What Is Sitting in the Power Really For?

If you're developing your mediumship, you've almost certainly been told to sit in the power. It's one of the most universally promoted practices in mediumship development. Every circle teaches it. Every book describes it. Every teacher says it's essential. The idea is that you spend time, often daily, sitting quietly and raising your vibration so that you can reach a particular state from which mediumship becomes possible.

I'm going to say something here that's slightly heretical in my own field.

I don't really believe in the power as a state you sit your way into. I've come to think the whole framing is overdone, and that for a lot of developing mediums, "sitting in the power" becomes another thing to chase rather than a useful practice. The good news is, you can let some of that go.

This isn't me dismissing the practice as worthless. I want to be careful with this, because there are genuine benefits to sitting quietly with yourself, and those benefits matter. But I think the way the practice is sold and taught creates a kind of magical thinking around it that genuinely holds developing mediums back. Let me explain what I mean.

What I was originally taught

When I first started working with spirit, my teachers kept talking to me about powering up, being in the power, sitting in the power. It sounded magnificent. I couldn't wait to learn how to be in my power. I imagined this special, expanded, electrified state where everything would suddenly be clear and the mediumship would just flow.

I sat in that practice for ages. Powered myself up, expanded my energy, got bigger and brighter, all of the things you're told to do. I tried to manufacture the state daily. Sometimes I'd feel something shift; often I wouldn't. I'd then wonder whether I was doing it wrong, or whether I just couldn't feel it the way other mediums claimed to.

Over the years, I started to notice something inconvenient. The state I was meant to be reaching seemed to arrive much more reliably when I was actually working with spirit than when I was deliberately trying to summon it. Sitting in the power on my own felt mostly like sitting quietly. Standing on stage and starting to work felt like the actual thing.

That's when I started to question the framing.

What I now think is going on

Here's the version of it I've come to.

I don't think there's a special, separate state called "the power" that you get into before mediumship can happen. I think there's a state that emerges naturally when you start working with spirit, as the blend between you and them deepens. The power comes through the doing, not before it.

This is a really important distinction. The standard teaching has the order: sit in the power, then work. My experience says the order is: start working, and the power arrives through the working.

If that's right, then trying to manufacture the state before you start is at best unnecessary and at worst counterproductive. You're chasing something that comes naturally if you just begin.

I'll give you a concrete example of why I think this. If you imagine me trying to power up before a stage demonstration, with an audience finding their seats, the lights coming on, someone introducing me, you can see immediately that it's not feasible. There isn't a quiet half-hour to sit on a cushion. There isn't time to expand my energy in the time-honoured fashion. I have to start where I am, in a slightly chaotic, slightly nervous state, and trust that the power will come through the work itself.

And it does. Every time. The connection deepens through the doing. The blend builds as I work. The state arrives once I'm in it, not before.

If the practice is supposed to be a precondition for mediumship, my own working life shouldn't function. It does. So either the practice isn't actually the precondition, or I'm doing it without knowing, in seconds rather than minutes. Either way, the heavy version of "you must sit in the power before you can work" isn't quite right.

The anticipatory trap

Here's the bit I see developing mediums get stuck in most.

When you've been told that you need to be in the power before you can work, you start watching for it. Am I in it yet? Is this what it feels like? Is this enough? Maybe a bit more breathing. Have I expanded enough? Should it feel more electric than this?

It's exactly the same trap as trying to meditate and constantly asking yourself whether you're meditating. The watching for it is what stops it from happening. You can't drop into a state when you're standing outside it monitoring for arrival.

So instead of the practice being useful, it becomes a barrier. Developing mediums end up convinced they can't work because they haven't reached the right state. They sit in their power for longer and longer trying to manufacture something specific. They build up an internal story that mediumship is locked behind a particular door that they have to find the right key for.

There's no locked door. There's no special state. There's just you, and you can start the work whenever you decide to start it.

What there genuinely is

I want to be clear that I'm not dismissing everything about the practice. There is something real being pointed at; I just think it's being mislabelled.

What's real is the power of being present with yourself. Sitting quietly. Knowing who you are. Being strong in yourself. Being unapologetic for the fact of you. That kind of inner steadiness is a genuine thing, and it does support mediumship, alongside supporting basically every other part of being alive.

What's also real is that you are a spirit too. There's a part of you that's eternal, that's already part of the spirit world, that's valuable and wise. Allowing that part of you to be present in your work is meaningful. But noticing it and allowing it takes seconds, not a thirty-minute breathing practice. It's not a state you have to laboriously build. It's something already there, that you can simply remember.

What's real, too, is the value of having a settled relationship with your own internal space. Knowing what your nervous system feels like. Recognising your own emotional baseline. Being able to notice when something extra arrives. These are useful skills, and the practice of sitting quietly is one way of developing them.

So the practice isn't worthless. There's just no special separate state called "the power" that you reach through it. What you reach is yourself. That's enough.

What I do instead

If I'm not sitting in the power before I work, what am I doing?

Sitting quietly for a moment. Feeling whatever I'm feeling, including the nerves, and not trying to dispel them. Acknowledging the fear, choosing to work anyway, pushing through it.

I often use affirmations, which are essentially soothing self-talk to remind me what I know. My one before a demonstration is "I am a phenomenal medium. I get evidence with ease and clarity." I say it to myself on repeat, settling myself, getting ready. It's not summoning a state. It's reminding myself of who I am while my nervous system catches up.

