thing, right? And then I lean back, right? So when I lean forward, I can recognize my body is actually telling me I'm too much in the energy of the sitter, and I need to move back into the spirit world. So I physically move backwards into my chair and I relax, right? And I move that energy and I take a deep breath in, and in the exhale you release and you surrender. And I almost guarantee you that information will come through flowing through in that exhale. You need to relax into it. The more tension you have, the less the energy is gonna move around you, the less you'll be able to tune into the energy around you. So you gotta chill out and you gotta be able to use your breath.
So use your hands, move the energy. I've even had somebody who was really stuck and I could feel them tense. And this happened in my mastermind last year and I was like, can you just dance for me? Like can you just like chair dance for me? And like move your body, move your energy. Just get out of the stuckness. And sure enough, they're like moving their arms and they're speaking and all this like evidential information just starts flowing through. So you have to think about it in the realm of energy, right? But in the out breath, in that surrenderance, more information is going to continue to come through. And then if you have to ask only one question, just one question, that is a really open question, it is simply in the out breath, you can ask, what have you come to say? Right? That's a very powerful question. What have you come to say? I heard Paul Jacobs actually say that. I will always give credit where I hear a teaching and I will always share who those teachers are with you. And I think that that's just good karma, good practice, and they deserve to be recognized for the wisdom that they've imparted on me. Okay. So that's a little bit of a teaching in itself. But I heard him say on Sandra Champlain's podcast, We Don't Die Radio. It's a great podcast if you like hearing interviews with other mediums. And I heard Paul Jacobs say that, and he's a wonderful teacher as well. What have you come to say? And that's what he said. He stood up at his first demonstration with Gordon Higginson, who is his mentor, and that's all he said. What have they come to say? And that's how his whole mediumship works, just with that one inquiry and it all unfolds after that.
The next question we have here is have you had any impactful sensory experiences in Indigenous ceremony with elders, pipe carriers, etc.? I know that you added a bit more context into this question as well, so thank you for sharing your experiences. I've seen a few posts from you sharing your experiences in this community, and I appreciate you sharing them. So the truth of the matter is, I am a First Nations woman. I have always identified as that. I am of course, mixed. If you can't tell. I am of course mixed. My grandmother went to residential school and she aged out of the system when she was 17, and she never saw her community again. And her community was actually moved from the government. She was placed in a residential school and she was three when she never saw her community again. And between three and 17, the community was moved from the Hudson Bay inland to a fly-in only community zone. There's a book on my family's community called Voices of the Hudson Bay, and it talks about that like migration, that kind of really stripped the community away of like their livelihood and living on the water for tens of thousands of years.
And so because of that, and because of what my grandmother experienced in the residential system, I identify as a reconnecting First Nations person. So I didn't get to grow up in my community or with my teachings. And because my grandmother had so much trauma from her experiences, we never actually knew even where her community was until after she passed away, and we found letters between her and her cousins and brothers and sisters. We're very much in close contact with them now, but that wasn't until after she passed away in like 1992. So the reconnections that I have had as part of connecting into my culture has all been through what I have learned through the First Nations Health Authority, which I worked for the organization for nine years in Indigenous health and healing. And I was able to have an adopted elder through that, which if you know Elder Leonard George, he passed away a couple years ago, he's the son of Chief Dan George who, if you're in Canada, I hope you know who that is. Just look up the centennial address if you want to hear something really inspirational.
But recently, and very recently, I had an absolutely incredible experience in meditation with Leonard George and my grandmother. It was interesting because I forget things quite a bit. And my grandmother came through with two wolves beside her. And the funny thing is my grandmother was terrified of wolves her whole life because she grew up in the forest on the Hudson Bay and wolves were like the top predators there. So she grew up terrified of wolves and she was scared of wolves her whole life. And so she came to me with wolves on each side. And then, Leonard George was there and he was giving me a smudge and he was inspiring me with a few things. And he was saying to me like, never forget that I adopted you. And that's what he kept saying. And then it was actually a few days later, I could cry even thinking about this, but he actually initiated me and 30 other people who were doing work in Indigenous health and healing into the Kaia Wolf clan. And so, there was like this beautiful synchronicity that happened over the course of a few days that my grandmother showed up with these wolves.
And then I found my grandmother's box just two weeks ago with her jewelry in it. And it has like this beautiful wolf box. So like the teachings around the wolf continue to show up for me and come, and I keep all my ancestors belongings in here. My grandmother's little, she was a nurse, so her little nursing pin. And a little charm from my nana. So I keep this always close to me. And you know, I brought my grandmother's like cross out here today. So yeah, you know, I'm somebody who is considered an away from home Indigenous person who's trying to reconnect in a respectful way to my Indigenous culture. So I try not to give any Indigenous teachings. I don't have permission to share, because I didn't get to grow up in the culture. And I try to redirect people to, other Indigenous people who do have those teachings and are willing to share them as knowledge keepers. So hopefully that helps. But that's something that happened very recently for me, and I will be reconnecting for the rest of my life. And I look forward to that journey because I've seen so much healing come from it.
I absolutely love Chief Dan George. He has come through to me in dreams and I met his others and family. Yes, and Leonard George was his son and I got to work with him very closely at the First Nations Health Authority on different projects. And he was the only person I ever came open to when I was developing mediumship for the first three years. And he was the one who helped me through my first stint of energy sickness and taught me around cedar trees, which I've shared on the podcast many times on how to use cedar to cleanse my energy, and I still do to this day. I have a big cedar tree in my front yard and my neighbors think I'm nuts because I'm like rubbing myself all up in it all the time, and I absolutely love it.
