Why Mediumship Stalls

## 🎙️ DESCRIPTION

If you still feel tension when you work, even after years of development, this episode is for you.

Not because you’re doing something wrong.
And not because you haven’t worked hard enough.

But because something inside the experience hasn’t been fully understood yet.

In this episode, I explore why mediumship often stalls, not at a technical level, but within the medium. Where tension comes from. Why surrender breaks down. And how personal development, when it has direction, supports your mediumship rather than quietly interfering with it.

This isn’t about fixing yourself.
It’s about understanding what happens within you when you work, so your mediumship can begin to move again.

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## 🔍 IN THIS EPISODE

* Why tension appears even after years of practice
* The difference between technical development and inner development
* What actually stops surrender in the moment
* How your past experiences shape your mediumship
* Why trust is not absolute, but something that grows
* The role of sitting in the power, meditation, reflection, and contemplation
* How to create the inner conditions for consistent, flowing work

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## ✉️ STAY CONNECTED

If you’d like to walk this path with me beyond the podcast, you can join my weekly mailing list:

👉 [https://spirit-talk.online](https://spirit-talk.online)

Each week I share a reflection, something thoughtful to sit with, and something to support your inner life and your mediumship as it unfolds.

---

## 🌿 SPIRIT TALK+

If you’d like to go deeper, Spirit Talk+ is where we explore these ideas more fully and more slowly.

Inside Spirit Talk+ you’ll find:

* Monthly live talks
* Guided practices
* In-depth conversations
* A space to develop your understanding over time

You can join here:

👉 https://spirit-talk.online

---

## 🎧 ABOUT SPIRIT TALK

Spirit Talk is a space where we explore the inner life, the nature of mediumship, and the questions that sit quietly underneath our experience.

It isn’t about quick answers.
It’s about slowing down, paying attention, and allowing deeper understanding to emerge.

