Past Life Therapy / Regression Therapy

[holistichealer]

Past life regression is a technique that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations. Some regard them as imaginary, as these are not necessarily testable through empirical processes. Nevertheless, sufficient numbers of people over millennia have reported experiencing memories of past lives to warrant serious consideration of the phenomenon.

Past life regression is typically undertaken either in pursuit of a spiritual experience, or in a psychotherapeutic setting to resolve trauma or related difficulties. Most advocates loosely adhere to beliefs about reincarnation, though religious traditions that incorporate reincarnation or rebirth generally do not include the idea of repressed memories of past lives.

In the West, past-life regression practitioners use hypnosis and suggestion to promote recall in their patients, using a series of questions designed to elicit statements and memories about the past life's history and identity. Some practitioners also use bridging techniques from a client’s current-life problem to bring "past-life stories" to conscious awareness. Practitioners believe that unresolved issues from alleged past lives may be the cause of their patients' problems.

Memories can vary from harmless to actually increasing suffering in the patient or their families. The memories are often experienced as vividly as those based on events experienced in one's life, impossible to differentiate from verifiable memories of actual events.

[gruntal]

This reminds me a bit of an incident where I used the live; in the "City of the Angels" (purely a Spanish idium lifted from the local language); a number of very young kids were sent to child pychologists. There to ferret out how they were molested so as to bring evidence to the infamous McMartin Preschool Trial. A number of these kids had to grow up into adults to realise how badly the establishment was fishing for the right answer. It was just assumed the poor kids were too young and naive to grasp how awfull they were treated. It is suggested now nothing untoward ever happened. I think that problem though may exist on many levels. That it might be so is only compounded by going back so far even as to consider past lives. Even if you believe in past lives it is not proven your past life was so intimately connected to you.

People may emphasize with the others but I rarely if ever hear of anybody experiencing someone elses pain or hunger. And that is the immediate. Going so outside the norm makes to me practically anything possible. Was that terrible betrayal really you or just somebody that hurt so badly the trauma would never let go and landed on you by chance like scrapnel? How isolated are we to begin with? Now it is obvious but the universe is so immense. Our parameters may in fact be too limeted. That is not in itself a bad thing. We make rules that serve us well for the place and time we occupy.

I have heard countless suggestions or speculations on why I act now the way I do. The walking numb. It isn't normal. Well it is to me. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't the rest of humanity that had all that garbage from the past that is driving them crazy. I just don't recall anything all that terrible. Then again I don't think a lot about it precisely because it is so scary to think how venerable I might have been ages ago. That to me is the ultimate hurt: to be less then perfectly self sufficient in mind and body. I'm not about to go back and relive those dreafull years even if I could.

Assuming I can not that is a good an excuse as any to avoid past life therapy. Next thing your suggest eye contact. Brrrrr.

And to think someone will inherit my memories and personalites hundreds of years from now? Now that is a funny thought! Sometimes I think it is good we are so isolated in time and place and body or we would be so enraged we could never survive to the future. Maybe some distant day in the future I can safely look at the past but for now the present is scary enough.

[holistichealer]

Hey, G.

Anything can be abused / used in the wrong way, etc. For instance, let's take something as mundane as drinking water. It's possible to drink too much water, believe it or not. And doing so can rob your system of electrolytes and result in some pretty severe symptoms, unless you take steps to counter- balance that depletion via electrolyte supplementation, etc. Still, you could wake up in a wet bed in the middle of the night, even with other precautions remedied, etc.

Past Life Therapy is something that can be abused / used in the wrong way. For instance, it's a "fad" with some people to go find out who they "were". So they go in with preconceived ideas about the outcome from the very beginning.

The thing is that looking into past lives, when done correctly, is simply a by- product of asking the person to "locate the point in time that this issue first began in your existence". The answer could just as well be, "When my best friend died.", "When my Dad left me and Mom when I was 5 years old.", as "I was in Egypt and there was a famine...".

It's not the role of the therapist to challenge what comes up. "That's not possible, or at the least highly unlikely." "Are you sure?", etc. But rather, it's the job of the therapist to help the client follow the free- flow of information that comes up once that flow begins. "And what year was that?" "How did that make you feel at the time?" "How does that play a part in how you are now?"

I heard a comment a while back that I think is very appropriate for this topic: The therapist considers the information that comes to be entirely accurate- metaphorically, or, in fact. In other words, whether it's literal or not, the client believes it to be so. And if the client believes it to be the crux of his or her issue, then it is.

