Past life regression

What is past life regression?

Hypnotherapist Liz Vincent explains more about past life regression in this short video.

Past life regression is a therapeutic technique for accessing and re-experiencing a person’s past lives or incarnations. Based on the theory that your reactions and the way you respond to problems are based in the past, past life regression is a holistic therapy that works with a person as a whole - not only the body and mind, but your emotions and spirit too.

While conventional psychotherapy or ‘talk therapies’ can be very helpful for some people, they typically focus on the present life. But in some cases, particularly if you are dealing with an issue that seems not to have a direct cause, you may be unable to uncover the ‘source’ of the problem. In contrast, regression hypnotherapy allows the client to unlock emotions and experiences stored deep within their memory.

What techniques are used?

There is a common misconception that practitioners ‘perform’ hypnotherapy on a client - but this is far from true. Past life regression, as well as other types of hypnotherapy, is an active therapy, whereby the client fully participates in the process.

Practitioners of regression therapy use hypnosis to help their clients relax and encourage them to open their minds. Other techniques such as suggestion, help to promote recall, and specific questions are designed to elicit statements and memories of the client’s past lives.

What is this type of hypnotherapy used for?

Some people hope to try past life regression simply out of curiosity, to see who they were in the past. But for most, it’s a path for personal growth and healing. To enable you to get the most out of your session, it is important to have a specific ‘intention’.

While you might wish to remain open to whatever you may experience in the regression, it is generally thought that having an intention offers a better context to understand and process the experience.

Focusing on this intention, a practitioner will be able to guide you to when you first encountered the root cause of a problem that you are currently experiencing. Such problems may include (but are not limited to):

• relationship issues (including inexplicable attraction/aversion to someone)
• vivid dreams or recurring nightmares
• chronic illnesses
• fears or phobias that have no apparent cause e.g. fear of death
• addictions
• déjà vu experiences
• feeling stuck in life

By examining the experiences that are thought to have first signalled the problem, practitioners can help connect their client’s current issues to a past life. It is hoped that by undergoing regression hypnotherapy, you will be able to make connections that you were unable to before - perhaps finally providing you with some explanation, or a sense of internal peace.

It would be understandable to expect that past life regression might focus on negative events and emotions, in order to explore the root cause of a problem. However, this is not necessarily the case. Practitioners will try to focus on the positive aspects of regression - rather than solely focusing on traumatic memories. In this way, it is possible for regression hypnotherapy to help you on a journey of personal growth.

What will happen in a session?

Therapists will vary in how they choose to conduct sessions, including how long each session will last, and the time dedicated to the regression aspect of the session itself. But you can expect that your hypnotherapist will start by asking you some questions about your present life, and the issues you hope to resolve. You will work together to uncover recurring patterns that may be the cause of problems in your life.

Having discussed the areas that you are most interested in exploring, you are in a better place to look back into your past lives - this will act as the focus or intention of the session. Your hypnotherapist will then talk you through relaxation steps to allow you to become deeply relaxed. This will allow you to access important subconscious memories - which may be from this lifetime, or from others in the past.

There is no way of knowing for sure what you will experience during regression therapy, as everyone experiences it differently. Some people may see glimpses of several past lives, whilst others may delve into one in more detail, or discover repressed memories from their current lifetime.

It is normal to feel unsure about where your memories will have come from, or wonder if you have made them up. But, as you become more comfortable with the process, these doubts will often fade.

Is this approach right for me?

Regression therapy, like many types of complementary therapy, is not for everyone.

Past life regression is often linked to reincarnation. There have been claims that a belief (or at least an openness) in the existence of reincarnation is the greatest predictor of reporting memories of past lives. On the other hand, it is thought that sceptics or disbelievers are less likely to report such memories.

Past life regression hypnotherapy is typically thought to be best for helping people to explore a spiritual path and it is gaining recognition as a type of spiritual healing. But whether you follow a religion or not, it is thought that by experiencing yourself as a soul in other lifetimes, you gain a profound awareness that you are more than a physical body.