So how can I best apply mediumship development to working with groups and Indigenous organizations? I rarely receive messages for individuals. So the interesting thing is, and you probably know this because you're definitely more connected and immersed in community than I ever have been, but I have only found that Indigenous communities and organizations have been incredibly open to this work, incredibly open. And you can go to some of the most political of Indigenous meetings and they will have healers working at them, and not just traditional healers, but tarot readers, astrologers, mediums. I've been asked many times to come to some of these meetings to do sessions and readings, and there are always these communities looking for keynote speakers. I think mediumship development can support people in all areas of their life because you learn through the discipline of mediumship development to quiet, to listen, to develop a language around things that are intangible. It actually helps you in every area of your life. I personally believe it's helped me in every single area of my life. Absolutely.
So I feel that Indigenous organizations are completely open to mediumship, spirit talking, in this line of work. So if you feel like you have something to say, you can actually approach different communities who do wellness events and events for their elders. They're always doing events for elders, that I get asked to consider doing readings at as well. I just have found them to always be incredibly open to it. So it's really just about putting yourself out there. I'd be happy to share with you as part of this replay in the community, my media kit. So I have like a two pager that basically says who am I, what I love to talk about, and here's my skillset. And I've sent it into different people who have had me speak to different groups. And I think that something like that would maybe make you feel confident because, you know, I would definitely add mediumship in there, but you don't have to identify purely as a medium doing traditional readings. I feel that people are rocking mediumship in a very multidisciplinary way. I've seen people rocking mediumship in medical fields. I've had judges hire me. I've had law enforcement hire me. And I see people developing their spirituality and their like mediumship that serves them in all these different areas of society.
It's actually in the one-on-one readings that you get the validation that you understand your abilities and how they work. So though you may not go on to do professional readings, it's still gonna be in that intimate space that you have the free range to get clarity on how spirit communicates through you in a much safer, small scale way. You know what I mean? Like if my teacher threw me in like group stuff right away, I'm like, the performance anxiety on me would be like through the roof. And I don't think that I could have shown up the way that I show up doing that. And I do very little one-on-one anymore, keep in mind. Ten years in, very little one-on-one. It's mostly been into groups, but that's evolved and grown over time. So I think in the one-on-one setting, you get confidence, you get validation, and you start to build out your language and your body of work. So I think the one-on-ones are still gonna be incredibly valuable, even if you don't intend on doing one-on-one sittings for those reasons.
I've done readings for 12 years, so I want to develop, but not sure how I can develop differently. You just have to put your student hat on and just expand open to new teachings and lessons. Here's something though that I will say that I pretty much believe, but I feel that we will end up working how we started. So I think you will have a natural way of being. It's like Mavis used to say. You start natural and then you become unnatural, and then you find your natural gifts again, right? So you have like these first connections. It feels very natural to you. It's almost like what the heck happened? And then you learn all these other people's techniques and the ways that they do it, and you lose yourself a little bit. And then when you end up where you're at, you're like, it's exactly how I started, in the end. So you might actually be more ready than you think. And I still think it's valuable to hear other people's experiences because it just might reaffirm your own even more. But I do believe, for myself and for like what I've seen with other people, you'll usually end up exactly how you started.
You're probably a lot further along and more ready than you're maybe giving yourself credit for, so just go out and do the freaking thing, even if it feels icky, because if it feels scary, it's probably something big for you. It's probably something that's like really, truly meant for you to try. I've said this to so many people. I'm like, run towards the things that scare you because they are literally the things that are meant to like expand you. I'm gonna use an example. You know, she's, She's an actress. She has like a theater company, successful theater companies. And like, just showing up in her own spirituality and talking about the spiritual things that she loves was like a real, like block. So she hired me, like, help me free this. Like, help me speak about these things.
She started an Instagram, she's making these posts and then she shows up in one of our sessions and she says, I still can't do an Instagram live. And I was like, then let's go on right now and do it. Right? Like right now. This is how we're going to use our session. Let's go on Instagram live right now. You can't get that girl off of live now. You know what I mean? And then she said after that she was like, Danielle, like all my readings are so clear. I feel so confident. I feel like my throat chakra just like ripped open, like magic is on the other side of the thing that you're resisting the most. Magic is on the other side of the thing that scares the shit outta you. And I have experienced that so many times, so many times. And every single time it's true. Magic awaits on the other side of that. And I think that's what living actually is. And I feel so sad when I experience that in a sense where like I know that there are people who will go their whole lives without getting to experience this sensation and without getting to experience this expansion.
And so I literally run towards the things that scare me. Literally run, if you guys knew what I went through to secure the space, having to come up with $120,000, like that's lots of money. That's more than I ever made in corporate in a whole year. You know what I mean? The fear that I went through, and like the tears that I was in, and how many times I was brought to my knees and telling spirit like, man, my faith is tested right now and I can't believe it. But I'm like, I'm running towards this because I know that there's something on the other side of this. And I mean, what I have experienced in that since October, I mean, other than my health stuff, which has been constant. But on the other side, my spirituality, my practice, my business, my life's work, has been nothing but short of magical. You know what I mean? So it's like I needed to be brought to my knees. I needed to have my faith tested a little bit because I needed to be able to lead myself back up out of it and experience that magic again. So, if that's a pep talk that you need today, try it out. What's the harm? Right? See what happens.
