What Is Clairsentience And How Does It Work?

Gut feelings are a blessing and a curse. They can manifest as butterflies in your stomach, goosebumps, or pure moments of clarity (via Healthline). For some of us, deciding to follow our gut over logic is a difficult decision to make. However, for a clairsentient, it's the obvious option. Not to be confused with empaths, a trending term with more than 2 billion uses on Tiktok, clairsentients can do more than just pick up on emotions. If a friend confides in you about their grief and you find yourself restless awake at night reliving their pain, you could be an empath. A clairsentient, however, has a complex intuition that tells them additional detailed information about a person's lived experiences. A clairsentient may be an empath, but an empath is not necessarily a clairsentient (via Thrive Global).

Clairsentience essentially functions as an unexplained psychic ability. Yet despite the wide skepticism around it, CBS News reported that the government is recorded as having hired psychics for highly-classified espionage cases. Clairvoyants tend to be in the spotlight regarding metaphysics, but clairsentience is equally as powerful and can even work alongside other intuitive abilities.

Stemming from the French word "clair," meaning "clear," and "sentience," meaning "to feel," clairsentience is one of the four clairs or psychic abilities people can experience (via Well + Good). These include clairvoyance, when one has intuitive visuals or psychic visions, clairaudience, or psychic hearing and are delivered audible messages, and claircognizance, or psychic knowing.

To be clairsentient means to receive messages through powerful sensory feelings. A clairsentient medium may experience intense emotions, feelings, and even tastes that describe a particular event or memory (via Kasamba). It's also similar to claircognizance in that there is an overwhelming gut feeling and pure knowing around specific questions and situations. Because a clairsentient can see with their feelings, they may even experience the same physical pains as someone else. For example, one psychic medium explained to MindBodyGreen that she once felt an ache in her knee when working with a client who recently had knee surgery. It turns out tapping into other's energetic fields has its downsides despite the help it can provide for others.

According to top psychic advisors at Kasamba, being clairsentient can be overwhelming as you can constantly be picking up on the energy of others, making simple tasks like grocery shopping or going into crowds exhausting and draining. A clairsentient can enter a room and immediately tune into the different moods and states of mind in flux. The oversensitivity, when not appropriately managed, can be depleting and overstimulating. It's crucial, therefore, that clairsentients take time for themselves to recharge and ground.

As mystical and elusive as clairsentience may seem, many believe it is a skill that can be developed, especially if you do identify as an empath or experience other clairs. Energy intuitive coach Anna Sayce says that most people use clairsentience daily but don't trust themselves enough to pursue their natural gifts. If you've ever realized your gut was right, don't deny yourself the opportunity to grow your intuition further. You can practice enhancing your clairsentience by first keeping a nourished and clean body. Your body is your vessel and holds your life force (via Wild Simple Joy). Feed it with high-vibrational and nutritious foods, nutrients, and environments. Also, practice tuning into your body. How does it communicate to you when you experience certain feelings? This awareness will better develop your body-mind connection and intuition. Above all else, trust yourself. If you're reading this, you are probably an intuitive or empath of some kind. Take this as your sign to believe your gut led you here and will take you where you need to go.