The Power of 3: An interview with Psychics in the Cities

It’s one thing to create a business as partners, but it’s something entirely different for three psychics to create a business in which they collaborate on readings at the same time for the same client. That’s the Power of 3, the Psychics in the Cities, otherwise known as Kayla Wright, Judie Randall and Debra Battenfeld.

The three Twin Cities women weren’t the first to do it, but they see themselves as just a step ahead of a growing trend in which healers and lightworkers begin joining forces to heal, guide and support people in their quest to find their way in life.

Psychics in the Cities is part grit, part shaman and part soul. Add three dashes of humor — and voila!

“The reason that the three of us get together and the reason why we work together,” says Kayla Wright, “is that we believe in the village. We believe that with one lightworker, the energy is amazing. When you get two, three, four or five together, just think how that power expounds and that light just shines off the universe.

“So (our collaboration) is one thing that we really like to push forward. That does make us unique right now, but not for long. We’re seeing more and more healers getting together, joining forces on each client to provide even more healing.”

Her business partner, Judie Randall, adds: “Basically, we’re about taking the fear away and coming together as soul workers and lightworkers to put more light and more positivity out into the world to counteract so much negativity from other sources.”

Psychics in the Cities offer monthly psychic gallery events in which the public can attend to get three perspectives on questions for the price of one. Their next gallery will take place on Friday, March 1, at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community at 44th and Upton Avenue South in Minneapolis.

The three women also will be present at the Minneapolis Psychic Symposium on Saturday, March 2, at Earle Brown Heritage Center in Brooklyn Center, and on April 20-21 at Edge Life Fargo Holistic Expo in Fargo, North Dakota.

They also launch their next eight-week series of beginning psychic development classes on March 6. “It’s a really great course for people who really want to know what psychic ability is all about, not just psychic work, but intuition and how to use it to navigate their lives,” Kayla Wright says. “Most people that we get for these classes are very gifted, and we show how to work with it. A third of our students are teachers, a third of them are in health care, and we get a lot of cops, TSA agents and the like. These are people who are already helping souls already in their daily lives, and these classes help them to be able to help people even more.”

The following is an conversation with Psychics in the Cities.

What was the moment when each of you knew that you had an intuitive gift?
Judie Randall: In childhood, oh maybe in my early teens, I was very aware of past lives. That was my major awareness, and I experienced a lot of déjà vu, where you know you know something, but you don’t know how you know it. I was reading about the French Revolution and I was very aware that I had been there. I could feel it, I could smell it, I could sense it.
Debra Battenfeld: I basically can remember always having my gift. I remember it from about the age of 2, but when did I realize that that was different than other people around me? I started having an interest and reading lots of books about psychic and mediumship, but it never occurred to me that I was on this path and I wanted to help others with this gift until I received a reading from a psychic from Canada named Marilyn Rosner. In the reading she told me, “You are a psychic medium.” Up until that point I did not realize that that was what I was.
Kayla Wright: I didn’t realize that I was really different. I didn’t realize that not everyone knew when other people were lying. I had events that I knew I had to show up to, even when I was a kid. There was a little boy who got hurt, and I knew that I had to go give him some Band-Aids, so I ran out of my apartment and over to where he was to help him.

I didn’t understand that not everyone knew things or felt things like I did. When I was in my early thirties working downtown, I began to really understand that this was something special and something I had to do. I had to change my life to become a psychic. I was walking through the skyway and I literally heard a voice say to me, “Go to that bookstore.” I looked around and I thought someone was talking to me, but what I heard was my spirit guide. I walked through that bookstore and there was Echo Bodine — and she was literally saying, “Sometimes you hear a voice and it tells you to do something; that doesn’t mean you’re crazy.” It was that synchronistic, and that’s when I knew it was completely different.

Would you describe intuitive ability as something we all have, though some people are more or less able to receiving information than others?
Kayla: I think everyone has intuitive ability. Not everyone is supposed to be a psychic, but everyone can use their gift to make their lives easier, to navigate their situations, to help them to choose their own path. I always go back to this saying, “Everyone can sing, but not everyone is an opera singer, but that does not mean we shouldn’t belt it out in the shower!” You know what I mean?
Debra: I do know that we all have these psychic abilities to a certain degree. Where we take it and what we want to do with it is part of our life’s path — our plan that we created before we came here in our body. I believe that if it is a passion of ours to help others and bring comfort to those in need of our gifts, then that’s the difference. That’s the difference between people using it every day of their lives without really knowing it and those who go out and give readings for others.
Judie: Yes, I am in agreement with that. Everybody has the gift of intuition, but not everybody is comfortable with it. I believe women tend to be more open about it, and men call it their “gut.” So, we all have it, but some people are more open to it than others.

