BOULDER — It’s not like a group of 5-year-olds sitting around, looking through crystal balls and talking to ghosts.
When many people hear the title of these classes, Psychic Courses for Children, that’s what they expect.
That’s not to say none of the kids claim to have a “sixth sense” or talk to monsters or dead people. Some do. Some don’t. Most are just typical kids, their teacher says.
Somehow, the term “psychic” has become misconstrued, says Stacia Synnestvedt.
She teaches the classes at Boulder’s Psychic Horizons Center for children ages 5 through 10 on the third Friday of every month. She also recently ran a psychic camp for older kids and a children’s “healing clinic.”
Step back and remove the title from the class for a moment. Without labeling it, here’s what Synnestvedt teaches:
The kids play games, sing songs, make art and spend some time practicing being quiet.
It’s about listening to the children and validating them. Helping them stay connected to their inner knowing, or their intuition. She teaches them about personal space and how to draw relational boundaries — like how they can disagree with a friend or parent and stay grounded without getting wrapped up in the other person’s emotions. This can help kids sleep better, channel their energy and feel more confident, Synnestvedt says.
“It applies to everything,” she says.
She explains these concepts to the kids by using the words “energy” and “spirit or essence,” which is the actual meaning of psychic, she says. Ultimately, she is teaching energy awareness, she says.
“You learn tools like grounding to the earth, letting go of energy that isn’t yours and then refilling, calling your energy back,” Synnestvedt says.
She adds, “It’s a way to sit in the observer place, without getting sucked into the drama of it. That’s when you become intuitive. You tap into a neutral place, because intuition is basically observing.”
Sounds like a normal yoga or meditation class? Well, here it goes a step further. When they’re ready, kids can also learn how to read auras, set energetic boundaries, set intentions and meet spirit guides.
“I don’t expect a 5-year-old to grasp all of this right away, but it’s like we’re planting a seed,” Synnestvedt says.
She says she first enrolled in psychic classes because she had been sick, tired and unhappy, and she wanted to take charge of her life. In the classes, “you start to peel away more layers of the stuff you pick up as you move into adulthood,” she says.
Teaching this to kids before their “true selves” are covered in layers of society’s influence means fewer layers to peel away, Synnestvedt says.
She began teaching the drop-in classes about a year and a half ago. Some classes have a handful of kids, whereas others draw upward of a dozen.
Vicki Smith drives from Arvada to attend classes and channelings at the Psychic Horizons Center, and she has brought four of her grandchildren (ages 9 to 16) to classes. The younger two come every month.
Synnestvedt says teaching kids how to ground their energy can calm their bodies. It also can give timid or sensitive kids tools to feel more empowered, she says.
Smith says when her grandchildren leave class, they talk about it nonstop. The older kids are getting better with peer pressure. They’re strengthening their creative “right brains.”
“Kids don’t learn intuition, unless you have some exceptional teacher or an exceptional school. They need to learn to go with their gut,” Smith says. “Our education system is failing a lot of these kids because they are not going to learn in the same way my generation did, or my children’s generation did. We need to learn how to help them.”
