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Some people have a knack for painting, singing, or sports. But a select few, like Tyler Henry, can communicate with the dead. Tyler is a medium, acting as an intermediary between the living and the departed through one-on-one sessions as well as his latest Netflix show, ‘Live From The Other Side.’ Tyler and Ricki talk about her guest appearance on his show, and what it was like to read for Tyler’s first celebrity client, actress Sarah Paulson. He also tells Ricki the origin story behind his gift and how we can all connect to a deeper, intuitive state of being.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Tyler Henry, Ricki Lake

Ricki Lake  00:08

This is The High Life with me, Ricki Lake, where we get to find out how my guests crack the code to living a full and vibrant life. So you can too. Now, I don’t know if you can tell it my voice, but I’m pretty excited about today’s guest. We have a psychic. We have the psychic. Well, he’s a medium, to be exact, meaning he can connect with people who have passed away. Tyler Henry is a medium of the stars. He’s done celebrity readings for RuPaul, Billy Porter, the Kardashians. He stars in the Netflix series live from the other side, which I was fortunate enough to be a guest on just a couple of weeks ago. He’s only 28 years old, but he has become the most sought after clairvoyant medium globally. Hi, Tyler.

 

Tyler Henry  02:58

Hi Ricki.

 

Ricki Lake  03:00

Tyler, we start the show asking our guests the same question, where are you getting your highs from right now? Where are you finding joy?

 

Tyler Henry  03:08

I’m getting those highs from oil paints, not sniffing them on ad and pro oil paint. If you’re afraid to do it, make the jump.

 

Ricki Lake  03:15

And wait. What are your paintings like? Do you paint like landscapes? Do you paint figures?

 

Tyler Henry  03:20

It’s just  finger paints. No, I’m kidding. It’s just very abstract. I have very minimal artistic ability. It’s just really more the process and and blowing off that steam, letting go of that tension.

 

Ricki Lake  03:29

God, that sounds good.

 

Tyler Henry  03:30

Yes.

 

Ricki Lake  03:31

So what exactly is a clairvoyant, or medium?

 

Tyler Henry  03:34

Well, clairvoyant is a French word. It means clear sight, and it basically refers to the way that a psychic might receive intuitive information, usually through very strong mental images, so Claire buoyance. And then when we talk about mediums, that is kind of a different role, where an individual as a psychic takes on kind of a role as an intermediary, or something between two things. And some people believe that’s acting as an intermediary between the conscious and the unconscious. Other people believe it as an intermediary between the living and the departed. There’s a lot of different philosophies around mediums and channels, you know, throughout the world, but the basic principle is that a medium steps into a position of allowing the universe to work through one’s mind and rely on meaningful coincidence and timing for that message to then resonate with the person that is intended to receive it.

 

Ricki Lake  04:25

Do you call them downloads?

 

Tyler Henry  04:27

They can best be described as that, I think, for sure. And living in a technical world, I think a lot of people can kind of relate to certain spiritual aspects, like algorithm. You know, there’s a lot of interplay.

 

Ricki Lake  04:38

I now, I have to be frank and transparent Tyler, I have had amazing connections via other mediums, through my old show and through, after my partner died, I had like mind blowing validation. And so when I did your show, which came up very last minute, thanks to my publicist, Lauren Auslander, I really. Have expectations. I was kind of like I knew who you were. I’m always down. I’m a total believer, but you blew me away. Do you remember the reading you did on me just two weeks ago?

 

Tyler Henry  05:12

Absolutely, of course. Ricki, thank you so much for having me. And my time with you so far has been one of the best experiences on the show. There’s such a synergy the people that you brought. It just felt like a love fest. And it was so reflective. I think in the reading, I find that the more rapport you kind of develop with the group, the more accurate, specific information seems to kind of come through. So I’m going into a situation where I have to rely on my intuition, something that’s very interpretive and feeling based and risk being wrong. And then, you know, the person going into the situation is coming in uncertain of what’s going to be said or shared, and has to kind of suspend expectations. So it’s a very intense process, I think, for both sides.