What qualities do all good, professional psychics share?
Debra: When you say “good,” that is the important word, because all psychics should have compassion and caring for whom they are reading, and for life in general. Not everyone has that. If you want things for yourself and only for you, and if you do not really have it in your heart to help others, then that is a quality that sets you apart from being a GOOD psychic, compared to just being a psychic.
Judie: When you are working, you leave your ego at home. Providing a psychic reading is when your soul comes through, and that is what brings a genuineness to the reading. If the ego gets involved, that’s when people can run into trouble.

In what ways are all three of you similar as intuitives, and what sets you apart?
Kayla: I can tell you what sets us apart, we’ll start with that. What sets every psychic apart is that we each receive our information a little differently. Personally, I will get most of my information empathically and energetically through Spirit guides. I know Deb receives a lot of her information through angels. Judie speaks to the soul. So while we’re getting somewhat of the same information, we’re getting it from a different source and we’re getting it through our perception of that source.
Debra: We love what we do and we have a common goal to help others.
Judie: Yes, we share a compassion for the client.

What do you do individually or as a group to prepare for a reading?
Judie: When we work with a group, and you’ve heard me do this, I do an invocation, asking our guides and our angels to come in and be with us. I call upon our power animals to come in and help us out. I’m always asking that we be given information for everybody’s highest good and how they can further their souls through me. When we are done working — as a group, for sessions we do at expos and galleries and big events — we will always close down at the end also and thank the Universe for all the information we have been given and all the words that they give us to give to the people. And we always ask that it be taken out into the Universe and be spread out to help everybody with their higher journey.
Kayla: Individually, if I’m going to go to a job by myself or working with a client, I ask God and my angel guides to come forward. I thank them in advance to help me maintain clear, concise and accurate information, and that my client — and this is the most important part for me — understands that clearly, concisely and accurately. That’s especially important with me, because I get down to the nitty gritty. You’re not going to get a big fluffy piece from me, and I just want to make sure that you get that.
Debra: I am very much like Kayla in how I prepare for a reading. I have a talk with my angels and guides and ask them to be with me and to help me receive clear messages and be there for support. I also ask the angels and guides of the person I am reading to come forward so that I can give them messages.
Judie: When I do an individual reading, I ask my angels and guides to come in right beforehand and also to be there with me. But I also have found when I am doing phone readings at home that I tend to sit on the floor when I do that, with my animals with me. If the person I am reading has animals, my animals will come in and bug me until I talk to that person about their animals and give out some information about their animals.

Do any of you sense any changes internally or energetically that tell you when your intuitive channel is open?
Kayla: I physically feel that they are open. I get what I call the “psychic hug,” which is like Spirit and the angels coming around me. I can energetically feel my whole body kind of buzz, and I feel lighter. Remember in Star Trek when they got on the transporter and they beamed down to the planet or to another ship and their bodies transformed into little particles? I kind of feel like that. Energetically, my body feels like it is loosening up.
Debra: I guess I live my life open and I always have. It’s not that I walk around and meet everybody or anything. I know when it is the right time or the proper time to use my gifts. I live a life of feeling connected to Spirit, with my whole entire life engaged, empowered.
Judie: I would say for me that I tend to feel very relaxed. I feel like that there my words are crisper, lights are brighter, colors are crisper when I am using my third eye. I also notice that if I have any physical ailments going on, they totally go away when I’m doing readings. I am in a different realm.
Debra: As far as different realms, I think that’s where I live. I exist in that realm.
Judie: (laughing) We have to pull her back.

When you do readings together at the same time in the same space, does it feel more intense or different compared to when you do readings individually?
Judie: When the three of us are working together — that’s what we call the Power of Three — our energy is much higher. People will come up to us at expos in awe, “I just had to come over here because I am so drawn to your energy.” People want to work around us, because they want the energy that the three of us tend to radiate when we are together.

We have found that if one of us is gone, like if Debra is gone and just Kayla and I are working, I can get angel messages, and that is usually Deb’s realm. If I’m gone, the other two will get shamanic messages, which is usually my realm. So, even though one psychic may be absent, we are so in tune with each other that we just channel each other.