With the above in mind, the instance you cited above makes me cringe. I can see a "therapist" going in with pre- conceived ideas that the children were abused / molested and "hunting" for evidence to "prove" the um, "hypothesis".

[gruntal]

That reminds me of a postulation in another post that only the scientific method would produce valid research. That is problemetical in the extreme i.e. we can certainly verify our truths logically but the search for possible answers is more intuitive or what we diegn to call "common sense". Our ancestors might consider the wrath of the gods as one reason for things but we don't include that anymore. So at some level we are open to all possiblities but at another level we already have what we are looking for.

We know the cookies go in the oven; we just need to experiment on time and temperature ect.

Then again I had a friend once who complained he was tormented by the others pain and grief and if I ever experienced such. I told him fortunately I did not and that was probably why I was able to sleep so well at night. Although the thought that empaths might exist does make me wonder if I might be missing something. And if I might live long enough to get some answers. And how things might change if I could. Nothing to worry about but even so .....

That is the trouble with being so isolated. Reality is much more compact. Simple is safe. I would not dream of kicking the furniture to get even with them for what they did to me. Well I do but the reasons are not important. Untill I don't even a decent chair left to sit on and then I might wonder about all the aggression.

I certainly don't think I was attacked by the ottoman couch in ages past. So it is agreed the details get very fuzzy over time. Cloth, scales, fur, 2024 T3, a 1963 Willys Overland; something must have run over me and produced the same results!

I may think too much. I DO wonder about that!

[sparklekaz]

Hi guys,

Its been great reading all your thoughts about past life and regression.

I agree with Holistic, that anything can be abused. I believe the important thing is intent. Why do people seek past life regression in the first place. For myself I would like to experience this at some point in my life, for the following reasons.

I have for many years had very vivid dreams about certain places. Particularly Egypt. The recurring theme has been scrolls of Hieroglyphs. I have read them and felt as if I should be able to read them. I have also had dreams where I have been present where funeral rites and the mummification process has been taking place. I have had these types of dreams many times and I am of the mind, that if we keep dreaming about certain things, which could have a past life connection. That there is a reason for it. For why else would they keep coming to us. So I would be interested in learning more about this.

The other reason I would seek past regression, is for health reasons or phobia's experienced in this life without any recoginsable cause. Why is it some people are petrified of closed in spaces, fire or water. Especially if they have never had a negative experience in relation to this lifetime. I go through periods of being woken in the night and can smell smoke very strongly. I have to get up and check the house to make sure there is no fire anywhere. This tends to happen mainly when I am stressed. But still I find it strange. To my knowledge I have never been in a fire and have asked family members to be sure it has not happened when I was very young.

I cannot bear going underground, even driving through underground tunnels on the moterway, I literally hold my breath until we have come through. I have a dire fear of being buried alive. These fears do not overly rule my life, but they are there and troublesome at times. It would be interesting to see if there is a past life cause for them. I am a big fan of Dr Brian Weis and have read many of his books. He contends that some current life issues can be resolved through re remembering their source if they occurred in a past life. I can wholeheartedly reccomend his book 'Many Lives, Many Masters'.

I have to say I don't agree with people going into this just for curiousity. I believe our past lives are buried deeply for a reason. For how can we live wholeheartedly in the moment, in this life, if we have one foot still firmly planted in the past? How achingly sad to be tormented by lost loves or other times that we cannot revisit. Each life has its lessons for us. What is gone is gone. So unless something from the past is affecting us now and we need to let it go. I believe in staying in the here and now.

Love and light
Kaz

[holistichealer]

A while back, I read, "From Birth to Rebirth: Gnostic Healing for the 21st Century", by Dr. C.V. Tramont. It's one of many I've read on the subject (including several by Dr. Weiss). I recommend it highly as a good "intro" to the topic for skeptics.

Dr. Tramont is a Gynecologist in the U.S. He got into hypnosis as a means to provide better pain management to his patients, and one day, with one particular patient, he instructed her to go to the source of the emotional discomfort that she couldn't seem to rectify, that he believed would help clear a path to her being pain free with regard to the anxiety she was having at that time. He was very surprised when she went into past life recall and even more so when she was improved as a result. As a result, his curiosity was piqued and he began a quest to look into the underlying causes of issues that his patients presented him with.

His experience is not so unique. If I remember correctly, Dr. Weiss had a similar experience with his patients, as did Dr. William Baldwin (who was a dentist at the time he got into PLT and SRT) and Dr. Shakuntala Modhi (a psychiatrist in the U.S.). There are others...