---

## 🔔

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

If you still feel tension when you sit to work, then you're not done with your personal development. And I don't mean that as a criticism, I mean it as an observation. Because if you've been developing for years, attending seminars, practicing regularly, and there's still a tightening inside you when the communication unfolds, then something important inside the experience hasn't been understood yet. Not because you're doing something wrong, and not because you haven't worked hard enough, but because development doesn't usually stall at the technical level. It stalls inside the medium. In this episode, I want to talk about where that tension comes from, why surrender breaks down, and how personal development, when it has direction, actually supports evidential work rather than quietly interfering with it. This isn't about fixing yourself. It's about understanding what's happening within you when you work so your mediumship can move again. I've been working with my mediumship for 22 years now. In that sense, I'm probably a little unusual, in that I've spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to understand what happens inside me when I sit, when I follow, when I lose the thread, and when I find it again. And even now, after all that time, I still sit regularly, I still work with a small group once a month, and I've never stopped. Not because I believe I'm failing, not because something is wrong, but because I value the process itself. I value the learning. And I know from experience that the moment we start paying attention to what's happening inside our mediumship, it begins to harden rather than deepen. And after all those years, when I move into my mediumship, do I still feel tension at times? Yes, of course I do. I'm human. I have insecurities, I carry memories, I've had experiences that can still be touched. The situations that make me uncomfortable. And as long as I'm human, there's room to develop. That's the part we sometimes forget. But in reality, especially in mediumship, personal development isn't something you complete. It's something that continues to open, refine, and reopen as you grow. In the early stages, I believe the first phase of personal development is an awakening, a turning inward. A moment where you begin to sense that there is more within you than you've been living from. More potential, more sensitivity, more depth. That awakening matters because it should shape what you choose to develop. Not everything, not all at once, but the parts of you that are asking to come forward. The second phase is self-awareness. This is where things slow down, where you begin to notice how you respond internally, where you become aware of your patterns, your defenses, your habits of control or withdrawal. Alongside that, your sensitivity deepens. You don't just feel more, you understand more about what you're feeling. That self-awareness becomes the foundation of your personal development. And in time, it becomes the foundation of your mediumship itself. Because the more clearly you know yourself, the more honestly you can follow. And the more honestly you follow, the less effort there is in the work. Often, by the time students come to work with me, they've already had some form of awakening. Something has shifted inside them. They've felt movement. They know there is more. What they're usually missing isn't effort or sincerity, it's clarity, a clearer understanding of themselves, and a more conscious way of working with the inner life so that it supports their mediumship rather than quietly restricting it. Most people who arrive at this point have already been involved in some form of mediumistic work. It may not be evidential mediumship specifically, it might be healing, tarot, sensitivity work, spiritual practice, or another form of expression. So when someone says to me, I've been doing this personal development work for 20 years, I understand what they're really saying. They're pointing to the self-awareness they've gained along the way. And that matters. That experience is real and it counts. But personal development, as I understand it, asks for a particular kind of reflection. It's not only about knowing who you are in a general sense, it's about becoming aware of how you respond inside the experience itself. Most of you already reflect on your mediumship technically. You look at what worked, what didn't, where the communication flowed, where it weakened, where things felt strong or uncertain. And that level of reflection is important because it gives you information about your expression. But it's only part of the picture. As there is another level we have to move into. And that is reflecting on how you felt inside the experience. Not whether you enjoyed it, not whether you felt the emotion of the communicator. I mean how you felt as a person while the communication was unfolding. Did tension appear? Did a narrative start running in your mind telling you how badly you were doing, that you were failing, that you should stop? Did you feel judged? Did you suddenly become self-conscious in some way? Whenever those things arise, they pull you out of the power. They move you out of the state of awareness where surrender is possible. And instead of being beyond yourself, following the communicator openly, you collapse back into yourself. You become aware of the room, of the people around you, of your own fear. And in that moment, the flow breaks. So part of your personal development is learning to recognize what is actually stopping you from surrendering. You do this in your technical work, but you also have to do it within yourself. Sometimes what holds you back is that you haven't fully accepted that you're a medium. Other times, it's that you don't fully trust the spirit world. In my experience, if we're being honest, what's usually happening is this. We trust our interpretation more than the experience itself. We override what comes, we reshape it, we soften it, we adjust it to fit what feels safer for us or more familiar. And in doing that, we're trusting our own framework more than the communicator's influence. So the real questions become these. Is the real difficulty here a lack of trust? Is it that you haven't fully accepted your mediumship? Or is it something deeper being triggered from your past? Because until you understand what is being activated, surrender will always feel just out of reach. Maybe you grew up in an environment where being wrong meant humiliation. So now, when you hear the word no, your body reacts before