Okay, so there's another question here that I thought was really good too. So how do you discern and ethically communicate to a sitter what a spirit message is versus your own psychic and personal insights? So this is such a good question. We were actually just talking about this in the Collective yesterday. I taught a psychic development class. This is so important to do. But I want you to also know that while you're developing, and before that discernment muscle really builds, you're not expected to get it right away. you gotta start off with the baby, right? Like, I use the analogy around kindergarten. It took both my kids all of kindergarten to learn how to spell their name. All of kindergarten, the whole year, to go from squiggles and lines to legible letters in order in the same size, right?
But as adults, we don't give ourself nearly the same grace. But we're literally learning something new. We put pressure on ourselves, just like get it, like, I should get this. I'm 40. Like, what's what? But you're learning something new. So you have to see yourself as a kindergartener, giving yourself time and space and grace to be able to fuck it up sometimes and learn from it, and then grow from it, and then get better. And you will continue to get better, if you continue the path. So give yourself that space and grace for one thing. So you're not meant to get that discernment right away. But as you develop, as you evolve, it is important to understand and learn ethically, the difference between psychic and mediumship. And for this reason, I have noticed from 10 years of doing readings, you hold a lot of influence when you are a reader. A lot of influence. And a lot of people will be like, well, this psychic said, and I'm gonna make these shifts. And so I had to start getting really clear on divine free will, my philosophy around it, expressing information in a way that lets people know like you have a choice. You know what I mean? Like this isn't like set in stone. Actually, spirit will actually show me a brick wall, if something is divinely planned, I actually can't see things that can't be changed. I can actually only see things that people have divine free will over.
So people might ask me something about a relationship and spirit will show me a brick wall. It's divine. We can't change it even if we know it. You know what I mean? So that's my symbol. It's like no matter, even if I were to pick it up, it wouldn't be helpful because we, we can't change the path. Right? So that's actually a sign that Spirit has given me. But the other thing that I noticed at a deeper layer before I was able to really discern between psychic and mediumship, which took me years by the way, is that I had to start getting really clear on what came from spirit and what came from my sitter, right? Because if I say like, you know, mom's coming through with this, we almost like take away a little bit of their divine free will because they will listen to mom, like mom said it. But if it comes from them, if it comes from their soul, their desires, their anxieties, their dreams, they will have a lot more feeling of divine free will to make the choices that they need to make.
So in a session, I'm able to actually discern what comes from them and what comes from spirit. And the way that that happens for me personally, and will come different for everybody, for the most part, is that the mediumship information comes from behind me, when it comes from spirit. And the psychic information comes from in front of me. I can actually feel sentiently, because clairsentience has always been my strongest gift, that the information comes through. I've heard clairvoyants talk about past and future, and color and black and white. Laura Lynn Jackson talks about a screen and things come in in different areas in the screen, depending on if it's psychic, mediumship, past, or present. So you can drive yourself nuts listening to other teachers and how it works for them. You have to get in the arena. You have to practice. You have to play to get clearer on how it works for you. But the reason why it's ethical and it's so important is because from what I have experienced, and I've heard other teachers talk about this too, is that they will listen more to the spirit world, like without hesitation and without their own discernment, rather than listening to themselves.
So what I will say around that is psychic work is interesting because I never developed as a psychic. I've never even read a psychic development book. When I opened up my practice in 2017, so that was four years into my mediumship development journey, I started working for the public for six months. All my sitters wanted psychic. None of them had a need for a mediumship, not a single one. And so I felt like spirit, acting as my agent, was trying to give me a bootcamp experience to develop psychically. And then I find going through this work that it doesn't matter how good your descriptions are, it doesn't matter how much you try to educate your audience, a lot of people don't know the difference between psychic and mediumship, right? They will come like, oh, tell me about my future. But Nana didn't come in? Like a lot of people don't really know all those differences, right? And so it's good to even be able to educate people, but what I'm telling you is even if you just focus on mediumship development, people will eventually come in and want that psychic.
So I feel like it's very important to be able to develop them both, but also know that the discernment comes after, and alongside, the understanding of how these abilities work through you. So the discernment doesn't come before the understanding of how these abilities work through you. It comes during and after, right? So you just gotta focus on psychic development. You gotta focus on mediumship development. And through those experiences, through trial and error, through getting it wrong to getting it right, you will start to build that discernment muscle and eventually be able to discern for yourself what's coming through psychically versus mediumistically.
So what that looks like in a reading is I might be channeling and communicating with like grandma coming through. And then I would just simply say, and I feel like this information's coming through you, this real desire for a shift to a landscape, like, I feel like you just wanna move. I feel like you wanna go across country. And I have to be clear that that is coming from them. And then it might bounce. Grandma may say, you know, I feel a lot of support from the spirit world on this. I feel like they see this and there's a lot of support from it. So I might give validation from that. But I have to be honest what I'm picking up from where. And again, that took me years to develop. So you're not expected to get it right away. There are ethics behind it, but if you are considering ethics, I'm not worried about you. If you're even thinking about how to be an ethical reader, you're not one of the ones I'm super worried about. We need gatekeepers out there for some people who don't even consider ethics and integrity in this work, and they are out there. So I'm proud of you for that.
