By High Desert Medium | Palm Springs Psychic Medium
One of the questions people frequently ask me about psychic mediumship is:
“How do you get the information?”
Do I actually see a person in Spirit?
Do I hear them talking?
Do I feel what they felt?
Or does the information simply appear in my mind?
The answer is: all of the above can happen.
Psychic mediums often describe receiving information through what are commonly called the clairs—clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and claircognizance. There are also less commonly discussed clairs involving smell and taste.
But I think there’s something important about the clairs that often gets overlooked.
You don’t have to consider yourself psychic to experience them.
In my view, the clairs aren’t necessarily about having some extraordinary supernatural power that separates one person from everyone else.
They’re about receptivity.
And most of us are far more receptive than we realize.
What Are the Clairs?
The word clair comes from the French word for “clear.”
Think of the clairs as intuitive counterparts to the ways we normally experience the physical world.
We see.
We hear.
We feel.
We smell.
We taste.
And we know things through thought and understanding.
In psychic and mediumistic traditions, the clairs describe similar pathways through which intuitive information may be experienced.
The four most commonly discussed are:
Clairvoyance — clear seeing
Clairaudience — clear hearing
Clairsentience — clear feeling
Claircognizance — clear knowing
There are also clairalience, or clear smelling, and clairgustance, or clear tasting.
A psychic medium may use several of these during a single reading, often without consciously deciding which one will be used.
The information simply comes through the channel that best communicates it.
Clairvoyance: Clear Seeing
Clairvoyance is probably the clair most people associate with psychics and mediums.
But clairvoyance doesn’t necessarily mean physically seeing a ghost standing in the room.
Often, it’s much subtler.
It may be an image appearing in the mind’s eye.
I might suddenly see a red bicycle.
A particular flower.
A house.
A uniform.
A dog.
A hospital room.
A wedding ring.
At first, that image may mean absolutely nothing to me.
That’s where mediumship becomes interesting.
My job isn’t necessarily to understand why I’m being shown something. My job is to receive it, describe it, and communicate it.
The person I’m reading may immediately understand its significance.
What seems random to the medium can be deeply evidential to the sitter.
And this is why receptivity is so important.
If I immediately dismiss the red bicycle because it doesn’t make sense to me, I’ve interrupted the information before the sitter ever has an opportunity to recognize it.
Clairaudience: Clear Hearing
Clairaudience refers to information experienced through hearing.
Again, this doesn’t necessarily mean hearing an external voice in the room as clearly as another person speaking.
It can be much more subtle.
A name may suddenly enter the mind.
A phrase may appear.
A song may begin playing internally.
A word may repeat itself.
Sometimes the information can feel almost like a thought—but it doesn’t seem to have originated through your normal thinking process.
This distinction is one of the things a developing medium learns to recognize.
Instead of asking:
“Did I really hear that?”
The more useful question may be:
“What did I receive?”
Analysis can come later.
Reception comes first.
Clairsentience: Clear Feeling
Clairsentience is clear feeling, and I believe many people experience this without ever considering it psychic.
Have you ever walked into a room and immediately sensed tension before anyone said a word?
Have you met someone and instantly felt comfortable—or uncomfortable—without knowing why?
Have you suddenly thought of someone and felt an emotion that seemed to arrive with the thought?
Those are the kinds of experiences people may describe as clairsentient.
For a psychic medium, clairsentience can also be useful when receiving information about a person in Spirit.
A medium might become aware of an emotion, a personality trait, or a physical sensation associated with the communicator.
Again, the medium doesn’t need to manufacture the information.
The skill is learning how to notice it without immediately interfering with it.
Claircognizance: Clear Knowing
This may be the hardest clair to explain because there isn’t necessarily an image, sound, or physical sensation attached to it.
You simply know.
Information arrives.
You don’t remember figuring it out.
You didn’t reason your way toward it.
It simply appeared as a complete piece of information.
Most people have probably experienced something similar at some point.
You suddenly know you should call someone.
You know something isn’t right.
You know which decision you should make even though you can’t logically explain why.
Then your rational mind arrives and says:
“Where did THAT come from?”
That moment is important.
Because we often receive first and analyze second.
And the analysis is frequently what causes us to dismiss what we received.
Clairalience and Clairgustance: Smell and Taste
Two less frequently discussed clairs are clairalience, associated with smell, and clairgustance, associated with taste.
These can be particularly interesting in mediumship because smell and taste are closely connected with memory.
Imagine suddenly becoming aware of cigarette smoke when nobody nearby is smoking.
Or perfume.
Freshly baked bread.
A particular flower.
Coffee.
A familiar food.
For the medium, the sensation may seem completely insignificant.
For the sitter, it could immediately bring to mind Mom’s perfume, Dad’s pipe, Grandma’s kitchen, or someone’s favorite flower.
Once again, the medium doesn’t have to know the meaning.
The medium needs to be receptive enough to notice the information and willing to communicate it.
