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Category: Spirit Guides

What are the different types of spirit guides?

Posted on by DrToni

Some spirit guides have been with you for your entire life, even since before you were born. Others came on your team as you needed them at different times in your life, and you can use your free will to request more spirit guides still.

Your particular spiritual guidance squad, the team of spirit guides assigned to you, could include any or all of the following:

Archangels

Archangels are leaders in the angel world and have a powerful, very large energy signature. If you’re an empath or are sensitive to energy, when you call on an archangel you might feel an energy shift in the room. Each archangel has a specialty, like Archangel Raphael’s specialty of healing, and can work with countless humans at once.

Guardian angels

Guardian angels are yours exclusively, and we each have more than one! Guardian angels have devoted their lives to helping just you. Call on them anytime for immediate assistance. They love you unconditionally, forever. Remember that angels are nondenominational and work with people of all faiths and spiritual beliefs.

Spirit animals

Spirit animals might be a pet you once had who passed away and is now part of your spiritual guidance squad. Spirit animals can also be any animal that has something to teach you, like the peacock teaching you the importance of beauty or confidently owning your gifts, or the wolf showing you the importance of getting your survival needs met.

Spirit animals could show up for the first time in a dream, in your backyard, or on your co-worker’s coffee mug.

Ascended masters

Ascended masters like Buddha or Mother Mary were once human, living journeys of deep spiritual growth and influence. Now they have a special place as leaders in the spirit world and as guides/teachers to humans like you.

My guides have told me that all ascended masters are partners and work together in harmony, no matter what culture or religion they were part of when they were alive.

Departed loved ones

Loved ones or family members who’ve passed on may choose to be one of your spirit guides and actively support you from heaven by helping you in very practical ways, like sending career opportunities or nurturing relationships your way.

One of your grandmothers could be an important spirit guide for you, whether you knew her well in life or not.

In fact, any human who has passed on might become a spirit guide for you. If you’re a dancer, you could have a spirit guide on your team who was once a dancer and performer too and now wants to help guide and inspire you as an artist.

Helper angels

Helper angels are “freelance angels,” so to speak, who are just looking for humans to help with specific situations, like finding new friends or finding a new office space.

How do spirit guides communicate with us?

Spirit guides will often enter your life by sending you signs, also called synchronicities. Carl Jung defined synchronicity as “a meaningful coincidence.”

An example would be realizing you need to improve your romantic relationship after having a fight with your partner before bedtime, and out of the blue the next day you notice a book about communication in romantic relationships sitting on a co-worker’s desk.

Spirit guides could also communicate to you through numbers or number sequences like 111, or you might have a lucky number, and when you go for a job interview, your lucky number is in the company’s address.

Spirit guides could talk to you by sending musical messages, like a song that always inspires you playing on the radio when you get in the car after a rough day.

Spirit guides might send you a dream that gives you an idea about how to handle a situation, or a guide could even appear to you in a dream.

Spirit guides even send helpful people and opportunities your way, another form of communication that often requires you to take action (asking an interesting new person in your life out to lunch, buying a ticket to a transformational workshop) regarding the person or opportunity your guide has sent or somehow put on your radar.

10 ways to start communicating with your spirit guides.

Posted on by DrToni

Here are some practical strategies for connecting to your guidance squad and recognizing their signs and synchronicities:

1. Be more present in your everyday life.

Part of getting more guidance from your spirit guides is recognizing the messages they are already sending. Many times the messages our guides send are lost on us because our lives are too busy or our minds are too busy.

Action step: Try opening up some space in your schedule or taking some responsibilities off your plate, if possible. When you’re not rushing around, you’ll notice more messages from your guides. Help quiet your mind by finding a meditation practice that works for you so you can get better at creating more space in between your thoughts.

2. Stay on the lookout every day for signs from your guides.

The more you watch for signs from your guides, the more you’ll recognize the signs they send. But something else magical happens too—as your guides sense you are more aware of them and their helpful messages, they will send more.

Action step: Remind yourself on your train commute to work or while you’re showering in the morning that every day your guides are sending you messages. If you’re trying to make a major decision, or you’re going through big changes or challenges, expect the guidance coming at you to increase to help you navigate this situation.

3. Start a spirit guide journal.

Get a special journal and devote it solely to increasing communication between you and your guides. This is a sacred place where you can write your guides a letter and ask them for assistance in specific ways.