The other thing too is I get so many requests for the psychic development and this discernment. I don't think that it really belongs in Initiation 1.0 because The Initiation I really want to be focused on getting a foundation of mediumship. Again, is the only space that I fully focus on mediumship development. So I did create a 2.0 that will have two classes dedicated to psychic development and mediumship development coinciding. And I do have a method that I've created and I've had to look at how I do it and kind of pare it back on evidential psychic sittings. So that's gonna be included in that as well. So there's four spots left for that. It's half price, but again, it's a scaled back experience, like there's no partner pairings. With The Initiation you get four Q and A's, five classes. With this, it's six classes and it's a bootcamp, it's six weeks.
So I will be having more offerings around this. And in the Collective, I'm gonna be bringing in Maxine Friend as a guest mentor for a couple months, who actually teaches, as a career, psychic development. So she's gonna be coming in as a guest mentor there as well. So yeah, just focus right now on understanding how these abilities work through you and trust that the discernment is going to unfold. Do you guys notice how different mediums talk about things like the language that they pick, the words that we pick, right? That communication? That has to get developed as well, and that gets developed on the go. Podcasting for me was the best thing for that. Podcasting, talking about spiritual things, was the best way for me to get the language around my body of work, and that will support you in this as well.
You gotta talk out loud too, okay? And this is a tough lesson. A lot of people just like talk in their head and then you go to say it and it's like, what? Like, did I even practice? Like it sounded so good in my head. It's actually something that you have to say out loud. So if you're driving in your car, if you're out on a walk, you gotta just like start talking about these things out loud, that's how you're gonna form your language. You can't do it in your head. And I had to learn that the hard way, the real hard way, the humbling way. Okay? Don't practice in your head please.
so we have someone here who wrote, as a therapist, I have fear around professional reputation. If I talk about my mediumship abilities, any advice on integrating or sharing with others? So I had this completely. Now again, I am an experiential teacher. I'm not just trying to talk about myself, but I have to relate it to a story of some kind, right? A bit of a storyteller. So, in my career in Indigenous health and healing, I wasn't qualified for any of the jobs I held, like literally on paper, did not meet any of the qualifications. So my career was a hundred percent riding on my reputation, and I had a really good reputation. So when I started developing mediumship, I was very quiet about it for about three years. No one knew about it other than maybe like my best friend at the time, and her family would actually be the ones that would sit for me. And that was pretty much it because I was unwilling to ruin my reputation.
And then it was in 2017 when I was on my maternity leave that I decided, because I almost died during my pregnancy, I'm not wasting any more time. I'm following my passions, I'm following my dreams, I'm opening up my practice. And I had to tell my boss at the time saying, you're gonna see things on my maternity leave. I'm doing this other stuff. She made it so uncomfortable. And we're still friends. We still talk every day, but she made it so uncomfortable. She was like, I don't wanna hear about it. Just do what you want. Just come back. She's like, all I care is that you come back. And I was like, yeah, I'm coming back. We both quit at the same time too. It was kind of funny, unplanned, by the way. I'm sure a lot of people don't think that, but it was like completely unplanned that we left the organization at the same time too. But I wanted to say that that was uncomfortable. It was actually my worst fear acknowledged, not being validated, not being seen, not being comforted by somebody that I really admire in my coming out. But I lived, and I survived, and I continued, and I went on. And for the most part, 99.99999% of people were like, oh, cool. And then they would just share with me their experiences.
Now, as a therapist, I've worked with a lot of doctors. Doctors have hired me. I went through a whole stint for like a whole year, I had two NDs and two MDs, so naturopathic doctor and medical doctor, hire me for mentorship because they were like, How do I meet a need? Like how come people don't get well? How do I get down to like, what's going on with these people? So I was just teaching them how to use their own intuition on, you know, reading between the lines, like relational intelligence, emotional intelligence, really kind of building upon that. So there is a licensing fear around that, right? So they actually can't come out as mediums or hold mediumship practices in the same space as their medical practices for a licensing requirement.
So you have to look at your own profession, your own body of work, your own governing body on what is allowed as a practitioner. I can't advise you on that for coming out, but I can tell you as a human, human to human, what I feel around that. And I feel like you'll be fine. In the trauma informed space, we call this who shame is this, right? When we have like this anxiety, when we have this fear, who shame is that? Who shame am I considering? Whose shame am I, you know, putting my life on hold for? Because it's not mine. So whose is it? Identify it. Let it go. It's not yours to carry. And I'm here to tell you, you didn't come all this way to live your life for someone else or by someone else's standards. And if you do, you ain't living at all. You know what I mean? That's not life. It's not living, it's just not dying.
So these are things that you have to consider for yourself, but you will be put through discomfort on this path. It's not a comfortable path. You're gonna be put through discomfort, but we don't change in comfort, we change in discomfort. So if you listen to my Spirit messages, if you've been listening to them for long enough, the world of spirit in 2019 was bringing through all these messages around mindset, getting our clarity on our mindset. And I feel like that was preparing us for 2020 because we were all at home with our families and our shit. We had nowhere to go, nowhere to pacify, right? Like we were uncomfortable.
So then in 2020, a lot of the spirit messages were around sitting in the discomfort, and being okay with discomfort. And discomfort doesn't mean bad. We can't be comfortable all the time, right? And so we have to learn how to thrive and show up for ourselves and lead ourselves through times of discomfort. And they will happen. And they'll happen a lot on the mediumship path because the mediumship path is a vulnerable one. There's no way around it. It's vulnerable for the sitter, it's vulnerable for us, right? So it's a vulnerable path. It's a sensitive path. So it's just preparing you for the path that I think that you might want to take.
