What’s involved in the process of past-life regression?
What is past-life regression therapy?
Regression simply means ‘to go back in time’. As one can infer from the title of the process, ‘past-life regression’ means to go back in time to a life you had prior to your current life. And the ‘therapy’ part relates to information recalled from a past life or lives which has relevance to a particular challenge you have in your current life. This ‘challenge’ can be of a psychological, emotional, or physical nature, and in fact usually all three ‘layers’ of your self are ultimately involved in any condition. The mere act of becoming aware of past-life information is in itself therapeutic for many people. A far deeper understanding of your current life circumstances can occur which can be both mentally and physically liberating.
Hypnosis is used to bring the individual to a state of focused concentration whilst
being deeply relaxed.
Many people become anxious when the word hypnosis is mentioned because of preconceived
ideas and beliefs about what it is and what happens to you when hypnotised.
Firstly, hypnosis is not a form of sleeping - although on some occasions one may
fall asleep during the process!
People may be anxious that they cannot emerge from hypnosis back into full conscious
awareness. The fact is that all you have to do to regain normal consciousness is
to have the slightest thought that you don’t want to be in this state anymore and
it will be instantly over. You cannot become ‘stuck’ in the hypnotised state, you
open your eyes and return to normal consciousness when instructed by the hypnotist
or of your own volition, or you may drift into sleep.
A person does not give up their power or control to the hypnotist. The client is
always in control. Any hypnosis is actually SELF-hypnosis. The hypnotist is facilitating
the process of recall and in so doing may make suggestions in their guidance of the
experience. There is no coercion for a suggestion to be followed, the client can
quite readily refuse a suggestion and even take the reverse route of a suggestion.
The client cannot be made to do anything that is contrary to their personal set
of ethics and morals - unless they really want to.
Hypnotisability is different for each individual. In general around 20% of people can be hypnotised fairly easily; 65% - the majority of people - can be hypnotised on a light scale, but with practice and experience, many can go on to experience deeper levels. The remaining 15% of people may experience a light level of trance occasionally or not achieve any recognised level of trance.
Hypnosis in itself is not harmful. “Difficulties may arise from a session because of the clinician’s inability to effectively guide the client. The same conditions exist in any helping relationship where one person is in distress, vulnerable, and seeking relief.” (Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D. Essentials of Hypnosis.)
Hypnosis does not act like some kind of ‘truth serum’. The client is always in control of the situation, including what is divulged to the hypnotherapist. Information can be withheld or falsified if this is the intent of the client.
So, hypnosis is primarily what is involved in past-life regression. And this is simply a procedure for achieving a very deeply relaxed state of focused concentration. In this state one is able to access the subconscious store of information. This subconscious store holds every detail of your experiences in your current life - from what you had for breakfast this day three years ago to the feeling you had when you won that race at the school sports day back when you were nine years-old.
You might want to picture your subconscious store as a huge library with thousands of shelves of books that contain all the information you could possibly require. The books that contain information relating to your current life are nearest to hand for the issuing librarian at the customer enquiry desk of the subconscious library. The librarian is well used to continuously issuing just ‘current life’ information booklets to the enquiring conscious mind. What most people’s conscious minds don’t realise is that the issuing librarian can, if instructed, access shelves of books from the farthest reaches of this majestic building.
Books that contain the autobiographies of lives that are influential to the current life of the individual. Generally speaking, ‘instructing’ the subconscious librarian can only be done whilst the conscious mind has taken a well-earned break from the enquiry counter, is relaxed and ‘out of the way’ for a few moments. Suggestions on what books to look for can then be made and the contents of them revealed to the relaxed, but constantly vigilant conscious mind.
Instructing the librarian to make available these autobiographies to the conscious mind is what past-life regression is all about. Of course for many such a notion of ‘past-lives’, let alone being able to access the information contained within these debatable tomes, is something that cannot be entertained as ‘real’. However, provided one has an open mind at least to such possibilities then the process of past-life regression can progress with this essential lubrication. With practice and a skilled ‘guide’, this meditative process can bring an expansive confidence to one’s current life as well as a far deeper understanding of one’s total Self.
Resources and Recommended Reading:
www.brianweiss.com - website of the foremost pioneering psychiatrist in past-life regression.
www.newworldview.com - website that explores metaphysical information including ‘other lives’.
Many Lives, Many Masters. Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
Messages from the Masters. Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
Same Soul, Many Bodies. Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
Past Life Therapy in Action. Dick Sutphen and Lauren L. Taylor
The Nature of Personal Reality. Jane Roberts
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression. Jane Roberts
Chris Johnson with Brian Weiss at The Omega Institute, NY.
