Awakening Your Intuitive Ability:
Powerful Practices to Help You Develop the 4 Types of Intuition

BY ATHERTON DRENTH

awakening intuition often means learning to tune into and feel the subtle sensory input that often times gets lost in the chatter of noise going on mentally. photo: viktor bezrukov

Reclaiming Your Intuition

How do you allow yourself to remember and develop your intuitive abilities? It is easier than you think. I was totally unaware that what I felt about people was called intuition. Why? Because no one had ever told me that what I was doing had a name. I just thought everybody did “it.” My hope is that by helping you to identify “it” that you will discover that you too have had “it” all along. You just need to give yourself permission to remember and then learn how to use your intuitive ability more consciously.

If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would be using my intuitive ability to help others on their healing journey, I would have laughed myself to tears. It took me a long time to recognize my awakening intuition for what it was. Developing intuition didn’t happen overnight for me: I didn’t recognize my intuitive ability until I was in my early thirties. It was a shock to me to be told there was a name for what I did naturally. I was even more surprised when I learned that I could develop my intuition even further and help other people. I went from being a medical technologist to an office manager to training as a medical intuitive. Today I have a very busy private practice with an international client base. The mystery of life!

Awakening my intuition happened quite by accident for me. In the early 1980s, I was working as a registered medical technologist. My industry at this time was undergoing radical changes in automation, which resulted in downsizing in a large majority of laboratories. At one point during this transition, it was predicted that over 50 percent of medical technologists would find their careers obsolete over the next ten years. The private laboratory I worked for at the time had notified us that it was getting ready for some major layoffs. Everyone was affected. To their credit, the owners of the lab asked, “What was going to happen to all these people who were being laid off and what can we do to help them?”

It was decided by upper management that the best course of action was to try and help us discover what our skill sets were. They arranged to have a team of training consultants come into the lab for a two-day workshop. It was explained to us that this team of experts would help us analyze our personal skill sets through various testing techniques, including an analysis of personality traits. By understanding our skill set, we were told it would give us a better chance of applying those skills in other fields of employment. It was an intense two days, but one of the best things I was ever able to do for my awakening intuition. It helped the large majority of us who worked at that lab to find gainful employment in new fields afterward.

During the workshop, all of the tests consistently identified me as being very intuitive. That was a surprise. Back then I didn’t really understand what it meant to have “intuitive ability.” For me, listening to that inner calm was like breathing. It was just something I did without thinking. I was discovering something new about myself. Boy, did that little piece of information about my developing intuition eventually have a huge impact on my life!

Finding out that there were four different types of intuitive abilities helped me to develop my particular intuitive skill set, which helped me to be more accurate. Everyone has all four, but one will tend to be more dominant than the others. Once I understood what my dominant type of intuitive ability was, it made it so much easier to focus on that strength and develop it. The more I practiced my intuitive muscle, the more comfortable I became with trusting the information I was receiving. I also quickly learned that how I read something intuitively is not how my colleagues read things intuitively. This taught me that everyone was different when it came to how they use their own innate intuitive ability, and that was okay.

The first step to understanding your awakening intuition and using it is to figure out what your dominant intuition type is. Once you know, the rest is easy; all you have to do is practice. With regular practice developing your intuition, you will find it easier to trust what you are sensing and feeling intuitively. Over time, you will begin to notice that you are much calmer, less reactive, and more present. People will begin to comment that you have changed somehow and they can’t quite put their finger on it. It is my hope that as you discover and develop your awakening intuition, life will become more calm and peaceful for you. After I had been practicing and using my intuitive ability more consciously on a daily basis, my kids told me I seemed happier. That made me smile.

To find out what type of intuition you have, we need to first take a look at what the different types of intuitive ability are and what they mean.

Then we will take you through a quick little quiz that will help you identify what type of intuitive you are.

Identifying Your Intuitive Ability

The four different types of intuitive ability are: clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience and claircognizance.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance is called “clear seeing.” It is the form of intuitive ability to see things inside the mind as pictures, images, short movies, symbols, or as impressions. It is considered the most symbolic of all the intuitive abilities.

Clairvoyance utilizes a chakra in the forehead called the Ajna as a mechanism for its intuitive development. This chakra is also referred to as the third eye in ancient Hindu texts. Chakra is the Sanskrit word for wheel and signifies one of seven basic energy centers in the body. Each one of these centers correlates to a major nerve ganglia that branches forth from the spinal column.

Each chakra is related to physical and emotional components in the body and aura.

The third eye chakra perceives subtle energy patterns and wavelengths and translates this information through your developing intuition into clear pictures or impressions. These images can appear on an imaginary screen in your mind in the form of movies, colors, or symbols, and they can be holographic in nature. In essence, the images act like your own internal movie projector. These images or movies can be in color or black and white.