 

Ricki Lake  05:52

I came on with my husband, Ross, my new husband, my third husband, and my dear friend Rachel Harris, an actress, and my friends John, Bonnie and Bethany Daly, and my husband was of the five of us, I would say, the most kind of skeptical. I think he’s absolutely a believer in that. He knows that Christian, my ex, my last husband, who passed, is with me like and I’ve force fed him like all the experiences I’ve had with mediums. But he was coming on the show to basically support me, you know. And Bethany said to him about a couple of hours before we went on, she said, Ross, is there anything you’re hoping to happen today? He’s like, Well, it would be nice if one of my grandparents came through and told me it was okay that I left the church. And literally, we come out, and you point right at him, I’m going to you first, and you bring up Ethel, his grandmother, and you give him that message, and it, I think it just debunked any sort of skepticism that he may have had in the back of his mind. I mean, look on this his face, the cameras like this zoomed in on him, and it set the tone, because you were just on fire from the minute we met you.

 

Tyler Henry  06:56

Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, I really go into these situations, and as I said, with the element of vulnerability, it’s nerve wracking for everybody involved. But I found that, you know, often these messages are most timely, and that’s what I’ve kind of learned, even beyond the whole idea of communicating with the dead or relaying messages from people who’ve passed, there’s something greater about consciousness and how it interrelates, and how the living and the dead don’t seem to be that different. We all seem to be still very much connected to one another, and that seems to reflect, you know, living and how we approach life.

 

Ricki Lake  07:28

I mean, I’ve had experiences with plant medicine, and you brought up, you know, me being with a bong in our tree house, which is like, so unbelievable. I wanted to invite you, when that tree house is built, to come hang out with a Von in me and my husband and friends. Have the eye drops ready? Okay, but one thing you mentioned to in the reading, you brought up a fire and a flood. And I was, like perplexed, because I did survive a house fire. I’m not kidding you that reading was on a Tuesday, on Sunday morning that weekend, I woke up to a flood. Water had poured into my living room from the fire sprinkler. I have a new house. I built this house, we’ve had not one leak in three and a half years. And you saw it.

 

Tyler Henry  08:10

It’s the weirdest thing. And I don’t really again, I fully understand, honestly, I think I probably can grasp about 10% of how it works, and any consensus I try to get on the ability it oftentimes switches, switches it up on me, and kind of shows me how little I’m capable of grasping. But it really relies on those meaningful coincidences, the idea that, you know, time and space can kind of converge, and that there’s opportunities to kind of see these signs, you know, when they present themselves. I always try to kind of speak when we talk about science as emphasizing the importance to not see everything as a sign, because if everything’s a sign, then nothing is a sight, right?

 

Ricki Lake  08:45

Right.

 

Tyler Henry  08:46

But to take the opportunity when things are uncanny and when things evoke that sense of uncanniness as readings, you know, try to demonstrate.

 

Ricki Lake  08:55

Right, and you didn’t know anything really about me or my family, or anything correct.

 

Tyler Henry  09:00

And I try, even beyond that, to get those details, those things, those points of conversation, the plans with an architect to build a tree house, like things that are only discussed within people’s inner circles. Because, I think just generally, human beings now, in this day and age, live about 75% of their lives on social media. So it’s really kind of up the ante, I think, even for mediums to try to get you know those kind of unknowable details, and that’s what I try to reflect even through dynamics of how people present themselves in readings.

 

Ricki Lake  09:30

And what is your process in going into it? Do you meditate? Do you pray? Do you do some sort of ritual before you do a reading?

 

Tyler Henry  09:38

Yeah, you know, I do so many rituals of sorts. I think of, you know, prayer as being one of the kind of most obvious, and then we think of meditation as kind of an opportunity to kind of listen back and kind of introspectively, you know, sense sometimes an answer to a prayer. But I find that, you know, I scribble, and that’s been a big modality in my life. As far as being able to kind of have a. Physical action that signifies kind of a changing of the mind, where I go into an altered state of consciousness. And scribbling is just kind of a very easy back and forth binary way to do that, so that when I’m not scribbling, I can kind of maintain some degree of normalcy. How did you learn to do that? It was on accident. So it happened I was actually on the phone with a girlfriend in school, and we were just chatting it up. And I was doodling, as you often do when you’re on the phone with someone. And I just found that as time went on, the more that the pen would touch paper, and the more I would kind of go with that flow of the doodles, the less easier it was to concentrate on what she was saying. And instead, I started noticing that these moments of knowingness, which I’d already had before, kind of started coming up to the surface. So upon researching that more, I found that there was actually a lot of research established and done on the induction of altered states of consciousness through physical actions. You know, some religions have the repetition of rosary beads. Others have chants that are repeated. Others have drums that are banged on in a repetitious way. So there’s something about that creating a kind of back and forth that helps kick certain spiritual states into gear.

