The Afterlife Research and Education Institute has created online training that will enable you to communicate with your loved ones now living in the afterlife. Most people who go through the training are having conversations with their loved ones anytime they wish. They are also open to receiving messages when their loved ones initiate them.
You can go through the online training at the link below. A brief explanation of how to enter the state of mind to have an afterlife communication follows the button.
The channel opens by allowing, not by effort
The first thing to learn about afterlife communication is that you do not make it happen. You make room for it. Almost everyone who comes to this work arrives with the opposite instinct. They want contact so much that they try hard: they concentrate, they strain to hear, they watch for signs, and they judge every passing thought as either a message or a failure. That effort, however well-meant, is the main thing that closes the door.
This lesson teaches the alternative. Opening the channel means setting down the effort and letting your attention soften until something can come to you on its own timing and in its own form. We call this free unfoldment. You do not decide what will happen or when. You prepare a quiet, receptive state, and then you let the experience unfold.
Why relaxation is necessary
Relaxation is necessary because the contact people describe is subtle, and subtlety is easily drowned out. Reports of afterlife communication, from the Victorian séance room to modern grief research, describe quiet things: a faint impression, a half-formed thought that does not feel like your own, a sense of someone beside you, a brief image at the edge of awareness. These are small signals. A busy, tense mind is like a crowded room with the radio turned up. Even if something is being said, you cannot pick it out.
There are three reasons the relaxed state matters.
Effort creates noise. When you try hard, you fill your mind with commentary: Is anything happening? Was that something? Why can’t I feel it? Each of those thoughts takes up the very attention that would otherwise be available for receiving. Trying is an activity, and receiving is the opposite of an activity. You cannot be fully engaged in producing and fully open to receiving at the same moment.
Tension narrows awareness. When the body is braced, the mind follows. Attention contracts around the worry or the goal, and the wide, soft awareness that notices small things disappears. A tense person tends to scan for threats and demands. A relaxed person notices what is gently present. Afterlife contact is almost always gentle, so it is the relaxed person who tends to notice it.
Expectation shapes and blocks. If you decide in advance what contact should look like, such as a clear voice, a vivid vision or a specific message, you will overlook the forms it actually takes. Many people dismiss a real experience because it did not match the picture in their head. Relaxation loosens expectation. It lets you accept whatever arrives, including things that are quieter or stranger than you imagined.
What relaxation does in body and mind
People who practice relaxation, meditation and self-hypnosis report the same shifts again and again, and they are worth understanding because they explain why the practice works.
The body settles first. Breathing slows and deepens, the shoulders and jaw release, and the heart rate eases. This is the opposite of the stress response, and it tells the nervous system that nothing needs to be defended against or solved. Once the body stops sending alarm signals, the mind has less to attend to.
The mind then changes its pace. In deep relaxation, people commonly enter the borderland between waking and sleep, the same state that many reports of spontaneous contact come from. It is the state in which people see a deceased loved one just before falling asleep or just after waking, or sense a presence during a quiet moment. The inner chatter thins out, and images, feelings and impressions become easier to notice. Researchers who study meditation and hypnosis associate this kind of state with slower brain rhythms and a shift from tightly focused, goal-driven thinking toward a looser, more open kind of awareness. The exact mechanisms are still being studied, so it is best to say simply that the pattern is consistent: quiet body, quiet mind, wider awareness.
Finally, attention changes character. Ordinary attention is narrow and directed, like a flashlight. Relaxed attention is wide and receptive, like a lantern lighting a whole room. Receiving communication asks for the lantern. This is why trance and mental mediums, whatever else their methods differ on, nearly all describe first quieting themselves, and why the traditions of prayer, contemplation and meditation all begin with stillness.
Preparing the space and yourself
You do not need special equipment or a ritual, but a little preparation makes relaxing easier.
Choose a time when you will not be interrupted. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough. Silence your phone and let the people in your home know you want quiet. Evening or early morning often works well, because the day’s demands are either finished or not yet begun.