They can also be quick impressions that create a visual in your mind’s eye. It is quite common for people who are predominately clairvoyant to have very vivid dreams caused by their awakened intuition.

For me, images pop up like they are floating to the surface of a screen. Do you remember the magic eight balls that were all the rage back in the 1970s? You would ask the ball a question, shake the ball, and then turn it upside down to see what answer floats to the top of the window. Images coming to the surface are like that for me when I am seeing something clairvoyantly.

A simple example of how something would appear to a clairvoyant starts with someone asking if you would like an orange. If you are a clairvoyant, your intuitive ability will first “see” an orange flash in your mind’s eye before deciding if you would like to have one to eat.

Clairsentience

Clairsentience is called “clear feeling.” It is the intuitive ability to feel or physically sense information in your body. Clairsentients receive most of their intuitive information as feelings through the third chakra, called the solar plexus, located just above the belly button. People who are predominately clairsentient will often talk about how they have “gut reactions” to events or situations. A clairsentient has the intuitive ability to “feel” information anywhere in their bodies, and this is called having a “body clue.” For example, if a clairsentient is talking to someone who has a sore elbow, their elbow will start to feel sore as well due to their awakened intuition.

They are the most sensitive of all the awakening intuition abilities because of their ability to feel other people’s emotions. While they represent the most truly empathic and compassionate of all the intuitive abilities, it does create a bit of a conundrum for them. They are considered to be little human Velcros because they pick up everything going on around them. This often creates a lot of confusion because they lose touch with what they are feeling physically and emotionally versus what another is feeling physically or emotionally. They get lost in the noise from their awakened intuition and can be easily overwhelmed as a result.

I have colleagues who are extremely clairsentient. They always know what is wrong with a client by what they feel in their own body.

If a client has a knee problem, then their knee aches. If a client has a headache, they feel a headache in their own body. Some clairsentients can also have an intuitive ability read on something through smells and taste.

These types of clairsentients can be very sensitive to scents and can be picky eaters because of their developed intuition. One young woman I worked with years ago couldn’t eat meat because she could taste the emotional trauma of the animal in her body. Eating the meat always made her feel emotionally ill afterward.

Again, asking a clairsentient if they would like to have an orange can be a simple indicator. Clairsentients will have a sense of what it feels like, tastes like, or smells like. They will then check in to see if they feel hungry.

Clairaudience

Clairaudience is called “clear hearing.” It is the intuitive ability to hear information inside your mind and receive it as statements, sounds, a song or lyric, or sense it as a vibration. It is the easiest of all the intuitive types because you can hear it. Clairaudients receive their intuitive information through an area located just above their ears but below the temples. This area of the brain covers the temporal lobes, which is where we process auditory information.

We all “talk” to ourselves. We’ve all had at least one instance in our life where we’ve heard that little voice inside our minds warning us of danger. We also “hear” our egos nattering away at us all the time. The difficult part for clairaudients is learning how to discern the difference between intuitive guidance and the ego voice. As a result, people whose developing intuition is predominantly clairaudient will be the first to question everything they “hear,” because for them, it’s like they are only thinking out loud. Pete Sanders, Jr., notes in his book, You are Psychic, that because this voice sounds so familiar, those of us who are predominately clairaudient struggle with the validity of what is being said.

He refers to it as “a credibility gap” as a result of this inner confusion between the ego voice and the voice of the inner calm intuitive ability.

Clairaudients are so comfortable with the sound of their own voice that the process for developing their intuition is only to learn the difference between their ego voice and their intuitive voice, when they can identify the difference in tone with the information they are hearing.

The intuitive voice, which is the inner calm, is calm, loving, subtle, and in times of danger, very strong and direct. This awakening intuition empowers you and gives you confidence. The ego voice, on the other hand, is critical, demanding, demeaning, and authoritative; it can be quite harsh and has the tendency to make you feel powerless. When we are in the throes of this “monkey mind,” it can be hard to hear the calm, still, intuitive voice of love and reason. For this reason, clairaudients garner the greatest benefits from meditating on a regular basis, as it helps them to discern between the ego voice and the developing voice of their intuition.

Clairaudients can read other people’s energy by what they “hear” from their intuitive ability.  Years ago, when I was on a training course learning a new healing technique, I met a woman who was a very talented musician. She could “hear” auras and could tell you what color your aura was based on the tone of the musical note she heard. If the music had a flat tone or sharp tone, she knew the body was out of balance. If she heard a harmonic tone, she would know that area of the body was in balance.

If you ask someone who is clairaudient if they would like an orange, they will hear a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ inside their minds.