 

Ricki Lake  11:07

And you’re a little boy at this time, right?

 

Tyler Henry  11:09

Yeah, 10 years old, was my first premonition of my grandmother’s, you know, death. And that really facilitated everything. And there were earlier experiences of intuition, but that was really the biggest, most definitive kind of catalyst. And then as time went on, you know, these moments would happen at school, when I would be walking the PE track with the other three boys, and I very quickly learned there was something about getting into a subconscious state, you know, lollygagging daydreaming, that somehow kind of kicked it into gear.

 

Ricki Lake  11:37

For those who don’t know, what was the premonition about your grandmother that you saw?

 

Tyler Henry  11:41

Well, I woke up one night with just a complete knowingness that my grandmother was going to die, and my grandma, my Nana, as I called her, she and I were very close, and I just had this moment of what felt like a memory that hadn’t happened yet, and it was really hard to explain, as you can imagine, it still is, even as a 28 year old, let alone a 10 year old. And I really didn’t recognize that as an ability. I went and I told my mom, you know, I feel like we have to say goodbye, and I was really upset. And then she, shortly thereafter, received the phone call from my dad, and he had watched my grandmother die in front of him, so that moment changed everything. But at that age, you don’t recognize that as an ability, and certainly not a gift. And I don’t think my mom did either.

 

Ricki Lake  12:22

Yeah, I was gonna say, how did your mom, like, support you through that? Was she? I mean, I would, I can only imagine, like, I have a son the same age as you have a 27 year old and a 23 year old. And I just, I must have been, like, unbelievable to her to see you saying these things that came true.

 

Tyler Henry  12:39

It was really peculiar, I would imagine, and it was very difficult for her to keep secrets, which was an interesting part of the parent child relationship. You know, my mother came from a very abusive upbringing and had a really incredible story of resilience in her own right that was covered in the Netflix show. But, you know, there were aspects there where she would try to protect me from things, and I would just kind of see them. And, you know, I remember I gave her the initials of someone that abused her in a pretty horrific way. And, you know, I was still a teenager, and I said he just needs, you know, he’s sorry. And boy, I mean, my the look on my mom’s face, I’ll never forget it, because, you know, this was a man who perpetuated a really horrible act against her, one that wouldn’t have even been age appropriate, I think, for me to know, right? And certainly, kind of broke that barrier between adult and child. We kind of have always been on the same level.

 

Ricki Lake  13:28

And you’re super close with your mom. Your mom is at every one of your tapings. And, I mean, it’s really beautiful to see. And are you able to turn it on and turn it off easily?

 

Tyler Henry  13:39

You know, I’m kind of liking it more like a volume dial, in the sense that there’s always kind of, like background noise, and then there’s certain things I can do to kind of turn it on or make it louder, and that’s, you know, through the modalities of scribbling, prayer, meditation, the reduction of kind of sensory input. So before a show, I’ll kind of try to be as silent as possible, be talked to as little as possible. I promise. I’m not a diva. I just, like, have to, like, hermetically feel myself. Yeah, I, you know, I make the room really freezing cold. Usually, if I can get it into the mid to lower 60s in a room, I love it. My whole body just kind of goes into this altered state. So once I’m able to kind of kick that into gear, I’m able to kind of bifurcate my ordinary way of thinking and my kind of altered way of thinking, and then kind of, Do you get nervous? Oh, yes, it’s so nerve wracking. Inherently, I think part of coming to the vulnerability and being able to be in touch with that is part of where the magic lies. So I think with every risk that I take, there’s some degree of a reaction or response that the universe kind of gives. And I’ve kind of lived a life where I’ve trusted in in those responses.

 

Ricki Lake  14:44

How did you get from having these premonitions, feeling like something was going to happen before it did, to doing your first reading? What was that first reading like? Do you remember?

 

Tyler Henry  14:54

Yes, so my first professional reading was when I was 16. I started working at a little bookstore in our small town, and it was like. The only place that sold crystals that also sold Bibles.

 

Ricki Lake  15:03

And you’re from, like, like, Fresno area?

