Balancing ethics and clairvoyant business with Tori Quisling.
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
We step into the captivating realm of clairvoyance and psychic development with Tori Quisling on this episode of Heallist. With over 36 years of expertise, Tori is a distinguished clairvoyant, educator, coach, and RTT hypnotherapist. She's the visionary behind the Center for Clairvoyant and Psychic Development and the author of influential books, "The Clairvoyant Practitioner: A Simple Guide to Developing Your Psychic Abilities" and "Calling in Your Baby: A Clairvoyant’s Guide to Manifesting Your Pregnancy." Her impact spans prestigious institutions like the Berkeley Psychic Institute and the NY Open Center, while her online workshops and classes have a global reach. Tori's 1:1 programs are tailored to dissolve creative blocks, nurture intuitive skills, and provide support for women and couples on their fertility journey.
In this episode, Tori's wisdom shines as she explores a range of topics: from unraveling the essence of clairvoyance and the ethics of psychic business, to illuminating the distinction between clairvoyance and mediumship. She shares insights on enhancing psychic skills, integrating them with other modalities, and establishing a thriving clairvoyant practice. Stay tuned as Tori treats us to a live clairvoyant reading for the Heallist business, offering a taste of her remarkable abilities.
What is a clairvoyant and the ethics of clairvoyance business?
Yuli Ziv: Let's talk about definitions. There are so many names for what you do, and so many amazing skillful people do. There's clairvoyant, psychics, tarot readers, fortune tellers, intuitive readers, mediums. A lot of times, some might mean the same thing, some of them totally different things, and a lot of people get confused. If you can clear that up first, that'd be very helpful to our audience.
Tori Quisling: Being a clairvoyant means you are interested in seeing the truth, creating clarity, and healing through communication at the level of your forehead. We have a clairvoyant system, and I wrote about this in my book, "The Clairvoyant Practitioner." The sixth chakra in the forehead is the clairvoyant ability, and it is the overarching psychic ability that you can use to tune into your own other psychic abilities, like clairsentience.
In my book, I talk about how, as a clairvoyant, you have the ability to take control of all of your psychic abilities. A psychic ability is simply a sensitivity that you have, the way you tune into the world. Most people are clairsentient rather than clairvoyant. When you're clairvoyant, you can have an emotion or feeling in the body. You can come up to the Clairvoyant center, separate from it, become neutral, see the truth of the emotion; it's not mine, it's somebody else's, and let it go. Being clairvoyant simply means you have the ability to become neutral and take a look at something.
As a clairvoyant reader, you are someone that's just looking for the best possible outcome in your reading. You're looking for a way to see the blocks for them. The way that something's blocking, it's like you're the visionary, you're offering a vision. The reason that it gets a bad rap is because, over the centuries, psychic people have had to make money that way. It becomes manipulative, and it's a fortune-telling, gypsy idea. If you drop down to the stomach area to give a reading, or even below the navel, what you're doing is you're trying to get power over that person.
I was sitting in Jackson Square, New Orleans, when I was living there in my 20s, thinking, “This is so much fun.” I had already trained at the Berkeley Psychic Institute. I knew how to get a reading from my sixth chakra. I'm just going to see something for somebody, which is, "I see you growing. I see you in a relationship that's not serving you. I see you moving away from that." From the stomach level or below, the gypsies around me would hawk people in by saying, "You need to break up with them. You need to do this," like giving advice. That's the opposite of what I do as a clairvoyant. We don't give advice. We say, "I see you eating more green vegetables and feeling better," instead of, "You need to eat this way," or "You need to do this, break up with somebody." So, it's from where you do the reading. In Jackson Square, I was surrounded by people hawking and manipulating people, seeing the pictures in people's auras, their fears, and reading from their fears. I'm reading from their best possible outcome, reading from their best possible highest self.
The difference between clairvoyance and mediumship.
Yuli Ziv: A lot of people come to these sessions expecting some connection to the other worlds, to people who are deceased or those who have passed away. How does that fit into this idea of giving them insights and empowering them to use those channels, or is it a different field on its own?
Tori Quisling: No, it's not a different field. Being a clairvoyant means you have access to all of your psychic abilities; all it needs is to be developed. Mediumship is very popular. However, what I teach my students, and what I was taught at the Berkeley Psychic Institute back in the 1980s, is that we're reading the person sitting in front of us—the one that's in the body. Our goal as a reader and healer communicator is not to channel any entities through us.
We actually have all the information we need in this body, in this time and space. Any entity we would channel through us as a spirit would not be as knowledgeable as us because spirit-to-spirit communication is what we're doing.
The person in the reading, the one I'm giving the reading to, may want to sit down and only hear about the spirits around them, but I need to anchor the reading by saying hello to the person sitting in the chair in their body. What is the connection there? I address that and then provide them with hope. Afterward, I tune in to their spirits around them and deliver messages that are for their best possible growth, not random messages but messages that are tuned in because I want to connect with the person sitting in the chair. I aim to ensure they feel healed and empowered. Any messages that I receive, which are clear audience messages, are ones that help the person in front of me in their purpose.
This creates a powerful healing space and empowers the person to communicate with spirits on their own. I do this often with women who want to get pregnant and feel the presence of baby spirits. I empower them to communicate with those baby spirits so they don't need to call me every time they want to connect. The relationship isn't from me; it's between them and the spirit. A good clairvoyant instructs and empowers the person to continue communicating after the session. Everyone is psychic unless they're a robot (which I haven't met anyone like that). If you come to me for a reading, it means you're ready to grow and advance in these areas. However, being psychic is simply an energy exchange, spirit-to-spirit communication. A psychic can steer toward the fortune teller stereotype, but a true clairvoyant reader focuses on reading the person and empowering them, not giving advice, or keeping them coming back for more.
