John Holland on Awakening to Your Soul’s Voice

Psychic medium JOHN HOLLAND is renowned for his compassionate, accurate, and frequently humorous approach. The author of several books, including Born Knowing and Psychic Navigator, Holland created the oracle deck The Psychic Tarot in 2009. Last year, Hay House released a pocket-size version of the popular 65-card deck, the culmination of three decades of dedicated study and practice. Thirty years ago, after discovering that most of the books he read about the field were written in England, the Boston native spent two years in the United Kingdom training with an exclusive group of practitioners in the seat of spiritualism. And he’s still learning: Holland (who now lives in New Hampshire) recently became certified as an animal Reiki practitioner. Here, he shares with contributing editor KAREN BRAILSFORD how cultivating psychic abilities can help you find your purpose, connect with the Divine, and make your everyday life easier.

KAREN BRAILSFORD: I just did your powerful meditation, Raising the Power. Tell me about its genesis.

JOHN HOLLAND: It’s a technique I was taught many years ago. I’m a big advocate of understanding the mechanics of psychic ability because I want people to remain balanced. When you begin to work with your natural psychic ability, it can make you even more sensitive. Much of my training focused on chakras, auras, meditation, and breath. Chakras act as a bridge on which the physical and spiritual worlds meet. The lower chakras deal with the physical body and living in this physical world, while the upper chakras deal with psychic abilities and spiritual gifts. Your psychic ability is intricately linked to the chakras, so it’s possible to stimulate your psychic centers purely by thought. Too much psychic work or even talking about psychic matters can open you up and may make you feel tired or irritable. Keeping yourself cleansed and protected as well as closing down properly will help. These are important practices in your own personal spiritual development.

In the meditation, my goal is to assist you in raising the energy up through each of the seven chakras, starting with the base chakra and moving to the crown. This automatically expands your aura, allowing you to receive psychic impressions and connect to the Divine, your guides, and your loved ones who have passed. But you can’t stay in that heightened state all day. You’ve got to go grocery shopping! At the end, I teach how to bring down the energy through each chakra one by one. I recommend you keep the crown and base chakras open so you can be grounded and energy can continuously flow throughout your body.

KB: Is this how you stay grounded for your sessions?

JH: Yes, it’s about having boundaries. When I am doing psychic or mediumship work, I raise the power to be receptive, and when I am not working, my energy is closed. I don’t see dead people walking around or pick up other people’s emotions. I don’t walk around like a giant psychic antenna. I started gardening and walking, which helps. And when my dog Koda was alive—I lost him two years ago—he was very grounding for me because we would walk in the woods, breathe in fresh air, and just be present.

KB: When did you realize you were psychic?

JH: I was raised in Boston in an Irish-Catholic-Italian family, and I recognized I was very intuitive. I knew when people were going to get sick or visit. And my dad was an alcoholic, so I needed to know what was going to happen every night. Would he come home drinking? What would he do? My upbringing made me more empathetic and sensitive to other people who are suffering. But because I was made fun of, I hid my ability.

KB: How did you reactivate your psychic abilities after suppressing them for so long?

JH: In my early 30s, after I moved to Los Angeles, I was in an automobile accident one rainy night. I walked away without a scratch. It was a wake-up call. I felt all of this energy run throughout my body. Some might call it a kundalini awakening. I ended a bad relationship, changed jobs, and went back to studying how my psychic faculties worked. I also began Reiki healing classes. On the weekends, I was asked to do readings at an aromatherapy shop. It was great training, and after a couple of years, loved ones who had passed started to show up for the people I was doing readings for. I then studied mediumship in England for two years. I never said, “I’m going to be a psychic or a medium.” I just wanted to know what was happening to me.

“When you become quiet and acknowledge your soul, it whispers to you. It tries to guide you through dreams, intuition, synchronistic events, or wake-up calls like my accident.”

KB: How did you begin working with tarot cards?

JH: When people were sitting with me, I’d tell them about their lives. Karen, have you been to Paris? I’m seeing the Eiffel Tower.

KB: Many times! I love Paris.

JH: I see that. Well, I needed to do something so that people wouldn’t freak out when I looked at them during psychic readings. So instead, I would focus on the cards. Once while pulling tarot cards for a woman, I was drawn to the bright red sash around the character’s neck. “So how long have you had the throat issue?” I asked. She told me she was going to have surgery soon to remove polyps on her thyroid. Now, the card is not a card about throat issues, but my intuition was drawn to the sash. I began picking up things about the cards that weren’t in the book.

KB: Is this how one should work with your Psychic Tarot Oracle Deck?

JH: I advise people to study the guidebook once or twice. Highlight the keywords and then put it away. Let your intuition take over.

KB: How does your deck differ from the standard tarot?

JH: Instead of the usual tarot symbols—pentacles, rods, cups, and swords—my deck features color, dream symbolism, numerology, and the chakras or energy centers.

KB: Can you elaborate on the differences between psychic work and mediumship?

JH: Being psychic is about sensing the energy around you: I’m getting the information from your aura. Your grandmother isn’t whispering to me, “Ask her about Paris.” Every medium is psychic because we need psychic faculties to perceive the spirit world. But not every psychic is a medium. As a kid, I would see people in my bedroom wearing clothes from different eras. I thought I was dreaming. I was never frightened. My grandmother was like this, but we didn’t use the word psychic. We said that Grandma “knew things.”

Two years into doing the psychic readings, something different happened. While reading for a client, the spirit of an elderly woman showed up. Her clothes didn’t match, and she kept showing me a diamond ring. When I told the client, she screamed and hugged me. “My great aunt was colorblind, so her clothing didn’t match,” she told me. “She gave me this before she passed.” It was the ring.

KB: How can cultivating psychic ability help people?