 

Tyler Henry  15:05

Yeah? So kind of, like, if you take Fresno and then you just, like, keep walking and just see your nearest cornfield, okay? And, you know, very rural. And particularly when I was growing up where I was at, a lot of my friends didn’t have internet until they were teenagers. It was a very different kind of pace. But yeah, that’s kind of where I started working, and then being able to have an office space where people could reliably, you know, show up and and have an experience. And I was basically just, like charging 20-30 bucks to try to pay for school textbooks, really, yeah, it was just a very bulk of my readings, you know, as time went on, went on to be done for free. And now I’d say about 85 to 95% or just charity readings.

 

Ricki Lake  15:43

And how are you in public? Like, do you pick up on energy? I would imagine, everywhere you go, you pick up on everyone’s energy?

 

Tyler Henry  15:50

Yeah, you know, it’s very, very overwhelming. It get very socially anxious. It took years for me to even be able to speak like publicly. I’ve always been very introverted, and I would have never met you being on TV as a child, I was like the kid that no one talked to on the playground, spent a lot of time, very mute and didn’t talk.

 

Ricki Lake  16:07

You’re an only child too, right? No siblings?

 

Tyler Henry  16:10

I am and I that’s that’s part of it. I think I was able to embrace my inner world and kind of create this inner world because I dealt with a lot of rejection and not being able to relate to others. And as an adult, I think the inner world is really paid off. You’re able to kind of create these inner structures that I think your subconscious can work through. And I was just young enough, I think, to plant those seeds and had an environment that cultivated that versus shutting it down. Whereas, you know, a lot of people live in environments that don’t support the exploration of self, let alone intuition.

 

Ricki Lake  16:41

Right, I mean, you being just introverted. I mean, that turns out to be a gift, like your superpower.

 

Tyler Henry  16:48

Yeah, absolutely, you know, and that’s the thing, the things that make us the most unique and perhaps differ from the community, can, you know, in essence, be, in a larger way, an opportunity to learn more about the outliers. And, you know, in many ways, I felt like a minority among the larger majority. And so there’s, there’s great value. I think the very thing one gets bullied for can be the very thing that one finds success at.

 

Ricki Lake  17:14

I agree. I mean, I could just what pops up for me is I was, you know, this fat actress, and I got the lead role in hairspray. So I had, I not been fat to begin with, I would never have gotten that role, which turned into my superpower in some ways, you know.

 

Tyler Henry  17:28

Owning that vulnerability and being able to have representation is just so important, and you just never as you know, you never know the impact you’re creating and kicking off in people’s minds and the kind of cultural significance that that has just by being able to turn on TV and relate to someone.

 

Ricki Lake  17:44

All right, we got to take a quick break, but we’ll be right back with Tyler in a moment.

 

Ricki Lake  17:54

How did you become a medium for the stars? Like, how? What did you have one reading with one celebrity that, just like got the ball rolling.

 

Tyler Henry  21:42

You know, it was very reluctant. I was doing readings through word of mouth as a teenager, and I had graduated high school at 16, and I was determined to try to become a hospice nurse, and I had a teacher that helped enroll me into my local community college, and ended up reading the Dean of the College, which was a whole crazy situation. But that aside, I was doing readings when I wasn’t in school, and eventually, as kind of word of mouth spread, Southern California was a big draw because people were a lot more open minded than where I was from. So long story short, I ended up just having a lot of draws to Southern California. Sarah Paulson was my first celebrity client, and she called me when I was a teenager, and I picked up the phone and my hand was shaking, and you know, that kind of seemed to signify the beginning of a very strange life.

 

Ricki Lake  22:27

And so were you a fan of hers? I mean, I love her so you knew her work. So how do you not confuse being such a young person reading her for the first time? How do you not go to like the American Horror Story characters and stuff she plays?

 

Tyler Henry  22:40

It was so bizarre because I had watched her on American Horror Story before, and it had things come through. And that was one of the challenges around even watching media. Sometimes would be able to watch people on TV and would feel like, Oh, if I were to sit with them, I would tell them X, Y and Z. And it took the believability out of acting like almost completely. And there were times where I would think, Oh, if I ever sat with Sarah, this is what I would tell her. So when she called me on the phone, I literally had the opportunity to share with her what I was getting. And, you know, it was very, very precise and distinct, and she trusted me with some very vulnerable exchanges. And it was just so, such an honor to be able to have someone who was so established, older than me, you know, confide in the equivalent of a child and trust me with that. And as an adult, that really is meant a lot. And it was one of the best experiences of my life.