your mind has time to catch up. You drop straight back into that same emotional state. Or maybe you were trained consciously or unconsciously to fear judgment. And that fear now appears every time there's uncertainty. Unless you recognize these inner patterns, they'll follow you directly into your mediumship. And when you begin to notice this, personal development stops being abstract. It becomes the process of discovering what makes you feel unsafe, what makes you feel exposed, what causes you to tighten, control, or pull back when surrender is required. This is also the point where personal development starts to move beyond technique and into your wider life. Because sometimes the work isn't about correcting a mediumistic habit at all. Sometimes it's about meeting a deeper wound, a past experience, a long-held belief that has quietly shaped how you show up, not just in mediumship, but everywhere. And until that is acknowledged, true openness will also feel just out of reach. For some people, the work is primarily spiritual. They come to realize they need a deeper relationship with the spirit world because if they're honest, they don't yet fully trust the intelligence working through them. For others, the work is emotional. They begin to see that certain fears or insecurities still have too loud a voice in the experience. And this is important to understand. Personal development is not about eradicating parts of yourself. These aspects of us don't disappear. They're part of being human. The work is about turning down the volume so that those voices no longer dominate the experience. So they no longer override the communication. In my own relationship with the spirit world, I know it can always be deeper. And I know I can always trust more. If I'm honest, my level of trust varies depending on the type of work I'm engaging in. I trust the spirit world more easily in evidential mediumship than I do in trance, for instance. And that's simply the truth. And I say it openly because as a teacher, honesty matters. Because I know there's still room to grow. I sit in the power every day, not because I lack something, but because I'm human. There's always more depth available, more trust, more surrender to cultivate. So when someone says to me, I trust the spirit world 100%, I understand what they mean, but I also know this. The moment we believe a relationship is already complete, there's nowhere left for it to deepen. And that belief, quietly and unintentionally, becomes another limitation. See, personal development at its heart is the process of discovering what stops you from surrendering and then doing the deeper work of softening that part of yourself. It's about growing the relationship, both with yourself and with the spirit world, so your mediumship can move with greater freedom and less resistance. When we expect ourselves to trust 100%, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We create an internal standard that is not realistic, and then we live with the constant feeling that we're falling short, that we should be further along than we are. So this work is not about perfect trust. I don't believe anyone achieves that, not even the great spiritual figures we look up to, because even Jesus, in one of his final moments, cried out, God, have you forsaken me? That's doubt. And if doubt existed there, I'm certainly not going to demand absolute certainty from myself. But can I move towards 80% trust, 90% trust? Yes, and that matters. Because when trust is something that grows, rather than something we demand to be flawless, we stay open. We remain willing. And it's that willingness, that openness, that keeps our development alive. It also means we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to eradicate the parts of us that feel fear or tension. We only need to become reconciled with them enough that their volume turns down. When they're quieter, we can still surrender, we can still follow, and we can still serve. So this work is not about eliminating parts of who you are. Those parts were shaped by life. They belong to your story. Personal development is learning how to make peace with them so they no longer interrupt your expression. At this point, I think it's important to talk about the practices that actually support this work. I want to touch briefly on the spiritual practices that are essential for development: sitting in the power, meditation, contemplation and reflection, and prayer. Sitting in the power and meditation are often spoken about as if they are the same thing, but in fact, they're not. Sitting in the power is a practice of awareness, awareness of your own power and awareness of the spirit world. You're not trying to communicate with an individual in the spirit world, and you're not analyzing your emotions. You're simply holding your awareness in that power, allowing yourself to experience its presence and reality. Meditation shares a similar stillness, but it serves a different purpose. In meditation, you can explore yourself. If an emotion arises, you stay with it, you observe it, you understand how it affects you and how it shapes your responses. And both practices matter because each supports a different aspect of your development. When I was developing in my early years, I was very rigid. If I was sitting in the power, then I was sitting in the power. And I wouldn't allow myself to move into meditation even when something meaningful arose. I kept the practices separate in a way that eventually became limiting. Now I'm much more fluid. I simply sit. And some days I naturally move into sitting in the power, whereas on other days I move into meditation. Sometimes I even shift between the two in the same sitting. Why would I deny myself something I need? And why would I block an experience that's arising naturally? You see, there can be a kind of vanity in being too strict. This idea that I'm doing sitting the power, therefore I must not do anything else. And that attitude just isn't helpful. I always think it's better to be relaxed, to be open, to let the practice become what it needs to be. And sometimes I begin by meditating on an emotion and realize I can't go any further. So it naturally moves into sitting in the power instead. And other times I begin in the power and notice an emotion that needs attention. So I naturally follow it and move into meditation. Both are valuable and both are serving my development. Then we come to contemplation and reflection, and many people confuse the two. But again, they're very different practices. Contemplation is immersive, it's where you re-enter