While your guides know you and your life well, it can be powerful to use your free will to ask for help and guidance. You can also use this journal to record any important signs they send.

Action step: Write your guides a letter at the beginning of the week and express gratitude for a sentence or two about anything in your life you think they’ve helped with recently.

Then spend a few sentences asking them for help or guidance on a specific issue. For the rest of the week, watch for synchronicities from your guides regarding this issue.

4. Get to know your guides, and give them names.

You might give one of your guardian angels a name you’ve always loved, like Emily. Or you could be thinking of your guardian angel as you read a name in a novel, like Javier or Gigi, and that becomes their name.

Giving a guide a name makes them feel more real and may encourage you to connect with them more regularly. You may also come to know the personality of one of your guides after working more closely with them over time.

Action step: See if a name comes to you for one of your guides via your intuition or a synchronicity, or get creative and give them a name.

If a guide is always offering you help taking your career to the next level, they might be serious and motivated. Yet another guide could be playful and always send you humorous guidance, encouraging you to lighten up and enjoy the ride.

5. Surrender something to your guides.

When you’re frustrated about a situation, confused about the best next step, or feeling that you don’t have enough control, surrender an issue over to your guides. Even if it’s just to give yourself a little break. This can allow fresh insights to come to you as well as let your guides have more freedom to do their thing and help. 

Action step: Practice energetically releasing an issue to your guides, perhaps just temporarily. Try to quiet your mind instead of strategizing and worrying. Use a mantra like, “I’m surrendering this issue over to my guides to see what they can do.”

6. Learn more about spirit guides.

Just researching spirit guides will help increase your communication with them. Look for experts and information that resonates with you and is positive, empowering, and healing.

Action step: Attend a workshop, take an online class, or read a book about spirit guides, like one of my most recent, Angel Intuition. Notice if simply learning more about them magically opens you up to more communication. Your guides will be excited they have your attention!

7. Improve your intuition.

Everyone has intuition, and everyone can improve their intuition with study and practice. There are actually four main intuitive pathways that you can play with and develop. (This intuition quiz can help you decide which one is the strongest for you.).

You can hear gentle voices in your mind (clairaudience); see guidance as images in your mind (clairvoyance); know guidance as breakthrough thoughts or mental downloads (claircognizance); or feel guidance as energy, emotions, or physical sensations (clairsentience).

Action step: Practice using your intuition to make small decisions the outcome of which aren’t a big deal, like where to go for lunch with a co-worker.

You can also play a game with your intuition right now by asking it which method here you should emphasize to communicate more with your spirit guides. Ask for a number between 1 and 10. Did you hear a number in your mind, see a number in your mind, have a strong knowing about a number as a thought, or feel drawn to a certain number when you looked back over this list?

8. Develop daily, weekly, or monthly spiritual practices.

Spirit guides are of the spirit world and have a powerful ability to ground you in your own spirituality or help you discover it.

Having regular spiritual practices—like drawing an oracle card every morning for inspiration, taking a meditative yoga class once a week, or attending a spiritual gathering once a month with other people—will create more intimacy with your spirit guides.

Action step: Do something in the next few weeks, like a new moon or full moon ritual, to create more regular spiritual practices in your life.

You can also make a list of some of your most important spiritual beliefs. For example, you may have a strong belief that the soul lives on after the body dies, or feel closer to Spirit whenever you spend time in nature.

9. Simply send your guides a message in your thoughts.

This may sound like the quickest and easiest way to connect to your spirit guides, but it really works. You can make a formal prayer or blessing, or you can simply tell them what you need in your thoughts with a brief sentence or two.

Action step: As soon as you finish reading this article, ask your spirit guides for help in your thoughts with something you’ve been worried about. Then also ask for help from a loved one, co-worker, expert, or health care professional. You deserve all the support you need!

10. Use a divination tool.

Humans have been using divination tools to communicate with Spirit for as long as humans have been around. Oracle cards, tarot cards, runes…there are many divination tools. Try different methods and see what works best for you. 

Action step: Before you work with your divination tool, take your cards or anything else in your hands and hold them for a minute, closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths to center yourself. Then silently ask your spirit guides to send you a helpful, healing message through this tool.

3 Tips to Meet Your Joy Guides

Posted on by DrToni

Updated 2020.03.09

Joy is the pathway to ascension.

You have Spirit Guides to assist you in just about any area of your life.