Claircognizance

Claircognizance is called “clear knowing.” Claircognizants see or perceive intuitive information as a hunch or through an impression where they know what the answer is. Of all the intuitive abilities, this one is the strongest intuitive type because the claircognizant receives information instantly and will know what will or will not work.

Claircognizants receive their intuitive abilities information through one of two areas in the body, either the heart chakra or the crown chakra. The heart chakra is located in the middle of your chest just above the tip of your breastbone. The crown chakra is located at the top of your head.

This intuitive information can be perceived as a warm feeling that emanates from the chest, or it can be felt like a rush through the top of the head and is received as complete ideas or statements. Men, for example, have a strong tendency to be claircognizants because they trust their “hunches or instincts.” A person who is considered a good judge of character is often very claircognizant. Someone who has prophetic dreams or visions of future events from their developing intuition can have claircognizant intuitive ability.

When I was about eight years old, I remember stepping out onto our front porch and looking up at the trees. At that moment, I had a vision from my awakening intuition. I “saw” myself walking down the aisle of a church. I could see that I was wearing a wedding dress and caught a glimpse of the man I was going to marry. I felt happy and content. I knew I was to “wait for him.” When I met my husband, I knew that this was the man I was going to marry by the end of our first date; but I didn’t relate it back to the vision I had as a child. A few months later, we attended a friend’s wedding at his church. As the bride walked down the aisle, I remember looking up at the ceiling of the church and that’s when it hit me that “this is the church I will marry in.” My whole body tingled and vibrated. We had only been dating for a few months when we decided to marry. There was some opposition to our marrying so quickly; and to be honest, we were both a little nervous. When I “remembered” my vision from my developing intuition at that moment in the church, any questions or concerns I had about marrying him instantly faded away.

If you ask a claircognizant if they would like an orange to eat, they will have a sense through their intuitive ability of what it would be like to have one or not.

What Type of Intuitive Are You?

By now, you are probably getting a sense of where you fit in the intuitive abilities spectrum. I am sure you would like a little more confirmation about your developing intuition, though. Here is a short quiz to help you determine what type of intuitive ability you have.

Before you take the quiz, remember you have all four intuitive abilities, but one or two of them will be predominant. Once you find out what your dominant intuitive ability or skill is, you will be able to focus on that ability, developing your intuition until it becomes second nature.

You will need a pen and paper to do the quiz. Take a deep breath, relax, and release any need or expectations. Have some fun with this.

Exercise: Discovering Your Dominant Intuitive Skill Quiz

Read the following statements below and choose either a, b, c, or d.

You can have more than one choice, so put down all the letters that resonate with you in order to get a clear picture of your developing intuition type.

When you return from a vacation, are you more apt to describe:

a. What you saw? (Scenery, architecture, people, culture)
b. How you felt? (Relaxed, happy, miserable, smell of the flowers)
c. What you heard? (Music, conversations, wildlife, sounds of the ocean)
d. What you learned about the area? (Culture, history, museums, language)

When you finish watching a movie, are your first thoughts about:

a. The cinematography, clothes, scenery?
b. The emotions you felt? (Laughed until I cried, sad, tense, frustrated)
c. The sound track? (Loved the music, aware of every sound or track played, bought the soundtrack)
d. The message in the movie? (Symbolism, concepts, accuracy of the story)

When you plan your next vacation, do you pick locations based on:

a. Visuals? (Lush beaches, romantic villas, places to explore)
b. How you feel in the moment? (I need a vacation, stressed, anxious, have to get out of here, need to escape for a while)
c. Activities—musical events, concerts, guided tours
d. History – What can I learn? What can I do to help?

When you listen to the radio, do you:

a. Visualize the singer and the band or remember images from the video?
b. Really get into the music and feel it?
c. Play along in your head and know every note or bar of music that is being played?
d. Listen to the message? Is there a story or a meaning, or is it repetitive?

When you read a book, are you:

a. Inside the story? You can feel yourself and the characters having the conversation
b. Feel the emotions of the characters and begin to identify with one or the group?
c. Hear the sounds implied by the story? (Band music played in the background, the sound of the carriage on the cobblestone road, the roar of the lion or the sound of the sea rushing onto the beach)
d. Looking for symbolism in the book? What is the author really trying to say? What is the moral of the story?

How to Interpret Your Answers

If you answered:

A: For all five questions then you are predominately a clairvoyant intuitive type (clear seeing)
B: For all five questions then you are predominately a clairsentient intuitive type (clear feeling)
C: For all five questions then you are predominately a clairaudient intuitive type (clear hearing)
D: For all five questions then you are predominately a claircognizant intuitive type (clear sensing)

If you discover that your answers have varied, look at the combinations. If you have three of one intuitive ability and two of another, then you are predominately the answer you gave three times, with the other answer being present but not as dominant. I would recommend you pick one that resonates the most closely for you and focus on developing your intuition with that one first.

