Past Life Regression

The phenomenon of past life regression, has been one of considerable controversy ever since its inception. I am not here to make arguments for, or against any beliefs on this matter, but instead I prefer to remain open to the possibility and the wonderfully easy way that everyone can experiment for themselves using hypnosis. The information provided below comes from my own research as well as personal experiences with this intriguing topic.

The three main theoretical positions most people take when attempting to explain past lives are as follows:
The first position is the positivist or tabula rasa position. This position states that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa in Latin) at birth, that we have only one life, and that all psychological disturbances are the result of experiences in this life. The only way the positivist is prepared to explain past life reports, is to see them as the result of unconscious imagination derived from forgotten stories, TV shows, or gossip overheard or read in early childhood.

The second position is the Great Memory position. According to this position we all have access, in dreams, meditation, or hypnosis, to the stratum of the unconscious mind which is universal and consists of not just our own, but everyone's forgotten experiences or fantasies. This position states that we all have the capacity to dip into the vast collective memory bank of mankind. This universal memory has been called the Akashic record, the collective unconscious or simply Great (Universal) Mind.

The third or reincarnationalist position asserts that “our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting”. The soul that rises at birth has lived many lives accumulating merit or demerit as the karmic consequences of actions previously performed. The governing thought is then expressed as "selfishness sown in one life is reaped as misery in another, according to the universal law of psychic cause and effect called karma."

As for my own explanations, I simply don't know. It's kind of like the "God" thing. How do you prove that it is, and how do you prove that it isn't. The stories do make one wonder, I do however have a good understanding of the positivist's view upon this matter. For example, early in my NLP training I learned that long time forgotten memories are easily constructed from bits and pieces of other memories, and easily transformed into a completely different story, you can have a look at our false memories page for more interest with this. These stories can even be eloquently placed into another's memory and thought of as real. Yet with the amount of astounding stories I have read, when it comes to hard to believe topics such as this one, I like to remember the transcripts of a Zen master's Sengstan's words:
"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind."

What I can appreciate is the approach used by Dr. Roger Woolger author of "Other Lives, Other Selves", a psychotherapist by trade, when using past life therapy. He states "the psychotherapist is primarily concerned with helping the patient get better, not in proving a theory or in promoting a doctrine". Woolger tells all his clients that it doesn’t matter whether they believe in reincarnation or not for past life therapy to be effective. On the other hand, he asks them to believe in the healing power of the unconscious mind.

When a past life memory occurs in therapy, Woolger does not see it as an end in itself, but as a means towards furthering the emotional catharsis, self-understanding, and healing that are the true goals of psychotherapy. When trauma is experienced, he carefully helps the client through the memory, to help the person let go of and fully clear the trauma at all levels: physical, emotional, and mental, focusing on the person and not the events.

Woolger suggests that as a rule, the unconscious mind will, in its wisdom only send us past life memories that we are ready to deal with and are able to integrate into our conscious personality structure. The first past life memories that come, tend to be more benign. Beginners not subject to pressure or neurosis, are usually shown other selves from the past, that can be more easily assimilated and dealt with.

Woolger uses the metaphor of the oriental image of the guardian of the threshold, a frightening monster depicted at the gates of a temple or bordering a sacred mandala, or meditation picture, to depict the images of our own fears, which prevent us from entering realms of the psyche we are not ready for. Whether we are aware of them or not, each of us has our own inner guardians of the threshold to prevent us from going too deep, too fast. There is a subtle inner economy of psychic and spiritual enfoldment in which every individual proceeds at his or her own pace, governed by these inner guardians and guides.

Any psychological work that goes into the deeper layers of the unconscious mind is likely to bring up powerful emotions, disturbing memories, and fantasy type material. Often overwhelming psychic contents may seem to the uninitiated and even to experts to belong to the realms of classical madness. Past life regression and exploration can be like taking the lid off Pandora’s Box, it can unleash potent forces over which we may have little control. For this reason, it is his firm belief that guiding regressions and research into past lives should only be undertaken by those fully trained.

A word of warning for those thinking about or already involved with past life regression, Woolger has noted that one thing to watch for is that of cryptoamnesia, which simply put is a story put together from forgotten memories. He states that when someone comes up with a past life as a famous person, his own skepticism, “rights it off”, as that of cryptoamnesia.

