I'm both a psychic and a yoga teacher, and am wondering what you think about the connection between physical fitness and psychic ability. It seems to me that being healthy and fit would enhance our psychic abilities, just as it enhances every other area of our lives, yet I see many psychics who are riddled with health problems and terribly out of shape. What do you two think?

-Andrea

Dear Andrea,

The strange ancient ritual of the Sin-Eater may help me explain what's happening here. In ancient times, people would place a feast on the body of the departed, for it was thought that the Sin-Eater would come and eat the feast and thus take the sins of the departed soul away.

This guaranteed the departed would go right into Heaven with all his sins forgiven. Though this is a really creepy idea, I think it will help me explain why many psychics are in awful physical and/or mental shape.

Just as modern vampires suck energy from others instead of blood, today's psychics take on the problems and ailments of all the people we read - unless we take proper precautions so that doesn't happen. Most of us do, but some of us don't know how.

The psychics you encounter who suffer from various health conditions are the ones who weren't taught to protect themselves against taking on the problems and issues of their clients.

For most of us psychics alive and working today, no one in the family was familiar with protection rituals because psychic ability was frowned upon by most organized religions and banned completely from others. Those of us who came into our abilities in the sixties had to discover our own protections, and some of us did better with this than others.

Every psychic has to find a personal way to connect, read and help clients and yet keep their problems and illnesses at bay, and this can be harder in some situations than in others.

Sometimes the client comes to us in such a weakened, unhappy state that our hearts reach out before we can take time to protect ourselves. At those times we're vulnerable, and many psychics will choose to take that heavy energy on instead of sending it back to the person suffering. We all do this occasionally whether it's intentional or not.

Even those of us who know better sometimes forget to protect ourselves; everyone gets sick once in a while. Part of being human involves taking on illness to strengthen our immune system. Now that there are vaccines for measles, mumps and chicken pox, people don't get all those childhood diseases. Similarly, we're not as accustomed to fighting off psychic germs as we used to be.

That is changing, however. More and more awareness is coming through now, so I predict that the next generation of psychics will pay as much attention to their physical well-being as they do their psychic abilities.

Fewer of the new kids are going to be plagued by the old ills because they're being taught how to not take on the physical and mental problems of the people they help.

Susyn responds:

Dear Andrea,

You address a very important issue. Having personally experienced both sides of these health issues and how they affect our abilities, I can clear some of this up for you.

I struggled with an eating disorder most of my life, and it wasn't until I got a handle on it that my psychic gifts began to emerge.

I had been fascinated with psychic phenomenon from an early age, but I grew up in a time when those sorts of activities were discouraged. I feel there was a direct link between that repression and the appearance of my eating disorder.

I encountered my first psychic experience at the age of seven, and by the age of eight, I was putting on extra weight. By the time I went to high school, I weighed well over 200 pounds.

I have heard this referred to as psychic puffing. In an effort to squelch or protect our gifts, many of us have a tendency to bury or hide them behind walls of extra weight or other bad health practices.

We must keep in mind that many of us had negative experiences as psychics in past lives, and unless healed and released, the memories of our suffering carried over into this lifetime.

If we were psychics, astrologers or witches in past lives, many of us were run out of town, imprisoned, hung or burned at the stake. That would make anyone think twice about recognizing, exercising or revealing their gifts!

You are correct in saying that the healthier we are, the stronger our spiritual gifts become. Most people have the desire to be healthy and in shape, but are working through their own fears and issues in an effort to reach a point where they can make a commitment to better health and maintain that commitment.

In addition to battling those inner issues, of course, we are all dodging the constant bombardment of food ads, endless encouragement to indulge (Super-size me!), and the misinformation everywhere regarding food, diet and health.

One of the gravest problems is how food producers who are driven by hunger for high profits laden most of what we eat with sugar, antibiotics and hormones. Even when we attempt to eat healthy, there are many hidden poisons in our food that keep us addicted to the very stuff that is making us unwell.

So eating healthy and staying fit is a challenge for all of us, not just people who are obviously struggling with their weight.

It's great that you're leading by example. While you may not be able to help all those psychics who are ailing, you can encourage your clients to replace unhealthy habits with exercise and spiritual practices, and remind them that in doing so, they will gain many physical, emotional, mental and spiritual gifts.