Meet the Senses That Will Transform Your Reality: The Clairs
The clairs: meet your new besties
From clairvoyance to claircognizance and everything else on the fringe, learn about the different ways to sense the soul world
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Sensing the world with all of your senses
In order to understand how you are psychic or intuitive or have other soul abilities, first you need to learn what you are working with.
Just like when you're a baby and you're learning the world, you need to use your senses. Well, if you are new in the higher-sensing world, you are in the same boat. it's time to be aware of all of your senses, not just the 5 physical ones that you’ve grown accustomed to.
It wasn't until I knew the definitions of the psychic or soul senses that I was able to connect my experiences to a soul ability concept. I didn't have the vocabulary to explain how I used my soul abilities but, once I did learn the vocabulary, I was able to define my experiences in a way that aligned with the soul abilities world. It was then that I really began to believe that I had psychic abilities, mediumship abilities and intuition.
I found learning the psychic or soul senses was empowering and affirming for me. The definitions allowed me to speak to myself in a way that allowed me to believe that I could be psychic. It also allowed me to focus my attention on these senses and see where I fell in the spectrum of strength for each soul sense. This in turn has made me understand what I'm "natural" at as wel las what needs building.
Let’s provide you with definitions to help you intellectually grasp these new concepts which will be aligned with terms and concepts you are already familiar with. Additionally, I will also give you my first hand account of the psychic/soul senses as a psychic medium intuitive with examples of how I have encountered and have experienced some of these ‘paranormal’, but actually quite normal, senses.
Becoming familiar with these terms will make the whole soul world not so detached from what you experience with our “normal” world and will actually help demystify psychic and other soul abilities.
Being able to provide my own first hand accounts will help you be able to relate, be able to compare your experiences to mine. The hope is that my experiences will help inspire relatability. That you will be able to connect an experience you’ve once had with how I experience my psychic/soul senses. This could be a way for you to identify an experience that you’ve had as a psychic experience or an intuitive experience or a mediumship experience.
In the end, how I experience the world will be different than how you experience it. My experiences are my truths, both in a “normal” sense but also in the psychic/soul sense. What you have experience is your truth. What brings our truths together is our commonalities in experiences, our relatability. And, I’m hoping putting my experiences out there will be relatable for you to see your soul ability truths.
The clairs: an introduction
The clairs- AKA the psychic senses, the meta senses, parasenses, soul senses.
In the human body we are able to see with our eyes, feel with our skin, smell with our nose, taste with our tongue and hear with our ears. With the clairs we are able to sense all of these things but, not due to a physical cause rather from a sense processed directly in the mind. When we experience the psychic/soul senses, we actually have a wider spectrum of senses than our five physical senses. However, a majority of soul senses can be linked to our understanding of the “ordinary” physical senses.
The main syllable “Clair” begins the terminology for all of these psychic senses, which is the French word for "clear".
According to some sources, we are dominant in one or two of our psychic/soul senses and we can tap into these senses consciously or unconsciously, with control and without control.
Some experience their clairs objectively and some experience their clairs subjectively. In my conscious state, like right now, I experience my psychic senses subjectively, in my mind, but I have heard of some in the soul work field who experience at least one of their psychic/soul senses objectively, meaning seemingly external.
An example I could give for objective psychic sensing would be like in the 1999 M. Night Shyamalan movie The Sixth Sense starring Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis. In this movie, the character of the precocious little boy, played by Haley Joel Osment, mediumistically sees “dead people”. He is able to objectively see them in his environment, he is able to objectively hear them in his environment. Alternatively, if he were to experience these psychic senses subjectively he would be seeing “dead people” in his mind’s eye or hearing “dead people” in his “mind’s ear”.
Define and conquer
Clairvoyance
This is probably one of the more popular terms, simply because it's a more widely used word than the other psychic/soul senses. Clairvoyance means "clear seeing". You see imagery in your mind’s eye or, outside of you, like in the example I gave you above from the movie The Sixth Sense.
In clairvoyance you are able to see beyond time and space.
There have been times when I have been able to retrieve imagery from what looks like the 30s or the 50s. I am able to automatically see things as if I am looking at a photo or film which helps indicate to me a time period that I am visualizing. I get hints like the tints of color I'm seeing things in (like with old photographs or old movies.