So people are always like, oh, you're so vulnerable. I'm like, yeah, it's a requirement of this path actually. It really is. If you're not vulnerable, your ego will, guide you, and your ego will keep you in a state of non-growth and maybe even causing a little bit of harm, right? Because if you're unwilling to get criticism or hear "no"s, it's not a great path. Tony Stockwell said this once a long, long, long time ago. He's like, a lot of mediums like smoke and drink and aren't very healthy people, like overeat because it's like, that validation, the discomfort, like the pacifying that sometimes we need, if we haven't dealt with our human shit. And that's how come, all my teachings, my path in Spirit School, it's like development while honoring your humanity. I try to bring in the humanity into the development experience instead of trying to bypass it and like go above and beyond it. It's like, no, this happens. We're human. We signed up for this experience. How can we heal our human while we develop spiritually, and then be of true service for humanity as well as the spirit world. You know what I mean? So just honor the humanity around that as well.
And the other thing too is if like you wanted to be an undercover light worker, I am in a lot of ways too, you know? I do a lot of undercover light work that has not even my name attached to it. Not just through like financial donations, but I literally scour the internet for grief boards. And I do readings in private for people who have no idea who I am, will never know who I am. And I do a lot of my readings like undercover in that way too, you know what I mean? And what the world of spirit has really shown me is that we need light workers and people who have these abilities and have these intentions in all areas of society. A few years ago, I would have very much said, quit your job and do this full-time. And I'm so glad I did, don't get me wrong. We can't pull all the light workers out of the justice system, or out of the medical care system, or out of the legal system, or the corrections system. We need people who are aware in these positions to be able to create ripple effects where they're needed the most.
So, you know, I leave that with you, with whatever you decide, but you know, I hope there's a lot there to work with and hopefully it helps. Yeah, you can also get a pseudoname, right? Like that's how come I'm actually Squamish Medium. I tried to change it in 2019 cause I didn't know about Long Island Medium at the time. I was like, oh my God. It like, sounds like I'm trying to copy her. I just called myself Squamish Medium because I didn't want Danielle Searancke attached to mediumship because of my reputation risk. And then that brand kind of blew up and I, it became a little bit too late to change. But you're also welcome to like, use a pseudoname in your spirit work and stuff like that as well if you do really wanna keep them separate.
So I love this question too. How has your process of mediumship readings evolved after years of professional readings? It's evolved a lot. Like I say, I kind of started and ended like in very similar ways, what I'm able to pull through, and like how I connect. But I will say that there was like a real big evolution. The first time I made a spiritual connection, a mediumship connection actually, but the first spirit communicator I brought through is this young gentleman. I still have a picture of him right over here, and his mom gifted me these earrings as a thank you because I just closed my eyes and I just like said what I was thinking and it was accurate, and I was like, what? That's it? Right?
And then we can tend to overcomplicate things as we move along because we're like, oh, we have to sit in the power for 10 hours a week and we have to like, you know, cleanse our chakras and we have to like, you know, put a circle around as a protection. And I'm not saying any of that stuff is not valuable if you feel connected into it. And if you feel like it helps get you into a place to be able to do your work, then by all means do it. But I think that I went from like a really simple way of doing mediumship and connecting to like going through like quite a process that was actually quite draining for me and costing me a lot of light. And then eventually ending up in a place where, okay, I'm just gonna sit down and say thank you spirit for allowing me to be your voice today. I'm gonna trust everything that comes through. I'm gonna try my best to get outta my own dang way. And I'll check in with you after on how I did. Thank you. And I just open up my energy and I just start speaking the things that are coming through me, you know? And that's gonna evolve over time.
But I will tell you, there was a couple years there where I was preparing weeks, days, hours before a session. I really did tie that a lot to my energy sickness. So one of the teachings that Spirit brought me in December, they brought me so many when I was crumbling. What they brought me was like the saying, you need to start measuring your energy and light. How much light is this gonna cost me? Right? How much light is this going to bring me? And so what I asked for you guys to do when you're looking at the evolution and process of your own mediumship readings is how can you do it in a way that helps you like preserve the light and helps you increase and amplify that light, not drain it and take it away. If you find yourself in practices or you find yourself in structures and systems that you've either been taught or created that drain you before you even get started, you gotta rejig that and re-shift that. You gotta re-look at that, okay? So everything should be expansion or contraction, filling you up or depleting you. Those are the measuring sticks as a light worker that you really want to be gauging your own practices at.
But I will say that the sittings took trial and error. Right. So I would do 20 minute sittings at the beginning because the mediumship link, I couldn't hold it that long when I was first starting. I had to develop that over time. And so when I first started doing it professionally, it was 20 minute sittings. And I remember too, some of them I even said like, oh, these are just psychic, because I got so used to doing psychic readings at the beginning as well. And then they ended up being 30 minute readings, and then I tried hour long readings and I didn't like them. So I found my groove in 45 minute sessions. And in a 45 minute session, I can bring through at least two or three spirit communicators, and psychic information, and a little bit of an opening and a closing. Right.
But one thing that comes up was when somebody's like talking over you and like you lose that connection, like how do you get it back? And one of the ways that I have evolved over time, because I have to identify what my needs are as a reader, what I need to thrive in doing this work, and I will tell my sitters, you know, I just ask that you let me just go for 20 minutes and I will definitely leave space near the end for questions, for comments and like there will be a space for you to be able to talk in the session without a doubt. But for the first 20 minutes, just let me go and get those first impressions and just give me yeses and nos. So I'm just letting people know what to expect and then they don't have to feel like they have to like interject to be seen and heard because I'm gonna make sure that we carve space out in this time together for you to be seen and heard.
