A wise man once said that you teach what you need to learn. Michelle Tedrow is the poster child for that saying. After her brother died, she had a spiritual awakening and decided it was her calling to become a medium. She read the best books on the subject and sought out the advice of other mediums. “There was no one around to teach me in the beginning so I did a lot of reading and taught myself.”
While honing her skills she got the overwhelming feeling that it was her mission to teach. “In a dream, my guides laid out the coursework for a six-week class on how to be a medium,” said Tedrow. So she used that dream to teach a very popular course at Fresno City College on intuition. Because of the cutbacks experienced by all local colleges, the course was discontinued. She now leads a psychic development circle every month at the Cosmic Corral in Hanford, where she continues teaching the tenets of mediumship. “I think everyone has the ability to open up to their intuition and discover their guiding angels,” she explained.
The circle, which meets the third Saturday of each month, usually consists of about six people who get together to improve their intuition. Darcy Bellows-Macorro, author of Finding Vern, explained that there is a huge advantage to developing and listening to your intuition. “It helps you in relationships and job decisions, or with your business. It’s our natural ability to make the right decisions for ourselves, but you need to go by how it feels, not by what you think.” Getting in touch with your intuition also is the first step of becoming a medium.
Everyone has a different interpretation about hearing messages from the dead. Christians would say it’s the voice of God, mediums would say you’re
having a spiritual awakening and atheists would say you are crazy.A former large who is now a medium.
For the last ten years, that’s what Tedrow has been doing every day, tuning in. The number one way to tune in to your body is to meditate, even if it’s for ten minutes a day. If you don’t know how to meditate, find a good youtube video and do a guided meditation. Meditation helps synchronize the right brain to the left brain. Intuition is a right brain function, so the left brain needs to slow down and put logic aside. All we are taught growing up is to think, but mediumship, and many other aspects of life, requires feeling. That is our natural guidance system, and it is the language of the soul.
Tedrow has her own exercise to get into her body and away from her left brain. She doesn’t necessarily have to do an entire meditation session. “Anything you can do to get your left brain quiet and get into your body works.” Before she does a reading, she sits quietly and imagines an empty box. Then she puts all her chores, worries, house, kids and her job in the box; in other words, anything that reflects who she is–so she doesn’t come through in the readings. She then closes the box and puts it away, such as under a bed or in a closet. To prepare herself for a reading, Tedrow used to need just the right room, lighting and surrounding, but now she can put her stuff in the box in a few seconds, clear her mind and open up to whatever spirit is ready to come forward. It just takes practice.
During one of the development circles, Tedrow brought a friend so her students could have a chance to to do a reading themselves. Stacy Smith was a childhood friend of Tedrow and was happy to be the first guinea pig. After taking about 15 minutes to meditate and put aside all of their “personal stuff,” the group was ready to focus on Smith. They sat quietly and wrote whatever came to mind first. “Just listen to your gut,” said Tedrow. She suggested that if they hit a block to just scribble in circles or lines or whatever is comfortable. Just like writing or journaling, scribbling can release the flow of thought. When everyone was done they took turns doing a reading on Smith. Everyone touched on some small aspect of Smith’s life, but the owner of the store, Tom McGuire, was amazingly accurate. He said he felt a lot of sadness surrounding her and could see many babies that had passed. In fact Smith had experienced seven miscarriages at different stages of pregnancy with one nearly full-term baby that was stillborn.
Tedrow said that this gift is not limited to any one person. Everyone has the gift. Some people can talk to spirit from the time they were children and some people have to learn it. But everyone has the ability to be their own medium. “Every reading I’ve ever done, they already had the message before we even sat down together.” Tedrow explained that unless someone is really skeptical and does not believe in an afterlife, they already have that connection. To make your own connection you have to listen to your own intuition. You don’t need anyone to do that for you.
An awakening usually follows some sort of personal loss, but not always. It could be the loss of a loved -one, a divorce, or near-death experience. Bellows-Macorro lost her fiancé, Vern, three weeks before they were to walk down the aisle. She came from a cynical point of view and was very involved in the material world. She doubted Heaven was real. But when Bellows-Macorro lost her fiancé in an auto accident it shook her world. That’s when she began her spiritual journey.
Her first reading was done by a medium who had written a book called Widowed Too Soon. Bellows-Macorro contacted the author, Laura Hirsch, and, because Hirsch lived in another state, they arranged to conduct a reading over the phone. Bellows-Macorro was surprised by how much more she enjoyed being on the phone versus a face-to-face meeting. Hirsch explained that she preferred the phone because, by not seeing the person, she can’t make any assumptions about their life attributed to age, race or appearance.
Within the first few minutes of their session, Hirsch told Bellows-Macorro that she saw a wedding ring on its side. Hirsch said, “I’m so sorry we didn’t make it to the altar.”
A few months later, Bellows-Macorro lost her job and couldn’t afford to pay for readings. But Hirsch told her that we are all mediums. We can all tap into our intuition. That’s when Bellows-Macorro decided to learn how to do her own readings. She had to work through her own doubts, but soon linked with like -minded people and formed a psychic development group called the Lightworkers Foundation in Fresno. One of the first people she connected with interested in forming the group was Tedrow.
When Tedrow explains how one receives messages from spirit, she describes the four major senses where information can come through. Spirit can talk to you through clairvoyance, which literally means “clear see.” This is what you see in your mind’s eye. You can strengthen this sense by practicing visualizing objects or facial expressions.
Another sense used when doing a reading is clairaudience, which means “clear hearing.” Clairaudience is a stream of thought, but it’s not your own thought. It’s coming from somewhere else. Tedrow said the more she practiced doing readings, the clearer the words and phrases became and the easier she could tell if it was her voice or spirit. “I turn into an open channel and just listen and get the information I need for the reading.” Journaling is the best way to get the messages flowing. “I call it inspirational writing. That’s the most important thing I teach in my class. I give everyone a note pad and tell them to write, doodle and draw. If you get stuck and feel like you are not getting anywhere, you can just scribble to get the messages flowing again.”
The third sense is clairsentient, or “clear feeling.” This is the strongest sense of all. The more empathetic you are, the more you will pick-up on it. With this sense you feel how things are, instead of how you think they are. You have to be in tune with your body and listen to your gut. This is best accomplished through meditation or making a conscious effort to pay attention to how you are feeling. Addiction can interfere with this process because the substance, whether food, alcohol or drugs, prevents a person from feeling. That’s usually the desired goal of taking substances in the first place, to not feel. To be a medium you need to pay attention to your feelings and use your emotions as a guidance system. After practicing, it becomes second nature.
The last sense is Clairecognoscente, or “clear knowing.” This is the strongest sense for Bellows-Macorro. This sense comes in flashes of intuition. It comes in and out quickly so you can’t put your own logic on it. That’s one way you can tell the difference between your own thoughts or clairecognoscence. But it’s subtle, and Bellows-Macorro had a hard time differentiating when it was intellectual or something coming from spirit. She wondered how she would know if she was just making it up. “The way you can tell between your own thoughts and spirit is if the message comes and goes quickly and would be forgotten if you weren’t paying attention. That is a message from spirit. Once you practice being aware and use it, the stronger your claircognoscence gets. But it takes dedication. It’s like a muscle and you have to use it every day,” said Tedrow.