I performed a reading last night, and midway through, this feeling of intense antsy impatience washed over me. One moment I was calmly communing with the cards and the next I felt as if I might jump out of my skin.
It took me a moment to recognize that these weren’t my feelings–I wasn’t impatient with the reading or feeling uncomfortable with my experience–I was picking up on the querent’s emotions. And, given the topic of the reading, those emotions weren’t surprising.
They also weren’t something I wanted to be carrying around for someone else.
After the reading, I broke my psychic connection to the querent, smudged myself, the cards, and the space with burning sage, and I used my rattle and the feathers that I keep on my altar to send all of this energy out the door, with the intention that it be transmuted into something useful.
Maintaining healthy boundaries is a vital part of life, regardless of whether or not you do tarot readings, but if you are knowingly engaging in any kind of psychic exchange, the need for clear boundaries is paramount.
Have you experienced any of these?
In talking to fellow readers, it’s clear that many of us are not disconnecting from querents after a reading.
If you find that the querent or their issues keep popping into your mind; if you feel emotions, have thoughts, or experience physical sensations after the reading that seem outside of your personal experience; or if you find yourself overly consumed by the outcome of your reading or how the querent is going to respond, these are signals that you might have a lingering connection that needs to be cut. (You might also want to explore codependency to see if this is something you struggle with.)
Even if you’re not feeling any of the above, it’s wise to consciously disconnect from a querent after the reading is done. Think about it this way: Not ending the connection is akin to a therapist inviting all of her patients to come live with her after their sessions. You’re allowing someone else’s energy to take up residence in your energetic home (and your physical home, too).
Disconnecting after a reading doesn’t mean you can’t have anything to do with the querent ever again (although if that feels like the healthy thing to do, by all means take care of yourself). It simply means that you are mindfully ending the session and not taking on any energy, issues, or other psychic material that does not belong to you. And if you do remain in contact with the querent, this allows you to relate to them more “cleanly,” i.e. without this commingled baggage clouding your sight.
Ending a psychic connection
How do you end a reading? There are as many methods as there are readers, no doubt, but I use techniques I learned from a book called You Are Psychic: The Art of Clairvoyant Reading & Healing. Author Debra Lynn Katz outlines a process in which you picture a telephone on the screen of your mind, a telephone that represents your psychic connection to the querent. And then, you destroy it.
You might watch it burst into flames and turn to ash, fade completely from view, or explode into a million pieces (I tend to use the latter). There’s an entire section in the book on destroying mental objects and the fears that often arise (“Am I hurting the person?!”), and if this practice of severing a connection or destroying a psychic object freaks you out, I highly recommend reading the book.
I also love the author’s technique of calling back your energy by envisioning a bright, burning sun drawing in all of your personal energy that you’ve left scattered around (at work during a fight with your boss, at the grocery store, with a tarot client, etc.), purifying this energy, then returning it to your energy field via your crown chakra.
Consciously ending a reading, maintaining healthy boundaries, and tending to your personal energetic health allows you to continue to serve your clients in a way that is healing, not only for them, but for you as well.
