Tarot Tip Tuesdays - Pressure To Perform

Whether you are new to Tarot and in the throes of building a connection with your Tarot cards or an advanced Tarot reader diligently honing your Tarot reading skills, I am putting out a Tarot tip a week to help you to consistently make Tarot a part of your everyday life.

So here goes your Tarot Tip for this Tuesday:

"All too frequently, anxiety crushes not only your spirit and your potential, but your ability to take care of your mind and body." ~ Jonathan Davidson and Henry Dreher, The Anxiety Book: Developing Strength in the Face of Fear


That 9 Of Swords Moment As A Pro Tarot Reader 

A few weeks ago, after working with my intuitive coach, I came face to face with energies from the past that I needed to let go of.   These stemmed from a single fear - the fear of rejection - that had inhibited my growth along my spiritual journey.  Part of this fear of rejection, had sometimes put a lot of pressure on me to "perform" when I did face-to-face readings for clients.  Yes it can happen to anyone regardless of experience or skills.  I wrote a blogpost  about my painful but necessary process of letting go so do let me know if my story resonates with you after you have read it.  Being free from this fear, has allowed me to face my clients with a lot of confidence.  Channeling for them had become effortless because I surrendered my trust to my guides without any fear of rejection. The insights I got from my Tarot cards also became much clearer.

So I thought to dedicate this tuesday's Tarot Tip to anxieties and blockages that you might get when you do face to face readings for clients.  Many might not have a similar experience as I had whereby a past issue got in the way of my readings. However, I could imagine the fear and anxiety for some Tarot readers who could be  "newish" to the experience of doing face to face readings.  Have you ever experienced having sweaty palms, brow knitted in worry, an almost blank mind and the feeling of dread just before meeting a client?  I had experienced all these when I first started out as a professional reader.  Some of these fears and anxieties might be driven by the desire to be absolutely 100% accurate with the insights, the need to deliver a reading that was more compelling than the details behind the breaking news, the fear of dealing with a client's skepticism, or perhaps the fear of forgetting the meaning of the cards.

Frankly, fear and anxieties are so unproductive and can only serve to drain you off your energy which you can otherwise plough into delivering a more meaningful and authentic reading for your clients. The pressure to perform is all in your head.

“Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind.  If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained."  ~ Arthur Somers Roche 

Dealing With Tarot Reading Anxieties 

Here are some ways to help you deal with that pressure to perform in front of your clients.

1) Remind yourself that you are not doing a Tarot reading to entertain or "perform" for a client. You are not a circus act. You are doing a Tarot reading to help guide your client to make the right decisions about his or her life.

2)  Your insights will be  accurate if you learn to trust your intuition.  From my experience, intuition and the cards will never lie.

3) Meditate and ground yourself before and after a reading...ALWAYS. I cannot over emphasize this enough. Grounding yourself helps build a defense against negative energies that can drain you.  It also helps calm your mind, refocus your thoughts and clear the "mental debris" enough to provide you with a clearer vision.  

4) Slow your breath down as you do your reading. This will help give you space to think and feel the situation that your client is in, and the slower pace will also guide you to spend more time connecting the symbols and imagery within the cards to your client's situation.   This also takes the pressure off memorizing the meanings of each card.

5) Be realistic and manage your own expectations. Your clients expect you to deliver authentic readings from the heart that aim to guide them through their issues, and that is your sole purpose as a Tarot reader.  They are not expecting you to wave your wand to remove these issues for them. So do not be pressured by your own erroneous perception of what your purpose as a Tarot reader is.

6) Turn to the Tarot community for support whenever you feel anxious about face to face readings. The members of the Tarot community have thr collective experience to support and advise you.  At some point in their Tarot careers, they were just like you, 

7) If you are dealing with skeptics, remember to come from a place of love and compassion when you deal with them.  They are possibly more anxious than you are because of the challenges that had driven them to call on you for advice in the first place,

8) When you do feel any  blockages at any point during the reading, just slow down, and let the conversation with your client flow freely. You might get additional background information that could form a trigger to provide you with additional insights from the cards.

Most importantly, just have fun when you do face to face readings and treat these sessions like  a casual chit chat over tea with a friend. With time and experience, your 9 of Swords moments will gradually subside.

"Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what may be." ~ John Dryden

May your Tarot cards provide you with a full deck of possibilities throughout your day.

If you like this blogpost, do follow my blog at http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.com and LIKE my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot

About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and an intuitive reader by accident who deploys the combined modalities of a Tarot, Numerology and Astrology overlaid with her Clairvoyant and Clairsentient skills to deliver her readings with authenticity. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is also a certified numerologist.  She is currently running a consultancy based in Singapore called Sun Goddess Tarot,  which provides confidential intuitive readings combining the metaphysical disciplines of Tarot, Numerology and Astrology via face to face and emails as well as readings at corporate and private events and workshops.  A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also a reader for the Free Tarot Network and mentors Tarot protégés on behalf of the American Tarot Association

Website: www.sungoddesstarot.com
Email:  Joanna@sungoddesstarot.com
Facebook:  www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot
Twitter: www.twitter.com/SunGoddessTarot

Building A Relationship With Your Tarot Cards In 3 Simple Ways

Building A Relationship With Your Tarot Cards In 3 Simple Ways

As a Tarot mentor, I always enjoy seeing the excitement registered on the faces of my protégés when they start to learn how to read the Tarot cards. During the mentoring sessions, we would be swapping notes, highlighting observations and sharing insights.  However sometimes, when they get home and attempt to practice a reading on their own, I might get a couple of frantic calls from some of them asking why they had not been able to do an accurate reading or might in some way not feel connected with the cards.

