An array of options for hot tea and a burning fire await anyone who is interested in finding out the intimate details of their soul, as read by psychic Miwa Linehan.
Linehan’s approach is not characterized by the traditional stereotypes that surround psychic readings. There is no crystal ball or incense burning in her traditionally decorated apartment. This is not about ghosts lingering around trying to spook the living, but rather the spirit interacting with spirits both living and dead.
Growing up in Japan and America, Linehan said she has always had a close connection with spirits.
“Socially, in Japan, it’s not necessarily a stigmatism to see ghosts, to see spirits,” Linehan said. “So as a little kid I was very encouraged to see those ghosts, those spirits. When my grandfather died around when I was four or five-years-old my family really encouraged that I still talked to my grandfather.”
Linehan said that around age nine, she lost touch with this particular spiritual connection. A CU alum with a degree in electrical engineering, she said her ability to see spirits returned her sophomore year of college. Her ability to see ghosts suddenly turned on again, and completely freaked her out.
“I flipped out, did not leave my house for a month, did not know what to do with myself. I felt like I was on a really bad acid trip,” Linehan said. “Most people as a spirit aren’t necessarily in their bodies, they’re off somewhere else.”
Linehan said all living things have a spirit and an aura radiating off of them. She added that seeing all of these things can be overwhelming, especially since ghosts and spirits have follow such a negative stigma in today’s modern culture.
Linehan searched through the phone book looking for someone to help her understand these intense visuals. She found a psychic named Mary Bell Nyman who taught her how to turn the visuals on and off at her leisure.
Nyman taught Linehan psychic tools that were originally developed by Lewis S. Bostwick in the 1970s. Bostwick founded the Berkeley Psychic Institute and his observations have served psychics since there publication. These tools were a combination of his studies from traveling around the world interacting with different shamans, psychics, and healers. Bostwick used his data to come up with different techniques to teach people how to control and correctly interpret energy.
Nyman then taught Linehan how to teach these tools to others. Just like Nyman taught her how to turn this power off, Linehan teaches people how to turn their power on. Linehan said anybody has the potential to see spirits and that it takes practice to develop their psychic abilities.
She said that the characteristics of these spirits depend on their level of spiritual development.
“A low level spirit is going to maybe look like a ball of light. A ghost and that would be a spirit not fully integrated, [is] scattered, [it] would look like a wispy trail with maybe kind of like eyeballs,” Linehan said.
The more developed a spirit is, the clearer its image.
“Like Buddha looks very clear,” Linehan said.
Linehan said an aura is like a little bubble around you that also depends on your spiritual state. It might be all the way around you, partially around you, or maybe has holes in it.
“In general it looks like a little cloud around you with a color or hue to it, or a few colors,” Linehan said.
After teaching with Nyman for a couple years, Linehan soon started teaching advanced classes for graduate students. Soon, her teachings blossomed into Boulder Psychic Institute, where she teaches students how to access their intuitive abilities at her home in North Boulder. She does readings during the day and teachings at night.
There is a wide variety of methods psychics use. Some psychics’ purpose is to just redefine reality. An example would be one who literally tears up a card and puts it back together again in an instant. Some people seek out a psychic because they need advice, or they want to see what their future entails.
There are psychics that will do that for customers, but Linehan said she wants to give her “readees,” as Linehan calls them, the tools necessary to make their own decisions. She said she doesn’t want to get mixed up in a game of karma.
“If you don’t feel like it was a legitimate experience then it’s because you chose the wrong psychic. For example, the people that are going to come to me are people that want to learn and grow and become centered and find their own truth,” Linehan said. “I’m not going to tell them what to do.”
Lauren Triche, a 19-year-old sophomore anthropology major, said she has a friend that claims he can read auras, although she said she doesn’t know if she would ever participate in a psychic reading.
She said she believes in living in the moment and doesn’t really want to know about her future.
“I think of like when you go to New Orleans and you’re walking around the French Quarter and you see all these tables of people with cards out and they always have weird clothes on and stuff,” Triche said.
Triche said she thinks it would be beneficial for some people because they’re so unsure about which path to take, and they truly believe in the advice they receive from these fortune tellers.
Other students, like Andrew Applekamp, an 18-year-old freshman open-option major, said he would definitely participate in a psychic reading. He thinks it would be interesting to hear what they have to say but said that one has to take the readings with a grain of salt.
“I think it’s a very vague overview, is what I’ve heard. I think they give a list of basic thoughts and then repeat that to the general public,” Applekamp said.
Steve Imeraj, a 19-year-old open option major, said he agrees with Applekamp.
“I think people hear what they want to hear, if they tell you general stuff and its good then you’ll accept it,” Imeraj said.
Linehan said she sees the benefit in getting readings because they help you become more aware of themselves. She also says everyone has the capacity to see spirits and to become psychic.
A lot of people are so unclear in their lives because so many people are co-mingled with one another. Linehan said the way to become clear is to practice these tools that will allow one to distinguish their energies with others’.
“A lot of people feel things, feelings are very misleading, and 80 to 90 percent of the time what you’re feeling is someone else’s emotion,” Linehan said. “You take a class like this so you can start to clean out others people’s energy from your space.”
She said this explains why so many people have such a hard time making decisions, because other people’s spirits are influencing the choices they make rather than going by their own instincts.
“I don’t see energy as being positive or negative,” Linehan said. ” There is no dark force or good force. There are appropriate places for energy and inappropriate places for energy. The only appropriate place for your energy is in your space. The only appropriate place for my energy is in my space.”
During a reading with Linehan, one can expect an analysis of the energy surrounding the readee, including past lives, spirits, and aura.
For those who want to learn how to become a psychic, Lineman teaches the skills of meditation and offers tools to make one centered and focused.
“You’re in the spirit world all the time, there is no difference. Right now this is very much spiritual and physical,” Linehan said.
For more information: http://www.boulderpsychicinstitute.org/.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Amanda Dovel at Amanda.dovel@colorado.edu.
