Exercising you psychic senses

I'm currently taking a class whose main purpose is to assist us to develop our psychic senses. At the end of the day, I believe that we all have psychic senses - we were born with them completely open and the more we lived in this world, the more it shut off because of society. For example, did you guys ever have imaginary friends as a child or did you "see" things when you were a kid that other people couldn't and it just freaked you out? Or you kind of knew that there was tension between your parents and some other people but you couldn't figure out why?That's our psychic senses coming to the fore. And like with a lot of abilities, if you don't exercise them, you ain't gonna be that good at them (unless you're really gifted.. but that's another story)!

So what are psychic abilities? The more I learn about this the more I think that being "psychic" is just about trusting your intuition. If you look around the web, you'll see that psychic abilities are categorised as:

• Clairvoyant - otherwise known as clear seeing. Some people can see spirit guides, angels, spirit animals, symbols, scenes, etc... and it's not necessarily that they can see it with their physical eyes (although some can), it's also being able to see with your physical eyes closed. 
• Clairsentient - this is clear feeling. Basically you get a lot of information from feeling things whether it's feeling something physical, emotional, etc.
• Clairaudient - clear hearing. Some people hear voices whisper in their ears when no one is around... sometimes it's hearing a voice speak to you in your head, sometimes it's hearing lyrics from a particular song, etc.
• Claircognizant - clear knowing. The sense of just being adamant about knowing something and it just simply came out of the blue and you can't explain how or why you know it. 
• The ability to taste (I can't remember the "clair" word). Some people may actually taste certain things in their mouth even though it's not physically in their mouth.
• The ability to smell - people may smell things when there's nothing around that would give you that smell.

For me personally, my stronger ability is clairsentience following by clairvoyance. As a massage therapist and an energy healer, I rely a lot on my ability to feel things... whether it's feeling the tension within the muscles, how jammed a joint feels, or whether the cause of an underlying problem in a person is emotional. This ability also allows me to pierce the "mask" that people put on as I can feel what they are REALLY feeling underneath. It's like when you ask someone they're OK and they go "Yep I'm fine". I'm one of those people who basically say "You sure? You seem really angry about something" etc.

As for the clairvoyance.. this is kind of a bit hard to explain when it comes to how it works with me. Essentially if I'm "feeling" something, in my mind's eye I'll be able to actually see the movement or somehow see what is happening. The feeling gets translated into a "seeing" - and I don't need to have my physical eyes open to know what's going on. Similarly as I am meditating or doing an energy healing, at times I will see something in my mind's eye whilst my physical eyes are completely open and when I raise it with the client, it means something for them. Can I see my guides? Sometimes and normally in meditation or when I'm in that sort of state (e.g. healing). I think this is developing however as sometimes things will come up when I'm not actively trying to use it.

ANYWAY, at the end of the day, all of the above is about trusting your intuition. In today's class, we were connecting with our spirit guides and reading spirit guides of other people. For a while I've been wanting to establish a better communication with my guides and whilst I knew some of my guides (mainly coz ppl told me who they were), I didn't know about others. The one I most wanted to connect with didn't come through today. In fact, whilst we were asking one of our particular guides to step forward, I felt a very subtle feminine energy and I knew it wasn't the one I was hoping to connect to. Our class had background music playing which was oriental in nature which I thought could have perhaps influences my perception of my guide as she seemed to be oriental in nature (I saw silk flowing in the wind). I had a feeling it was actually Kuan Yin but wasn't sure as I didn't know if I was being externally influenced to think like that. One of the benefits of having a teacher who actually is a medium is that she pretty much confirmed it was Kuan Yin - which was nice! Similarly when we were tuning into our class mate's guides, I had some doubts about what I was feeling was coming through and what I was hearing (I have to tell you that some guides are VERY blunt but in a way hilarious at the same time) and it was again really good to have it confirmed that I was on the right track.

The other trap not to fall into is comparison. At the end of the day, we are all unique, and people will perceive things in different ways and they will have different psychic abilities that are more stronger for them. Some people have full on conversations with their guides whilst others won't be able to see them but know that they're around. That is perfectly OK. Know that your psychic abilities are your own and you will develop them in your own unique way (if you choose to). I personally don't see why you shouldn't try - it opens a lot of doorways and you can use these abilities to really make your life a lot easier!

If you want some examples of certain things you can do to try it out, let me know and I'll pen some down.