I believe that each Tarot reader has a special relationship with his or her cards.  I have 26 Tarot decks and my relationship with each of them are different.  My working decks ( the decks that I would use to read professionally with clients, are the Radiant Rider Waite updated by Virginisijus Poshkus and the Morgan Greer deck created by Bill Greer and Lloyd Morgan.  Somehow, I get the most insights from these 2 decks and they seem to be “gentler” on my clients because the images are quite easily relatable.  My Tarot of the Holy Light deck is a difficult one to use with my clients because the images though vivid, are not as friendly and the symbols are often more profound for non-Tarot readers to comprehend.  However, the deck is perfect when it comes to readings that I do for myself because I often find different and deeper insights with the symbolisms within each card, every time I use that deck.  

So start a relationship with your Tarot deck the very minute you own one.  Here are 3 very basic ways that you could easily use to build a relationship with your cards.

1. Explore Your Brand New Tarot Deck

When you purchase a new deck or are gifted one, examine the deck from box to cards.  Scrutinize the packaging in detail and take note of how the deck creator had decided to package the deck.  Examine the colours, the texture and the imagery on the box. Which card is featured on the box?  This will help stage an introduction between you and the deck creator. Then explore the imagery, not in too much detail yet, but assess the brush strokes, creative treatment, overall use of colours and fonts used to write the words and numbers on each card. Read the little white book that comes with it and correspond the written card description with what you personally glean with the imagery.  Treat this as your way of saying hello to the deck creator and your desire to get to know him or her better.

2. Pick A Card Du Jour And Meditate On It

Meditate with your Tarot cards each morning.  Start your meditation by breathing in 7 counts and breathing out 7 counts, imagining a white light going from the top of your head, through your forehead,  throat, torso, legs and feet.  Feel the white light pushing the stress and negativity into the ground.   When you are sufficiently calmed and relaxed, shuffle and randomly pick a card.  That would be your ‘card du jour’.  Examine the image within the card, the colours, the characters, the symbols, and imagine the card becoming gradually bigger, till it looks like a doorway.  Visualize yourself walking through that doorway into the card.  When you are “in the presence” of the imagery, notice how it interacts with you, listen to what the image says to you,  talk to it freely and even describe verbally what you are feeling at that point when you see the image and what each symbol, colours and the imagery itself means to you. 

You are strongly advised to note your thoughts down in a journal.  When you think you have already gleaned enough from the cards, turn to “walk out of the card” and ground yourself by being aware of your own surroundings.   

Read the notes in your journal and make a mental note of your observations.  At the end of the day, pick that card again and re-examine it, cross referencing it with the notes in your journal.  Ask yourself at that point, how had events of your day co-relate with the observations you have made of that card earlier in the morning.  What are the lessons learn?  What opportunities did you have which you became more aware of because of your observations about the card.

3.  Write Down Your Tarot-Related Thoughts In A Journal

I am a strong believer of keeping a journal.  I have a hard-copy leather-bound journal custom-made for me as a gift.  However, you can journal your thoughts anywhere that you feel most comfortable with.  Some of my friends do it as blog posts and one of them update his notes in his IPhone daily.  So what do you write in your journal now that you have gotten one?  You are advised to note down everything you see and feel about your Tarot card daily.  This is the best opportunity to write down your reflections when you pick a card a day.  Your reflections are your own, there are no rules to developing these reflections, but here are some tips to watch out for besides the colour, imagery and symbols within the cards:

i)              If you have picked a court card, note the personality and characteristics of the card and reference it to someone you already know, a family, a friend, or even a celebrity.  I used to call the King of Wands “Donald Trump”.

ii)            If you have picked a Major Arcana card, note down your observations about the card and reference it to someone or an event in your life that you are familiar with.  I saw the Empress as Mum and her generous nature of nurturing, loving and giving her family members the best of everything.  I likened the Tower to the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11.

Constant Practice Helps

Different Tarot readers build their relationship with their Tarot cards in different ways.  There are no hard and fast rules.  Ultimately, they are your Tarot cards, your reading style and your personal relationship with them.  As with most relationships, yours with your Tarot cards can only be built over time.   You should solder that relationship by using your Tarot cards for regular practice readings.  Practice your readings with your family, friends and self.  Start with a 1- card pick, then move on to a 3-card spread and when you become even more confident, you can expand the reading to a 5-10 card spread.  By that time, you would already have that strong relationship with your Tarot cards that will allow you to gain even better insights with each reading.

Below this post is a picture of my Tarot journal and sitting on it are some cards picked from the Goddess Tarot deck by Kris Waldherr.


About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is also a certified numerologist.  She is currently running a Tarot consultancy based in Singapore called Sun Goddess Tarot,  which provides confidential intuitive readings combining the metaphysical disciplines of Tarot, Numerology and Astrology via face to face and emails as well as readings at corporate and private events and workshops.  A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also a reader for the Free Tarot Network and mentors Tarot protégés on behalf of the American Tarot Association

Website:www.sungoddesstarot.com
Email: Joanna@sungoddesstarot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot
Twitter:www.twitter.com/SunGoddessTarot