Elissa Heyman, Psychic Counselor and Healing Practitioner from Sante Fe, New Mexico shares her journey of becoming a professional psychic with insights on developing intuition.
How did you first know you were psychic, when did it begin?
From the beginning, I was aware of an inner authority, and it felt very right to follow my inner directives and see what they led to. I also knew there were two worlds: the magical one that I entered when I was in nature and by myself, and the one I was in with everyone else, family and friends.
Until I had a psychic reading at 19, nothing in my upbringing brought up the topic of psychics. When inexplicable things happened to me, and they happened a lot, I ignored the implications. For instance, while in Greece a few months shy of my 18th birthday, I had a telepathic conversation with a little Greek girl at the Temple of Delphi. She appeared out of the crowd in the parking lot, took my hand, and led me up a back way to the temple. Our silent conversation was punctuated by occasional look-back nods and eye contact. Although I didn’t doubt it happened, the experience was so out of context to what I thought was possible, I just didn’t think about it.
I needed the framework of metaphysics to make sense of my life, and that’s what having a metaphysical teacher gave me. My education in divination, mediumship, and healing was comprehensive and decades-long, and began in earnest at 19.
Was there anything that you felt you needed to do to deepen or develop your psychic abilities?
I fell in love with the tarot and other psychic subjects, and was keenly motivated to study and practice, and took workshops with people all over as well as weekly and private metaphysics classes. I had to keep myself free in life, so that my choices didn’t get in the way of that. What turned out to develop me the most is the constant practice of doing it professionally and perfecting a format that served people, and inspired both of us.
Before psychic work, I thought I would be a therapist. I spent years as a para-professional counselor in a training program at the local county mental health clinic, and I also manned “The Help Center” a peer counseling program I created while a student at U.C.S.B. That experience also developed my intuition and ability to listen deeply… just being attentive and desiring to help turns on the intuition.
What do you love most about your profession?
I love how it challenges me, and how engaging it is, and how I get to have such intimate encounters with people, and see their creativity and bravery and true stories. I love that it is so spontaneous and creative and brings out the best in me. It still seems miraculous every time: I have never taken for granted that I can trust the principle “ask and ye shall receive”, that I am given helpful information for someone by doing that, and that there seems to be no end to how much can be known or manifested through a connection to the unseen.
The other thing besides the work itself that stands out to me, is that as a self-employed professional and an entrepreneur, meaning that I get to take my profession where I want to go, I always run into the problem of dealing with my own un-businesslike personality and choices – I am always having to deal with myself, and understand myself, and learn to work around my own weaknesses, and that helps to make me a better counselor.
Is there a certain method that you personally use to prepare yourself before a reading?
If the reading is for me, I’m often casual about the preparation, but for a client, I go through a series of steps to get ready. The first preparation is to release my day and be empty and receptive; to get ready to be a channel of wisdom and truth and healing for my client; to call the spirits, and to listen to their messages; and this, plus a divination system of stones that I lay out, is what I do each time before I work with someone.
In addition to your private sessions, you also offer Intuition Workshops. Could you tell us a little more about what this entails?
The pandemic changed that – my downtown office in Santa Fe has been closed since mid-March, and I only work with private clients by phone now. However, I’m just starting to offer some new group experiences online through LearnItLive.com, “The Leading Live Learning Wellness Platform”. It hosts all kinds of teachers with their wellness classes and programs. I took a wonderful class on Past Lives recently with renowned author and metaphysical teacher, Linda Howe.
Many of the experts offer free classes during LearnItLive’s monthly Consciousness and Wellness symposiums. You have to sign up – right now there’s a special on for $2 for two months (use code: 242BF) of teacher access. There’s also a completely free one month code: “SymposiumFree.” I’ll be doing a symposium tarot class and experience December 9th, and a well-being class and healing experience called “Lullabies for Adults” on December 15th.
What would you say is the key to developing your intuition?
Assuming someone is keenly interested in developing their intuition and willing to study and practice, it’s a matter of staying in the role of student of one’s intuition, learning how it communicates, and seeing “why” from real-life outcomes. It’s a matter of seeing where it leads by following your heart’s desire, the compelling intuitive urges you have to go somewhere or try something or move on. This means enduring self-doubt and social pressure to be logical. It helps if you understand intuition is there to guide you to what you find uniquely fulfilling. It’s an inner navigating system that responds to your life, not your ideologies and beliefs.
Intuitive insights are often a message with a healing intent. If you explore what the intuition brings up or points out, and see what happens when you follow through on its suggestions, you’ll deepen your relationship to your intuition and it will get stronger.
