Cosmic girl

Clairvoyant and psychic, Lisa Andreou, has 25 years in the industry up her sleeve, but she first discovered her abilities as a young child.

"I've always been connected to spirits even from a very young age. The earliest memory would've been maybe age six or seven," she says. "Back then I thought they were just imaginary friends and that was very normal to me and I spent endless hours just alone, really isolated from other kids because I found more comfort and connection in connecting with my spirit friends. As I got older my abilities increased and when I became a teenager my abilities scared me," she tells.

"You're sort of conditioned to believe that that sort of stuff is not right, and so I started to question my sanity basically. But nevertheless I just went on a journey to discover more because I wanted to understand myself and through understanding myself I nurtured my abilities, refined them, and it sort of just happened from there."

While her psychic abilities came naturally Ms Andreou says she still had to learn how to refine and control them.

"Every single person has a psychic ability in some way, shape or form, they're just not aware of them and they don't know how to develop them because it's something that's not really discussed," she says.

Ms Andreou, who performs spiritual readings of all kinds, says she relies on her abilities of seeing (clairvoyance), knowing (claircognizance), and feeling (clair sensing).

"I gave up using tarot cards many, many years ago. I'm purely psychic now. For me it's clearer without cards," she says.

While Ms Andreou doesn't ordinarily work with spirits in the way of dead people, this is hardly the line of work that you could call predictable. "I have had clients that come in for a normal reading and a loved one will appear to me, that can sometimes happen as well," she says. Ms Andreou says clients are often amazed at the level of detail her readings uncover.

"The messages I receive are quite clear, they're very detailed and I usually touch very deep issues that the people coming to see me haven't discussed with anyone ever in their life. So they're quiet amazed at how much detail I can bring up from their past," she says.

And the past can be essential to resolving issues in the present, Ms Andreou says.

"Sometimes bringing up information from the past is really important to understanding the present circumstances and why we're going through the things we're going through, and how we can use that to create change for the future," she says. "During past life readings we can go into past lives and see the connections and people from that lifetime and see how that affects us in our current life. That can give us a really clear insight towards specific patterns we're continuously repeating in this life and can help us understand and become aware of how to break those patterns and move forward in life."

The current psychic trend is for soul readings, Ms Andreou says. "A soul reading is quite an insightful experience. I connect with the person's higher self and through that connection and the connection with my guides, I allow them to get a sense of who they are spiritually as a soul and understand their life lessons, their purpose, their karmic obligations in life, and where they need to be at," she says.

A sense of disconnection is glaringly evident in modern life, Ms Andreou says.

"I'm finding, especially over the last ten years, people are really struggling with who they are. There's a lot more confusion that's affecting humanity at this time as well. People who have been completely in control and successful are finding all of a sudden that it doesn't matter to them and they're really at a loss," she says.

"I get a lot of business people, very successful people in life that have really just resigned themselves to failure over the last few years and they can't understand why it's all happening. My understanding of this is people really need to get back to the source of themselves, which is their spirit, in order to find peace so they can actually live a happy and comfortable life."

Ms Andreou describes her business in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, as "a place where somebody can come to not only discover themselves through the ways of spirits, but also to discover themselves through holistic therapy".

Ms Andreou offers holistic counselling, art intuitive therapy, meditation, yoga, and holistic beauty therapy. She also runs classes and courses for people interested in developing their own psychic or spiritual abilities.

"I can switch my abilities on and off and that's why I encourage people who want to develop spiritually or psychically to do a development course because by understanding how the energy works you can then control the energy," she says.