Practice Month One

Tips on practicing are scattered through many sections of this book. This is a summary list of helpful and harmful things to do as your practice. Laugh at the goof-ups; remember the helpful things. Psychic ability practice should be fun and comfortable.

Remember that everyone has some trouble. If you realize you're doing something harmful, be amused. You're much like everyone else. Don't worry about it too much. Just work on improving. Use the challenge statements from the Beliefs section if you're having trouble with a particular worry.

Now you, too, can absolutely assure that you won't make progress. You won't learn the abilities. You won't experience new and strange things. You won't have anything useful to show your friends. You can make certain you will never, ever gain control of any psychic skill! Here's how.

Ok, so some of the goof-ups are slight exaggerations. Here are some helpful tips to remember instead.

You may experience things that seem to be paranormal. Careful investigation will usually show you whether it is normal or paranormal. Consider two things when you investigate each event.

1. Does any normal explanation fully explain the event?
2. Does the event provide otherwise unknown information, or seemingly impossible movement or events?

The first step is to investigate all normal causes for an event. If an object moved, look for wind that could do it. Were there people who might have thrown or dropped it? Were there vibrations from large vehicles driving by? A weak nail could cause a picture to fall off a wall, and this would certainly not be psychic. Does the event provide any new information? Could that information have been gained normally, such as overhearing a whisper?

If there is no normal explanation for the occurrence, then it may be paranormal. You can use the form below to record the important information if you want to keep a record. You may recognize a pattern to the events after you keep a record for a while.

Grouping events into categories can help you understand the event. Each section below explains what is paranormal and what isn't.

Intuition means "just knowing" something without images, words, or touches. Intuitive messages are often warnings for safety, instructions to follow, gut feelings, and hunches.

These are sometimes called hallucinations. They are psychic only if nothing is causing the vision, sound, or sensation. They are not dangerous if you know you are healthy and they don't interfere with your life.

These are changes of physical objects, such as movement, floating, breaking, mending, vanishing, and appearing. They also include invisible touches, where a visible dent can be seen.

When you investigate carefully, you'll usually find a normal explanation. Check for wind gusts, drafts, breaking or weak nails and hangers, lopsided shelves, and objects off balance. Consider normal ways to cause the same movement. However, scientists have recorded real movement and touches that have no physical explanation, so some of these events are paranormal.

One common kind is a poltergeist, which translates as "noisy ghost." This includes cases where objects move around as if a ghost were moving them. This is usually unrecognized psychokinesis caused by a living person. If the person doesn't want psychokinesis, a counselor can help. Once the person learns to deal with stress better, the psychokinesis usually stops.

Telepathy is any communication between people or animals that does not occur by the normal senses. It can convey images, sounds, words, names, ideas, feelings, and emotions. It happens most often between emotionally close people, such as families, lovers, best friends, and pets.

Telepathy is not body language, whispers, voice inflection, lip reading, or any normal communication. If the people communicating are far apart and separated by walls, then telepathy may be a reasonable explanation.

Synchronicity is when an event occurs at exactly the right time. This may mean that people meet unexpectedly, just when they needed to talk. It can be accounted for as coincidence, but it may also involve telepathy or other psychic abilities. It is difficult to measure since there is no "chance" to compare against.

Some cases of synchronicity can be explained by telepathy. Some can be explained as coincidence. The rest are still a mystery.

All psychic abilities require some visualization. That visualization can be images, sounds, ideas, or stories. If you have trouble visualizing, try some playful childhood activities. Play pretend, or act out scenes in storybooks. Create an imaginary world to explore. Play with them when you’re feeling good, relaxed, and want to have some fun. Get enthusiastic! Dress the part. Share your excitement with nearby children.

Create an imaginary land in your mind. It can be anything - a jungle, a desert, a crater on Mars, or an underwater city. Make it something that excites you and interests you. Decide how big you want it to be, and who else is there with you. Start to explore it, looking for anything and everything interesting. If you work better by writing, write down a description of it, as a poem or a story. Make it as detailed as you can. Describe it to a friend. Do anything you can to remember your land. Come back to it often and add details and new ideas to it. If you tire of one area, create a new interesting one. Play in it!

