The Four Main Psychic Pathways
To better understand yourself as an empath, it helps to learn how the four main psychic pathways—clairaudience, or hearing intuitive guidance; claircognizance, or knowing intuitive guidance; clairvoyance, or seeing intuitive guidance; and clairsentience, or feeling intuitive guidance—operate in your every day life.
The Four “Clairs”
When you understand your own system, you’ll know how to better nurture it, and part of an empath’s system is strong intuition, or sixth sense. Your intuition, which gives you guidance via the four main psychic pathways, helps you navigate the world—and it can also help you navigate yourself.
Among other things, your intuition will give you guidance about how to better take care of yourself, or alert you to self-care issues that need your attention. While I use all four “clairs” in session with clients, I also rely on them in my personal life for compassionate, comprehensive self-care.
These terms—the four “clairs”—might seem fancy, but they can be explained in simple language. For example, all empaths are naturally strong in the clairsentience, or feeling, psychic pathway.
Clairsentience is that feeling you get when a major purchase, like a home, is a good one or meant for you—perhaps you sense warm, inviting, positive energy around this home, or feel unexplainably at home when you walk through the door for the first time with a real estate agent. Or it could be the uncomfortable, something-is-off vibe you get while interviewing at a new company.
This type of energetic or emotional impression is naturally quite developed for most empaths. While it may not be something we can see with the naked eye, for empaths, energy and vibes are things we can feel very clearly, and should never discount.
Empaths can easily access this clairsentient psychic pathway. But you might be less familiar with the other three psychic pathways. Like with any other skill set, the more you practice and use these pathways, the more adept you may become at them. Keep in mind that clairaudience and clairvoyance are the rarer psychic pathways to have open, yet you don’t need to be able to access those to have rockstar intuition.
° Clairaudience: Hearing intuitive guidance as a voice in your head that is not your ow. The voice will sound calm and offer helpful advice. (This voice is different than the voices people with mental illness or severe vitamin and mineral deficiences or hormone imbalances can experience, which might be distracting or unpleasant.)
° Clairvoyance: Seeing intuitive guidance as images in your mind. Sometimes these images will be straightforward, like seeing the image of a friend’s face when you’re wondering whom to confide in. But the images can also appear as a metaphor, like seeing a lush landscape of dark, fertile soil and lots of vibrant green plant life when you’re pondering the future possibilities of a romantic or business relationship.
° Claircognizance: Knowing intuitive guidance, often as aha moments or mental downloads that appear in your mind fully formed. These are thoughts that pop into your head and are often out-of-the-box solutions, not thoughts that are emotionally charged or conclusions you got to by logical deduction.
While some of the concepts are very mystical, they’ll become less intimidating when you approach them in a practical way. That’s really important for a grounded empath to remember.
Excerpted from Self-Care for Empaths with permission from tanyablessings.com.
Tanya Carroll Richardson
Intuition: The Language of Angels
March 13, 2021
Explore the four psychic pathways to the angelic realm with intuitive Tanya Carroll Richardson. You’ll discover the most common ways that angels send you guidance and take your intuition to the next level with this fun, informative, and encouraging workshop.