So you fill in for the other one when they are not there.
Judie: We do.
Kayla: I want to share a little story. Probably the second year when we were working together professionally, we were doing a show and there was a vendor booth across from us with mirrored trays on display. Throughout the day, especially if we had an intense reading going on, their trays would literally flip over. The woman from the other booth came over to us and said, “I don’t know, I mean, I can feel you guys’ energy over here, but when you guys really get going, my stuff is falling off the pedestals.” So, that was really cool.
Debra: Each of our personalities comes through during our readings, whether we work together or individually. We’ll hear that from people who receive a reading from us. We’re all different when we are sitting there. Even though what Judie said is true, about the Power of Three, as individuals we do have our certain way in which we act and behave. Whether together or as individuals, we express ourselves as we are.

If somebody comes to an expo and wants a reading, what do you recommend for them in terms of finding an intuitive who is right for him or her?
Kayla: When we are at an expo and are just chit-chatting with one another, we find people walking around, especially those who have never been to an expo before, who get very overwhelmed. They’re a little afraid. I always tell them, “Listen, walk around and look at the people and you feel what you feel. If you feel trust with yourself, if you like someone’s energy, then sit down with that person. Or, you can just chat with them. If you like what they have to say and you feel comfortable with them, sit down.”

Not every psychic is good for every person. I do the bookings for the company, and I am pretty good at determining who is going to be the better fit between the three of us for that client. I know if they need a quick, get it done, get the nitty gritty information, I’ll probably take that client. If they really need a loving and hopeful message, I will typically send them to Deb. Judie is good for someone who feels kind of lost, and really doesn’t know where he or she is going, soul-wise or life-wise.

For those people who are walking around not knowing what to do, I let them know that they have the power to choose the right psychic. And I always tell them this, though, “If you ever come across a psychic who says, ‘For another $20 I’ll give you more reading,’ or ‘You need to come back to me again,’ pick up your money and walk away, because those are the shysters and those are the ones who give the rest of us a bad name.
Judie: That’s when I talked earlier about the ego getting involved. Those are the ego people. Those are the people who say, “Oh, I’m going to be 100 percent correct.” and I always tell people who run into something like that to run the other direction. They are working from their ego and not from their compassion.
Debra: I believe there’s a little bit of higher power involved. I feel that when you are open to receiving messages, information, then the angels and guides will help you find the right one or the right company, like Psychics in the Cities, because we do offer a large variety of different gifts to offer our clients.

So do you recommend that the person who is at their first expo looking for a psychic put forth the intention that their higher selves, their guides, their angels help them find the correct reader?
Kayla: That certainly helps. Any direction you can get is good. Everyone needs to understand that when you are sitting down with a psychic, you have the choice to disregard what is being said, and you have the choice to listen to it and take what works for you and put aside what does not work for you. We’re not 100 percent, and we may misinterpret things. We have had some clients come to us who have had some horrible past experiences with psychics. But you know, it’s just a mistake, and the bottom line is that it’s just a moment in time.

How do I explain it? It shouldn’t be taken so seriously. This is just information. This is a perception, but it’s not the end all, be all.

Judie: In reality, we inform people they have their own free will.
Debra: We get quite a few clients who just are not ready to hear what they’re given, and they will go from psychic to psychic trying to find what they want to hear — and 99 percent of the time they receive the same information from every single one.
Kayla: We have had some psychic hoppers, and it’s not that they’re asking four different psychics four different questions. They’re asking four different psychics the same question. After a while, your guides are going to just throw their hands up in the air and go, “Whatever, go here, go there. If you don’t like that, here try this one!” We see the frustration. To me, that’s a waste of time and a waste of money and a waste of energy. We just talk with people and say, pick one or two, but have two different reasons to go to two different psychics.
Debra: Some of that could be coming from their lack of knowledge on how it really works. It’s not a game. It’s not a slumber party. It’s real. We are really connecting with Spirit to receive these answers and to help us have clear visions. Some of the people who are out there wanting a reading are just doing it for a girls’ day out or something, or they just want to hear the answer they expect, so they just need to understand more what it is all about and who we are and who we work with.
Judie: That’s part of what I try to cover in the invocation, and that is to bring in the people who can really hear our words. We have found that as we go along, we have fewer and fewer of those people who just want to hear anything. We do find that the Universe guides to us the people who are ready to hear from us and who we can really help — those we can help and take further on their journey. So, it just gets better as time goes on.
Kayla: We did a show in Iowa one time — I think it was our second show together — and the client sat down and she says, “What are my winning numbers?”

I said, “What?”
She says, “What are my lottery numbers?”
And I said, “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you for $20!”
So, she just said, “Well, then I don’t want anything from you.”

Debra: One time I was at Canterbury Downs, and every single horse I bet on came in last. (All three women laugh uproariously!) Every single one was last. I was like, “Wait a minute, what’s going on here?” Remember when I said I am open all the time? I choose when to use it and not to use it. (All laugh again!)

