My memories from another life during regression therapy

Many years ago when I was thinking of becoming a complementary therapist I somehow found the courage to go to a hypnotherapist for regression therapy, which is perhaps better known as past life therapy. I didn't think I particularly had any sort of problem to clear at that time, I was just curious and the secret life of the subconscious mind fascinated me. But like most of us I had a natural nervousness as to what would happen. I had never had hypnosis before and it was that that made me more anxious than what any past life might reveal. What the experience did reveal led me not only to train as a hypnotherapist but also to access what apparently were other lives many times. And these other life memories always gave me an insight into whatever life problem I was living with at the time.

That first session of regression therapy was a long time ago now but it left an indelible imprint on my conscious memory and most of it is still clear. How I became at first aware of the therapist's Yorkshire accent and then annoyed by it as she talked me down into hypnosis. I said nothing out of natural politeness as I thought. But was it that? Then, despite being a complete novice, I was sure I was not in a deep enough trance. I remember a panicked thinking 'I'm not in deep enough, I'm not hypnotised enough, I must tell her'. Again I said nothing and it was at that moment that all my preconceptions faded away. I realised that I was actually unable to say anything because everything was just fine as it was, something was reassuring me to just 'go with the flow'. As soon as I let go of my conscious need to try and control my situation my subconscious took over.

The past appears ...

Under gentle questioning the first picture that came to my mind seemed inexplicable. It was dark and all I could see were wet cobblestones beneath my hands. It was raining lightly but I was dry, wrapped in a brown woollen cloak. Someone passed by and scattered a few copper pennies on the ground in front of me and, as I was kneeling down, I gathered them up. I felt that I was waiting for something, waiting and waiting. It is a feeling I still get sometimes.

This memory was not pursued at this point because when I was asked if I remembered my name at that time I answered 'Dora' and the name took me back to a life on a farm as a healthy looking girl in early teenage. I believe that I had a brother and he felt familiar, as if he was my brother in this life. This part of my remembrance is no longer clear and I do not want to supply this narrative with suppositions as to why I apparently left the farm to go to the city of York. I have a vague theory but as it is not a clear memory I will not share it. The memory of the journey from the farm to the city on a farm cart are clear however and as I was smiling it would seem that I was happy with the decision. I was going to work at an inn strikingly called The Gilded Lily and in my mind's eye I can still see the golden Fleur de Lis on the hanging sign outside.

I worked as a barmaid which also seems to have meant scrubbing the floors. It was from this floor level vantage point that I could get an idea of the time I was living in. I saw shoes with large buckles on them and looking up I was aware of the tricorn hats of the men trying to get past me as I cleaned the flagstones in the passageway that led to the bar. I was living in the 1700's but I cannot remember if I was aware of an exact date at this late stage. My memories were presented to me in vignettes rather like old sepia photographs with soft focus edges. The main drama of the snapshot however was always central and crystal clear.

Suddenly, there is a man on horseback laughing down at me in the narrow, crowded street, and I, looking back up at him, am laughing back. This is Black Jack, who everyone knows is a highwayman and apparently I am one of his paramours. I believe I was considered to be pretty, my skin as yet unblemished by any pox. My subconscious did not allow for any remembered intimacies but the fact of our liaison was somehow implicit in that one scene even though I am under no illusions that I am his only woman. More remarkably I strongly believed Black Jack to be my current husband in my modern life, though there was little facial resemblance.

Then I was back on the wet cobbles waiting for something, something I dreaded. As the day eventually dawned I managed to scramble up onto something to get a better view of the gallows. Across the heads of the crowd I saw Black Jack hanged. He wore a white shirt and appeared brave. An untimely death. I do not remember my reaction to the sight, but I seem to remember moaning in grief to some shadowy figure who may have been comforting me that 'I'll never love anyone else like I loved him'.

It would appear that this statement, uttered in extreme distress in another life, may have programmed my subconscious for my current life as I left my first husband and everything I had to live with this man, the modern day version of Black Jack. This man was literally a bit of a' jack the lad', a man with whom I had absolutely nothing in common but who I felt I had known all my life. A man who I felt was the love of my life, a man who died early at the age of 45.

A sad demise.

As the therapist prompted me forward in this life, the bleakness of the rest of my life in the 1700's was revealed. I aged and was relegated to doing the laundry out in the backyard where I would not be seen by the customers. Unmarried, I became aware that my wholesome looks had faded. I had missing teeth and my hair was grey and sticking out frizzily at all angles from under my cap.

Eventually I must have become so unsightly and useless that I was thrown out on the streets to fend for myself. It seemed to me that I died of cold and starvation in the narrow alleyway beside the inn. Strangely, this was not a painful memory, it was merely a fact, a scene remembered. I had the impression that I was aged about forty. So, I lived a long time with my grief.

I am sure that many of you think this is fanciful. All I can say is that I am only describing an experience. Perhaps many of you think that this is something I read in a book at some time and, being brutally honest, I cannot guarantee that this is not so. I can say only that it all seemed very real to me.

I am sure that many of you will wonder why I didn't try to trace the Gilded Lily or Black Jack to prove that I had lived before. It is true that I thought about doing that but, perhaps strangely to other people, it just didn't seem that important to me. I have found that vindication is never important in past life therapy. There is usually some sort of acceptance of the situation shown.

To me, at that time, this past life explained why I had made the painful and apparently irrational decision to leave a safe and loving marriage for life with a somewhat wild and unpredictable man. At the time the thought that this decision may have been somewhat out of my control comforted me and although I always bitterly regretted the pain it caused the other people I loved, it was a relationship that endured until his death.

And now, hopefully, Black Jack and I have achieved some sort of closure and can go our separate ways in our future lives. Because this was not the only life in which we met ...