Typically, when I have a clairvoyant experience, I am always nearly seeing a different space than the space that I am physically standing in. If I were to be having a clairvoyant experience in the place I am physically standing then I would probably be having a moment of deja vu, which I notice are often dreams that I had months or even years ago.
As for an accurate representation of what I actually see in my mind’s eye, I’ve photoshopped up an example for you below of how I started to notice my clairvoyant visions when I first started in my soul ability work. I saw imagery in a way that is like you are squinting and the images are kinda dark and blurry.
As I’ve progressed, my focus on details of the imagery are good to note but the messaging is usually more directed at what the image is and not necessarily all of the detail involved.
Here is an example of how imagery using my clairvoyance has looked to me when I first started expanding my soul abilities. The image on the left is how I would see it with my physical eyes. The image on the right shows how I see imagery in my minds eye: blurry and dark without a lot of contrast.
Clairaudience
The psychic/soul sense of hearing. This one mystifies me because I am still working on building this one, even after years of work.
Some psychics have said it’s that ringing in your ears, which would be commonly called tinnitus. This high pitched ringing is said to be spirit talking to you but that spirit isn’t able to bring their vibration down enough for you to hear them. It is then suggested that you need to raise your vibration in for you to be able to receive and interpret what the message is.
I do experience clairaudience during the process of getting to sleep and in my dreams but the conscious state is my hurdle for clairaudience.
This particular clair is mentioned a lot and I do find that it’s often talked about as a difficult one to grasp for some. For some its naturally a heightened sense and for others, like myself, it may take some work to be to identify where to focus, how to bring your vibration up or some other barrier in order to work this psychic/soul sense.
Claircognazance
‘Clear knowing’ without knowing who or why.
This is a clair that is hard to describe because it defies the physical senses, it beyond that physical sense understanding.
It is kind of like a quick download of information that settles into your brain, it puts connections together without much effort, as if it the information is just imparted on you.
For me, this shows up generally after my clairvoyance gives me information. For instance, I read a woman who’s daughter just bought a house. This information came through in the reading with visuals for me. I was even directed to the basement of the house (with visuals) but had a knowing that there was a problem in the basement. Knowing there was a problem in the basement was the information that was received with my claircognazance. The sitter validated that there was a problem in the basement and I was able to foresee how a resolution would come into place for her daughter with this particular problem.
This sense is probably the most ‘mystical’ of the senses because it seems impossible to have a sense like this. But, this sense is very dominant in my readings so, it’s definitely possible, from my own experience and truth.
Clairtengency
Clear touching, also known as psychometry. This clair is pretty specific in that you receive information by touching an object or entity.
I have a couple of examples of this off the top of my head, both of which I experienced at a weekly development circle I took part in when I first got started on my soul quest.
My first example you can check out on my podcast, which consisted of a student’s special object they brought specifically for a psychometry exercise. The other example happened in that same class where our teacher, Patty, gave each of the students a sealed envelopes. In each of the envelopes was a picture of something. We were given a few minutes to see what our psychic impressions were of what the picture could be and I saw an image of a bird as the photo in my envelope. Upon opening the envelope and taking a look at the photograph, it was a bird.
Clairkinesthetic
Clear movement. An example that I could give you that is not an experience of mine would be more mediumistic in that you would take on the movements of an animal or person. Another example I’ve witnessed is the feeling of sudden movements, like the feeling of being in a car accident where the body is jolted. These sensations can certainly give a sense of time and impact for the receiver to pass along to the sitter.
Clairgraphia
Clear written word.
This one was a huge moment for me when I was first doing readings because, I had, and still have, a hard time getting names. There has been one medium sitting that I experienced spirit actually write their name for me in my minds eye. Like, their signature. It was the clearest communication I had gotten up to that point when it came to a name and when the sitter was able to immediately say "yes" I was absolutely floored because, it wasn't a common name. it was actually a two-namer and I'm still super impressed with spirit’s ability to communicate with me like that. Cause it worked very well!
Clairtackilus
Clear medical conditions. I experienced this at a weekend workshop taught by some nationally known mediums consisting of other psychic mediums, shamans and I don’t know what else from around the world converging to this workshop to develop their mediumship skills. I attended because it happened to be in my home state and was one of those “yolo” moments. We were doing an exercise where we were practicing giving 5 pieces of information about the mediumship reading we were giving to another student in the workshops and I was channeling a woman’s grandmother. I sensed a blockage in a vein (claircognazance) with physical pressure (clairsentience) in the lower front part of my right leg. I had summized a blood clot but was corrected that this woman’s grandmother suffered from varicose veins.
