You can read chapter 1 here, or you can simply read the book format of the first two chapters here.
Chapter 1
Let’s Have a Past Life Discovery
I did not know where this was going to lead me, when one day, out of great curiosity and a little trepidation, I asked my nephew Devin to try doing a past life regression session with me. I did not know what to expect. In fact, I was incredibly nervous.
Devin was living with my partner Tim and I, as an international high school student. And I was fresh out of graduating from a two-year clinical counselling hypnotherapy program.
During the program, our instructor had told us that “weight loss” and “quit smoking” was where the money was in this profession, and it would be wise to focus on these areas in our practice. Accordingly, I planned to start my practice treating people’s mental, emotional, and behavioural issues.
At some point, I became aware of my growing fascination with the more spiritual aspects of hypnosis. That very same fascination was present when I finally learned that it was possible to access past lives through hypnosis. Even though I had not registered for the Hypnotherapy Program with the intention of doing past life regressions, taking the course helped to place me squarely on that path.
For a long time, I had delayed asking Devin. I had hoped to “exchange” nephews with another newly graduated Hypnotherapist to avoid any embarrassing situations. What if I had killed my nephew, or if he me, in a previous life? After all, didn’t they say souls travel together in different lifetimes due to karmic debts? Wasn’t humanity’s a history of violence? One person or group killing another or vice versa for one reason or another?
But I could not find another Hypnotherapist from my class who was as keen as I about exploring past lives. Most of my classmates likely did not believe in it. Those who did, were significantly discouraged by our instructor’s instruction: “We do not do Past Life Regression on purpose. When it spontaneously happens, deal with it.”
Keen to experiment, I looked around and found my nephew was the only person with whom I could afford to fail in this endeavour. It would not be a big deal for him. At the time, Devin was an easy-going teenager; one immersed in the world of online gaming. He was relaxed about his new life, despite living away from home, in a new school and a new country.
Devin has since grown into a self-confident young man, and most things are still not a big deal for him. My first book Past Life Regression: A Manual for Hypnotherapists to Conduct Effective Past Life Regression Sessions was dedicated to him, as he was the one who helped me out when I first started. But as far as I know, my nephew seemed not to care about such sentimentality. He has not, and probably will not read it, even though I told him a book with his name in it is travelling all over the English-speaking world.
It was that relaxed attitude of Devin’s at the beginning that enabled me to try and not be concerned about failure. Devin would do it simply because I had asked. He did not question me; he did not seem to need to know what for, how, how long, or how far we would go.
My 18-year-old nephew seated himself comfortably on the club chair in my bedroom and closed his eyes. His eyelids quickly fluttered. After a short while, he found himself in Japan as a 7-year old boy playing with his little sister in the backyard of a nice house.
Oh my God! I could not believe it! So vivid, so real, so true! So easy! I paused, opened the bedroom window, and took in a deep breath of fresh air before I could continue the session.
The little boy in Japan grew up to become a very successful businessman in real estate. In the 1980’s when he was in his 60’s, he died unmarried and alone. The only person who had been close to him his whole life had been his younger sister, who married and had children.
That past life regression session of Devin’s was the start of something incredibly significant in my life. Thanks to my nephew, he made me feel success could be easily attained when undertaking such sessions.
After that first session, Devin and I did a few more past life regressions. It was then that his Soul’s theme became clear to me: my dear nephew was always alone and left feeling lonely at the end of a life. Intrigued, I discussed my past life regression discoveries with my partner. I had wanted to have a session with Tim, too. For a while, nothing else mattered more to me. But Tim did not buy into those New-Agey beliefs. A life before Tim? No way, not plausible. You have got to be kidding. There was none. A woman’s egg and a man’s sperm. That was all there was to it, as far as “before Tim” went.
But some of my recounting of Devin’s past life regression stories must have resonated with Tim. In hypnotherapy, using targeted keywords is a common practice for getting through to a person’s subconscious mind. And Tim had been an engineer who loves science to this day. So instead of “regression”, I knew that using words like “exploration” and “discovery” would speak to him.
One day during a relaxing bath, I must have been describing something too excitedly to Tim. To my surprise, he uttered, “Cool. I would like to explore that too.”
For a moment, I could not believe my ears.
Wow. Great! Really? Oh, I cannot wait!
I managed to keep my excitement in check. Too much enthusiasm sometimes scared him.
“Are you sure?” I had asked. Haltingly I stumbled through thoughts and questions about scheduling a suitable time to do it. Despite my best efforts, my excitement got the better of me. “But … if you really want to explore it … Let me see. Maybe … next … Is Thursday okay? Otherwise we’ll have to do it much later. I’m quite busy this week.”
“Sure. Thursday works fine.”
“All right. I’ll put you in my calendar to make sure it’s happening then.”
Thursday came and found Tim lying on the couch. “What areas would you like to explore?” I softly asked.