There are Spirit Guides to help with practical things such as finding the right job, finding the right partner, and helping to set you up for the best learning and growing experiences.

All Spirit Guides together work to ascend those they watch over towards a life of Joy and greater love. However, there are specific Spirit Guides who focus on aligning you to more Joy.

These Spirit Guides are called Joy Guides.

Joy Guides assist you with more than just going through the motions of your soul’s journey and life path. They promote you in actually enjoying your ride and finding contentment while you are here on Earth.

joy guides

Joy Guides specifically bring you towards opportunities to experience with your whole body greater sensations of happiness, wholeness, completeness, and love.

Their job is to set you up for life experiences that will awaken you to more life experiences that will fill your heart with feelings of Joy and delight.

Today, Joy Guides are showing up more than ever, and they are essential guides for co-creating.

Call on them when you think they are least with you in times of grief, sadness, and when you feel alone, incomplete or separate or when you don’t know what to do to move forward.

The pinnacle of human experience is the vibration of Joy, so whatever situation is creating friction against this, you can ask a Joy Guide what to do to release and transmute it.

call on a joy guide anytime you need a boost in

  • How you feel

  • How you look at the world

  • How you experience the world

  • Fashion, makeup or self-expression

  • Your overall level of happiness

  • Your appearance, the better we feel about ourselves, the more beautiful we are to others and thus the more Joy we experience

reasons to meet a joy guide

  • To ascend to a higher vibrational feeling daily, making happiness your normal state

  • When you desire to be happier and more content but aren’t sure the pathway there

  • You could use an uplifting experience or series of experiences

  • You are going somewhere fun, and want to make sure it is the most magical it can be

  • To fill your life with dashes of magic and more miracles

If you answered three or more of the above reasons or benefits, it’s time to formally meet your Joy Guide.

Your Joy Guide could appear as a person, a child, an animal, a bird, or a fairy. They can be Ascended Masters or Angels.

They could appear to you in any fashion, but most are fairy-like, unicorn-like, child-like, or angelic looking.

Most commonly, Joy Guides appear in your third eye, in your dreams, through transmitted sensations.

Can’t stop smiling lately? Your Joy Guide may already be with you.

To call them in, officially, have fun with the steps below –

3 tips meet your joy guide

Photo of yellow leaves on spring branches by Alex Seinet on Unsplash

1. go to a place that brings you joy

Physically go or visit in your heart. You can use music to get you there, a view, or even a fragrance. I like Nutmeg, Helichrysum or Cypress for Joy.

You can also call in your angels and feel their sensation.

Go dancing, to an amusement park, get your nails done, on a solo hike or anywhere. Breathe in anything that brings you ultimate happiness.

You can ask your Joy Guide to transmit an idea to you that will bring you closer to Joy, for funds for a trip, or even for an action that will give you more of what makes your heart sing.

Not sure what brings you Joy? Remember the last time you giggled like a child. What were you doing?

You will make the choice that best suits you for this day.

2. have fun there

Aspire to contentment, a gentle smile.

Even if you only spend the whole time smiling, once at your place, set your intention on having the most amount of fun and feeling it in your body.

Do the rides, listen to the songs, and be okay with being in a place of contentment. Allow your heart to fill with this feeling fully.

Have the most fun possible, then use the feeling of fullness in the heart to guide you to more fun and more opening.

3. at the moment you’re having the most fun, close your eyes

A Joy Guide is one of many types of guides, and sometimes they appear as fairies, ascended masters or angels.

Take three deep inhalations and three deep exhalations.

Ask your Joy Guide to step, float, or otherwise come forward into your energy space.

Then, see what you feel, sense, or hear.

  • Do you have any tingles?

  • Warmness?

  • Buzziness?

  • See anything in your mind’s eye?

Then ask for a name and notice what you see with your eyes closed, paying particular attention to any images, forms, or symbols you see.

What flows to you, without thinking?

This is the sensation of the presence of your Joy Guide. These sensations are your Joy Guide’s calling card.

While there are many types of Joy Guides, from many cultures, if you’re wondering what to expect, know Jesus and Archangel Haniel are both known for transmitting Joy, and can sometimes be Joy Guides.

When they come to you at a time when you are peaceful, sitting, or working, know they are with you and joining with your energy.

When your Joy Guide’s energy is near, remember this is the essence needed to transcend the limitations of the current situation.