According to those practicing the art of past life regression therapy, our previous selves seem to have many an influence on our present behavior.
The first way in which past lives influence one's current behavior is a recognition that these characters from previous eras are recognizable as other selves, which we dimly know, yet have always been there in the background of our consciousness. These other selves are elegantly compared to as "skins to an onion", which can be peeled off layer by layer with each viewed past life. I now have a sense that I am one big mother of an onion.

The second feature is an inescapable feeling that this character’s past life story is somehow being re-enacted in this life and that it still remains unfinished. Woolger suggests that certain developments, seemingly traumatic ones, tend to carry forward in the form of beliefs, fears, and ailments.

The one thing I do wish to pursue with this is that of unfinished business. I am of the hopeful wish that somehow learnings can be transferred, so that wrongings can be made right, because I really don't want to come back anymore.

Past life regression sessions can be easily brought forth using methods such as found on our regression therapy page, or one can follow a path as shown here below.

In a typical past life regression session, the therapist usually starts with an interview to explore any current or recurrent problems. In the first session he takes a detailed personal history from birth through childhood, up to the present, noting illnesses and emotional upheavals of any kind. Then he gives his client a simple relaxation exercise with eyes closed and begins to focus on whatever issue seems central. Sometimes he encourages the client to focus on an image, a recent memory or a person and asks the client to say whatever comes to mind as if the client was confronting that situation. Sometimes he may focus on a pain in the body and allow images to emerge from that area. As soon as images, words and feelings start to intensify, the therapist suggests that the client follows them into any story that might emerge in this life or another life.

Often enough the client soon finds herself in a different body and personality, recounting a story quite dramatically as the other self. Then the therapist may encourage the client to fully relive the major events and turning points of that other life, assuming that emotional release will come at these crucial points of conflict. Whatever arises, however confusing, incoherent, or bloody, the therapist will take the client through it to completion. This was also the same process Irene Hickman urged in "Mind-Probe Hypnosis".

If the climax of a particular story is in fact a violent death, the therapist will ensure that it is fully relived at a physically conscious level on the same principle that only a remembered trauma can be let go of.

In most past life regression sessions, the therapist will attempt to complete the memory of a life story by taking the client through the death of that particular personality. This has the effect of completion and, more importantly, of detachment. Woolger states that the death transition is an opportunity to let go consciously of the obsessive and repetitive thoughts, feelings, or fears of that other self in turn releasing a layer of the onion. In the after-death period the client is given the opportunity to compare the themes of the past life with unresolved issues in this life. Every client should then be encouraged to see the story as now finished, a pattern that need not be repeated.

Throughout the past life regression, the client may experience sweating, hot and cold flushes, cramping, temporary paralysis, sharp pains, erotic sensations, numbness, trembling, shaking, or tingling which represent the release of blocked energy associated with an old trauma. Traumas at a physical level might stem from birth, a past life, or an operation in this life, and often all three. The body is encouraged to express and let go of the shock and the trauma. Such release at a somatic as well as emotional level is absolutely crucial to the full healing process.
A typical past life regression session should last about two hours providing adequate time for the three stages of the process: interview, intensive work, reflection and re-entry.

Woolger states that within each one of us there is a multitude of inner characters, our other selves. Firstly, he suggests the recognition of these characters, then secondly, we come to terms with them.

Past life recall offers a particularly vivid, and emotionally engaging way of encountering our inner figures. As Woolger puts it, "first, we engage in dramatic identification – becoming the past life self for the duration of the life story, and then dys-identification – dying to that self, detaching from its powerful samskaras, and resolving in dialogue or imagery the unfinished business from a particular story."

Essentially Woolger's idea, is to remember and integrate the learnings, and passions of all these other selves, into a well balanced new self. Old pains should die out, with new doors and strengths opening for the re-birth of a newly integrated personality.

If you are curious to explore on your own and learn about your past life, have a look at our Personal Enhancements products page, we even have some programs to take you into the future... your future... or just go ahead and try out one of our programs listed below... you will never know what you find until... you actually get there...

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Have you ever wondered what life might have been like in another time? Well here is your chance, "Past Life Recall" will help you learn the origins of present pains, and ailments, and even allow you to learn what place significance others in your present life have played before... lots of fun here with this one...

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Release yourself from the negativity of a past life, and watch how easy your present life becomes. This program goes very well with program number 430 for Past Life Recall. Aren't you curious as to what you might find?

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The extra subliminal track added here will help you figure out what your unconscious might just be hiding, and it will take care of things you might not want to know about all on it's own...