I do the same thing...I do a line of cards...they do have assigned positions ...which I hardly ever use...but if a person points to a card and says "what's that position mean?" I have an answer for them.
After that first line I just keep placing lines, but more often as I am seeing things and conveying the message I will just feel compelled to throw a card to confirm what I am seeing.
So I am talking and throwing, talking and throwing.
Only I guess compared to conventional tarot reading I am doing it backwards, because first I get the information and then the card confirms it instead of pulling a card and getting the initial info from the card.
Hope I expressed that clearly.
When we're done with that question on to another... and a line of cards... then throw, throw, throw.
It seems to be a way the cards and I have worked it out to keep me comfortable and focused on the psychic images, smells, feelings etc that are coming in to me.
And only loosely connected/dependant on traditional meanings and spread positions.
I call it "Free Range Reading"
I am sure you could just sit and hold their hand and give them a reading...and not use cards at all if you feel comfortable with that.
For me it was that I plain
my cards and didn't want to leave them out of the process so I created (or should I say this way evolved) of using them and keeping cards involved in my readings.
And over time it has proven to be the right decision because often when the psychic images stop for a minute to regroup then the cards take over.
And it is comforting to know I can rely on that.
I have a friend who is a medium and psychic and we have had many conversations about this...he went the other way he just sits and talks...but I always tease him because he holds a deck in his hand all the while he talks. "Just in case" the client wants him to throw cards.
Another reader I know only carries a bag of wooden runes or sometimes a bag of small polished crystals.
At the start of the reading she throws the bag open and spreads the runes/crystals out and proceeds to read them..but she has admitted she only does this because clients like to see her use a tool...she is really a psychic reader who has found her own way of just talking through the reading.
Because I imagine you have already noticed this...as you talk the client sits real still, and as the information flows the cards...runes...crystals fade away in importance.