Because Joy on Earth can be tangible, pay attention to any symbols you see or words you hear.

Then, to continue to work with your Joy Guide, take one step towards the direction of your Joy Guide’s essence each day.

You will slowly see your life change to mirror you.

for more on connecting with your joy guide

Check out the Spiritual Gateway Series which is part of the The Getting Started Kit.

Join The Membership Program, which includes 65+ meditations for accessing a clear spiritual connection to Guides, Angels and Masters, some have a specific purpose of ascending you towards Joy.

Amanda Linette Meder

amandalinettemeder.com

How You Can Meet Your Own Joy Guide & Bring Love Into Your Life

Posted on by DrToni

November 1, 2019|Everlasting Life, Hope, Spiritual Living

I wrote last summer that I had finally met my Joy Guide after getting frustrated that I hadn’t met her yet  https://montclairmedium.com/blog/f/i-just-met-my-joy-guide .  I mentioned that I would discuss how you too can meet your own Joy Guide, which I’ll do below.   First, however, why do you think it is so important that we each meet our Joy Guide?  Think about the every day world we live in, its constant conflicts, partisanship, disagreements, social unrest, high divorce rates, an opioid overdose crisis, an increasing teen suicide rate, the list goes on and on.

We seem to live in a world of unrest and unhappiness bordering on depression.  Is this a state we want to live in?  I think everyone wants to be happy and searches, sometimes in vain, for the magic elixir to cure their ills.  I know the stresses of everyday life weigh heavily on people, including financial strain or job loss, relationship or marital problems, health issues, losing loved ones, just to name a few.

Yet it’s important to take a step back for a moment and take a look as if you were a distant observer of our own life (an interesting exercise I can assure you).  For every heartache you may have, others have similar pains as you do.  Also realize that there are certainly others who have problems that are much worse than yours, so you should consider yourself lucky.  Consider your life from a relative perspective, and the picture becomes much clearer.

Furthermore, we are all here on this earth school to learn from our experiences, for we are spirits having a human experience  https://montclairmedium.com/blog/f/we-are-spirit-beings .  We come to earth to grow our spirit, and the only way we can do that is by experiencing challenging conditions  https://montclairmedium.com/blog/f/were-each-here-for-a-reason  Think back to your college days…didn’t you learn more from the difficult courses than you did from those that were too easy?  Same holds true in life on earth.  It’s no wonder it’s called the “school of hard knocks.”

The trouble many people seem to have is where they choose to place their attention or focus their energy.  You can choose to pay attention to all the negative things in  your life like loud neighbors, horrible traffic, mounting bills, mean/unfair bosses, health concerns that don’t seem to go away, a spouse who just doesn’t understand you, etc, etc.  OR you can focus on the good things in your life (even if they’re small) and think about things like the beautiful day outside recently, a warm cup of coffee, a relaxing weekend, perhaps an adorable pet, family and friends, etc, etc.  This will put you in a “happy place” much faster.  If you like Monty Python, watch the movie Life of Brian and take the attitude of the criminal who’s being crucified at the end of the movie who’s singing, “Always look on the bright side of life.…”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M  Not only will this put you in a better mood, but it will get you thinking that it’s better to find what’s going right in your life rather than what’s going wrong.

It’s important to realize that “What we think about we bring about,”  or as Buddha said, “All that we are is a result of what we have THOUGHT.” The thoughts that occupy our minds are so powerful, they manifest into reality in our lives.  It’s up to each of us to create our own happiness, which is something we can certainly do.  For those interested in an academic study about happiness and how to manifest it in your own life, I highly recommend the book The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky, available on Amazon.

So what is a Joy Guide and why do we need one?  Typically our Joy Guide is a loving Spirit Guide who has agreed to stay with us and help us throughout our physical journey in this life.  They contracted with us when we were preparing to incarnate into this life so that we might always find happiness even in the worst of times.  They’re an uplifting source of energy that tries to boost our spirits when we’re feeling glum or make us feel even better if we’re just sort of “Ho-Hum.”  They help us enjoy our physical life and bring opportunities in our path that help bring feelings of happiness and love.  The best part is we all have them, as they are a member of our inner circle of spirit guides who stay with us our entire life.