And the thing around doing lightworking, what you end up being really good at is multitasking because you really are holding energy. It's like I'm holding the energy with spirit, but I'm giving space to my sitter. And I'm still listening to them, but I'm also listening to them as well. Like if you can journal while listening to music, it's kind of comparable. You know what I mean? Like if you could journal and listen to music, you can probably hold the energy of Spirit and be able to like listen into your client as well.
The only thing for me that has changed over time really, is I definitely, and this took me so long, and one the hardest and biggest lessons that I've had on my path, was I used to be so concerned about my sitter's experience and I would give them way too much of my energy and the spirit world would almost get scraps. And so I reversed that and I started saying, I'm gonna give all, almost all my energy to the spirit world and just trust that the sitter gets whatever they need. So I stopped placing so much importance on the sitters experience and I started moving my energy behind me to stay more with the spirit world. So I'm listening more intently to them. And when I talked at the beginning about your energetic experience and directing energy, I'm just directing my energy behind me more than in front of me, but I'm making sure that there is some in front of me so that I'm present with my sitter as well. And that's taken a little bit of a balance.
So, someone says, is it more difficult to do a reading on video or phone? Now this is gonna be totally nuanced for people. For some people it'll be phone, for other people will be video. I will say that I had a nightmare first client on a phone reading, and it completely, I never did one after that, like ever. She completely traumatized me from doing a phone reading. And I feel like if we could have seen each other's body language, a lot of things would've been kind of cleared up. She treated me like I was like a coin slot machine and just like, you know, tell me to sell my house. Tell me to leave my job. And I was like, I don't work like that, you know? And I feel like if we could have seen each other and like made each other a little bit more human, that it would've gone a little bit differently. So for me, in my personal lived experience with it, video readings all the time, or in person. And I will start doing in person again when Spirit School opens. But I only did that one phone reading and I was like, never again. And it was just because I had such a hard first experience.
But for people who get over concerned and over consumed with other people's body language, a phone might be better. I've had people sit in front of me like this, like they don't want to be there. And it doesn't mean that they don't wanna be there, they're just not going out of their way to make me feel comfortable, and nor should they. That's not their role. As long as you can manage, you know, staying connected like above whatever your sitter's doing, then in person will work good. But I say try 'em both. You gotta try it all to figure out what you love and what works for you. Would I ever try a phone reading again? Probably now. I mean, that session happened in 2018. Again, was a big lesson for me because at 10 minutes I was like, look, I'm not your reader, like you gotta get on Etsy or something like that. And like, just go find like, you know, a $10, three question reader. That's kind of what you're looking for. I like to go deep with people. That's just not for me. No, no, no, no. All my friends have had readings with you, like they all loved it. Keep going. And this lady just strung me along to the point where I'm like, you're not getting refund now. Like, you basically wasted all this time and all this energy and like by the end we were not fans of one another.
So that was a big lesson learned for me because I also should have honored my instincts and just ended it preserved everyone's energy, and then just giving her a refund and everything would've been fine. And that lesson did come back time and time again until I was able to learn it, by the way. No, it's not common to not receive messages for people. The first time that ever happened to me was this past August, actually, of all things. And funny enough, spirit said to me, we need you to book a bunch of readings. We have to show you a few things for the last round of The Initiation that I did. And yeah, it was an interesting experience. And I don't know all that much about it. And I don't want to say too much about it. I was sitting in front of someone and usually there's so much information coming through that I have to write down a couple things just to get it out and like to have some starting points, but it was completely dead air around me. It was like nothing. And so I had to say to them, you know, I've been doing this long enough to know that like there's no energy moving around me right now. Like I just don't think I'm your reader today. Nothing wrong because they were worried that it was them and their energy. I was like, no. I was like, sometimes we just never know why these things happen, but I just have to honor my skill. I have to honor my history and just say, I don't wanna waste anyone's time here today, so I'm gonna give you full refund. But that's not very common at all.
So that's happened once in 10 years. So it did happen. It wasn't that bad. It's not like anything negative happened from it. It just happens. We're human things happen. So for whatever reason. I had a couple of readings recently where the evidence is very clear. The spirit is not for the sitter. Why does this happen? I trust spirit enough to know it's not my mind making things up, but why would a spirit come when it's not their sitter? Besides asking the spirit to come another time and bring the right person to me, any advice or insight? Okay, so there's quite a few things here, I would have to say. And the truth is, one of the uncomfortable things about the spiritual space is sometimes we will never know. Sometimes we will never know the reason why.
And I love Caroline Myss's teaching around this, where she says, sometimes you're just asked to sit in the energy of holy awe, right? Like, you just have to sit in holy awe and just know that you'll need to know what you need to know. So I can't tell you like why this happens. I can validate for you that this has also happened to me many times, and it could be frustrating and humbling. And I think that there is a lesson in that humility as well. And I always kind of see it sometimes as spirit keeping me very humble because I can only imagine how I would move through this world if I was a hundred percent right a hundred percent of the time, everybody praising me, everyone talking like amazing things about me. Even being as humble as I am, I can only imagine how that would get away from me. So I do feel that these experiences do keep me humble in my practice, and they do keep me in that student mindset. So there is like this, like beautiful divinity behind having experiences like that.