 

Ricki Lake  23:30

Wow, and so then she told a friend, and they told him friend, and it just grew and grew.

 

Tyler Henry  23:35

Yeah, just kind of evolved, you know, it just kind of feels like a snowball. Once that kind of got kicked off. I started regularly going on weekends to Southern California. You know, I was trying to kind of get better at public speaking, so I was, you know, putting myself in social situations that I ordinarily wouldn’t. And through there, I met my manager, the man who’d become a manager for now over a decade, at a Christmas party. And he was very skeptical, but he thought, ah, you know, you’re a teenager. You say you’re a medium. That just sounds like a great TV show, but come on, be real. And then he met with me the next day, and I held on to a watch of his, and it ended up that it was originally belonging to a loved one of his who had died by suicide. And as I held on to that, it all came through. And there was this very immediate change where this man went from kind of jovially thinking, you know, teenage, medium, small, medium at large, to, oh, my God, there’s something to this. What do we have here? So that that really was the turning point.

 

Ricki Lake  24:30

And then I know he, like, he had you read everyone, like, around him, right? Yeah. He like boom. You just reading after reading to see if it was just like a fluke or if it was the real deal so.

 

Tyler Henry  24:40

So he put me through the ringer as far as reading a number of strangers to me, people who he knew, friends he’d gone back, you know, years, with some people who he’d only known recently, work, cohorts, various things, and then ended up, actually, through the E Network, reading a number of executives, and then putting me through a bunch of tests of reading strangers, people they pick. Um, sometimes fans and even, you know, just various strange positions that they would say, Okay, now perform. And I, you know, never knew if it was going to happen or not. It just either does or doesn’t, but I’ve always leaned into that challenge.

 

Ricki Lake  25:13

And did it ever not work? Are you ever not able to read for someone?

 

Tyler Henry  25:18

There’s times where, like, what I try to get I won’t get so people will come, you know, and they’re like, I want to hear from my mom. It would be wonderful. And then I’ll try to connect. And then they hear from their mother in law, and they’re like, dang Navid, that’s not who I wanted to hear from.

 

Ricki Lake  25:31

Right, but you have no control, right?

 

Tyler Henry  25:33

And I just kind of have to view it as a responsibility to relay what I feel in the moment, and kind of take on that role of a messenger without, you know, putting my own spin on the information and and trying to suspend judgment.

 

Ricki Lake  25:46

Yeah, how do you counter skeptics who think that you have just like thoughtful guesses, that it’s not that, it’s not real?

 

Tyler Henry  25:54

Well, I would argue, even if there’s a thoughtful guess element, it kind of relies on the idea of meaningful coincidences anyway. So it’s kind of one of those things of like, why do we feel inclined to say what we say? Why do we feel inclined to go left versus right? I think there’s something sometimes informing our inclinations. And so who knows what informs the mediums inclination to say this versus that? The jury’s still out. I think mediumship offers, offers an opportunity to have a really meaningful, subjective experience. And it can be so qualitative that it can feel quantitative. But as you’ve seen, it’s one of those things that you kind of have to experience to fully even be able to touch.

 

Ricki Lake  26:34

I think it’s also witnessing it too, because I think from my I mean, I’ve had so many people reach out to me that saw me on your show and was just like, was that the real deal? I’m like, no, I’m telling you, that was the real deal. And you’re so compassionate and kind and open. It’s unbelievable. And you, I know you have a wait list of like they said, 700,000 people.

 

Tyler Henry  26:55

Is so sweet. I’m so thankful people are I say sweet because it’s so such a testament to people’s willingness to connect and an openness and to explore grief, and it’s just so humbling, honestly, to to be an outlet for that.

 

Ricki Lake  27:09

And how did they find you like so, so let’s say, you know, there, I mean, there’s so many people that everyone wants a reading with you. What’s the best way for them to go about getting a reading?

 

Tyler Henry  27:17

Well, nowadays, you know, I have a membership site where I’m able to connect with people virtually. And that’s been the most, really, I think, the greatest opportunity to not only demonstrate the validations from all across the world with different cultures, we’ve had different languages, I’ve kind of had to act as an interpreter to an interpreter who is often relayed a message to a person’s loved one speaking a different language.

 

Ricki Lake  27:38

Whoa, you’re kidding. Can you wait? Can you tell me one example of that? I’m so curious, like something will come through that you need translated.