Choose a comfortable place. A reclining chair, a bed or a sofa is fine. You want to be supported enough that you do not have to hold yourself up. Avoid lying down if you tend to fall asleep immediately, since the goal is relaxed wakefulness, not sleep. Dim the lights if that helps.
Set a simple intention. Before you begin, say quietly to yourself something like: I am open to whatever comes, in whatever form it comes. I do not need anything in particular to happen. This sentence matters more than it seems. It tells your own mind that the session cannot fail, and that removes the pressure that undoes relaxation.
Decide in advance that you will not evaluate. During the session, you are an observer, not a judge. You can think about what happened afterward. Until then, you simply notice.
A practice for relaxing into allowing
Read through these steps once, then do them with your eyes closed, at an unhurried pace. You do not need to memorize them. The sequence is a guide, and you can skip or repeat any part.
- Settle and breathe. Sit or recline, close your eyes, and take three slow breaths. Breathe in through the nose, and let the breath out with a soft sigh. Let the sigh be audible if you like.
- Release the body in stages. Starting at the top of the head, move your attention slowly downward: forehead, eyes, jaw, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, chest, belly, hips, legs and feet. At each place, notice any tightness and let it soften. You are not forcing anything to relax. You are simply noticing and letting go. Pay particular attention to the jaw, the brow and the hands, which hold more tension than most people realize.
- Follow the breath without controlling it. Let your breathing return to its own rhythm. Feel the rise and fall of the belly. When your mind wanders, which it will, gently bring it back to the breath. Do this as many times as needed without any sense of failure.
- Sink a little deeper. Imagine each exhale carrying you a little further into stillness, as if settling into warm water or a soft chair. You can count slowly down from ten to one, letting yourself deepen with each number.
- State your intention and release it. Quietly repeat your intention: I am open to whatever comes. Then let the words go. Do not wait for an answer. Rest in the quiet.
- Receive. Let your attention become wide and passive. Notice sensations in the body, feelings, images, words, memories, the quality of the silence itself. Whatever appears, simply observe it with friendly curiosity. Do not reach for it, and do not push it away. If nothing seems to happen, that is a perfectly good session. Rest in it.
- Return gently. When you feel ready, or when about twenty minutes have passed, take a deeper breath, move your fingers and toes, and open your eyes slowly. Stay still for a moment before getting up.
Common obstacles and how to meet them
Every beginner meets the same difficulties. None of them means you are doing it wrong.
“I can’t stop thinking.” A busy mind is normal and does not prevent success. Thoughts are not the enemy. Fighting them is. Let them pass like traffic outside a window, and each time you notice you have been carried off, return to the breath. The noticing itself is the skill.
“Nothing is happening.” This is the most common worry and the most counterproductive one, because worrying about it creates tension. Remember that quiet is not failure. Many people have several sessions of simple peace before anything else occurs, and the peace is worth having in its own right. It also builds the receptive habit that later sessions rely on.
“I’m trying too hard to relax.” This is a real trap, since effort at relaxing is still effort. Soften the aim. Instead of trying to relax, simply allow whatever level of tension is present to be there, and let it ease in its own time. Acceptance of tension is often what releases it.
“I don’t know whether what I’m noticing is real.” Hold the question lightly. During the session, do not decide. Afterward, write the experience down and consider it with the same open, honest curiosity you would give any unusual event in your life. Measure it by what it brings you, such as comfort, clarity or a sense of connection, and not only by whether you can prove its source.
Free unfoldment
Once you can relax reliably, the practice becomes less about technique and more about trust. Free unfoldment means you stop steering. You do not ask a question and wait for the answer. You do not demand a face, a voice or a name. You rest in an open, welcoming state and let the session show you what it will.
Sometimes that is a feeling of warmth or love that seems to come from outside you. Sometimes it is a memory that returns with unusual clarity, a phrase that arrives unbidden, or a quiet sense of being accompanied. Sometimes it is only peace. All of these are valid, and none is a lesser result. People who practice this way often find that the experiences deepen over weeks and months, not because they got better at trying, but because they got better at allowing.
The lessons that follow build on this foundation. Return to this one whenever you notice that effort has crept back in. The way forward is always the same: breathe, soften, release the grip of wanting, and let it come.