Upgrading your psychic skills.
Yuli Ziv: It's so helpful to educate people and help us lift some of those stigmas. I love your approach to this ancient science. It's very methodical and systematic. How did you develop your system?
Tori Quisling: I've always felt on the fringe, an observer. That's why I was an elementary teacher for a while, to help these sensitive children. Many of us who are healers, natural healers, want to help people, and we're in service here, in the light. We tend to be very sensitive children. Children are already wide open, but when you're an extra sensitive, wide-open child, you need more support. I was always searching for people like me.
I found the Berkeley Psychic Institute and started studying there concurrently with my master's degree. I realized there's a way to train yourself; you can develop your psychic skills. You have to graduate your childhood sensitivity to adult-level psychic abilities. As children, we use all our psychic abilities to survive. We have to age ourselves and try to use our psychic abilities. As a hypnotherapist now, I help with that.
Once you're an adult, you want to upgrade your psychic skills. You can do that through using psychic tools. In my book, "Clairvoyant Practitioner," I explain that becoming a psychic is essentially about being sensitive. There are different ways to be sensitive, and clairvoyance is one of them. I'm a teacher with a background in metaphysical concepts. People who come to me often have some past-life experience with being a healer and knowing metaphysical concepts. Those "problems" are actually their creativity in life, labeled as problems. But as adults, you don't need to use your psychic abilities for survival; you can use them to manifest, create healing, explore, and understand your psychic potential.
Using your psychic abilities alongside other modalities.
Tori Quisling: What's happened lately, and I've noticed this over the years since the 80s when I developed my psychic abilities, is that I found my community. I felt at home. This is me. It was the first time I felt truly seen, and that's what I aim to do with my clients—help them feel seen.
The gateway to psychic exploration in recent times has been Reiki. Over the years, Reiki has opened people up and given them permission to develop their intuition in a certain way. Society has accepted practices like Reiki, massage, yoga, and acupuncture, making them normal and accessible. I call these practices the gateway into using your intuition, giving you permission to define yourself as a healer and a psychic person.
Taking it further, learning clairvoyance is like having a Mary Poppins bag. You have all your tools from practices like massage and Reiki, and clairvoyance is like turning on a little light in your forehead. This light allows you to look into the bag, metaphorically speaking, so you can assess the person you're working with and choose which modalities and combinations of tools you want to use. Clairvoyance organizes your abilities because when we become emotional or get caught up in someone else's energy, we need to step back and become the healer again. We come up to the sixth chakra and say, "Let me see how I can help, how I can serve."
Yuli Ziv: Some of the best healers I've encountered, whether they're acupuncturists or professionals in other fields, have this amazing ability. You might go in for something specific like shoulder pain, and then they see or sense something related to your teenage years or another aspect of your life that you hadn't even mentioned. Those sessions can be the most wonderful because they tap into the profound connection between the mind, body, and spirit.
Through these psychic sessions, you can sometimes address not only physical pain but also emotional and spiritual issues. When you have the opportunity to explore this holistic approach to healing, it truly feels like pure magic.
Establishing your business as a clairvoyant professional.
Yuli Ziv: I always love to touch on the topics of business and help healers develop those skills and learn from people like yourself, who not only have talent and skills but are able to build this multi-dimensional business. It includes individual sessions, the classes you teach, workshops, books, and all those different things that really feed into your practice. Can you share your point of view? A lot of people who see the things you've seen or have your skills often have challenges translating them into the three-dimensional world. You seem to be someone who's walking between those worlds so well. What's your secret?
Tori Quisling: It's been quite a journey of self-discovery, with many fortunate manifestations. I was originally a teacher in Long Island, trained as a psychic. I went through a divorce, had a young child, and was new to Long Island. Within six months, the school let me go due to budget cuts, even though I had 16 years of teaching experience. I had to find my way.
I realized that many teachers knew about my healings and readings behind closed doors. Word spread, and once I left the school, I faced the challenge of making a living. I had a prayer and intention to express my true purpose as a psychic teacher without restrictions.
After leaving the school, I began marketing myself as a psychic. I got an office, shared it with an acupuncturist, and my network grew. Facing adversity as a newly divorced single mom without a job, I tapped into my skills and passions. I started earning money, charging what I was worth, and making a better living than as a school teacher. I got lucky and met friends in the news broadcast industry who helped me get on various shows and in newspapers. I became part of the Long Island Paranormal Research Society.
Developing pricing strategy for your services.
Yuli Ziv: You're a great spokesperson for the community. I was wondering how that came about. Can you touch a little more on your natural marketing skills? Did you do something special to position yourself attractively for media opportunities?
Tori Quisling: It was about putting myself out there with all my enthusiasm and talking to as many people as possible. I always had my business card on me, and when someone was in front of me, they needed to hear about what I do. Abundance, money, and success are like a currency. It's also about connecting with people and building relationships. The more you talk about what excites you, the more people will connect you with others. As a healer, your business is all about people, and you're connecting with as many as possible. I just expressed my interest and belief in myself.
In essence, my training in clairvoyant skills taught me to establish my crown chakra, that sense of certainty and expertise. It means you don't have all the answers in the moment, but you know how to find them. You're resourceful. You keep your crown chakra tuned into your higher self, and you can confidently say, "I know what to do. I know what to say." You come across as an authority. When you're starting your own business, you act as if you already have it going. You are the expert.
What's essential to remember, especially as a clairvoyant healer, is that it's never about performing. Even if you're on stage or TV, it's not a performance. You're doing it for yourself, out of genuine curiosity about the person you're working with. In any reading or healing, it's always about doing it authentically and for yourself, and if it's authentic, it will resonate with others.
