Inner Work, Trauma, and the Nervous System in Mediumship Development

Mediumship development requires inner work. I recognized the correlation between personal growth, healing, and mediumship development through my personal experiences and later heard it echoed through many different mediumship teachers and mentors, including Mavis Pittilla. I mentored under Pittilla, as well as mediums Annie Gee, Kay Reynolds, and Danielle Searancke (n.d.), all who also mentored under Pittilla and who share the observation of mediumship and personal healing being parallel and interwoven paths. Medium and mentor Kay Reynolds (2020) said, "Almost all wobbles in our mediumship are a reflection of our personal soul development. If only I had a nickel for every time a tutor told me, ‘Kay, you need to work on yourself some more’” (Reynolds, 2020, p. 35). She continued, “if you have trust issues when giving a reading, it’s a direct result of what’s happening to you on the inside. So, off I’d go, to sit alone in quiet contemplation—and sometimes, sit with my guide in silence” (p. 130).

Roadblocks in one’s mediumship reflect one’s personal development, such as not trusting oneself, or feeling shy or inadequate. The nervous system is activated in mediumship, and one must find the delicate balance of being relaxed yet primed for action—the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the nervous system both engaged. The parasympathetic is the “rest and digest” system that “predominates during quiet, resting conditions,” whereas the sympathetic system “predominates during emergency ‘fight-or-flight’ reactions and during exercise . . . to prepare the body for strenuous physical activity” (McCorry, 2007, para. 15). The elevation of energy and resulting activation of the sympathetic nervous system in a medium with a history of trauma can cause them to blow out of their window of tolerance and into a state of fight, flight, or freeze. By working to widen their window of tolerance when encountering triggers of emotion in everyday life, one can learn to tolerate and access the state of mediumship more easily and for longer periods of time, remaining in the optimal arousal zone. Developing intuition—which arises from unconscious perception and knowledge presenting itself to awareness (Sharp, 1991)—involves learning to identify all of one’s physical sensations, mental processes, and emotional states, and trust one’s feelings. This process naturally connects one to the Self and supports one’s path of healing, spiritual awakening, and individuation.

This is an exerpt of my master’s thesis. Read the full version here: Spirit Therapy: Mediumship as an Adjunct to Depth-Oriented Grief Therapy

References:

McCorry, L. K. (2007, August 15). Physiology of the autonomic nervous system. National Library of Medicine, 71(4). https://doi.org/10.5688/aj710478

Reynolds, K. (2020). The evidential medium: A practical guide for developing mediumship. Mind Blown.

Sharp, D. (1991). C. G. Jung lexicon: A primer of terms and concepts. Inner City Books.