Ever have an inexplicable gut feeling about something or experience Deja vu? Most just shuck these feelings as pure coincidence, however, some suggest these vibes are the groundwork of developing psychic abilities. Chanda Parkinson is one of them. WellWell spoke with the author of Meditations for Psychic Development: Practical Exercises to Awaken Your Sixth Sense on misconceptions associated with psychics and the benefits of meditation and journaling.
How did you get into this field?
It’s an interesting story and I’m kind of unlike a lot of other healers and psychics in this field. I actually didn’t realize that I had gifts and abilities as a child or anything like that. It wasn’t actually until I was off on my own for the first time as a young adult and living on the east coast trying to make my way in the world. I was following my dream to go to graduate school and within the first few months of living in Boston, a few of my family members died within a few months of one another, and being a broke college student meant that I couldn’t actually come back to mourn with my family. But it sent me on this really intense spiritual awakening of sorts that led to a fascination with psychics. For the longest time, I was reading, studying, exploring, taking classes, and seeing mediums. doing readings and out of that fascination, I just decided to, and I was also encouraged to, grab a deck of tarot cards and start learning tarot. Then it all clicked and grew from that.
What’re common misconceptions about this work?
There are a lot of common misperceptions about psychics. First of all, the word psychic is Greek for “of the soul”, so when you sit with the weight of that, the common misperceptions kind of get blown out of the water because the old-school stereotypical images of storefront psychics and fortune tellers are inaccurate. I’m not going to say there aren’t still folks that sort of prey on other people’s vulnerabilities, but most are good heart-centered, kind, compassionate, grounded people who also have a knack for seeing, sensing, and feeling things that are maybe a little bit more intangible or of the unknown person. It has nothing to do with trying to predict somebody’s future or next ten-year path or predict an outcome of any kind, really. It’s about being able to sense where the course correction might be needed. 
For people who may be skeptical about it, if you take the term “psychic” out of the equation, there’s a lot in the book on just general strategies to better be able to connect with your partner and to be better able to connect yourself. Can you just speak a bit about how many of these meditations achieve that?
Yeah, for sure. What we’re looking to do through meditation practices in particular, not to mention meditation medicine or psychic development, is create the right conditions. Meditation helps us establish just the right conditions in our inner being, meshing with our outer world in a way that allows things to just sort of swell and show up, whether it’s a flash of insight or an empathic or gut reaction to what is happening in our environment. Meditation to me is simply a tool that creates just the right conditions if used over time, for your psychic gifts to flourish.
You start to recognize that you’re allowing your own natural receiving mechanisms to flourish. And it absolutely, positively impacts your own state of being, your decision-making. In this fast-paced world, technological world, being able to pause and being able to put yourself consistently in that space gives you an advantage. I’m a mother of 3 children so I have to lean back on my practices to keep myself really tuned in. So, I can also sense what’s happening with them. Now I can support and also help them thrive.
Similarly, there is a great emphasis in the book on record journaling. What is the benefit of writing in a general sense?
Record keeping journaling isn’t just about record keeping. It’s not just to give somebody something to do to occupy their time; there’s actually a purpose behind it. The purpose has to do with noticing our patterns over time. And so, certainly, you can have an amazing spiritual or psychic experience and then you write it down and it’s really cool but you’re not always going to know at the moment, what did that have to do with. Journaling is the only record-keeping mechanism or system that we have for really tracking, tracing, noticing, and studying our own past because you receive differently than I receive. We’re not going to get the same information in the same way in how a spirit works with you because how you receive is different from how they work with me.
Is there any cross-over between record journaling and sleep journaling? Do they achieve similar outcomes and benefits?
Oh, absolutely. I do believe there is. I haven’t actually done any research into any sort of scientific studies between the cross-over so I can’t vouch for that. But I do know that when you create the right conditions for psychic phenomena to happen, it is extremely similar to what happens in your dream state. Like for example, if I’m listening to drumming music, it’s going to put me into a theta brainwave state that’s the same and similar kind of brain wave state that will help you fall to sleep. You’re going to get visions, images and things that play out in your dreams that can also play out in your “daydreams” when you’re in a meditative state and receiving. In their waking state, not everybody sees with their inner vision and so there’s the bonus of being able to use their dream state to receive messages and symbols that can be interpreted largely in the same way and they often are.
Are people who commonly utilize or express these capabilities without realizing it?
I’m in complete and utter awe of artists and creative people who are just suddenly able to paint something out of nothing or suddenly, this beautiful poem appears on a page or song lyrics for example, or something that comes through them. I feel it is so often divinely guided and I would assert that oftentimes those folks are tightly connected with some other realm. I think we’ve known and experienced that since the beginning of time with really phenomenally great artists. I feel that creativity in particular is one of those things that even with solving problems creatively at work, it’s huge. I just think creativity is such a twin sister of psychism and intuition and channeling. All of that kind of blends together, oftentimes without people realizing it.
About Chanda Parkinson
Chanda Parkinson has been a professional Psychic Intuitive and Spiritual Teacher for over 15 years. Ms. Parkinson utilizes her spiritual gifts, tarot, and astrology to support others through transitions in life with clarity and deep compassion. No stranger to introversion, Ms. Parkinson seeks to live in the grey matter of life, leaving lots of room for exploring the playground of her own mind and the rich, wild, sometimes animated thoughts that drive her creativity daily. As the author of Meditations for Psychic Development: Practical Exercises to Awaken Your Sixth Sense, Ms. Parkinson is fiercely committed to mentoring others in the discovery of their own spiritual gifts.
earn More At chandaparkinson.com.