 

Tyler Henry  27:46

So it’s actually interesting, because I’m doing a big event for Japan here, upcoming in December, and I’m going to have to do readings, and I’ve dealt with this viewed as kind of a sort of interpretive challenge with Spanish before, and I know a little bit of Spanish, so I can kind of work that around, but Japanese is going to be completely different ball game, and we know there’s so many cultural nuances to so many things that I really have no way of knowing what I’m seeing and how the significance is going to land.

 

Ricki Lake  28:13

That is fascinating. That is so cool. You mentioned grief Tyler, and I wonder, in your own personal experience with this work, how has your own grief like impacted your ways of communicating and messages that you get?

 

Tyler Henry  28:27

Yeah, I think you know, in many ways that my grandmother’s death really was a catalyst for me in living this life ironically. But it wasn’t until I was a teenager and I lost my dear friend Terry of brain cancer. He was my first love. He was somebody that I deeply admired. He was my best friend, and he had dealt with childhood brain cancer, and in our mid teens, I had a very strong impression one day that his cancer was going to come back and that he would not live to see, you know, full adulthood, and he passed away years later.

 

Ricki Lake  29:00

I’m so sorry. It was really.

 

Tyler Henry  29:03

It’s still hard to talk about, but I knew, and I cut him out of my life because I couldn’t cope with what I knew to be true. And I kind of preventatively grieved him. I grieved him before he even died, and he reached out to me shortly before he passed and said, I Tyler, I’d love to see you, even if just one last time. And I said, okay, yes, let’s make it happen. And then he passed away and never had the chance. So it showed me to take an opportunity when it presents itself, to say it now, while we have the chance to validate our loved ones, while they’re still here, and even if there was nothing I could have done to fix the inevitability, I could have extended my friendship and been more to him and could have gotten more from her relationship.

 

Ricki Lake  29:51

Are you able to have peace connecting with him now, like does he forgive you for not seeing him that one last time?

 

Tyler Henry  29:59

Say he visited? Me strangely years ago, and I was house sitting, just the weirdest experience, and came through, and he was happy, and he was playing sports with a bunch of kids. And I later did a little research and found that some of the children that he had demonstrated to like soccer with were actually kids that he had been with in cancer wards. His mom had posted photos him and these other children that he got to know, many of which had died when they were, like 11 or 12, and, you know, he believed he reached 18, but they all kind of presented with him, and I found out after the fact of some of their faces. Wow. And did that comfort you deeply? I mean, it’s like hardness. I still struggle to talk about it, but yeah, that really let me know he was okay. And that was his way of kind of giving me a send off, and I’ve never felt him since. And a lot of people wonder why they don’t feel their loved ones after an initial kind of visitation, and I think in some ways they’ve made it easier, yeah, just to kind of allow nature to take its course. And we all ultimately are walking each other home anyway. So Wow, beautiful. We catch up. It’s see you later.

 

Ricki Lake  30:58

Yeah, is it a See you later? We are going to see him later, right?

 

Tyler Henry  31:01

Really, truly, in my heart of hearts, believe that.

 

Ricki Lake  31:04

I do too. I’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Tyler Henry.

 

Ricki Lake  31:14

So when Christian died in February of 2017 we couldn’t find his body. So I knew, because he was struggled with mental health issues, I knew he was suicidal for a very long time over the years we were together, so when he passed, he left a note on February 11, at 111 I knew, like it was very specific. I knew he was gone, and I called a medium for help. And is a woman named Maureen Hancock. She’s so wonderful, and she had been on my show, and she had met Christian, so I called her, and she said, It’s Christian, right? And I was like, Yes, he told her where his body was, and 10 minutes later, the police said, and it was exactly where he was. So that was my first, like, sort of true validation that, like, he was talking to her, and she relayed this. I mean, it was very specific, and it is so healing, I have to say. You know, there was a medium that I’d worked with not on my show. I had a reading from her when I lost Christian. It was almost the year anniversary, and she has since passed away. Her name was Patricia Michelle, and she channeled Christian for an hour. Like full on I’d never experienced. I used to have mediums on my show all the time, but like, I’d never experienced this one on one, and it just led me on the path to making peace with with what I’d lost and and the gifts that came out of that. You know, do you have a sense of where we go when we die? Like because I know Patricia, the woman who read for me, regarding Christian, she said he was in the third heaven, and that, from what he understands, he has the ability to move up, but he’s at peace. He said, It feels like he’s himself, you know? And so I got all this, this confirmation. But do you have any belief of, like, what, what happens when we die?

