This is something students & prospective students sometimes ask me.

The answer is that there is no set time period for developing your abilities, but there is an ideal time period, to avoid imbalance in your life. That’s what I’m going to talk about in this article.

Developing your abilities overnight

We all have latent intuitive abilities. And there’s actually two ways your latent abilities can develop. One way is that you have something happen to you that changes the way your nervous system is functioning, pretty much overnight, and that sparks the development of your abilities. So that is something to happens TO you, and it is usually a trauma or losing a loved to death. (In this article: Can Extreme Stress & Trauma Awaken Psychic Abilities?, I explain why traumas cause a psychic awakening, and in this article: Psychic Abilities Opening up After a Death in the Family, I explain why having a loved one pass away, can also cause your gifts to open up.)

So if your abilities develop that way, that’s something that can happen very quickly, and for some people it can be quite dramatic too. So, you can go from not having any or much ability at all, to suddenly being able to channel deceased people. And it happens passively — you don’t have to do much to make it happen.

And then there’s another way to open up your abilities:

Active psychic development

This is where you actively take steps to open up your psychic gifts, and this is more work than having your gifts open up passively.

Ideally, going down this route will take you 2-3 months at a minimum, from having no discernible psychic ability to being able to channel.

The reason I think it should take weeks and not days is because a path of psychic development is composed of 3 stages, and you have to move through all of those 3 stages in that time period.

The first stage is about laying the groundwork for connecting with your Higher Self and Spirit Guides. If you are a total beginner, this stage takes a few weeks at least, and probably longer. As part of this stage, you need to identify your strongest gifts and you also need to sensitize them. In addition, you’ll need to work on areas like putting yourself into the alpha state at will, and raising your vibration.

The second stage happens only when you have put in the ground work. This one is about finding a technique for connecting with Spirit that utilises your gifts, and having several go’s at it. Often you won’t get any guidance at this point (but you shouldn’t let that deter you). And if you’re unsuccessful in this stage, you may need to try on multiple techniques for size. This stage usually takes at least a few weeks.

The third stage is when you’ve found the technique that works for you and you have managed to make a connection with Spirit. This is where you start receiving guidance and making real progress, however you need to practise a lot in order to hone your gifts. It’s a bit like getting fit —you need to keep developing your intuitive muscle. Don’t let it atrophy at this stage, after all of the groundwork you have put in. This stage also takes at least a few weeks, probably longer, at a bare minimum.

So in conclusion, expect it to take several weeks or months, not days.

I have a psychic development course for beginners called Intuitive Awakening. It is a self study course so students can take as long as they like to work through it, but I recommend it’s done over a period of 12-13 weeks, and the reason for that is that experience has shown me that students need at least 13 weeks to pass through all of those three stages. People who power through the 13 week course in a short space of time usually end up feeling short-changed because they are not giving themselves the time and space needed for the whole process to unfold.

Staying grounded

And then there’s the issue of grounding. Sometimes people who open up their psychic abilities really fast are spending a lot of time on it over a short period of time. I don’t recommend this. It’s much better to spend an hour or two a day on it rather than several hours per day, simply because psychic development can be a little ungrounding if you do too much of it in a short period of time. Make sure to pace yourself and take care of your lower chakras, while you do it.

(More info on taking care of the lower chakras here, here and here.)

I hope that gives you a good idea of how long it takes to develop your abilities.

If you’re interested in my Intuitive Awakening Course, which will guide you through the whole process of developing your abilities, you can check that out here. This Course provides a roadmap for developing intuitive abilities, so it shaves a lot of time off your learning curve.

If you’re not looking to invest in a course, you also might like to check out my free e-course for developing your intuitive abilities.

Good luck!