Clairsentience
The psychic/soul sense of emotional feeling. This sense doesn't fit with your traditional 5 physical senses in that it doesn’t really have a physical sense translation. But, this is a sense that shows as a strong "natural" psychic/soul sense for those that see themselves as empaths.
There have been a few times during mediumship sittings that I take on the emotion of those that have departed, quite often it's an emotion of love, and it feels intense. Quite often, the strength of these feelings have brought me to tears.
Clairempathy
Clear empathy is a psychic/soul sense that seems to have parallels with clairsentience, in that they both have an ability the receives information about emotion. Where the difference between these two honestly is unknown to me.
However, another part of clairempathy that I tend to experience, during a reading and while living my real life, is taking on others physical pain, physical discomfort or physical sensations. Sometimes I absorb this information without actively trying.
A few year into my soul training, I was experiencing a feeling in my lower abdomen of what felt to be a pregnancy "stretching" feeling. I’ve had three kids and know what that feels like and if you've been pregnant, you know this feeling, too.
Over the course of a week I kept feeling my lower abdomen ‘stretching’ which got me a bit concerned. My hubs had a vasectomy a year before and was cleared, so, I was kind of freaking out like I could be pregnant. I went to Walgreens and got a couple of pregnancy tests, which turned out to be a big, fat negative. So, why was I feeling pregnant? Then, it all became clear.
A few days after doing the pregnancy tests, I overheard a coworker talking with her client. I overhead her client mention that she was pregnant. My coworker was quick to tell him that she wasn’t telling anybody yet.
That's when I put it together that I was feeling her pregnancy "stretching". I was so relieved. Once I found out, I stopped feeling these physical pregnancy feelings. And, was so very relieved. So was my husband. But, especially me.
Another example of feeling someone else’s physical state, was before I started exploring my soul abilities. A few times a year, I would check out a local monthly gallery reading. I ended up sitting behind a middle aged couple and started developing a head ache. It kept getting stronger and more painful as the night went one and I almost left because it hurt so bad and had this feeling like my eyes were crossing. Eventually, the medium heading the gallery reading came to the couple in front of me. It was then revealed that their son had died in an accident and had suffered head trauma prior to passing.
I connected it together that I was feeling what their son felt and was completely flabbergasted at the idea that I was taking on his pain. Again, I was not actively exercising my soul abilities or even aware at that time that I was capable of these things. I spent a long time trying to “rationalize” the situation, but now I know what was really happening.
How we ignore the easiest explanations.
Clairgustance
Psychic taste. You know this phrase, “It’s so close, I can taste it”? Well, this is the psychic/soul sense that allows for you to taste it without physically having a substance in your mouth. If you are into cooking and exploring flavors, then this is probably a stronger psychic sense for you. I've noticed this sense kicks in for me when I have other psychic things dominating the experience, as a secondary sense that enhances the messaging. My experience of this particular sense happened during a reading where I was able to see, smell and taste a lemon cake made by my sitter that she had made for her boyfriend's birthday days earlier.
This soul sense is often experienced with clairalience/clairscent.
Clairalience/ Clairscent/ Clairolfaction
Psychic smell. Again, being able to take on the physical sense of something without the actually object that would give that sense around. One memorable time for me when I was in the first year of expanding my soul consciousness, I would wake up and smell things. A few times it was banana bread. The smell of it would waft around as I was waking up and be the reason I would get out of bed. As I would waken and get up, the scent would disappear and, alas, would find no freshly made banana bread in the kitchen downstairs.
Sometimes, this soul sense is experienced with clairgustance- clear smelling.
Can you relate?
Now that you are aware of the breadth of clairs and have some real world examples to work off of, do any of these relate to you?
You can also see how common one psychic sense can be for you compared to others that you may not any experience in.
Checking out this list allows you to focus on being more objective and in the moment in your everyday life. It’s there that you recognize these soul senses as your own abilities.
My tip to you is to write down your experiences and see what psychic senses you have experienced. Pick out which ones may be your stronger clairs.
I hope this helps you define your experiences and gives you a heads up on where to put your attention when it comes to exploring your soul abilities.