When you are comfortable with that intuitive ability, go back and focus on further awakening your other intuitive ability. It will be good training for you to understand the difference between them and how developing your intuition will work for you.

After a short period of time, you will begin to realize that you do in fact have all four intuitive abilities. This will come with practice as you learn how to “read” information intuitively.

To give you some context, when I did the quiz, my answer was A for three questions and D for two of the questions. This means that I am predominantly a clairvoyant with strong claircognizant intuitive abilities.

For me, A is more natural, so I focused on mastering that intuitive ability first.

Then I focused on developing claircognizance. Now I use both intuitive abilities at the same time. I can see an image in my mind’s eye and then I get an interpretation or hunch happening in my heart, or sometimes I feel it coming down through the top of my head. The majority of the time, because I’m well past my intuitive development stage, they happen together.

Now that you have an understanding of what type of an intuitive you are, things should become clearer for you. Treat it like an adventure and see how you can apply your awakening intuition to the different aspects your life. Each intuitive ability has its advantages and disadvantages.

When you are in the positive column of your intuitive abilities, you are more in line with the inner calm. When you are moving toward the negative column, your ego is having some fun calling the shots. Being able to feel, or discern, the difference is all part of the dance. To help you awaken your intuitive ability a bit further, I have also included some interesting exercises below. They are fun and easy to do. As you do the exercises, you may find that writing down what you are sensing and feeling in a journal will be quite useful in developing your intuition. It will also help you track how your skill set as an intuition is developing over time. Going back over your results might surprise you.

The Clairvoyant Dance

Clairvoyants are visual people. They love to take a gazillion pictures and always need to buy extra memory cards for their cameras. They are creative, love colors, and they always seem to be involved in some sort of craft, such as scrapbooking, painting, or quilting. Their homes are filled with art and decorated in beautiful colors. Their surroundings are orderly because messes drive them crazy. They are the shoppers who always pick up the perfect vase or just the right piece of jewelry to go with the dress they bought last year. In business, clairvoyants with an awakening intuition have a knack for being able to visualize how a project will turn out before it even starts. Seeing the big picture is easy for them, and they can foresee what will work or what will hold a project up. CEOs of large corporations often have this gift of visualization.

One company I worked with asked me to reorganize their department and come up with a better layout for the staff. Turns out there were a group of engineers working together who knew if a piece of furniture could fit in a room just by looking at it. They could use their developing intuition to visualize space, dimension, volume, depth, and placement, and all I had to do was show them a picture of a chair or desk. It was amazing to watch.

They were never wrong. It saved me a lot of time when I was reorganizing their department to make room for a new addition.

Being a clairvoyant with awakening and developing intuition can also be a bit of a problem because you can sometimes just blurt things out without meaning to. I ran into this little problem all the time. As you get used to your intuitive ability, you’ll be able to filter yourself more clearly. Once, while having lunch with some of my coworkers, I had a flash in my mind’s eye of one of the ladies holding a sick baby that seemed to be running a high fever. I turned and looked at her and asked, “How is your baby doing?” She was surprised by the question and said the baby was great.

With surprise in my voice I said, “Oh.”

Curious, she asked me why I wanted to know, and I replied, “Oh, I just wanted to make sure that the baby was okay.” She looked puzzled and I felt embarrassed. That question from my developing intuition just popped out of my mouth and I didn’t think it through. You could tell it upset her.

The next day when I came into work, I found out that she’d spent the entire night in the hospital with the baby. The baby had suddenly spiked a high fever and had a seizure that night. Thankfully, the baby was okay.

Exercise: Practice Using Your Clairvoyance with These Simple Exercises

To begin developing intuition, locate the clairvoyant receptor inside the middle of your forehead, close your eyes and focus on the area between your eyes. Imagine or pretend that you are inside the middle of your brain and looking out through an imaginary eye. This area is also called the third eye.

1. Think about a memory that made you happy. Write out the memory and observe how you “see” it in your mind’s eye. Is it in color or black and white? Does the story replay scene by scene or is it like a movie playing in your mind? Write out how you are seeing it.

2. When you read a book, are you inside the story? Do you live it? Does it create images in your mind of what they look like or talk like? Is it a movie or images that flash through your mind? Is it in color or black and white?

3. Think about a movie you saw that you really loved. How do you remember it? Can you see scenes from the movie flash before your eyes? Is thinking about the movie like being back in the theater and watching all over again, or do you feel yourself sitting on the couch in the front of the TV watching the movie? Is it in color or black and white?

