The Link Between Spirituality and Wellness, According to Intuitive Medium Susan Grau

This week on The Art of Being Well, Dr. Will Cole sits down with Susan Grau, a grief expert, intuitive medium, life coach, and hypnotherapist, about the myths and misconceptions of being a medium. Grau, who has a doctorate in divinity and works with children who have had near-death experiences, blends the physical with the metaphysical and Western World medicine with Eastern World medicine. 

“A medium deals with the darkest, deepest pain. We’re holding the soul basically of a person’s loved one. We’re talking to the soul of someone in the spirit world, and we’re trying to bring that together to ease the pain,” Grau explains. 

This is the first time Dr. Cole and Grau have been able to connect since seeing each other before the pandemic, and they were excited to dive into the intuitive side of wellness.  

TheWellness-Intuition Connection

Grau shared how health connects with intuition. “When you are looking at your intuitive being, you understand your body more. You get the signs and the signals much more quickly than if you are not. If you are paying attention, and learn how to do that, you can keep yourself well emotionally, physically and spiritually.”

While everyone has intuitive abilities, not everyone uses them. “We all have intuitive abilities,” she says, “If we tap into it instead of using fear to deflect it on, we would be in a much better position. All of it is connected—mind, body, and spirit.”

As a medium and hypnotherapist, Grau connects with people’s loved ones. Her journey with spirituality began early—she’s been seeing spirit animals since age three but initially ran away from it for many years. “It just felt like the boogie man. As time went on, it became normal, and I just kept flowing from there.”

She’s been a grief and addiction therapist most of her life, so it only made sense for her to use her skills to support others on their wellness journeys. 

A Journey With Spirituality

Grau first heard the title “medium” in her late teens after a close relative died and she spoke to someone at UCLA about her experiences. She did not know how to control it, but eventually she learned. Grau shared that she did not grow up in a spiritual home, and her mom was put in a mental institution when she was a kid. “My mom would say to me, ‘Don’t talk about it.’”

It took Grau time to own her gifts and not see it as something to be feared. “There’s been times even up now when a spirit might come and it shocks me because I’m sleeping and they wake me.” Her gifts became familiar by her late 20s, and she really started to own it in her 30s. 

Emotional Intelligence and the Brain

In functional medicine, we call the gut the second brain. Dr. Cole explained that research shows that the heart is the second brain and is the through line down the center of our body. Your heart holds all the memory.

Your heart actually talks to your brain more than your brain talks to your heart. “The heart is actually in more control. And if the soul is seating in there, it makes sense to us that we want to listen to what our soul is telling us,” Grau says.

“If we can’t rationalize something, we deny it,” Grau adds. “It’s not a perfect science. It’s okay to be a skeptic, and you should be.”

Grau has her fair share of skeptics about her work as a medium and the power of the intuition. People often say you can’t see intuition or the spiritual world, and Grau will reply with, “Well you can’t see tomorrow but you know it’s coming.”

Our Past Lives 

As a hypnotherapist, Grau helps clients explore past life regression and what they are holding onto and what they are bringing with them. “It’s not about karma but simply about what did I bring with me that I am not letting go of in my soul.”

Grau believes her purpose for being on earth is soul expansion. A large part of that work is working through everything that occurs in your life’s journey.

“A true medium is actually in a healer mode. We’re holding space for people who are in pain and we help them connect to their loved one to let them know that they haven’t left them,” Grau shares. 

To learn more intuition and how it connects to the body’s overall wellness, listen to the full episode, out now, on The Art of Being Well.