One of the most interesting tools of hypnosis assisted psychotherapy is known as past life regression. During past life regression a client is hypnotized and taken back in time to an event that took place in a past life. The goal of a hypnotist is to identify and narrow down to a very specific event that is related to a psychological problem that is affecting the patient’s current life. This brings the knowledge that helps therapist and the patient to deal with the present problem by understanding what event in another life caused this problem.
This approach works best with anxiety and depression. The therapist not only identifies and taps into a situation or event that is a source of anxiety or depression for his client, but also reframes the event or change what was experienced so that the said event does not negatively affect their client any longer in their present life.
Past life regression was first developed in 1890’s Paris under Dr. Pierre Janet who collaborated with Sigmund Freud in an experiment to use it as a tool of psychotherapy. The subject of past life regression was seen as some type of an occult philosophy and commonly regarded as unbelievable. It was pretty much ignored by therapists for the next seven decades, at least until Morey Bernstein wrote a publication entitled “The search for Bridie Murphy” during the 1960’s. This was an account of a young women, Virginia Tighe from Colorado who, when hypnotized, travelled back to a former life in 19th century when she was a young woman in Ireland known as Bridie and recalled many details about her life. Many of these details couldn’t have been known to this young women, who never left her home town. After many searches in Irish archives it was discovered that there was a person with the name Bridie Murphy Corkell, and most facts of her life did match to the descriptions given by Virginia Tighe.
It was also at this time that Arnall Bloxham collaborated with BBC in the creation of a television series about a housewife by the name of Jane Evans who regressed all the way back to the 12th Century York as a young Jewess named Rachel. Rachel was married to Joseph, a wealthy moneylender, who was hounded by the mob to the point that the Jewish family went into hiding in the crypt of an old church. They were eventually discovered and put to death by the sword in what was known as the Battle of York in 1189.
It was a historian named Professor Dobson who corroborated this story when he became intrigued enough to investigate the details. He found the ruins of an old church which at first did not have an old crypt until it was renovated and the remains of the crypt was discovered hidden within the bowels of the church.
Past life regression is commonly categorized as para-psychology treatment and is a widely used therapeutic tool that can help an individual work out issues such as insecurity that is caused by fear of abandonment, low energy and/or depression, phobias as well as any other type of past trauma history; this could include whatever was the cause of death in your past or future life. Lastly, it can also be used to work on overcoming guilt such as feeling a sense of responsibility for the death of others.
The whole point of past life regression in therapy is to identify a problem in a past life that is linked to something that is currently taking place within your current life. As the saying goes, the purpose of the study of history is to avoid making the same mistakes which would inevitably cause history to repeat itself.
We prepare for the future by studying the past. As Albert Einstein once defined insanity as “doing the same thing over while expecting different results.” Part of treatment for any major issue is realizing that whatever you have tried in the past is not working so we look to others for help and see what they did, even if it is the lives of people in the past, differently that we have not tried yet. Since each person is a unique individual, each person will have different methods so their treatment is tailored differently. In regression therapy, we identify with something in the past that closely resembles the present and in many cases this solves the problem.
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/babs4180/4347305428