by Riley Bartlett (they/them), Reiki Practitioner at Prideful Wellness

The question I always hate getting in a therapy office is, “do you see things other people don’t see or hear things that others don’t hear?” For me, the answer is always yes. I can see orbs floating in space and shadows that create images. I can see auras splaying out like a web and textures of energy radiating off a person’s body. I’ve had friends turn off the lights and suddenly there are figures standing in the room that only I can see. I also hear words and phrases and warnings that end up coming true. Some of this I keep to myself. People are generally more or less open to hearing about auras and orbs of light, but hearing about shadowy figures standing over them as they sleep, not so much.

When I told my therapist about this, she just assumed I was on drugs. Mind you, she wasn’t a very good therapist and I only saw her a couple of times when I was in high school, but the experience made me wary to share what I saw and heard with others.

The reasons I decided to get trained in Reiki was because I’m so sensitive to energy and I found things out that I had no business knowing. In high school, I knew one of my teachers was going to go out on bedrest before it happened. I predicted the gender of my friend’s baby. I gave a friend a warning about something that was going to affect him on the left and, a week later, a medical procedure punctured his left lung. Getting Reiki trained helped me make sense of what I was seeing, hearing and feeling.

“clairvoyance” and “clairaudience” are two ways that I gather information about clients in my Reiki sessions. The word “clair” is French for “clear.” The word “voyance” means “sight” and the word “audience” means “sound.”

Being clairvoyant and clairaudient does not mean I see things like I would in a movie or hear something that sounds like it’s coming from another room. It can be that way, but 90% of the time, I see images in my mind’s eye or I get a sense of the words being communicated. I use these senses in my sessions to give people messages about things going on in their lives or communications from loved ones who have passed on.

When I was younger, I felt crazy because of how people reacted to the things I saw and heard, but now surround I myself with people who believe me and who see these skills as valuable to my energy healing practice.

Photo credit to Heather (she/her) Hanson @msheathernoel.