In my new book “Other Realms, Other Ways: A Clinician’s Guide to the Magick of Intuition”, I tell my readers, “Before I was a social worker, I was a psychic.”
I knew from the time I was very young that I had the gift of intuition, a human capacity that can be developed, honed and applied in many dimensions of life and work.
I began doing “readings” a few years before going back to social work school. Ramona Garcia and psychic and mentalist Herb Dewey, both of whom I mention in Other Realms, Other Ways, were my two most important teachers. Highly intuitive individuals, Herb and Ramona helped me develop my psychic skills with the understanding that I was not reading minds, not doing mental telepathy, but instead actually more typically “reading” my own intuitive knowing.
This idea intrigued me. I wanted to learn more, and my teachers were willing.
Both Ramona and Herb taught me how to pay attention to impressions that came to me while sitting with a client. They explained that intuitive ideas and insights come in the form of images, teeny hunches and metaphors from which meaning could be derived. Like any skill, an intuitive way of accessing knowing takes practice, and I practiced the skills via many readings, and many consultations with my teachers and other psychics.
Herb Dewey emphasized that a reading should be intended to uplift, to shore up strengths, to inspire change. In this way I was introduced to a social work value system well before becoming a social worker. I learned to do readings, not as entertainment( though a “reading” can definitely be fun) but as a form of helping others.
This journey has been and continues to be exciting. Eventually, I began teaching my counseling clients how to use their own intuition as a way of managing stress and coping with difficult life decisions. Now, I utilize an integrative intuitive approach in my practice, witnessing the way intuition guides my interventions while helping clients to access their own wise mind to more effectively attain their psycho-social-behavioral life goals.