And then I start. The power arrives through the starting. The blend builds as I begin to receive. The work generates the state, rather than the state being a prerequisite for the work.

If you've been spending lots of time sitting in the power and feeling like nothing is happening, please consider whether you're chasing a state that was always going to come through the work rather than before it. Stop trying to manufacture the precondition. Start the work. The power, whatever you mean by that word, arrives once you're in motion.

A more honest version of the practice

If you do want to keep some version of sitting in the power as a daily practice, here's what I'd recommend instead of the version usually taught.

Sit quietly with yourself for a few minutes. Not because you need to enter a special state, but because most of us live too noisily and time alone with ourselves is genuinely valuable.

Don't watch for arrival. Don't ask yourself if you're in the power yet. Don't expect anything specific to happen. Just sit, breathe, notice what's actually there.

Allow the part of you that's already spirit to be present, without trying to summon it. Remember it exists. That's enough. The remembering takes a second.

When you're ready to work, just start. Don't wait for a state. Trust that what you need will arrive as you go.

That's a much lighter, less anxious version of the practice, and in my experience it actually produces better readings than the heavier traditional version, because it doesn't load the work with so many preconditions.

Why this matters

This might sound like a small distinction, but I think it has real consequences.

If you believe you need to be in a specific elevated state before you can work, you'll wait for that state. You'll postpone practice readings until you feel ready. You'll cancel demonstrations because you weren't quite there. You'll spend years sitting in the power and wondering why your mediumship isn't progressing.

If you believe the state arrives through the work, you start the work. You take the practice reading even when you're not feeling it. You demonstrate even when you're nervous. You trust the process to generate what you need. Your development accelerates, because you're not waiting for a state that was never going to arrive in advance.

The way we frame a practice shapes how we engage with it. The "you must be in the power" framing creates anxious, anticipatory mediums who hold themselves back. The "the power arrives through the doing" framing creates mediums who just get on with it.

If you're stuck because you can't seem to get into the right state, please consider whether you've been sold a story that doesn't quite match how the work actually unfolds. The state isn't the precondition. The willingness to start is.

A last honest word

I know this is a slightly contrarian post, and I want to be clear about what I'm not saying.

I'm not saying don't ever sit quietly with yourself. I'm not saying spiritual practices are pointless. I'm not saying every teacher who teaches sitting in the power is wrong. I'm saying that the version of the practice I was taught, and that's still taught widely, made the power into a magical separate state, and chasing that state held me back for longer than it should have.

The power is real, in the sense that there's a presence and quality available when you work with spirit. But it's not a state you sit your way into. It's a state that comes through you when you allow yourself to be in motion with spirit, and the allowing takes seconds, not ceremonies.

If you've been working hard at sitting in the power and feeling like nothing's happening, please consider that you might be chasing something that was never the bottleneck. Drop the chase. Start the work. The thing you've been waiting for is on the other side of beginning.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is sitting in the power supposed to do? The standard teaching says it raises your vibration and prepares you for spirit communication by reaching a particular elevated state. In my view, what it actually does, at best, is build familiarity with your own internal space and a quiet relationship with yourself. The idea that it produces a specific separate state required for mediumship doesn't really match how the work unfolds in practice.

Do you have to sit in the power to be a medium? No, in my experience. The connection with spirit deepens through working with them, not through manufacturing a particular state beforehand. You can sit quietly with yourself before you work if it helps you settle, but you don't have to reach a special state for the work to be possible.

Why doesn't sitting in the power seem to work for me? Often because it's been framed as a state you need to summon, and watching for the state stops it arriving. It's the same trap as trying to meditate and constantly asking whether you're meditating. The anticipatory monitoring blocks the very thing you're trying to create. If this is happening to you, you're not failing; the framing is.

What's the difference between sitting in the power and ordinary meditation? In how it's taught, the main difference is intent. Sitting in the power is usually framed as preparing for spirit work. Ordinary meditation is framed as preparing for daily life. In practice, they often look identical from the outside. Quiet time with yourself is useful regardless of what you call it.

What should I do instead of sitting in the power? Sit quietly for a few minutes before you work, not to reach a state but just to settle. Acknowledge your nerves. Remember who you are. Allow the part of you that's already spirit to be present, which takes seconds. Then start the work. The power, in whatever sense the word means, arrives through the working, not before it.

Is it harmful to sit in the power? Not in itself. Quiet time with yourself is good for almost anyone. What's harmful is the belief that you can't work until you've reached a specific state, because that belief postpones practice indefinitely and creates anxiety around the start of every reading. The practice isn't the problem; the framing around it often is.

Do experienced mediums sit in the power before they work? Some do, some don't. Many do something quieter and shorter than the traditional teaching suggests, often just a few moments of settling. If you watch experienced mediums work in unscheduled settings (informal demonstrations, spontaneous readings), they often don't sit in any extended way at all. The state arrives through the work for them too.

Should I stop sitting in the power if I've been told it's essential? You don't have to stop, but you can stop holding it as the gateway you have to pass through. Try working without an extended sit and see what happens. You might find that your mediumship works perfectly well without the elaborate preparation, and that the practice is more useful as a calming ritual than as an actual prerequisite.

If you want to hear more on the practical realities of how mediumship actually works behind the scenes, including the bits where I disagree with how things are traditionally taught, my podcast covers this kind of territory regularly. Worth a listen if you've felt held back by mediumship dogma and want a more honest take.