Contacting Spirit: How to Contact Your Spirit Guide
Spirit guides are kindred souls that aid us from the other side. Use these tips to connect with your spirit guides. Learning to recognize the signs and various ways our guides communicate with us can deepen our connection with our intuition and spirit.
A Ritual to Contact Your Spirit Guides
When it comes to opening up a channel to communicate with your guides, you’ll want to make sure you’re investing in your spiritual well-being. Your psychic abilities are a muscle you flex. Are you doing the necessary care to strengthen this part of your being? Are you incorporating your intuition into your daily routine?
There are countless ways to build a connection and start accessing your guides. Journaling with your guides in mind is one way. Making an effort to be more present in your daily life and open to receiving symbols and signs from your guide is another.
Kaitlyn Graña (they/them), spiritual educator and advisor, offers a ritual that can be used to open up the channel with your guides.
What You’ll Need:
- Soap
- Water
- White candle
“Your body is the first altar, which means that your guides are always with you. If you are ready to get in touch with your spirit guides, begin by washing your hands well,” Graña says. “Take a seat at your desk or the kitchen table, and set out a glass of water to your right and light a white candle to your left. Take a few deep breaths, relax your shoulders and your jaw. When you are ready, say out loud: ‘I [say your name here], desire connection with the benevolent spirit guides and guardians who are entrusted with my care. I thank you for all that you have done for me in this lifetime and in timelines beyond. I ask that you please share your wisdom, guidance and truth with me, through both the shadows and the light. I desire to know you more, and I thank you for all that you reveal to me, in Divine timing.’”
Don’t be afraid to adjust the language, Graña adds, use your intuition and speak from your heart and what feels more aligned to you. After you’ve completed this ritual, it’s time to start talking! “Talk to them about your life, talk to them about your struggles, share your questions, share your joys,” they add. “New practitioners often struggle with feeling like what they have to say isn’t ‘important enough’ for their spirits. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Your guides want to hear all of it—the good, bad, mundane, and fantastic.”
Don’t forget to thank your spirits before you close out the ritual for their time, energy and investment in your care. Graña adds that it’s important to “extinguish the candle, and pour the water into a thirsty plant. After this ritual, you can call upon your spirits anytime, anywhere.” You’ve opened communication in an intentional way and, remember, your guides are always with you. You can talk to them in the shower, when you walk your dog, or even as you drift off to sleep.
If you don’t receive a message back right away from your guides, don’t panic. “More often than not, the spirits listen to our questions and petitions as we offer them, but their responses come later—usually like an “aha!” moment as we are going about our day,” they say. “At first, it will probably feel a lot like talking to yourself. This is normal! Spirit communication is a muscle whose strength and accuracy we build up over time. The more you practice, the more you talk to them, the easier it becomes to recognize their messages.”
How to Use Your Dreams to Contact Your Guides
Another way to tap into messages and symbols from your guides is through dreamwork. Dreams serve as a portal to our subconscious and can provide a direct link to our spirit guides.
“Dreamwork is one of the absolute best ways to connect with your spirit guides, including your deities, ancestors, angels, inner archetypes, and more,” Captolia, a brand strategist, spirit medium, and biz psychic for witches, says. “Spirit contact through the dream realm is powerful—and your spirit guides love to connect with you through the symbolism in your dreams.” You can set an intention before you go to bed that you’d like to connect with your guides, Captolia adds, and pair it with “a dream herb like mugwort, valerian, or blue lotus to enhance your spirit contact capabilities while you dream!”
Similar to dreamwork, another way to facilitate a bond with our spirit guides is through astral travel, which you can achieve through trance and meditation work. Captolia names this as one of her personal favorite ways to “connect with and receive messages from the dead and the spirits of passed on loved ones. You can reach them by imagining yourself stepping into a doorway and through the astral pipeline to the psychic world of your spirit guides (like their spirit home), or by inviting them into *your* world to connect.”
Signs Your Spirit Guide Is Talking to You
- Sensing a presence
- Recognizing repeated symbolism
- Angel numbers
- Profound messages in your dreams
Our guides communicate with us in every way they possibly can. They’re very mindful to send messages that will stand out to us and light up an inner knowing within us. Graña reminds us that, while guides often communicate psychically, we don’t need to be a psychic medium to receive messages from them.
“Guides love to speak with us through our physical world all of the time! Their messages can come through the people we interact with, the words on a local billboard, a song that comes on while you’re in the supermarket, a line from a movie you’re watching, a passage in a book,” they say. “You know when it’s your guides rather than, say, your anxiety because the messages of your benevolent spirits do not come with an emotion attached to them. It is simply a knowing.”
And don’t forget to pay attention to your dreams! Don’t limit yourself to what your guide might show up as either. “Through dreaming, you can usually tell when a spirit guide is talking to you when you literally come into contact with a being in your dreams,” Captolia says. “Perhaps an animal, a person, or an energetic entity. I find that spirit can be quite direct in their dream communication. They can speak right to you. It’s not always just symbols. If you can practice lucid dreaming, you can consciously call in your guides during your dreams.”
If you begin to hone your lucid dreaming skills, the ability to consciously recognize you’re dreaming and take control of the dream, you can make literal magic happen. “In doing so, I’ve received whole ritual and protection spell instructions, as well as ingredients from my patron Deity Hekate,” she says. “I conducted the spell in my dream, and then replicated it in my waking life!”
FAQs
Do I have a spirit guide?
Yes, you have a spirit guide! Whether you’ve established contact or recognized signs yet, you certainly are connected to entities from the other side. Some guides have been with us since birth and others enter our lives at specific times when we need their specific skill sets and guidance most.
Does everyone have a spirit guide?
Everyone has spirit guides. Spirit guides come in many different types of form—from angels to deceased loved ones to archangels and animals, we all enter this life with a spiritual team who has our best interests at heart.
What do spirit guides look like?
Spirit guides are unique to each individual. We’re better able to understand the signs and symbolism linked with our guides over time as we deepen our connection with them. For instance, if you see a hummingbird outside the morning after a loved one has passed, you may start to associate that animal as a hello from that loved one or guide. Recognizing the timing of when hummingbirds show up in your life and connecting it with what you’re thinking about, talking about, or what themes you are currently working through is key to deciphering messages. Spirit guides can come in all shapes, sizes, and forms.
What is my spirit guide’s name?
The more you invest in your relationship with your spirit guides, the easier it will be to find out what their name(s) are. “The best way to find out is to take the time to ask them! Ask them, and trust the first name that comes to you upon asking,” Graña says, adding that your guides want to make it as easy as possible for you. “They will reach for a name that already is present within your consciousness, a name they know you will recognize and understand.”
The portal and power of lucid dreaming can also lead you to an awareness of your guides’ names. “If you can break into a lucid dream, you can ask your spirit guides their names directly by asking ‘who are you?’ or ‘what is your name?’ You can offer the guide a piece of paper and ask them to write it,” Captolia says. “You can also ask to receive their name in your waking life.” When in doubt, she adds, you can also try a variety of other divination tools “like holding a pendulum over the alphabet, automatic writing, or a good ole fashioned Ouija board.”
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