So sometimes we just like don't know, but I've always seen it as a really good lesson for me around that. But sometimes my sitter won't recognize who I'm describing at first. But as the session goes on, I often get an, oh, I know who you're talking about, as we progress. Yes. So in your situation, I feel like the world of spirit is trying to get you to boldly stay with something longer than it feels uncomfortable. I feel like your development is taking you up to a next level where they're like, okay, you can't just trust the sitter, right? The sitter is actually probably the most valuable in the sitting of the three because we get amnesia when we're in the hotspot as well. I mean, you should see my face when I'm getting a reading. I'm like, what was my Nana's name? When did she pass? I'm like that. And I do this work professionally. I'm like one of the worst sitters in the world. So I have a feeling that the spirit world for you may be asking you to stay with something and hold true to it a little bit longer.
And this is what my first mentor used to do, and I love that she used to do this, but she would do a demonstration and she would get like a no. And she'd be like, okay, but do you understand x, x, x? And they would say yes. And she'd be like, then the other stuff is also accurate. So I'll leave that with you. I'm sure it'll make sense, like eventually. So she would actually test it by bringing through two or three pieces of information that could evidently placed and then she would feel confident saying, then I feel confident about what I brought through and you didn't understand it at this time. So broaden your perspective. Broaden what you think you might be expecting to come through, or this might make sense at a later time, right?
So that's a technique that I have seen approach, but I feel like for you it's like not letting things go so quick. And then sticking with it longer than feels uncomfortable, to like stretch yourself a little bit. There does come a time in our development where we're like leveling up a little bit where we may be asked to stay with something a little bit longer than we're comfortable with because yeah, this happens all the time. This is one of the things about the spirit work and why it's so vulnerable is we won't be validated all the time, and we won't be validated right away. And we have to be okay with that. And we have to be okay that, you know, it's not all going to be fluff and glory for us. We're not doing this work to be seen as like a hundred percent accurate. We're not doing this work to be seen as like perfect. We're doing this work to bring healing to those who need it. We're doing this work to be a voice for those who no longer have a voice box and want to get messages and evidence through to their loved ones that they're doing okay. And I'm telling you that a lot of the information will make sense after the fact. So you just gotta stick with it. And I've been on both ends of this.
So, I feel like I answered this a little bit earlier about how to not lose focus. I mean that is one of the beautiful things about sitting in the power and why it is such a powerful tool for mediumship development is because it does teach you and train you how to sit in that focus state. And I do feel like there is a link to between how long you can hold that zone into sitting in the power and how long you can hold a mediumship link. So there is something very beneficial to doing something sitting in the power and being able to hold that concentrated state, and be able to hold that energy. That's one of the benefits of it. Do I think you can do mediumship without it? Absolutely. I know mediums who have never sat in the power. I know mediums who have never stepped foot in a spiritualist church, I know mediums who have just self-developed. There's no rule book. But when I look at the way I've developed and the way that, you know, I teach, that is something that can help with that sustaining, right? Sitting in the power will be a very powerful tool for that. Uncomfortable though, isn't it? Like, I don't wanna sit for that long. I know for me, I'm such a busy body, it's hard for me to sit for that long. I'm like, Ooh, I wanna touch my drum, or I wanna like, pull some cards. I wanna do anything but sit here in the quiet right now. But it's getting easier and it's getting better.
The last one I have here is, oh, I love this one. So somebody basically said, you know, if they resonate with the description, but the photo they show me wasn't what I pictured, is it me or is the sitter filling in the blanks in our minds? Okay. So I'll refer to Tony Stockwell quite a bit because I did a retreat with him. I'm holding my retreat, the Sacred Spirit Retreat at the exact same venue that I went to a Tony Stockwell retreat at in 2016, and it was my favorite experience ever. I knew I wanted that to be my first retreat location because it was absolute magic, and the best time I've ever had in my development journey. And he is so funny. So he was telling us a story about doing a demonstration, and he was like, channeling this information. This woman in the audience was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's my mom. That's my mom. And then afterwards she went up to him and said, this is my mom who you were talking to. And he's like, I have never seen that woman in my life. Like, what he pictured was completely different than what the woman was able to take in what he was describing. Right?
So I will tell you too that me and my dad went to a demonstration together once with Lauren Rainbow in 2018. Me and my dad and my mom went together. My family got five connections that night. We were late and we were last row, and we got five connections that night. And me and Lauren had been friends ever since because I was like, what is happening? But she started describing someone who I knew was my grandma, right, like my grandma. That's my dad's mom. And he was like, no, no, no, that's not her. Like it really was a lesson for me to know that we all experience, even our closest loved ones, very differently in life. So it's not gonna be very different as a reader either. And the spirit world will come to you in a way that you can accept, because if they were to come to you in their true form, they would come as light. And there would be no physical descriptors because they would literally show you as their truest essence, which is light, a ball of light.
So what they do is they come near you and impress upon you things that you can resonate with, that you may have experience with. I don't bring through a lot of physical descriptors because for the most part of my career I haven't been incredibly clairvoyant. But one that always comes through, that comes through strong, is like this Burt Reynolds look the black mustache, like the dark hair, the short shorts the big hairy legs And when it comes through, people can Latin and they send me pictures all the time. They're like, look like you just nailed it. And that comes through kind of like super clear for me, you know what I mean? But I don't pick up every spirit communicators, and I think you don't even have to, because I had one of my students say, oh yeah, your grandma had bangs. I was like, no, she never did. But then my dad showed me a picture where she did have bangs at some point. So I think too, our physical appearances changed so much that it isn't necessarily the highest quality of information you can bring through.