You Already Use Receptivity Every Day
This is the part I wish more people understood.
You don’t necessarily wake up one morning and suddenly “get the clairs.”
You may already be experiencing versions of them.
The difference is that you probably don’t call them psychic.
You call them:
A gut feeling.
A hunch.
A strange coincidence.
Something that popped into my head.
A feeling I couldn’t explain.
I don’t know why, but I just knew.
We tend to dismiss these experiences precisely because they often feel so ordinary.
People sometimes expect intuition to arrive with flashing lights and a booming voice announcing:
THIS IS YOUR INTUITION SPEAKING.
It usually doesn’t.
It may be quiet.
And that’s why learning to receive can be more important than trying harder.
The Clairs Are About Receptivity
I believe this is one of the biggest misconceptions about psychic ability.
People often approach intuition by asking:
“How do I MAKE something happen?”
I think a better question is:
“How do I become receptive enough to notice what’s already happening?”
Think about a radio.
The music doesn’t begin existing when you turn on the radio.
The signal is already being transmitted.
The radio simply becomes capable of receiving and translating it.
That’s a useful way to think about psychic and mediumistic receptivity.
You don’t have to strain.
You don’t have to force an image.
You don’t have to desperately listen for a voice.
In fact, trying too hard can sometimes create so much mental noise that it becomes harder to notice subtle impressions.
Receptivity requires something different.
Attention.
Openness.
Curiosity.
And perhaps most importantly:
The willingness to receive something without immediately deciding whether it’s right or wrong.
We All Have Clairs—But We Don’t All Use Them the Same Way
I believe everyone has the potential to experience intuitive information.
That doesn’t mean everyone will become a professional psychic medium.
Just as everyone can sing but not everyone becomes a professional singer, natural ability, interest, practice, confidence, and development vary enormously from person to person.
One person’s strongest clair may be seeing.
Another person’s may be feeling.
Someone else may rarely see images but have an incredibly strong sense of knowing.
And that’s okay.
There’s no “best” clair.
A medium doesn’t receive a higher-quality message simply because it arrived visually rather than through feeling.
They’re simply different languages of reception.
How Psychic Mediums Use the Clairs Together
During a mediumship reading, the clairs can work together.
For example, I might suddenly see an older man.
Then I may feel something involving my chest.
A moment later, I might hear or become aware of a particular first name.
Then I may simply know that this person had a dry sense of humor.
Four different pieces of information may have arrived through four different channels.
When the sitter begins validating those pieces, the communication starts forming a recognizable picture of the person in Spirit.
That’s one reason evidential mediumship can be so interesting.
The information doesn’t necessarily arrive as one perfectly organized message.
It can arrive piece by piece.
The medium receives it, interprets it as carefully as possible, and gives it to the sitter.
The Hardest Part May Be Trusting What You Receive
Developing intuition isn’t always about learning how to receive more information.
Sometimes it’s about learning to stop dismissing the information you’re already receiving.
“I’m imagining it.”
“That’s just a coincidence.”
“I made that up.”
“Everybody probably experiences that.”
Maybe.
But what happens if, instead of immediately dismissing an impression, you simply become curious about it?
Write it down.
Observe it.
Don’t embellish it.
Don’t force a meaning onto it.
See whether it becomes relevant later.
You don’t need to believe everything that crosses your mind is psychic information. Discernment matters.
But you also don’t have to automatically reject every intuitive experience simply because you can’t explain where it came from.
You May Be More Receptive Than You Think
Perhaps you’ve never thought of yourself as psychic.
That’s okay.
Forget the label for a moment.
Instead, begin noticing how you receive information.
Are you visual?
Do you get strong gut feelings?
Do you hear words internally?
Do you suddenly know things?
Are you particularly sensitive to the atmosphere of people or places?
Do smells unexpectedly trigger strong impressions or memories?
You may begin discovering that intuition isn’t something completely foreign to you.
You’ve simply been calling it something else.
The goal isn’t to force yourself to become psychic.
It’s to become more aware.
More observant.
More receptive.
Because sometimes the quietest impressions are the ones we’ve spent a lifetime overlooking.
Experience Evidential Psychic Mediumship With High Desert Medium
If you’d like to experience how the clairs work during an actual psychic mediumship reading, I offer private evidential mediumship readings designed to help you connect with loved ones in Spirit and receive meaningful, recognizable information.
High Desert Medium serves Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, La Quinta, Indio, the Coachella Valley, Joshua Tree and the surrounding High Desert, with private Phone and WhatsApp Video sessions available worldwide.
If you’re interested in understanding your own intuitive abilities and learning how to become more receptive to them, I can also help you explore and develop your natural psychic and mediumistic awareness.
High Desert Medium
Palm Springs & Coachella Valley Psychic Medium
Call 760-898-2172 or book your private session today.
You may discover that intuition isn’t something you need to acquire.
You may simply need to learn how to notice what has been there all along.