We are familiar with our biological, physical senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell etc. But what about your non-physical senses, your intuitive senses? You’ve probably heard the terms: clairvoyant, clairsentient, clairaudient, claircognizant? But what do they mean to you? Many people associate these terms with psychics and mediums, but that’s not what they are. I’m not too fond of the word psychic because it puts everything under one roof. Just because I can bend spoons with my mind doesn’t mean I can predict the future. (I can’t really bend spoons with my mind.)

Our ‘clairs’ are our intuitive senses.

Anyway, our ‘clairs’ are our intuitive senses. They are not about whether we communicate with spirit, foretell the future, read minds or sense omens. These are about how we receive intuitive, insightful information. It’s not even about where we receive that information from, whether it’s our own higher self or gut instinct, a spirit guide or something else. It’s simple how we receive it. Just like our sense of hearing has nothing to do with whether the music comes from the TV, the radio, or your next-door neighbour singing in the bathtub. We may each have different dominant physical senses. Equally, we can each have different dominant intuitive senses.

Our Intuitive Senses aren’t about what we perceive but how we perceive it.

To be clairvoyant isn’t strictly to be able to see spirits. It is merely about having an intuitive eye. Someone who is Clairaudient has an intuitive ear. Clairsentience is all about intuitive feelings. Claircognizance is an intuitive knowing about something. These senses don’t belong only to the psychics and mediums. Not at all; they are no more unique to a psychic or medium than having arms and legs. Intuition, instinct, insight belong to all beings, as do all the intuitive senses. But like many things, we tend to favour certain senses over others.

Find out how you perceive intuitive information!

You are intuitive; there is no question of that. The only problem is how much you pay attention to it. Knowing your dominant sense(s) can help you learn to recognise your intuition, trust in it more and understand what intuiting method best suits you. In NLP neuro-linguistic programming, a questionnaire was developed to help people learn their preferred way of receiving information. In NLP, the results allow us to understand better communication, use of language, and ways to study and learn. I’ve noticed that this also gives us an idea of our dominant intuitive sense and can provide some valuable spiritual insights. I created a version of the quiz online for you to take to use the results to support your spiritual and intuitive development. You’ll find the link at the bottom of the article.

Here’s some insight into how you can use the quiz results to develop your intuitive senses.

In NLP, your preferred system may be one of four, and you can probably guess how they fit with the four ‘clairs’. Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, Digital (the last one might confuse you, but you’ll get it by process of elimination.) Of course, we don’t fit neatly into one box. It gives us a general idea, knowing that some things will always be contextual, and occasionally these quizzes won’t suit someone well. Please take it will a pinch of curiosity. You may also find you have more than one dominant sense or that you are relatively even. If so, it’s a sign that you are a good all-rounder. In the results, the higher the number, the stronger the sense.

We will and should use all our senses, the physical and non-physical.

My dominant senses are kinaesthetic and digital; visual is relatively high, but auditory is incredibly low. The latter is not surprising as my physical hearing is poor. Just because a sense is low on the scoreboard doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t use it. We will and should use all our senses, the physical and non-physical.

Let’s look at what we can determine from each of the senses.

Visual – Clairvoyant

Visuals receive information through what they see. You can look at a person and get a sense of whether you like them, feel safe etc. Visuals get a lot of insight from appearances, whether that is what someone wears, how some decorates their house. You probably take a fair bit of pride in how you look and present yourself to others.

Clairvoyance means you may be more prone to see a spirit, see auras and energy, find your eyes drawn to people, places, or things that need your attention in some way. If you choose a crystal, your eyes will guide you to the best one. If you are doing healing work on someone, your eyes will guide you to areas of need. Any intuitive technique that involves the use of the outer or inner eye will work well for you. Guided Journeys and meditations that are visual will be more suited to you.