Joy Guides more often than not appear to us as a young child (often a little girl), symbolizing youthful energy, innocence, happiness, joy (obviously), fun, bubbly effervescence, etc. Imagine all the traits of a happy young child, and that is your Joy Guide wrapped into a package.  Think of Tinker Bell, Peter Pan or any other young happy fantasy character and you begin to understand what a Joy Guide can do and what it does.

We need a Joy Guide in our life to help us focus on the positive things in our life, to realize the joy of being alive and appreciate the gift of life.  Since it’s so easy to fall into a slump and just focus on all the negative things going on around us or to us, we need a wholesome pick-me-up that will help us “…look on the bright side of life.”  Although we don’t remember it because of spiritual amnesia, the spirit world is full of love and joy and happiness, sort of like heaven…oh wait that IS heaven!  Our Joy Guide is beside us to help us not lose sight of that reality and bring a little bit of heaven into our life.  While many people may find this difficult to accept or prefer to take the materialist view instead, they are more prone to lacking true and lasting happiness in their lives than those who accept the love of spirit. For spirit is love.   https://montclairmedium.com/blog/f/why-does-spirit-continually-visit-us–one-answer-love

How do you meet your Joy Guide?  For me it was when I had been focusing on distinguishing between my guides and searching for the feeling of joy and happiness to find my Joy Guide.  It was then I clearly saw her in my mind’s eye as a smiling little girl with blond hair with her hands stretched up to the sky, and I heard her shout, “Yay!”  My recommendation to you would be to conduct a “Sitting in the Silence” meditation as follows:

  1. First, sit and relax in a comfortable straight-backed chair with your hands on your legs, palms up in a receiving fashion.  Begin to calm your breathing and focus your attention on your inhalations and exhalations.  Do this for several minutes until your breath becomes slow and relaxed.  You can ask your spirit helpers for loving protection or you can just think thoughts of loving kindness that surrounds you and protects you in a beautiful bubble of protection.  You can also say a prayer that is meaningful to you.  Do whatever makes you feel safe.
  2. Next, after you are calm and focused, bring your attention to your heart space and see in your mind’s eye a small ball of soft, glowing white light.   As you focus your attention there, notice the white light begins to brighten and grow and finally fill up your chest space.
  3. See this white light slowly expand to fill your entire body and realize this bright white light filling your interior is actually your glowing spirit within you.
  4. Your white light of spirit has no boundaries, so you can see it easily expand beyond your body to fill the entire room in which you sit.
  5. Next, send a beam of loving, white light from your spirit up to the heavens to reach out for the spirit world.
  6. As your light goes up and out, you are met halfway by the Love That Knows No Bounds in a ray of golden light that comes down from the heavens to envelop you tenderly and lovingly.  It comes down to envelop your entire being with love and encircles you, protects you and empowers you.  You are overcome with a bliss you have never known and a divine love that is all encompassing and all accepting.
  7. Feel your entire body begin to tingle with warm energy and know that you are loved by spirit.
  8. Thank spirit for this beautiful meeting between two worlds and feel the joy and happiness that wells up inside you.  As you do, start thinking about your Joy Guide and ask to meet them.  Your joy and happiness and love will attract your Joy Guide to you.   Begin to imagine what your Joy guide might look like (this stimulates your creative mind and clairvoyance) and you may be able to feel or see them if they chose to reveal themselves to you.
  9. If you don’t meet them on your first sitting, that’s totally normal and quite fine, so don’t get upset.  Just keep trying to meet them with this meditation.  Once you are in a good mind set and they are ready, you two will meet.  Just always be in a loving frame of mind, for love attracts positive spirit.

Love and Light,

Chris

A Cheat Sheet to Common Spirt Animals

Posted on by DrToni

HorseHORSE Giddyap and prepare for change! The horse will teach you to ride in a new direction, for new journeys and adventures may be heading your way. Alternately, you may be looking for a renewed sense of freedom somewhere in your life. Horse medicine asks us to examine the balance between the instinctive and tame parts of ourselves. When calling on horse in your life you embody strong personal drive, expression, vitality, and physical and inner strength.

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EagleEAGLE  We are asked to look at life from an eagle’s-eye perspective. In flight, eagles are able to broadly view what is below them while still being able to hone in on specific items with their laser-sharp sight. Being an eagle requires looking at life with a wide lens and not getting tripped up on daily details, or looking closely at minute details in order to see life from a broader perspective. Eagles provide vision, wisdom, strength, and courage. The eagle allows us to soar to new heights and lets us know when the winds of change are coming.

