Although Hollywood clairvoyant medium Tyler Henry gained fame less than a decade ago with his reality shows, he has had special gifts since childhood.
Henry reached fame after appearing on reality shows Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry and Life After Death with Tyler Henry, highlighting his otherworldly spiritual talents.
Kansas City magazine talked with Henry about “reading,” what comes through to him most from those on the other side and his newest tour, An Evening of Hope and Healing, which makes a stop in KC on January 11th.
So what does “An Evening of Hope and Healing” mean to you specifically and where did the idea for this tour come from?
It originally was called “An Evening of Hope, Healing and Closure,” and we changed it because closure for me is something that I’ve learned in my work is a bit of a misnomer. It’s ongoing. I don’t think that grief can ever fully be resolved. But there is something to be said about hope. And the power of hope, and the power of healing that comes from having the idea that there might be brighter days ahead. That, in essence, is kind of the fundamental of what I try to leave in every reading and in every message. To never lose hope. [The show] is completely live and unedited, so you never know what’s going to happen. Things can go right, they can go wrong. I’ve had so many fascinating experiences, but there’s something so connective about watching the process happen. And I truly believe we can find a sense of healing from other people’s experiences and maybe even get it right ourselves.
What can people expect from the tour?
It’s very educational, it’s funny and it’s emotional. And for me that’s really the goal. The process is fundamentally the same in any reading, but there’s something about when it comes to group readings, where themes start getting exemplified and that’s what I find so interesting. Very often there’s certain alignments, things that reflect the idea that though we go about our life maybe not knowing each other, we have a connection to one another far more than we know, and that gets exemplified. So there’s really something about the power of synchronicity—meaningful coincidence—that I think as a medium, I’m able to kind of facilitate. It hopefully leaves people looking at life a little differently, looking at timing. That when things kind of seem to uncannily align is maybe a nudge that you’re on the right path.
Most people are familiar with your work on TV, how does that translate to a live show?
Readings really do vary privately versus in groups. In group settings, they can go anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes. Privately they go on, sometimes for an hour to up to 13 hours. My longest reading actually was with Carmen Electra on Hollywood Medium and I think she went for about eight hours. So it really varies depending on the need. I’m so excited to be able to travel across the Midwest here in 2024. I haven’t had the chance to do that and coming to Missouri and all over, I had some family roots here, so I’m excited to get to come to the state of my people and just tap into new audiences. I think one of the coolest things has been connecting to different cultures across the country. I’ve found that while we all live in different environments and grow up differently—and especially now in this day and age with so much division in this country—I’ve been able to go to rural places and non-rural places and see the fundamental need, the fact that we all deal or will deal with these very human connective experiences. I hope that through having a shared audience of people with a whole bunch of different beliefs, all going through that grief and finding a sense of resolution, I hope that’s unifying and connective for people. I think we need that more than ever, especially now.
Could you tell us more about your iconic “scribbling” when getting “tuned in” for readings? What is that process like?
So at the live shows, people will see me and my notepad. And as I scribble, it’s really just a way of turning on, or turning up that volume dial, so to speak. So that I can start kind of getting into an altered state of consciousness. The scribbles themselves don’t mean very much. It’s really the process of scribbling that is repetitive—akin to kind of like a drum circle or chanting, or all the various ways that people get into a kind of a spiritual state, and scribbling is just that for me. As I do that, it allows me to kind of tune in and start receiving impressions, and whatever’s there I have to try to make sense of. I have to discern between what is valuable information and what might not be, and I have to really hope that there’s going to be something tangible. I can say with a lot of happiness that in the over 80 shows we’ve done, every single reading has had a moment of connection and, I think, leaving someone better than I found them, so I’m very, very happy about that.
Are there patterns with the messages you see communicated with you? And on the flip side, are people looking for similar things when they try to communicate with ones on the other side?
Going into readings, I find that I have to prioritize the information that comes through. I liken my job to that of a mailman in the sense that I don’t write the letters, I just kind of deliver the message. I think a good medium can determine what’s coming through and also kind of read between the lines of what’s not coming through. I think more than anything, people are looking for validation and they’re looking for affirmation, whether there’s life beyond death, or that the love and the bonds they’ve created haven’t died. Or sometimes, it’s just that they’ve made the right choice, that they did everything they possibly could have done. That for me is where I think the most power is in readings.
What is your relationship with death/afterlife? Do you think having this ability has changed your feelings or fear around it?
I still look both ways when I cross the street and I encourage people to do that as well—to stop at red lights and wear your seat belt. And by that I mean this: I think this work has shown me the fragility of life. Just how quickly it can be taken away, just how quickly our normalcy bias can be broken, we think “things are normal, things are the way they are, things are always going to be the way they are.” But for so many people I read, their lives have changed overnight. So it’s allowed me to live in a way that is genuinely more filled with gratitude and I’m a much more present person. I make sure that I say it now while I still have a chance, I make sure that I tell my parents how much I love them every single day. You know, it’s really fundamentally changed how I live so as to prevent future regret. I think it’s okay to be afraid of the unknown on some level, I think it’s human and certainly nobody has it all figured out. I know so little beyond what I’ve been exposed to from my work. But I would say that you know, it’s a matter of some level of perspective, we can allow the inevitability of death to dictate our life and to live in fear. Or we can take that awareness and we can live life to its fullest. We can extend the olive branch. We can do compassionate acts for those who are still with us on this plane and that will mean something. I often think of when we take our last breath, I hope that when we look back at our lives, we’re not thinking about all the times we spent at a desk job or all of the hours we clocked in. I think we really think about our relationships, connections and bonds.
