The value of Regression Therapy - how a past life can help a present one.

Regression therapy, sometimes known as past life therapy, is the recounting of a particular past event by a client under trance in order to clear distressing issues or 'stuck' or inappropriate behaviour in the present. It is a therapy that I found it to be one of the most valuable tools in my repertoire as a clinical hypnotherapist.

Hypnotherapy is often about visiting fears and phobias to 'take the sting' out of them and reduce their power on the client; the bread and butter of hypnosis. But sometimes you get a client with bizarre behavioural problems that impair their everyday life and seem to have no obvious triggering event to work on.

This is where regression therapy really comes into its own.

Because neither the client or the therapist knows what caused the inappropriate behaviour it has to be left to the subconscious mind to show it, if it deems it safe. As the subconscious mind is fanatically protective about its host (after all it has a vested interest in its survival) it will only show the event if it feels the host, i.e. the client, can cope. I found many people were frightened they would be shown something so horrible they would not be able to handle it and I had to explain how the subconscious protected them.

My experience was that if the conscious behaviour was becoming enough of a problem for the client to seek help then that was the subconscious insisting that the triggering event be looked at in the cold light of day. Usually, once examined by the conscious mind, the fear/inappropriate behaviour ceased or moderated.

But I don't believe in past lives.

It does not appear to matter whether you 'believe' in past lives or not, frankly. As a casual Buddhist/New Age spiritual weirdo myself I have encountered too many unexplained things not to believe in them. My clients didn't know that; I felt it was wrong to try and indoctrinate them. Buddhism, after all, is the least evangelical of all religions.

So I would just ask them to suspend disbelief, just for a little while, the length of the therapy session say, and see what turned up. I must admit that 99.9% of remembrances under trance were from another time but the client's presenting problem was always resolved by focussing on them.

The importance of a well-trained therapist.

Even though the subconscious mind controls the events shown, it is vital that all questioning is non-directive. Correct questioning in regression is vital to good practice and the safe resolution of the client's problem and must be non-leading to stimulate the release of genuine scenes into the client's mind.

The hypnotherapist's job is simply to induce a state of relaxation in the client so as to allow the subconscious to step out of the shadows and communicate. Once this has been achieved they are no more than a prompter to move the sequence on to the 'next significant event' in whatever time the client is accessing.

Beware of the therapist with a habit of steering questions.

Unfortunately, it is likely that some therapists have brought regression into disrepute by the wrong sort of prompting. Some badly trained therapist are not even aware when they are asking leading questions; questions that can stimulate false memories. Such questions may possibly be memories of television programmes that have left a lasting impression and which the client then accesses and believes to be their own memories.

This can sometimes lead people to think they were abused as children and that they have 'buried' the memory deeply. It their therapist also believes they have stumbled upon a trauma they may 'load' the questions they ask of the client so that the answers will 'prove' their suspicions.

The truth can be very hard to get at when this has happened. It is not best practice and it certainly does not help.

Trusting the event is relevant.

Frequently the event the subconscious raises in the conscious mind of the client whilst they are in trance seems to have little relevance to the presenting problem but it is worth remembering that the subconscious knows best.

Trance is the best possible method for allowing the subconscious mind the elbow room it needs to clear the issues it feels should be addressed. As this part of the brain is all-knowing, all-remembering it is obvious that one has to let it do its job without trying to steer it down any pathways one thinks it should be exploring. The best question is always, ' ... and what happened next?'

One of my more memorable cases involved a woman whose sleep was so turbulent and disturbed that she often tried to strangle her husband in his sleep even though she herself was also asleep. At the initial interview she said she felt she was always 'waiting for something'. Needless to say she found all of this distressing and sought my help.

Under regression she remembered a life as what seemed to be a male Victorian artist. 'He' appeared to be clock watching, just sitting in his kitchen watching the clock. Under questioning she/he revealed 'he' was waiting for 'his' children. In fact the whole event seemed to show that somehow 'he' had somehow become separated from 'his' children and was constantly waiting for them.

It was a simple remembrance and there was no touching scene of being reunited with them. This lack of resolution in this lifetime may have been the reason for the disturbed behaviour in the present lifetime but why the behaviour should present itself as strangulation of her present husband is unfathomable.

The final act of this remembered life was 'his' suicide and I remember thinking what a sad, bleak life it had been. But reporting back after treatment my client said that she had had no recurrence of her sleeping problem and that her husband remained unmolested from that date, though neither of us ever understood why that particular life should have had such relevance in this one.

Remembering a death from another life does not, in my experience, hurt. It seems more to be a detached observation of the event. Some people do weep at the things they see when in regression but I believe this to be a cathartic release which encourages a positive outcome to the therapy session and I have never had any evidence to the contrary.

Despite the somewhat inexplicable nature of regression therapy, it really should not be regarded with suspicion or as either wacky or bizarre. It has been proven to work by many reputable hypnotherapists and even more grateful clients. As Jim Morrison said, 'There are things known, and there are things unknown. And in between are the Doors'. The doors, with a small 'd', in this case are found within regression therapy and can be safely opened.