What’s the Inner Calm to Being Clairvoyant?

Clairvoyants are the big picture thinkers (seeing from the fifty-thousand-foot view) who can easily see finished outcomes on a project before they are completed. Their developing intuition makes them excellent organizers (have a tendency to rearrange furniture a lot), excellent problem solvers because they can see more than one solution to a problem, love time management (systems, graphs, charts), love to make lists, have a great sense of direction, and they rarely get lost.

What Is the Ego of Being Clairvoyant?

Clairvoyants can be resistant to change, inflexible, and arrogant. They always believe they are right and have to have the last word. They are perfectionists (cannot tolerate mistakes or clutter), worriers, judgmental, critical, and they tend to meddle in other people’s problems.

Clairvoyants will jump to conclusions before they have all the facts.

Meditating while focusing on this area between your eyes can be a very powerful way to further expand your clairvoyant intuitive abilities. While developing intuition, you may eventually experience a mystic event where all of a sudden you find an eye opening up and looking back at you. As you look at your inner eye, you will feel peaceful and loving as it looks back at you. It doesn’t happen for everyone, so don’t be concerned if it doesn’t happen to you. However, if it does, I want to make sure you understand why and that it is a natural event for awakening intuition.

Theosophy, ancient philosophers, and other Eastern religions have taught that the third eye is connected to the pineal gland, which is considered to be the seat of the soul. Ancient tribes found ways of developing intuition by stimulating this gland to assist in realizing higher realms of understanding and consciousness. For over a thousand years, the pineal gland has traditionally been represented as a pinecone. Physical evidence of this symbol can be found in ancient hieroglyphs, paintings, and statues from many different cultures from around the world, including esoteric Christianity.

Scientists were surprised to find that when the pineal gland was examined under a microscope, it was in fact shaped like a pinecone and contained the same elements of rods and cones like a human eye has. This provides us with further evidence that the pineal gland is an organ of vision.

When I was touring the Vatican a few years ago, I was quite fascinated to find a huge statue of a pinecone fountain located in the Court of the Pinecone. The fountain was originally built by the Romans in the first century and was situated near the Pantheon next to the Temple of Isis. It was moved to Vatican City in the Middle Ages and was flanked by two peacocks, one on each side, which are the esoteric symbols for immortality. I found it to be an interesting social statement—an Eastern religion’s mystical reference to the seat of the soul and the intuitive ability that is surrounded by symbols of immortality in the courtyard of one of the most powerful Christian churches in the world.

The Clairsentient Dance

Being predominantly clairsentient means that you can feel or sense things through your developing intuition. Feelings can be powerful motivators and can create strong physical reactions anywhere in the body, such as gut aches or body clues. Clairsentients are very compassionate and empathic people.

They always just know the right thing to say or do. It is a gift from their awakening intuition. They ooze love, gentleness, and tenderness. Little children just love to sit on their laps and get hugs. I always thought that Glinda, the good witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz, personified a clairsentient.

Clairsentients can also receive intuitive insights in the form of tastes or smells. One client of mine who owned a retail store told me that because of her developing intuition she could always tell when she was working with a customer who was angry about something. She told me, “I always smell smoke when someone is angry.”

In my practice I see two primary types of awakening intuition in clairsentients. The first type of clairsentient receives their intuitive insights through what are called “body clues.” Once clairsentients recognize body clues, their life will be made much easier and they will be less anxious. Clairsentients who get intutive body clues have a tendency to be what I lovingly refer to as little human Velcros. They pick up everybody’s energy and then don’t know what else to do with it. They carry it around in their field and then start to think that they: A) caused it, B) created it, or C) have to fix it. A confusing dilemma to say the least!

Years ago, I was having lunch with a friend and I suddenly got this toothache. It had come on so fast that it threw me off. My friend looked at me and asked me if I was all right. I said, “I think I need to call the dentist. I have a toothache.” My friend looked surprised and said, “Wow, I just came from the dentist. I had a root canal this morning. My tooth is still sore.” That caused me to pause. So I asked myself silently if I what I was feeling was really her toothache through my developing intuition. That’s when I realized I was feeling her pain too. Once I silently acknowledged that to myself, my toothache mysteriously disappeared. That saved me some money. If I had not acknowledged my toothache in that way, I could have very well been on a merry goose chase for a tooth that wasn’t sore.

The second type of clairsentient receives their intuitive insights through the solar plexus, or belly, and it is called having a “gut ache.” This type of intuition is often confused with nervousness or a digestive problem. It can be accompanied with diarrhea and nausea in extreme cases. People report it as feeling like they were punched in the stomach or suddenly felt weak and had to sit down. Young children have a tendency to be very clairsentient, especially if they are sensitive and emotional. These are the children that often come home from school complaining of bellyaches while developing their intuition. Trips to the doctor often reveal that they are fine and parents are told the child is making it all up. The reality is that their child is feeling someone else’s emotions and doesn’t know what to do about it.