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LionLION King of the jungle, lions teach us how to embrace our personal power and self-confidence as well as warning us about threatening situations in our lives. We learn strength, assertiveness, and leadership. The lion may also be letting us know it is time to deal with anger, authority issues, fears, aggression, or control-freak tendencies.

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Rabbit RABBIT  Rabbits are associated with procreation, desire, and fertility…f*%k like a bunny, right? Rabbit lets us follow our intuitive instincts in an alert, quick-witted way. Rabbits’ heightened senses invite us to use cleverness and fast reflexes to succeed, as well as sense fear and danger.

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FoxFOX Sly like a fox, this animal is a great ally to have when you are facing a tricky situation or encountering obstacles. Foxes are cunning, quick-thinking, intelligent, deceptive, and sometimes tricksters. The fox teaches us how to get around obstacles fluidly instead of facing them head-on with the same bag of tricks. The fox can teach us increased discernment in situations having to do with business and relationships.

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SnakeSNAKE What does a snake do? It sheds its skin over and over again. When a snake appears in your life it represents healing, transformation, and life changes. As a snake sheds its skin, we shed layers that are no longer serving us. The spirit of the snake is connected to our life force. As a reptile, it symbolizes our primal needs and instincts. Snakes can provide guidance about life changes and transitions.

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Spirit Animals

Posted on by DrToni

HERE ARE THE THINGS TO KNOW:

1.You can have one or several spirit animals throughout your lifetime. They can come in and out of our lives to give us guidance, teach us about ourselves, and help us maintain balance. The timing and direction we are headed on our path, a specific occasion that may arise, phases of life, or tasks that need to be completed along our journey will dictate what animal steps forward to help.

2.An animal can bring us a message in several ways. We can physically cross paths with the animal, we can dream about it, it can visit us in our meditations, or we might have it as a pet.

3.Your spirit animal often represents qualities and attributes that you may see in yourself. On a base level, you want to understand the general vibe of the animal and look at it as an archetypal figure in your life; a symbolic representation of you. You may never personally interact with your animal, like a tiger or whale. But pay attention to the details like specific behaviors, character traits, habitat, diet, social status. Are you group oriented, a loner, nomadic, sedentary, etc.?

10 ways to start communicating with your spirit guides.

Posted on by DrToni

Here are some practical strategies for connecting to your guidance squad and recognizing their signs and synchronicities:

1. Be more present in your everyday life.

Part of getting more guidance from your spirit guides is recognizing the messages they are already sending. Many times the messages our guides send are lost on us because our lives are too busy or our minds are too busy.

Action step: Try opening up some space in your schedule or taking some responsibilities off your plate, if possible. When you’re not rushing around, you’ll notice more messages from your guides. Help quiet your mind by finding a meditation practice that works for you so you can get better at creating more space in between your thoughts.

2. Stay on the lookout every day for signs from your guides.

The more you watch for signs from your guides, the more you’ll recognize the signs they send. But something else magical happens too—as your guides sense you are more aware of them and their helpful messages, they will send more.

Action step: Remind yourself on your train commute to work or while you’re showering in the morning that every day your guides are sending you messages. If you’re trying to make a major decision, or you’re going through big changes or challenges, expect the guidance coming at you to increase to help you navigate this situation.

3. Start a spirit guide journal.

Get a special journal and devote it solely to increasing communication between you and your guides. This is a sacred place where you can write your guides a letter and ask them for assistance in specific ways.

While your guides know you and your life well, it can be powerful to use your free will to ask for help and guidance. You can also use this journal to record any important signs they send.

Action step: Write your guides a letter at the beginning of the week and express gratitude for a sentence or two about anything in your life you think they’ve helped with recently.

Then spend a few sentences asking them for help or guidance on a specific issue. For the rest of the week, watch for synchronicities from your guides regarding this issue.

4. Get to know your guides, and give them names.

You might give one of your guardian angels a name you’ve always loved, like Emily. Or you could be thinking of your guardian angel as you read a name in a novel, like Javier or Gigi, and that becomes their name.

Giving a guide a name makes them feel more real and may encourage you to connect with them more regularly. You may also come to know the personality of one of your guides after working more closely with them over time.

Action step: See if a name comes to you for one of your guides via your intuition or a synchronicity, or get creative and give them a name.