 

Tyler Henry  36:37

Etymology is tricky when we talk about words and semantics, because so many phrases, particularly when we talk about theology and spirituality, are loaded when we talk about like the afterlife, right? So often we think of like heaven or hell, and it’s so tricky to talk about the subject without all these other conclusions being assumed. So when we think of it, I have kind of been able to only glean that there seems to be a greater interconnection between consciousness. There seems to be a continuity of life that reflects more of an experiential state versus necessarily just a single perspective one, and that seems to kind of allow for them to look and perceive things differently. They seem to go through the process of a life review in which they are able to kind of get a wider understanding of their actions and their inactions, their impact what they did and didn’t do, and through coming to terms with that and finding acceptance, I think they find peace, but it seems to be very much akin to being in a in a state of consciousness beyond what we can grasp here as singular beings.

 

Ricki Lake  37:40

Mm, God, well said.

 

Tyler Henry  37:42

Thank you. It’s tricky.

 

Ricki Lake  37:44

I would imagine. I, you know, I’ve done my share of plant medicine, not just cannabis, but I’ve done Ayahuasca. I’ve sat with the medicine probably 14 or 15 times. And, I mean, it’s so hard to describe, but I felt as close to spirit, to source as I think one can maybe feel, you know? I mean, when one one image comes to mind when I did it once in the daytime in the redwoods, up in Guerneville, California, and at one point I was on the ground, and I had my hands on the ground, and I could see and feel the Earth’s heartbeat pulsing in my hands. Like, I mean, what do you make of that?

 

Tyler Henry  38:20

That’s amazing. I mean, that is an opportunity to supersede the normal barriers of consciousness that we have through these modalities. And whether a ritual is going to have like a neurochemical component, like through truons or through Ayahuasca or cannabis, there’s so many modalities and so many rituals one can do to get that ALT and state. And there has been a lot of research, of course, in the therapeutic effects of it. But from a spiritual perspective, I think it does give people sometimes a necessary grasp in an interconnection of things that ordinarily a lot of people don’t seem to feel. So it can be a great kind of like kickoff, I think, for self awareness and greater introspection.

 

Ricki Lake  38:58

And inner peace, for like, the fear of death, you know, like, I feel like I had, like, that ego death they talk about. I mean, I definitely fear death on some level. But I mean, in those moments, you know, you kind of let go of all that, and you just feel this interconnectedness and this sense of peace. And what about, like, sacred geometry? Do you ever see that? Because that’s something I would see doing, you know this plant medicine journeys?

 

Tyler Henry  39:22

Certainly, there’s been times where very, very vivid geometric pattern, patterns will come through. I’ve actually had reservations around shrooms or like psychedelics, just largely because I’ve had some very strong psychedelic experiences, just kind of like natural without it. So I don’t know if that would be helpful or detrimental. I’ll explore it in my 30s, but it does come through, and I think it reflects some underlying current or structure to the universe.

 

Ricki Lake  39:48

Do you ever get scared doing readings?

 

Tyler Henry  39:50

No, I find people to be scary sometimes, as far as, like, the capabilities of living people. And there’s times where you know, there will be. Very heavy sentiments that will come through as reflected in a living person’s life and situations I know I can’t fix, and that that sometimes can be a little overwhelming, and that can bring up fear, because I want to be able to leave people better than I find them, but my inclination is often I want to fix whatever the problem is. And I learned very quickly that you can’t fix grief, that grief isn’t something to be fixed. And, you know, I think when we talk about grief on a larger level, so many people view it as something to be closed, to be resolved, and it’s not. It’s a lifelong relationship. It’s like weight. I think we carry it differently depending on the person, and it’s something that we have to kind of be able to work with and develop a relationship with, versus wish away.

 

Ricki Lake  40:43

It’s just such a responsibility for you. Like, do you ever feel like it’s too much for you?

 

Tyler Henry  40:49

You know, it always rides that line. But I also am of the belief that what presents itself as an opportunity is very often going to be on the other side of my comfort zone, and that’s really where growth lies. And anytime that I’ve said no to a challenging experience that I know is going to make me better, I’ve regretted it, right? So I would much rather lean in and kind of, you know, see a hypothetical cliff and jump off than than not, yeah, because it’s worth it in the end, either you either get something of value from it, or you learn about yourself, and either way, that courage has value.

