Whilst guiding people through their past lives, I’ve heard captivating details of their lives, their deaths and the many regrets and reflections from those lives. In fact, the fascinating stories and surprising plot twists within those lives could often be the makings of a gripping novel or movie.
Yet, even with all of the detail, emotion, meaning and facts, one question is common for most clients. “Is this real or am I making this up?”. Indeed, it is rare to encounter a person who doesn’t silently ask it of themselves. And I am no exception. Like my clients I wonder this too, in the midst of my own past life regressions.
It’s not a question we’re likely to answer any time soon, given that science has yet to identify the location of consciousness in the brain, let alone the possibility of a soul. Which means past life regression requires a degree of faith. Or does it?
Could it be possible to experience benefits from a past life regression, even if you didn’t believe in reincarnation or non-local consciousness? If you believed such a regression session is imagination or fantasy, no more real than virtual reality, could you still get some therapeutic value from it? If it really is just a figment of the imagination and entirely made up, is there still some therapeutic value to a past life experience?
Yes. I believe so. And here’s why …
Rehearsing the unfamiliar
It’s hard to overcome blocks in your life if you have no sense of what good looks or feels like. Because your mind typically follows familiar patterns, irrespective of how beneficial they are to you, it’s difficult to bring in new more positive experiences if you’ve never experienced them before. If you have a long history of dating unsuitable partners for example, might you reject a suitable one in favour of the familiarity of another dysfunctional relationship, simply because it’s what you know?
Utilizing the rehearsal room of your mind is a powerful way to practice new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, so that you can become more comfortable with the unfamiliar. This technique is used in therapies such as CBT-hypnotherapy, systematic desensitization or any therapy that uses visualization. Such therapies allow you to become more familiar with the unfamiliar (or scary) from within a state of deep relaxation, thus gradually changing the association and the automatic reactions as a result.
Past life regression is also one of those techniques, but supercharged. Want to experience a healthy relationship? Then fully immerse yourself in the past life of a person who had one, to gain familiarity around sensations of trust, love, connectedness, compassion etc. Want to know what wealth or abundance feels like if you’ve only known scarcity? Then immerse yourself into the past life of a wealthy person, to have that experience from a new perspective.
But can you really have these experiences even if you don’t believe in reincarnation and suspect past life regression is all, well, just fantasy? Yes, I think so. I have had many clients who doubt the whole thing, but still have rich and fully immersive experiences, provided they can relax a distracting conscious or overly analytical mind.
Utilizing the rehearsal room of your mind is a powerful way to practice new ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, so that you can become more comfortable with the unfamiliar.
Even though we know virtual reality is virtual, it doesn’t stop our brains being quickly 'fooled' and then led by the experience. Similarly, you could view past life regression as an immersive, inner role play, similar to virtual reality, but with the story being highly and uniquely relevant to you and what you need right now. A client might for example, visit a past life which puts their current challenges into clear perspective. Or they might experience a life of peace and simplicity, if that is lacking in their current life.
So even if you believe you are making up your past life regression, that mental rehearsal or inner role play can still help fill in experience gaps in your life, or give you a new perspective. As long as a busy analytical mind can be calmed enough through guided meditation or hypnosis, then I believe you can get all of the benefits of a past life regression, whilst still believing it is fantasy. All views are valid and equally effective.
Overcoming the fear of dying
An extreme fear of dying can have life-impacting effects. I have known people who can’t do a long-haul flight, relax on a train or drive on a motorway, just in case the worst should happen. They can’t live fully now, in case they should die. Helping them to overcome or minimize that fear clearly benefits their lives immensely. Whilst not everyone is so extreme in that fear, what would be different in your life if that fear or concern was no longer there? How might you live differently as a result?
It's an interesting question and one that is frequently answered by a past life regression. During a typical past life regression, clients are taken through the significant events of a life and then through their death and into the immediate moments afterwards. Most describe it as a simple letting go, followed by a sense of peace. Most also describe it as easy, much to their own surprise. So as previously stated, past life regression is an opportunity to rehearse something in your mind that you are unfamiliar with, in a bid to remove any unnecessary fear, even if that unfamiliar activity is something like dying.
One client (who I’ll call Bob) worked as a medic in emergency care. Having witnessed so many traumatic deaths, he had a deep fear of dying. In his past life regression, Bob entered his past life at the point of death, shipwrecked and washed up on a distant shore. He simply let go and experienced a peaceful death. When I asked Bob to return back to earlier significant moments in that life to find out more about it, he returned instead back to his final moments of that life and died again. In fact he ‘relived’ dying 3 times, with little past life living in between. But the outcome of this experience? A recognition by Bob that his previous view of dying may not be the experience of the person going through it. He got the experience he needed and his deep fear rapidly disappeared as a result.
Past life regression is an opportunity to rehearse something in your mind that you are unfamiliar with ... even if that unfamiliar activity is something like dying.
Could Bob have got this learning even if he believed he was making up his past life and it was a figment of his imagination? Yes, quite possibly, because this was Bob’s first experience of past life regression and so he did have those skeptical thoughts anyway. His fear of dying was effectively reduced by rehearsing the experience of it in his inner mind.
Safe release of emotions
One thing that often surprises people who are having a past life regression for the first time, is the depth of emotion that they feel for the life of a ‘stranger’. They can experience deep love, loss, sadness, anger and all manner of emotions and feelings whilst immersed in that life.
In the same way that having a good cry whilst watching a movie can provide a beneficial sense of release, so too can expressing emotion within a past life regression. It may well be a safe way of releasing pent up, repressed or withheld emotion from this life, that’s perhaps a bit difficult to deal with.
Do you need to believe it is a real past life to experience such emotion? Well no. Even though you know that the sad looking dog in the movie is not really homeless and alone, it still triggers your emotions strongly, once you are immersed in the story. So it is with past life regression. Once you are in your own past life movie, emotions can still surface, ready for safe release, even if you’re questioning whether you are making it all up.
Sarah was a client who experienced a past life that featured extreme love with a partner and extreme loss for a child. She vividly felt all of those emotional extremes and her experience was deeply cathartic. Perhaps it was a real past life or perhaps it was just an opportunity that her mind took, to release previously unexpressed upset? We will never know for sure and perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps the resulting sense of release afterwards is all that really matters. Susan certainly felt like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders afterwards.
Once you are in your own past life movie, emotions can still surface, ready for safe release, even if you’re questioning whether you are making it all up.
So, to sum up, I firmly believe that anyone experiencing a past life regression should choose their own explanation behind the experience and that ALL possible beliefs are valid. Do you have to believe it is a real past life in order to undertake it or to get some benefits from it? No. I believe you can still experience many of the benefits, even if you conclude that it is a complex fantasy created by your equally complex inner mind. And that anyone willing and open minded enough to park their analytical mind and to immerse themselves in the experience, may benefit, irrespective of beliefs. I believe past life regression therapy is suitable for most, irrespective of personal beliefs.
I’m Debbie Jeremiah, a leadership learning professional with an interest in the mind at work and accessing the subconscious through regression, parts therapy and hypnotherapy. These are my own thoughts and opinions and as such, may contain inaccuracies and biases.
Find out more about past life regression at: https://www.debbiejeremiah.com/past-life-regression
Results are unique to you and not guaranteed. For any concerns you should always consult your own medical practitioner first.
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