If a guide is always offering you help taking your career to the next level, they might be serious and motivated. Yet another guide could be playful and always send you humorous guidance, encouraging you to lighten up and enjoy the ride.

5. Surrender something to your guides.

When you’re frustrated about a situation, confused about the best next step, or feeling that you don’t have enough control, surrender an issue over to your guides. Even if it’s just to give yourself a little break. This can allow fresh insights to come to you as well as let your guides have more freedom to do their thing and help. 

Action step: Practice energetically releasing an issue to your guides, perhaps just temporarily. Try to quiet your mind instead of strategizing and worrying. Use a mantra like, “I’m surrendering this issue over to my guides to see what they can do.”

6. Learn more about spirit guides.

Just researching spirit guides will help increase your communication with them. Look for experts and information that resonates with you and is positive, empowering, and healing.

Action step: Attend a workshop, take an online class, or read a book about spirit guides, like one of my most recent, Angel Intuition. Notice if simply learning more about them magically opens you up to more communication. Your guides will be excited they have your attention!

7. Improve your intuition.

Everyone has intuition, and everyone can improve their intuition with study and practice. There are actually four main intuitive pathways that you can play with and develop. (This intuition quiz can help you decide which one is the strongest for you.).

You can hear gentle voices in your mind (clairaudience); see guidance as images in your mind (clairvoyance); know guidance as breakthrough thoughts or mental downloads (claircognizance); or feel guidance as energy, emotions, or physical sensations (clairsentience).

Action step: Practice using your intuition to make small decisions the outcome of which aren’t a big deal, like where to go for lunch with a co-worker.

You can also play a game with your intuition right now by asking it which method here you should emphasize to communicate more with your spirit guides. Ask for a number between 1 and 10. Did you hear a number in your mind, see a number in your mind, have a strong knowing about a number as a thought, or feel drawn to a certain number when you looked back over this list?

8. Develop daily, weekly, or monthly spiritual practices.

Spirit guides are of the spirit world and have a powerful ability to ground you in your own spirituality or help you discover it.

Having regular spiritual practices—like drawing an oracle card every morning for inspiration, taking a meditative yoga class once a week, or attending a spiritual gathering once a month with other people—will create more intimacy with your spirit guides.

Action step: Do something in the next few weeks, like a new moon or full moon ritual, to create more regular spiritual practices in your life.

You can also make a list of some of your most important spiritual beliefs. For example, you may have a strong belief that the soul lives on after the body dies, or feel closer to Spirit whenever you spend time in nature.

9. Simply send your guides a message in your thoughts.

This may sound like the quickest and easiest way to connect to your spirit guides, but it really works. You can make a formal prayer or blessing, or you can simply tell them what you need in your thoughts with a brief sentence or two.

Action step: As soon as you finish reading this article, ask your spirit guides for help in your thoughts with something you’ve been worried about. Then also ask for help from a loved one, co-worker, expert, or health care professional. You deserve all the support you need!

10. Use a divination tool.

Humans have been using divination tools to communicate with Spirit for as long as humans have been around. Oracle cards, tarot cards, runes…there are many divination tools. Try different methods and see what works best for you. 

Action step: Before you work with your divination tool, take your cards or anything else in your hands and hold them for a minute, closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths to center yourself. Then silently ask your spirit guides to send you a helpful, healing message through this tool.

What to do when you feel disconnected from your spirit guides.

If you’re feeling disconnected from Spirit, don’t worry. You have a connection to Spirit and always will. Your spirit guides are there, working on your behalf behind the scenes, whether you sense them or not. Sometimes it’s during the most challenging times in our lives that we can feel disconnected from Spirit, yet this is when Spirit can and wants to help us more than ever.

When you’re going through big changes, it can help ground you to feel connected to your spirituality and your spirit guides. Watch a documentary or movie with spiritual themes, listen to a podcast by a spiritual leader who resonates with you, or read an uplifting and inclusive book about spirituality for 20 minutes every night before bed.

Your spirit guides very much want to have a closer relationship with you. As you open up to and attempt more communication with them, you may be pleasantly surprised by how many messages you notice. Your spirit guides already send you so many messages.

For most people, the invitation is to start recognizing the communication that’s already happening.

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Tanya Carroll Richardson
Tanya Carroll Richardsonmbg Contributor
Tanya Carroll Richardson is a professional intuitive, giving readings to clients all over the world. She’s also the author of seven nonfiction books including Angel Intuition, Are You…