 

Ricki Lake  41:27

What do you do for fun? I know you paint, right?

 

Tyler Henry  41:29

Yes, painting. I like to make stained glass windows with my partner, or like two little old men who just like, sit at home with little wooden little little hammers and but we’re like little elves around Christmas. It’s the worst. That’s so cute, terrible. But I would you stay glass windows, and then we make music together, Ambient Music, like synthesizers, real, like no science fictiony. And, you know, there’s just so many outlets. I try to kind of convey what can’t be be articulated with words. When we talk about mystical states, one of the biggest qualities is the ineffability of of a state, and that really is like beyond our ability to semantically articulate so creation allows for us to kind of meet back.

 

Ricki Lake  42:09

Right, and what, and what does your boyfriend Think of what you do? I mean, how did you mee, first of all.

 

Tyler Henry  42:15

Yes, we met long ago now, about eight years and, you know, he hit me up and sent me an email, and he watched me on TV, and have had a lot of intuitive experiences of himself. And he was from rural Georgia in the middle of nowhere, and he didn’t think he would get a response. And I saw his email, and I responded, and very quickly, we hit it off, and we just truly, I think we’re destined to be with each other. We are so similar in so many respects, and we kind of teach each other, I think, every day on a larger and not to be cheesy, but we truly do, like I look to him as one of my greatest inspirations in my life.

 

Ricki Lake  42:50

That’s amazing. How lucky to find someone, your person at such a young age, and to and to not go through this weird life that you’re living alone, right?

 

Tyler Henry  42:59

Especially as like being a, you know, in my early 20s, when a lot of this kicked off, and how volatile the period that is for so many, and for me to be able to be with somebody who we grew together versus apart, and I feel like one of the, if not the largest blessing of my life, because I don’t think I would have been able to get through it if it weren’t for the structures of family and the love I’ve been given that I could always Know I had a soft place to fall.

 

Ricki Lake  43:22

Do you have a sense of why you were given this gift, like why you?

 

Tyler Henry  43:27

I honestly think everybody has the ability to connect to a deeper intuitive state of being. I just think so few people have been allowed or willing to create these inner worlds, these deeply, deeply imaginary worlds we think of like visionaries. We think of like Disney, Walt Disney, right? That was a man who had some inner worlds, and, like, granted, he had a lot of Imagineers that, like, helped out, right, right? He had a bigger picture understanding, and that all came from some deep Wellspring that sprang forth, and he was able to leave the culture with this entire land of his own creation. And so I think more people should aspire to be that way, be different. Create these inner worlds. Create whether it’s art, whether it’s cooking, whether it’s anything, I think subjective and feeling and meaning based can give us more opportunity to be who we are and step into that.

 

Ricki Lake  44:17

Tyler, you are amazing. I’m just blown away by Just Your grace and your humility and your talent, like I feel so lucky that I got to have that special, unique experience of having a reading by you and you being able to, like, break it down today with me and my listeners, I just, I’m such a fan. I’m such a fan of yours. Thank you. You’re doing like, I mean, God’s work.

 

Tyler Henry  44:42

Oh no, you’re so you’re so kind. I feel so lucky to have gone from a fan to a friend, and I feel like I know you, and I feel thankful to be able to exchange wisdom.

 

Ricki Lake  44:54

It’s been such a gift. Thank you so so much.

 

Tyler Henry  44:57

Thank you, Ricki.

 

Ricki Lake  45:00

I don’t know about you, but I really feel like that was a very special conversation. Not only do I love Tyler Henry, but I also feel like I got to ask him questions that I’ve never gotten to ask a medium before, and he was so open and just a great, great guy. You can find Tyler Henry on Instagram @TylerHenrymedium, and check out his show live from the other side on Netflix, you can catch me in one of the episodes. Thank you so much for listening.  There’s much more of The High Life with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like rapid fire questions with Ellen Langer. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts. The High Life is a production of Lemonada Media. Isabella Kulkarni and Kathryn Barnes, produced our show. Our mixes by James Sparber. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Additional Lemonada support from Rachel Neel and Steve Nelson. You can find me  @Rickilake on Instagram. Follow The High Life with Ricki Lake, wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.