At no point does anyone ask the child if they are feeling unhappy or concerned about something going on at school or between themselves and a little friend. Doing so would eliminate a great deal of unhappiness for everyone involved and perhaps encourage their awakening intuition.

Feeling hungry or full is just one very simple example of clairsentience, believe it or not. Unfortunately, our determination to validate anything with scientific proof has interfered with developing our intuitive senses, and so we learn to ignore them. For example, most of us have been taught to clean up our plates because there are starving children in Africa. As a result, we clean our plates regardless of whether our body wants to eat that much or if we aren’t feeling well that day. How many times have you, as a child, been forced to finish your dinner, only to get sick later because you were coming down with the flu? I often find that my clients who have developed an eating disorder are very clairsentient, with poorly nurtured intuitive development. My clients, in turn, are often surprised to find that the root of their eating disorder is an early childhood memory where they have been forced to eat something that made them feel ill. People who are bulimics tend to swallow their emotions or the emotions of others and are only able to release the pain and emotion that doesn’t belong to them by vomiting it out.

I find in my practice that people who are afraid of crowds or have panic attacks in public places are also highly sensitive clairsentients.

They become overwhelmed by other people’s energy and feelings and then short circuit. Their egos have them convinced that what they are feeling is theirs. Once they learn how to develop their intuition and discern what they are feeling from what other people are feeling, they do just fine.

Exercise: Practice Your Clairsentience with These Simple Exercises

The clairsentient receptor area is located in the middle of the belly, in the area between the diaphragm and the belly button, also called the solar plexus chakra or the third chakra. Clairsentients are also very gifted at feeling things anywhere in their body. They can receive information from their developing intuition as body clues or gut aches. Remember—these sensations can feel so real that they can be often be mistaken for being your own and treated like a symptom.

1. Do you remember getting gut aches when you were a child in school? Do you feel sick if you have to do something that scares you? Do you suffer from diarrhea or nausea before a big presentation? Describe the feeling of the gut ache. Where exactly do you feel it in your body? Above or below the belly button? Does the feeling have a color or taste to it? (Gut ache)

2. Write out an example of where you were feeling somebody else’s pain and were surprised to find out it was coming from them.

Example: When you arrived to work you were feeling fine, but you felt a headache coming on while you had lunch with your coworker. You mentioned the headache to your friend, only to find that she had a headache too. (Body clue)

3. Think of an instance in your life when you have really felt something was off and you couldn’t figure out what it was. An example would be attending a party and talking to someone who makes you feel tired or sick. What was the experience like? What happened as a result? Where did you feel it?

What’s the Inner Calm to Being Clairsentient?

People who are predominately clairsentient are the most loving, empathic, and compassionate, and they make the finest of best friends.

Because of their highly developed intuition they have a knack of always being in the right place at the right time, and they know just what to say or do. They love good food, good wine, and are usually amazing cooks. They trust their feelings, they are the best cuddlers (kiddie and pet magnets), they are party pleasers, and they live in comfortable homes that always seem to look a little disorganized.

What’s the Ego to Being Clairsentient?

Clairsentients ruled by their egos will pick up everybody’s stuff. (Remember—they are emotional Velcros). Their awakening intuition can cause them to be worriers, easily overwhelmed, and have a fear of crowds, and they can often experience anxiety. They will cry easily and will feel rejected if you forget to smile at them (needing a lot of reassurance all the time).

They can’t make deadlines and they live in constant chaos, forever losing their keys and phones. They often have digestive issues and want to hide in their homes. They look disheveled and disorganized. Their desks, cars, and homes are messy, which can be the result of hoarding.

The Clairaudient Dance

Clairaudients receive their developing intuitive guidance through words and phrases heard inside their minds. There is no questioning that magical little voice in the back of your mind. We all talk to ourselves. We know what “we” sound like inside our own heads. People who are predominately clairaudient find listening to their intuition the easiest. In my workshops, all participants report having at least one instance in their life where they “heard” a voice from within warning them of danger.

Clairaudients are very sensitive to sound from their awakening intuition. They love good music, the sound of the wind, the waves, birds singing, people laughing. They have the best music collection and audio equipment. They have a very low tolerance of squeaky hinges, static, and sounds that are jarring and irritating. They tend to crave silence after a busy day, especially if they have been exposed to a lot of ambient noise throughout the day.

