How I actually receive intuitive messages

Timing, boundaries and the 'clairs'

This month carries a lot of energetic movement – a new moon, an eclipse, and the wider shift into a new lunar cycle. Can you feel it?

New moons are about beginnings and eclipses accelerate what’s already in motion.

I’ve felt that momentum personally.

Over the past couple of months, a career opportunity presented itself that felt like it was all in the timing.

Intuition is about knowing when something has shifted – even if nothing visible has changed yet.
It can be sensing when to raise a conversation with your boss (or whether it’s better to wait).
It’s reading the energy of a room.
Knowing who to speak to.
Knowing when to leave.

That’s the strategic side of intuition.

And it’s also what people are curious about when they ask me:
How do you actually receive messages?

The Clairs – the senses I work with

The simplest explanation is through what are called the “clairs” – intuitive senses, or channels of communication.

Most people have one or two dominant ones. Mine are primarily clear knowing and clear feeling, but others come through as well.

Here’s how they show up for me.

Claircognizance – Clear knowing

This is my strongest channel. Information arrives fully formed. I don’t reason my way there. I just ‘know’. This is the sense that most people struggle with because they say “but how do you know”. Just trust me!

Clairsentience – Clear feeling

I feel shifts in energy. Emotional undercurrents. Timing. This is often how I read business environments or social spaces.

Clairvoyance – Clear seeing

Images appear in my mind’s eye. Sometimes a little movie. Symbols. Visual metaphors that later make sense in context.

Clairaudience – Clear hearing

A phrase heard internally. A specific word. Sometimes a name. There have been times when a name has come through clearly – and it’s been correct.

Music can also be messages for me. A lyric might loop internally. A particular song surfaces as a message reference point.

For me personally, I’ve always known I’m in alignment when I walk into a store or sitting in a waiting room and a Roxette song comes on.

When I’m working with someone energetically, it can be like tuning a radio and a song emerges from the static.

Clairolfaction – Clear smelling

Less frequent, but distinct. A scent with no physical source – perfume, flowers, smoke. It’s subtle, but unmistakable when it happens. When I smell cigarette smoke I know it’s my Nan. If I smell violets, it’s my great grandmother (who I had never met, but my Mum tells me that it’s what she associates with her). It’s normally to let me know I’m not alone and when I acknowledge their presence, it vanishes.

Clairalience – Clear sensing

Sometimes it feels as though someone is right there. Other times it’s simply an awareness of presence in the space. It’s not spooky. It’s just feels like a shift.

Boundaries and ethics

One thing I do like to make clear to anyone who knows that I’m intuitive, is that I don’t “tap in” unless I’m invited.

For me, that’s an ethical boundary.

Being intuitive or highly sensitive doesn’t mean being open to everything at all times. I had to learn to turn it down. To choose when to engage. If I don’t I end up getting headaches, or I feel like someone has drained my energy. It can manifest later as anxiety, overwhelm or insomnia.

There are some moments when something feels important enough to pass on. But that’s the exception, not the rule.

The Eclipse effect

Eclipses tend to speed up what is already ready. They give clarity.

Going through the interview process, it all felt calm and that each was a natural step of the process. The people I met felt familiar. I moved through the stages with relative ease (though I did have to work hard for it!). And even though it could have very much gone in a different direction, I felt that it was in the right place at the right time.

If you’re at a decision point – career, direction, or something else you’ve been circling – and you’d like space to explore what you already know beneath the noise, I have space for two North Star Sessions in March. Find out more and book here.

Sometimes clarity is already there.

It just needs the space and time to see it clearly.

Until next time,
Katy