Jodi Livon’s book launch party will take place on Aug. 14 in Minnetonka
By ERIN ELLIOTT /Â Community News Editor
When Jodi Livon was a young girl, she knew things. She knew who was calling before she answered the phone, she knew if her friend was going to bump into something and she knew details about people who had passed away.
“I discovered I had a gift when I realized that other people didn’t have it,” said Livon, who has written a book about being a psychic medium — a conduit between worlds — since high school.
Initially, Livon was overwhelmed by her gift and sought the help of a therapist, who taught her how to use her intuition and establish personal boundaries. She also began reading every book about intuitive energy that she could get her hands on.
“It was so much more basic than I thought it would be,” Livon said. “This is energy and everybody and everything has energy, and you just learn to understand what the vibration of that energy is. It’s not this big, bad spooky thing, it’s something really cool.”
Livon’s book, The Happy Medium, was released Aug. 1 by Llewellyn. Through real-life stories, Livon explains the process she goes through during a reading, and offers tips on maintaining emotional balance, staying grounded and interpreting signs from the universe.
A book launch party will take place on Aug. 14 at Borders in Minnetonka.
Jodi Livon: When we do prayer for the dead and they’ve been gone for 23 years, they can feel it. It’s in the Torah all the time. It’s about honoring people even though they’ve crossed over. (Photo: Jason Brown)
Livon grew up in a Conservative Jewish family in Golden Valley. After her grandmother, Faye Livon, died in 1985, she began exploring “the medium end of it.”
“I started reading about people who had crossed over and what that meant,” Livon said. “I wasn’t afraid anymore because I loved [my grandmother] and I recognized her energy when she was alive. All of a sudden, I kept feeling it when she was gone. And I knew people just didn’t disappear; it’s quantum physics — things change form, they don’t just disappear — and I realized it was her and it helped me so much.”
All mediums are psychic, but not all psychics are mediums, though Livon said that everyone is psychic and everyone has some mediumistic abilities. She wrote The Happy Medium as a tool to learn how to tune into one’s own natural gifts for higher awareness and guidance in making life’s decisions.
“The book is about encouraging people to understand how they use their own intuition and how when somebody dies, they don’t just disappear,” Livon said.
The book is also a way to comfort people in their grief.
“I know how people struggle so much when people they love die, and there’s going to be that, but when you know that they’re safe and when you know that it’s an OK place and we all go there, you don’t have to live in constant fear of dying,” Livon said. “The only thing that doesn’t die is love and that love comes through from the other side.”
Livon sees a lot of what she has learned as a psychic in the Jewish tradition, though she said that people of every religion are afraid of what they don’t understand.
“If you really look at the Torah or the Kabbala, they talk a lot about reincarnation,” Livon said. “And we do prayers for the dead all the time in Judaism. When we do the Kaddish, you can feel the vibrations of the person in the room… you can feel the vibrations rise. When we do prayer for the dead and they’ve been gone for 23 years, they can feel it. It’s in the Torah all the time. It’s about honoring people even though they’ve crossed over.”
Livon’s career as a psychic medium has spanned the last 25 years. In addition to doing readings and workshops for individuals, she works as a corporate coach to provide strategic planning advice to businesses and professionals.
“Because I have so many corporate clients, I maybe appeal more to the mainstream than the average psychic,” Livon said. “It’s normal, everybody does this and it makes people say, ‘OK, I’m not crazy, I can feel somebody who loves me still around’ or ‘My instinct was right about not hiring that person’… It’s not a shameful thing and people should be able to talk about it without hushed tones.”
Livon lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Jason Rein, and their three children, Cole, Aaron and Sophia. Livon said all three of her children are gifted in different ways.
“All kids have psychic abilities, but they learn to squelch it,” she said. “Acknowledging it to yourself is the biggest thing.”
***
A book launch party for The Happy Medium will take place 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 14 at Borders, 1501 Plymouth Rd., Minnetonka. She will also speak and sign copies of her book 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13 at Magers and Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis.
For information, visit: www.theintuitivecoach.com.