Intuitive hearing also evokes the strongest emotional memories for people. We might not recall who attended our first school dance or what clothing we wore, but there is a chance that through our intuitive ability we will remember the song that played when we had that first dance. Christmas of 1964 will always bring special memories for me because our mother bought us our own record player. She bought us the hit single “Downtown” by Petula Clark. Even today, hearing that song takes me back to memories of sitting on the floor with my sister while we played with our dolls.

Exercise: Practice Your Clairaudience with These Simple Exercises

The clairaudient receptor area is located just above the ears but below the temples. If you place your middle finger at the outside edge of your eyes and place your thumb over your ear canal, your index finger will mark the area in the middle. With an awakening intuition, this area can also be a little tender to the touch. A clairaudient should focus on developing intuitive hearing through this area as opposed to hearing through their ears.

1. Write out some of your musical memories. Do you remember the song that was playing the first time you danced with someone? What was “your” song on your wedding day? What song always brings back a beautiful memory for you?

2. Write out a memory of an instance where you heard a word or a warning that came true. For example: being out with friends and suddenly hearing a shout of danger that came out of nowhere that saved you. Was there a time when you think you heard someone tell you to call home because something was wrong, and it turned out to be true?

3. There are two types of hearing. One is called outer hearing and the other is called inner hearing. To practice outer hearing, sit in silence and record all the things you hear going on around you outside. An example would be birds singing, traffic, or people passing on the street. To practice inner hearing, sit in silence, listen to your thoughts, and write them down. Now shift from outer hearing to inner hearing and back again to practice this intuitive ability. Write down how it feels. Shifting back and forth can sometimes feel like a shift in pressure.

What’s the Inner Calm to Being Clairaudient?

Being clairaudient is the best for understanding and receiving intuitive guidance or receiving specific answers to question. They are articulate, they think before they speak, they are usually musically inclined, they can be multilingual, and they always have the best playlists for parties. They rarely feel overwhelmed and can tune people in or out.

Clairaudients are often the quiet one standing in the corner listening to everything, especially as they are developing their intuition.

What’s the Ego to Being Clairaudient?

When they are being ruled by their egos, clairaudients have a hard time trusting their awakening intuition because they don’t trust “the voices” inside their head. They have difficulty understanding the difference between fear and intuition and cannot tolerate ambient noises. They are the least likely to trust themselves but can come on too strong.

Clairaudients love the sound of their own voice and need people to listen to them. They can become screamers, having constant problems with their hearing. They have a tendency to take conversations out of context. They like seclusion and want to be left alone a lot because silence is the only thing that feels safe when they misunderstand their developing intuition.

The Claircognizant Dance

Being claircognizant means having the intuitive ability to know things. The development of claircognizant intuitive “knowing” can be so fleeting, you can react instantaneously without even realizing it. There is nothing to support what you know with anything tangible; it just is. This is called having a hunch. A statement that claircognizants often make is “I know that” or “I knew that was going to happen.” It is considered to be the driving force behind the fight-or-flight response when there is danger.

Claircognizants are quick thinkers, fast movers, and are often considered quite prophetic. From awakening intuition they know what people are going to say and do and how things will turn out long before anyone else does. They have a knack for being the right person in the right place at the right time. They can tell you what time of day it is without looking at their watch. They are always well prepared and ahead of the trend, or they are the trendsetters. They are quick-witted, engaging, and entertaining. They can be the life of the party.

My father had good hunches. He was considered by everyone in the family to be a very astute judge of character. I learned to not object too much when he ran boyfriends off. Eventually, I would find out that the guy he wouldn’t let me date was not all that great. Between my intuitive ability and my father’s gut instincts, guys didn’t stand much of a chance. My husband was the only man my father ever approved of. I had a hunch from my at the time developing intuition my father would approve of him, and he did. We are still happily married thirty-seven years later.

With that same sense of knowing, I knew I was going to have a boy; but I didn’t know it wasn’t going to be my first pregnancy. I knew the day that my daughter was going to be born. That little piece of information from my developing intuition was useful because, my husband, Bert, had to go out of town on business unexpectedly on my due date. It didn’t stop me from crying all the way to the airport, mind you; but I knew deep down he would be back in time. He was.

Exercise: Practice Your Claircognizance with These Simple Exercises

The claircognizant intuitive ability receptor area is located in the chest area or heart chakra (fourth chakra) but it can also be felt at the top of head or crown chakra (seventh chakra).

1. Write out an example when you just knew something was going to happen and it did. This is also called having déjà vu. It can be an event, a conversation, or a situation you found yourself in.

2. Think of a time when you just knew you were doing something wrong but did it anyway. How did it feel? Where did you feel it in your body? How did you feel afterward? Have you found that since that experience you are more open to your intuitive ability’s hunches?