Find a child's storybook about adventures and surprises. The 6-9 years age group will probably have some good ones. The more silly and adventurous the book is, the better. One with lots of pictures will help if you have trouble specifically with pictures. As you read the book, make the scenes from the book as vivid as possible in your thoughts. Really get into the book and laugh with it. Be willing to let yourself feel like a child, and bring back the creative excitement of childhood.

Read the book aloud to any nearby children. Practice being a storyteller, using creative cartoon-like voices. Give every character its own body language and tones. Use crayons to draw pictures of each character showing its personality. Add another character and imagine how it would interact with the others. Enjoy yourself!

If you have the toys available, make a wooden block castle, a Lego dragon, or a Tinkertoy Ferris wheel. Create the same kinds of play scenes you enjoyed when you were young, and relive the ones that interest you. Draw/color/paint a picture (it doesn't have to look realistic!). Get crayons and color in a coloring book. Make it as fun and silly as you can; let the trees be purple with pink polka dots if that amuses you.

Find your creative self, and enjoy it with enthusiasm. If you have trouble with pictures, use whatever other methods you prefer to think about things. Doing the things you did as a child will help you remember how you thought about the things you created. Then you can use those same methods to access anything that requires visualization (it doesn't have to be pictures).

This is useful when you are dealing with a stressful person or situation. It helps clear your mind, focus your attention and energy, eliminate distractions, and keep you stable. It's also very necessary before you begin to use any advanced skill.

Shielding is useful for many things. It can help you move through crowds. People will feel the edge of the shield and move away, often without realizing why. A shield set around a room will alert you when anyone crosses it. And, a shield can reduce the effects of highly emotional situations and other psychics nearby.

Overusing a shield may make you feel tired, however. So, if you use it a lot during the day, spend some time each night letting it relax and soften. You don't need to feel defensive all of the time. Relax, play, and center instead of shielding each evening.

Everyone participating should ground and center before starting the games. Sit in a circle, and watch each other's energy until everyone is grounded and centered. None of these games have a winner or loser. They're cooperative for fun and practice. Discuss everyone's experiences as you play.

The goal of this game is to see how much energy a person can draw before he or she gets unstable and the flow collapses. It practices staying well grounded and holding a large energy flow.

Draw a little energy in from the ground, funnel it upward through your body, and out your head like a fountain. Stay well grounded and balanced. Gradually increase the amount of energy moving through you. Over a few minutes, try to move as much energy as you can. It's okay to get lightheaded or giggly, as long as your energy is still stable.

When you can't increase the energy any more, or when the energy column collapses because you got dizzy, drop all the energy into the ground and relax. Lower your energy level and ground a lot until you're comfortable again. Then let the next person try.

When you are watching someone make a fountain, practice seeing and feeling his or her energy. Notice if he or she wobbles or stays grounded.

The purpose of this game is to practice matching a description with your shields.

One person is chosen as the leader, and names a type of shield for everyone to create, such as soap bubbles, tire rubber, brick wall, metal armor, fuzzy blankets, spider webs, etc. Everyone in the group spends a few minutes trying out that kind of shield, making it as strong and stable as possible.

Then the next person around the circle names a different type of shield, and everyone tries that. Go around the circle as long as it's fun, and discuss how the shields felt each time.

This game practices stabilizing energy while letting go of it.

One or two people create a strong psiball between their hands. Then they pass it to another person in the group, who adds energy, and passes it on. See how strong you can make it. Try varying the thickness and temperature. Notice how the energy changes, as each person contributes.

This game practices stabilizing energy while directing it through an area.

Each person creates psiballs and throws them against the walls of the room, like throwing sticky goo. Vary the energy in the psiballs, and let the energy remain on the walls as you throw them. If you want, say aloud what your psiball is made of just before you throw it. ("Soapy sponge! <Splat>") After a few minutes, look around psychically and notice all the energy splats everywhere.

When you're done, take turns "washing" the walls off with a spray of energy from the palm of your hand, like a garden hose. Let all the energy soak in to the ground, and ground yourself.

For a more advanced version of this game, create the psiballs and throw them without using your hands.