I think one of the highest quality pieces of evidential information you can bring through is memories because memories are what was. People have a feeling associated to memories. They have movement associated to memories. So if you can ask the spirit will to say, can you show me a memory you've shared with them? Right? Maybe it was a trip to Disneyland, maybe it was fishing on a lake, maybe it was like an annual trip to a cabin, like maybe it was playing bridge. All I know is that anytime I am able to tap into a memory, it is what is. It's like it is what happened. And to me that has been like really high quality information that comes through. But that's gonna be different for everybody because again, when we even look at evidence and all mediumship should be evidential, and then you can move into the messages after you've established that evidence. But what people think is good evidence or super valuable evidence is very determinant, sitter by sitter. Some sitters will be wowed with certain information. Other sitters won't think too much about it. The sitter really identifies for themselves what quality and amazing evidence is. And that does look a little bit different between sitter to sitter.
But yeah, I had an experience last year where I was being challenged to bring through a whole communication without identifying the relationship. Like let it go. You don't need to identify the relationship. So I did this whole reading and in my world, behind my eyes, I kept seeing this older woman who was like probably Hispanic. That's how I was seeing. And when she showed me a picture, it was a young woman who was like Caribbean, like Black, much darker than I was seeing, but all the information made sense. So I was kind of glad I didn't go for the relationship. I didn't go for the physical descriptors because everything else I was able to bring through was able to give her full confidence I was connected in with her loved ones. So we have to kind of like be open to removing an exact checklist I need to bring through do, do, do, do, and let the world of spirit surprise you a little bit. That's how come I love that question, what have you come to say? And then let the world of spirit decide what needs to come through evidently that will land with their sitter.
Okay. I had the most incredible reading in the fall, getting comfortable and right on time. I'm in this phase of contraction. I'm integrating the lessons. I took a break from readings, but I feel like I've taken five steps back and it's so frustrating. So I just wanna say, I hear you, and I feel you, and I see you. Okay? Because I know what it feels like to feel like you're taking steps back, but from what I have experienced and from what the world of spirit has been able to bring through me, is that we actually never go backwards. We may have ignored signs to take a rest, and when you ignore signs to take a rest, and I'd be curious if you did experience them and you can recognize them now, you will have a little bit of a rug swiped from underneath you. That's what happened to me in December. I knew in every core of my being, I probably shouldn't have done the Empowered Light Worker week and pushed it and shouldn't have done a couple other projects because I was feeling beyond capacity. And I didn't listen to that intuition because I wanted to hold to my commitments, to the detriment of my own wellness. And what happened? I had the rug swiped out from under me for a whole month. A whole month. I couldn't do hardly anything, and I was forced into a place of rest.
So look for yourself, if there were potentially like little hints that you were receiving that maybe you should move things. Maybe you should make more spaciousness. Maybe you should take a little bit of a pause and replenish a little bit, right, that rest and retreat. And if you maybe ignored that, you may be stuck in that feeling of having the rug swiped out from under you. But I promise you, when you pick it back up again and you are in that flow, you will not lose any abilities. You will probably find you have new tricks and adventures. Every time I come back from a break, I have new tricks under my sleeve. Every single time. So I love them for a good reason. Just give yourself space and time. I have a saying, and it's gonna be on one of my coffee mugs, when I have the Spirit School store open in May, but it's gonna be like ride those flows and honor those ebbs. Stop forcing it, accept it. I am in an ebb right now and I need to rest and replenish and rejuvenate. And then when the flow comes back in, I'm gonna ride that flow for all it's worth. And then I'm gonna honor the ebb again because the wheel of fortune is continuously turning, and we are always going to be in a state of ebb and flow, and resisting it is gonna make you sick. So don't resist it. Just keep going.
Okay. In an open public setting for readings, how have you encountered and protected the space when antagonistic people, usually hurting, lashes out or tries to challenge you? So that's evolved over time. That's really evolved over time. Like as you find your confidence, and as you find your like footing in your body of work, you'll be able to manage that a whole lot better. I have said to people who have been very like arms crossed and like didn't wanna be there. I said, look like your energy is one third of the success of this overall reading.. So what do we need to do to get you in an energetically open space so that I can work easier for you? Or if this isn't something that you wanna be here and do, I'm happy to give you a refund, like you don't have to be here. So I've felt confident enough to say that and like let people know like, this isn't all on me. Like your energy is one third of the overall experience that we have here. It's Spirit, me and you. And if your energy isn't open, this isn't going to go very well.
So that's what I've basically said to people. But it took me a while to build up confidence to be able to do that. What I used to do was people please, go over on time, be performative, pull out all the tricks, like make them like me, all the places from my, you know, wounded inner child space to try to be safe. And that made me sick. And you only do that so many times until you realize it's costing you too much light and you have to try another way. And so I just stick up for myself now every single time.
I really hope that this was helpful for you. And you're also welcome to just hang out in the free space and I'll pop in with these Q and As every once in a while. You're welcome to use the free space to ask questions at any time. I will definitely try to answer as many as humanly possible. Just know that I'm a very cyclic being. So sometimes you will see me in the space like nonstop for about a week, and then you won't see me for a few days. And I just really honor my cycles with that. So I pop in at every opportunity I can, but always in a space where I really want to be there, to make sure that the energy just stays like really clean. Thank you for bringing in your good energy in the space and in Spirit School and helping me, you know, keep the energy up. Bye everyone.