“Anything at all would be fine.”
“We will free flow then.”
“Free flow sounds perfect to me.”
I was nervous. I had just graduated from my nephew, an open and carefree youth, to a sceptical and logic-based adult. Even though this was still an unpaid “friends and family” type of session, I felt that there was no room for error with this one. In case anything about our karma came up, I acquiescently suggested to Tim, “If there is anything that you want to keep to yourself, that is all right. Just let me know and we will move on.”
It took me a lot longer to get Tim into a deep enough state for past life regression than it had for Devin. Devin was younger with no agenda other than to simply go along for the journey. Tim on the other hand, while generally an open-minded person, also had a lifetime of attitudes and beliefs to contend with.
First, I had Tim focus on my pen which I held in front of him above his eye level, and I slowly began the hypnotic induction. “Give yourself permission to go into hypnosis. Nod your head without moving your gaze if you are ready … Your eyelids are getting heavier … and they will blink.” I timed my words to the movements of his eyelids. “Allow your eyes to gently close and remain closed on one of your exhales.”
Once Tim’s eyes were fully closed, I followed up with a progressive relaxation technique. Progressive Relaxation is a common practice which supports a person in becoming more deeply relaxed. Starting at one end of the body, I bring their awareness to one set of muscles and guide them to relax those. I then shift their focus to the next set of muscles as we systematically work our way through their body. Tim was completely relaxed by the time we finished. So, I closed the induction with a simple deepening, instructing him to visualize taking an escalator downward.
Tim’s first regression into past lives turned out to be a primitive life. He was living in an icy cave-like structure and was male with a wife. There was a fire in the centre of the structure to keep out the cold. Everything was simple in that life, including the story itself. After a short time, his wife died. Caveman Tim ended up living the rest of his days feeling very lonely. Towards the end of Tim’s session, there were two streams of tears silently running down his face.
I wondered about the theme of loneliness that ran through those past life regression sessions of both my nephew and my partner. I don’t know what their thoughts were about their past lives. But I was comforted by holding onto the thought, that at least they had me in this life. In that moment, I made up my mind to love them as much as I could, for as long as I could.
Thrilled as I was with the “success” of facilitating a past life regression with a second person, I did not know what to make of the session with Tim. For the longest time, emotions from both my professional and personal lives became intertwined. My delight, however, with this success was magnified by the fact that during my Counselling-Hypnotherapy training, we had not been taught how to do Past Life Regression sessions. The instructor held his own religious beliefs. As unbiased as he tried to be, he did not seem to want to get into this “grey” area in his teaching. He informed us that one way to explain what comes up in a “past life regression” was that it is genetic. That is, we each carry the genetic profile of our ancestors all the way back to the beginning of time. So, the “past life regression” experience could be described as a genetic “memory”. Even though my instructor never denied reincarnation theory, he simply chose not to emphasize it in the curriculum he presented to us. During the entire two years of the program, we had watched one video on Past Life Regression, and five slide shows on this topic. That was it. I must have been doing past life regression sessions in another life. I really cannot find another explanation for my fascination, enthusiasm, and proclivity for it.
If Orlea is a client-turned-friend, I also have quite a few friends-turned-clients. One such client once said, “I don’t understand why so many people are interested in sports shows. More people should be more interested in past life regressions. Because, in a sports game it is always certain one team will win, and one will lose. But with this past life regression stuff, you never know what’s coming up. It is to find out more about me, ourselves. Everyone should do it, multiple times. A session is not even more expensive than a game ticket!”
At the time, I could not agree with her more. My client’s comment helped me delightedly visualize a stadium-full of people flowing into my practice for past life regression sessions. But today, years later, I would not agree with that. Why would everyone be interested in using past life regression to find out more about themselves? We can discover and explore our unique selves through anything, including sports shows. In everything we do, there is an opportunity to learn more about ourselves. People can choose to learn in the manner best suited to them, that resonates with them the most. Exploration of past lives through hypnosis is simply one such tool on the path of self-discovery.
Now that the door to one past life had opened for Tim, I wondered whether he would agree to another session with me. I hoped the tears of sadness would not turn him off from further exploring his other lives, but instead, make him more curious. Tim could easily explain it all away by claiming it had been his overly active imagination. But how would he account for the tears?
I was still not certain. If it were me, I would be interested in unpacking those emotions. But Tim was not me, and I could not speak for him. Some people are more scared by, than curious about, their unconscious feelings. And often, when I thought I understood Tim, I would be quite wrong. Even on things we agreed upon, if we delved deeper, we would discover that we each used a hugely different thought process to get to that same place. We are now both aware of how extreme our differences in thinking and reasoning can be. So much so, that you would wonder why or how we came together in the first place. Well, it was not exactly “love at first sight”. Emotionally speaking, it was completely drama-less when we first met. But that does not mean there wasn’t a story. In fact, it was quite a story.
….. read the next chapter here.
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