You may be someone who sees lovely images and colours when you meditate. It’s the intuitive sense most people want to have, and if that’s you, consider yourself lucky. That’s not to say that the other senses are any less important or valuable. It’s just one of those things where people tend to want to ‘see’ rather than hear, feel, or know. Hence the commonly used phrase I’ll believe it when I see it. Visual divination tools such as oracle cards will also work well for you. Activities that involve the use of imagination or physical sight will support you in developing this sense. Taking up a hobby such as art or creating mandalas will help you.

Auditory – Clairaudience

You are likely to have a keen sense of sound. You probably enjoy nature sounds or music, or both. If clairaudience is your more dominant intuitive sense, then you’ll pick up information from others based on the tone and cadence of someone’s voice. What will go unnoticed in a subtle change of tone by many will be picked up by you.

Automatic writing, chanting and mantras used for meditation, listening to healing sounds are things that will help you develop this intuitive sense. You may also find you take to these things more quickly than others. Learning to quieten the many internal voices will be essential so that you can begin to distinguish the quieter, softer voice of your intuition. If you’ve ever worked with a pendulum, you may find when you ask the question that your intuitive voice responds before the pendulum does, pay attention to that voice.

Kinaesthetic – Clairsentient

It’s all about feelings, many kinesthetics and clairsentients are keenly aware of how they feel and how others feel, and it’s the way a person feels, their vibes that you are likely to tune into to determine how you feel about the person. Quite often, it is this group that will belong to the strongest of empaths. Being aware of your physical and energetic boundaries will be vital for you. To choose the feelings and energetic vibes, you tune into and what you don’t is necessary for your wellness and your ability to discern the information that is useful and important over the general chaos of vibes surrounding us all, all the time. You may find you need more physical space around you as your sensitivity and spirituality develops. You may feel a person’s aura if they are too close to you intruding on your aura.

If you do any healing work, you are likely to feel the energy with your hands and body, feel auras, chakras and the flow or lack of flow in the energy of a person. You may also be much more tuned in to your body’s feelings and experience a mirroring effect whereby you feel in your own body what is going on in someone else, don’t hold onto what isn’t yours. You may find that dowsing is an excellent tool for you to use. If you like working with crystals or oracle cards, you’ll probably do better if you feel the crystal or card’s energy rather than focusing on appearance.

Like an auditory clairaudient person, you may enjoy sounds but more for the feeling of the vibration than the tone. In this way, working with something like a drum will appeal or deep, resonant chanting, or the gong. For meditation, these vibrations may help you, but also, any mindfulness technique that uses the body or your sense of touch will be helpful and likely to work well for you.

Digital – Claircognizant

You know stuff. The problem you are likely to face is that your head will get in the way of your intuition. If this is you, look at your next dominant sense and use that to support this one. That will help you get out of your head more, to create space for the knowing and wisdom to come through. Claircognizance is a superb sense if you can master your head. A claircognizant may find that insight seems to appear out of nowhere. You are the stream of consciousness people and can find yourself downloading a ton of inspiration, seemingly out of nowhere.

Digital/claircognizant people find meditation hard. Again, looking to your next dominant sense will help you find techniques and exercises to quieten the mind and allow those downloads of wisdom and insight to occur. Automatic writing can be helpful for you and anything that is a right-brain activity.

Otherwise, it’s a sense of knowing something. You won’t be aware of how you know or where you got that knowledge in the first place. It can certainly seem like it’s not coming from you. I’ve read things I wrote years ago, and I can’t believe I wrote them, except for it’s my handwriting. Digital people tend to be logical, over thinkers, so any technique that helps you calm and still your mind and connects you more with your body will be helpful.

No matter your dominant sense, all these senses are available to you, don’t ignore something just because it’s not connected to your prevailing sense. As with many things in life, balance is beneficial, so work with all the senses. The idea of identifying your dominant sense is that it will be the building block to help build your confidence in your intuition. It will provide you with something you can always turn to when you need some insight during critical moments in your life.

Here’s the link to the quiz: NLP Rep Systems

When you get your results, have another scan of the above and let me know your thoughts or questions in the comments below.