3. Have you ever been somewhere and suddenly felt you needed to get out of there? Describe the event and how it felt. Where did you feel it in your body? How did you feel afterward? What happened as a result of that experience?

What’s the Inner Calm to Being Claircognizant

People whose awakening intuition is predominantly claircognizant are quick thinkers, spontaneous, adaptable, and strong negotiators who have strong hunches.

They react quickly to danger, can usually sense the future outcome of an event, have lots of synchronicity in their lives, and are the best host or hostesses. They always seem to know when things will work out and will leave things to the last minute. They are leaders and are self-assured and confident. They have great instincts as a result of their developing intuition and are easily trusted by others.

What’s the Ego to Being Claircognizant?

A claircognizant being dominated by his or her ego has a hard time trusting their instincts. They have difficulty fitting into groups because they can come across as being rude, impatient, or arrogant know-it-alls who have a low tolerance for fools. They rarely finish what they start, never read the instruction manual, and won’t ask for directions.

Exercise: Practicing Your Intuition with Games

Other fun things you can do for the sake of your developing intuition is to play games. For example, every time the phone rings, see if you can intuitively determine who is calling. Helpful tip: a clairvoyant may see the face of the person flash in their mind’s eye; a clairsentient will feel the presence or essence of the person; a clairaudient will hear their name; and a claircognizant will just know who it is.

Another game you can play for awakening intuition and honing your intuitive skill set is playing with a deck of cards. Take a full deck of cards and sit quietly for a moment while you shuffle the deck. Let yourself feel the energy surrounding the deck. Now take a moment to decide what a red card feels like using your strongest intuitive ability. Then decide what a black card will feel like. Now, keeping each card face down, pull the first card from the top of the deck and before you turn it over, intuitively decide what color it is. Then turn it over and see if you are right. Go with your first impression. Don’t second-guess yourself. Repeat this nine times. Remember, your ego will try to get you to change your answers. Helpful tip: A clairvoyant will see red or black flash in their mind’s eye; a clairsentient will feel if the card is red or black; a clairaudient will hear the word red or black; and a claircognizant will know if the card is red or black.

Even if you only get one card right, you are well on your way to awakening your intuition ability. Remember, it takes time for you to develop your intuitive abilities to learn how to understand how to read the cards based on your dominant intuitive gift. Have some fun playing with the cards. Try playing them with your children and see what happens. It could be quite fascinating.

Dancing with Your Intuition

Now you know why you know things.

Remember that this is a natural gift and half the battle will be giving yourself the permission to relax and learn about awakening intuition and using it. Use the games to practice and enhance your intuitive gifts. The more you practice, the easier it will become. A helpful hint: Intuitive flashes are very quick and instantaneous. You have to learn how to catch them and trust them. The more you practice and play with your intuition, the easier it will get.

Find ways to incorporate your newfound innate gift into your day-to-day life. Start with the simple things and work your way up. I found writing things down in a journal at the end of the day really helped me to be aware of when I used my intuition and when I didn’t use it. The more I became aware of how much I was using my intuitive ability, the more confident I became. It really is a simple matter of developing intuitive confidence.

You may also find it very helpful to not tell anyone you are practicing developing your intuition.

People might be afraid to validate your hunches or instincts. Over time, you will see if you are right or not. It is more productive to just stand back to see what the outcome is. As they say, “the proof is in the pudding.” You don’t need to prove to anyone that you have intuitive abilities. You only need to give yourself permission to develop your intuition.

As you read more on this subject, you will find that there are many techniques and exercises here to help you to understand your developing intuition more effectively. As your confidence in your intuitive abilities gets stronger, you will find that you are much more in touch with the inner calm. It will be harder for your ego to banter and push you around because that calm inner voice will just nod and do what feels right anyway. I started to recognize over time that my ego voice was just a scared little kid who didn’t know any better. I started to see my awakening intuition, that inner calm voice, as the adult who could stand back and calmly assess the situation. My inner calm could listen to the rant of the scared little kid and then help it see the situation in a different light.

Over time, you too will discover what a gift your intuition is.

“Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.”
– Richard Bach

Listening to your intuition will get you there. Learning when and how to use your awakening intuition will help you become accustomed to making your intuitive ability a natural part of who you are.

This article on awakening and developing intuition is excerpted from The Intuitive Dance by Atherton Drenth. © 2016 by Atherton Drenth. Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., www.Llewellyn.com.

About The Author

Atherton Drenth (Ontario, Canada) is a certified medical intuitive and holistic energy practitioner. She’s been in private practice since 2000 and has conducted over 35,000 healing balances on clients from around the world. Atherton also offers yearly workshops and was featured in the documentary “Voyage to Betterment” as one of twelve experts in the fields of consciousness research and spirituality. Find her at athertondrenth.ca.