an experience without judging it and without analysing it. You're not trying to understand it intellectually, you simply allow yourself to be inside the memory again. If I contemplate a childhood event, I'm not interpreting it. I'm experiencing it as it was. Reflection, on the other hand, is where we think about the experience, where we explore its meaning, where we consider how it shaped us. For example, if I reflect on being bullied as a child, I might look at the narrative around it, the impact it had, and the patterns it formed inside me. If I contemplate that same moment though, I just relive the feelings without analysing them. I simply allow the experience to be present again. And both practices reveal different things. In reflection, we revisit the experience and engage with it consciously. We explore how it made us feel, we consider the meaning it carried and the way it influenced who we became. Reflection asks us to think, understand, and interpret. And then there's prayer. Prayer is simply communion with the power of creation. It's an opening of the heart, a quiet conversation with the source of life itself. Every tradition understands prayer in its own way, but at its core, it's the same movement, reaching outward and inward in the same moment. All of these practices, sitting in the power, meditation, contemplation, reflection, and prayer, help us navigate the inner life. They help us understand our story, and they help us to move forward on the spiritual journey of who we are. Not to eradicate parts of ourselves, but to understand them, to find clarity, to begin accepting what happened, forgiving where we must, and discovering peace and meaning within it all. It's a long journey, and some experiences are so complex that we return to them many times. Not because we failed the first time, but because the experience itself is layered. You may have reconciled one part, but other parts are only now ready to be seen. Students often feel frustrated when the same themes resurface time and time again, because they assume it means they haven't progressed, but it doesn't. It simply means deeper aspects are beginning to unfold. And this is what it really means to get to know yourself. It isn't about overcoming or eliminating anything. It isn't about pathologizing your history either. It's about allowing your life to speak to you and letting that understanding shape a richer inner world. And as that inner world becomes clearer and more grounded, surrender becomes easier. And when surrender becomes easier, your mediumship can breathe. Through this personal work, you create the inner environment that allows your mediumship to flourish. You cultivate the qualities that support its expression, awareness, acceptance, sensitivity, trust, presence. So when you look at your development as a whole, this is why I often tell students that one or two focused practice sessions each month is more than enough. Because you always You also need time for sitting in the power, time for meditation, time to reflect, to contemplate, and to pray, time to build a relationship with the spirit world, and a time to live. You have to learn to listen to your soul because it will tell you when it's time to sit in the power, when it's time to reflect, when it's time to contemplate, and when it's time to pray. And don't think these practices only happen in a quiet room. You know, I don't sit in my own house and announce, now I will contemplate. I contemplate when I lie in bed at night. I reflect while I walk the dog or while I wash the dishes. These practices weave themselves naturally through the fabric of your life. The point is to build an inner life, to become more aware of being alive, to stop living only on the outer surface of things. Even in the busyness of the world, you can stay connected inwardly. You can move through your day with a deeper awareness of your experience, your spirit, and the presence of something greater moving with you. As much as we cultivate an inner life, we also have to step out of it. We need experiences that bring us fully back into the physical world. Maybe that's going out and dancing all night, maybe it's a long walk. For me, it's always been fishing, and more recently, DIY projects. I love renovating, repairing, decorating. And I taught myself via YouTube over the last few years how to do these things. And I find real joy in it because it brings me back into my body. Just this weekend, I've been renovating the nursery in preparation for the arrival of our daughter. And while I was sanding, lifting, painting, and cutting, I wasn't analysing my emotional life. I was simply present in the moment, in the physical. And that matters too. Because sometimes we need a break from the inner world. It's all about balance, time for practice, time for sitting in the power, time for reflection and contemplation, but also time to be in the physical world, with people, with life. I, for one, don't believe a cloistered withdrawn existence, rejecting the physical world in favor of a purely contemplative life is what most of us are meant for. Some are called to it, and there's definitely a beauty in that. But many of the spiritual figures I admire were deeply engaged with life. They lived, worked, connected, struggled, celebrated, as well as having a deep and rich inner life. So it's really important that you don't approach development as performance. But instead, as a student, you accept that it's difficult. You accept that you won't get everything right. In fact, you accept that you'll get many things wrong. But as you keep going, something begins to change. When you allow yourself to return to a normal contact after all that inner work, after the struggle, the refining, the honing, you find that your following becomes deeper, more stable, more consistent. Consistency doesn't arrive quickly, it's earned through time and attention. But you begin to notice it, you begin to feel the shift, and your mediumship starts to move somewhere with direction, with purpose. If you'd like to walk this path with me beyond the podcast, you can join my weekly mailing list at spirit-talk.online. Each week I share a reflection, something thoughtful to sit with, and something to support your inner life and your mediumship as it unfolds. And if you'd like to go further still, Spirit Talk Plus is where we meet for monthly live talks, guided practices, and deeper conversations that allow these ideas to be explored more fully and more slowly. You can find both at spirit-talk.online. So thank you for listening, and until next time, take care and stay curious.