I would like each one of you to select what you think is the greatest misconception you would like to clear up about psychics.
Judie: There is a misconception that we are mind readers, that we walk around and we look at people and we read their minds. Therefore, when I am in my other business world, I am pretty careful who I let know what I do, because I’ve had them say to me, “I don’t want you near me because you’re going to read my mind.” That’s not what I do and it’s not how it works. We are not mind readers.
Kayla: One is that we were witches. Some of us might be witches, but I’m not. And, the other one is that we are fortune tellers, and that we’re going to be able to give people tips to win money. I get potential clients who call up and say, “Well, I have some business decisions.” They need to know if their stock is going to go up or down, and so forth. Listen, there may be a psychic who can do that, but that’s not where we choose to go. I don’t believe that those are actually good psychics, because that’s not necessarily for the higher person’s good. If something comes through in a reading in which I see some guy coming in and he’s going to offer you this business opportunity, but I’m getting a bad feeling about it, I’ll share that, but stock options? Really. I would be driving my Jaguar, okay? I would be living in a 500,000-square-foot house if it worked that way. But it doesn’t.
Debra: People don’t want you to look in their eyes, and but the thing is, that’s how I can read a person. I look in their eyes and see their soul, so I guess that misconception is true for me. If I can look into your eyes I will be able to see who you are.

Examples of questions we get are, “Who am I going to date or who am I going to marry?” But we don’t receive information that people are not ready for, or that they’re not prepared to deal with. We don’t receive every single answer to every question given to us by a client, because it’s not all for them to know right now. That’s hard for them to understand. Some of them fire off a list 10 or 20 questions long, wanting this answer and this answer and this answer. We will only put forth the information that would be for their higher good, and some of them just cannot accept that. They want to know the name of their future husband or what color hair he is going to have or what state they’re going to get married in or even what dress she’s going to wear.

Once again, this information most of the time is not necessarily something that is for their higher good or to help them in their day-to-day lives. I think those are the clients who don’t really get what they should out of their reading. So there is a misconception out there that we know every single thing that they present to us — that we know the answers or that Spirit will bring forth the answers. They won’t. Not all of them. Not all the time.
Judie: We are not all-knowing.

It seems another misconception, particularly among fundamentalist Christians, is that psychics are not Christian or not good people. I’m sure you’ve heard things like that.
Kayla: Guess what, I’m not Christian, I’m Jewish. So, they’re always right on that respect!
Judie: I hear that they’re just so frightened by us, and actually we have a higher power that we do connect with. What they don’t understand is that our higher power is their higher power also.
Debra: And, when people have that misconception, I do believe that once they get to know you and they see the light you live in and the love that you have and compassion for others, that it actually will help change that belief. It is in our power to do that. It’s in every psychic, medium, shaman, whatever gifts you have. It’s in their power to bring that to life. And that’s what we need to do, because that misconception is out there.

So, everyone who practices gifts and uses their gifts to help others needs to be aware that they need to always be living and doing their readings in the light and love and compassion, so that it reflects well on the whole community of psychics and mediums and shamans. All the lightworkers.

What is the purpose of a psychic?
Kayla: I believe that psychics are — I don’t want to say leaders or teachers — I want to say guides, and we are a guide to how to listen to your own self, to listen to your own intuition. I find that 75 percent of the time after we share information with a client, the client will say, “You know, I kind of already knew that.” So, we serve as a validator of what they already know.

One of the reasons I do this is to help alleviate people’s fear. Seventy-five percent of the people live in fear on some level. As a psychic, I think one of the biggest gifts we can give to human beings who are on this joy ride with us is to not be so damn afraid. Guess what? We get to do it again, so you can’t really screw up too badly, you know?
Judie: When I am being a psychic, I am out there helping souls on their journey. That’s from my angle of it. That is my way. I am the shaman of the group, and the shaman has many different areas to work in, but the psychic is one of my areas that I feel most gifted with, so it has been helping souls on their journey.
Kayla: Psychics empower their clients, giving them the confidence that they can get through life with a little less angst. But that comes from within, guiding them through their own intuition, and validating that they know what to do — so that they don’t have to keep going to psychics.

Of course, going to a psychic is not a bad thing! As psychics, we go to psychics. I just went for a psychic checkup, you know, because we all need a little push or a little guidance or a little validation of what we know — and it’s very empowering.

For more information on Psychics in the Cities, call 612.860.9196 or visit PsychicsintheCities.com.