JH: I want people to realize that being intuitive or psychic is not about fortune telling, crystal balls, or predicting the future. It’s a way of being. Your psychic abilities can help you in all areas of your life, whether it’s relationships, work, family, or health. They help you go within.

I think people have been too focused on the outside world. Social media shows you the perfect face, the perfect hair, the perfect body. It can be hard sometimes to recognize that the beauty inside also makes a difference. The physical body is the temple of the soul. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and you’re joyful, it shows. That’s what I call “soul shine.” Your soul is just beaming.

KB: Do you find that people today are more interested in inner beauty?

JH: Yes! I teach this in my membership group, My Soul Community. People used to think, If I have a relationship, I’ll be happy. If I fill my bank account, I’ll be happy. If I have the perfect nose or am a certain weight, I’ll be happy. But even when they attain all of that, they realize that something is still missing. They wonder, Why do I feel empty? It’s because they have focused totally on the physical and not the soul. You’re a soul that comes with a body, not a body that comes with a soul.

Life and social media can pull you away from the soul, so it’s important that people learn to get quiet and meditate. I don’t mean chanting with incense. You could walk in the woods. When you become quiet and acknowledge your soul, it whispers to you. It tries to guide you through dreams, intuition, synchronistic events, or wake-up calls like my accident.

More so now than ever, people are experiencing a spiritual awakening. It could also be a small thing. It doesn’t always have to be dramatic like a breakup or a death. It’s when you wake up one day and you’re no longer believing what you were taught. You understand that there’s more to life, and you realize that the outside world is not giving you the answers.

KB: Why do people seek you out?

JH: Some come for intuitive work. They want to know what’s blocking them. I use my spiritual teaching side to show them the obstacles they may encounter or how their own thoughts may be blocking them. But most come for mediumship. They want validation that their loved ones are okay. I present it in an easy style. I use humor to raise the energy of the room.

People also want to know about their soul. They ask, “What’s my purpose?” I love being a medium, but if I can help people spark a spiritual practice, then I feel I’ve done my job. My purpose is to show you that you’re more than a physical being. You’re a spiritual being with unlimited potential. Your soul’s purpose is to be all that you can be using your gifts, talents, and abilities to help others.

KB: Do you also teach people how to connect directly with their loved ones who have crossed over? Or is it about understanding the signs?

JH: Both. There are signs—after-death communications, or ADCs as coined by Bill and Judy Guggenheim in their book Hello From Heaven—such as cardinals, license plates, feathers, pennies, and smells. I teach people to stop explaining them away. They say, “Isn’t that weird? I was thinking of my mother, then her song came on.” No, it’s not weird; it’s really your mother. Your loved ones are just a thought away. I teach people the mechanics of psychic ability. I always start with psychic training because you are the vessel for mediumship to happen. I also teach people who have the potential for mediumship how to see if the potential is there, how to turn it on and off, and what to do about it.

KB: What are the key tenets of your teachings?

JH: First, we are all naturally psychic. We have the five senses, but there are many more. If you learn to see clairvoyantly, you can see beyond what’s in front of you. If you’re clairaudient, you hear the real words. If you’re clairsentient, you are tuned into your inner feeling. We’re physical beings in a physical world, but also spiritual beings in a spiritual world.

Second, you must understand that there’s something more than what’s in front of you that is trying to help you—your soul. Once you do that, you can trust your own soul, your own guidance. Many people want to hand everything over to the psychic. Tell me what to do. Tell me what you see. But you can get the answers for yourself.

KB: What are some practical ways one can nurture psychic ability?

JH: Be curious. In a crowded supermarket, ask yourself which line will go faster. Wonder which elevator door is going to open first, or who’s calling on the phone. I also like to declare, “Something wonderful is going to happen today.” And then I get the parking spot! It’s the small things. You’ve got to flex that muscle. I also invite people to ask, before choosing what to eat, “What feels aligned for my body right now?” And before you send that text, always pause and ask, “What’s the highest way to approach this?” You’ll get answers.

People ask me, “How do I know it’s not my imagination?” Imagination will come and go, but a real intuitive answer will keep coming back. Your soul knows what you want, but it’s also going to get you what you need.

KB: How can developing psychic abilities help people cope in these challenging times?

JH: A lot of change is happening right now. We see it in our financial, educational, and governmental institutions. But the one thing that remains constant is your soul. So when people get caught up in the physical world and are in worry and scarcity, it’s important to remember to pull back. I try not to get overwhelmed by social media. Energy flows where action goes. If you’re focused on the news and the drama, you’re going to get more of it. I’m not saying you should ignore it, but I recommend you don’t become obsessed by it. Find your center and remember to go to the soul or heart center and feel the love that’s there, because that’s who you are. [Touches heart] Ah, there I am.

KB: Is that what psychic work and mediumship is really about—remembering who we are?

JH: Exactly. People are concerned about outcome and transformation. They want to know, “How can this help me now?” What I teach can help calm them, help them manifest things, and help them to be more sensitive or less sensitive. We live in a society where we want everything fast. It’s important to take time for your soul, because that’s going to slow you down. And that’s when synchronicity starts to happen and guide you to where your soul wants to be.

Our psychic intuitive ability is the language of the soul. I don’t think the Divine would have us here without a little help. Our spiritual psychic abilities are what keep us connected to God, to Source. Being connected shows us we are never really truly alone.

Psychic medium and spiritual teacher John Holland is the author of six books and the creator of five oracle decks, all published by Hay House. He is also the founder of an online membership group devoted to spiritual development called My Soul Community. His website, johnholland.com, offers visitors a free automated and interactive oracle reading each day.

This article appeared in the May/June 2026 issue of Spirituality & Health: A Unity Publication^®. Subscribe now.