Let’s say you didn’t come here for a lecture on quantum physics. Let’s say we’re going to an alternate reality: Time is malleable. The past, present, and future coexist in a single moment.
Reincarnation is a possibility. And this present life might be a blip in a constellation of lives that compose your soul’s identity.
This theory cannot be proven. It cannot be disproven.
Okay, you and your therapist agree that it’s a good idea for you to go back and sort out those unresolved issues experienced by a past you.
The PLR session, or sessions, will be very similar in nature to any other hypnotherapy session, with just a few differences.
Revealing any past-life memories
Along with taking a normal case history, your therapist may also ask you about the following:
Your belief in reincarnation. Your therapist wants to know what your understanding of PLR and reincarnation is. After all, she’ll be working with your beliefs. She also needs to know of any past experiences you had visiting former lives, either through a therapist or spontaneously.
(On rare occasions, some people spontaneously slip back into a past life when they are dozing, just about to fall asleep, or as a dream experience.) Why you think that a past life experience may be responsible for your current symptom. What tells you that your solution lies in a past life?
When you think about your symptom, what indicates that its cause lies way back, before you were born?
Just because you believe that your problem comes from a past life, that doesn’t mean that your hypnotherapist will automatically take you there.
She will consider many factors before taking you down that route.
Whether you’re aware of the particular life responsible. Some people are very aware of the life responsible for their current problem long before they go for therapy. If you know, let your hypnotherapist know too.
Keep in mind that this may be only one of several lives contributing to your problem (then again, it may be the only one!). You may need to visit other lives before your problem is solved.
Any relevant dreams you’ve had. When you dream, you allow your unconscious to roam freely, and your unconscious may well access a past life. When you awaken, you may be aware that this particular dream holds something of significance.
Any spontaneous thoughts you have been having about past lives.
Is your unconscious trying to tell you something? Do you have spontaneous thoughts about events from a past that doesn’t seem to belong to you? Could this be your unconscious saying ‘Hey, this is where the seat of your problem lies!’?
Let your hypnotherapist know about any experiences on this list, because your awareness of your past lives may be pointing you in the right direction.
When many people think of reincarnation they often make the erroneous assumption that they were someone famous in a past life. In actual fact, it is extremely rare to come across well-known characters from history. On the contrary, by far the most common manifestation of a past life is that of a very ordinary person. Is it likely that you were Henry VIII? No! A cook in the court of Henry VIII? Yes!
Choosing a route
There are many approaches to taking you back to a past life, none of which require magic or any special powers, so let’s leave that idea to the fantasists!
What route will you travel on through the centuries? Well, the path you take depends on the creativity of both you and your hypnotherapist.
Your hypnotherapist may ask you to imagine one of several scenarios:
- You’re walking down a long and comfortable corridor. On either side of you are doors, with each one leading to a specific past life. Your therapist may invite you to find a door that is particularly attractive to you, for whatever reason, and to imagine walking through that door into the relevant past life.
- You’re walking up a safe and well-lit tunnel. When you reach the end, you step out into your past life. You’re climbing a gentle hill and when you reach its summit, you step out into another past life.
Or maybe you step into a time machine, or through the pages of a book, or through a mirror, or . . . the possibilities are endless.
Even though you think you know which life you need to visit at a conscious level, your hypnotherapist may want to be unspecific when she takes you back.
She may use a phrase along the lines of – “And you can step through that door into the life that is most relevant to the reason you are with me today”. She isn’t ignoring you, she just knows that your unconscious mind will recognize the most important life you need to visit. Consciously you may think you know, but your unconscious often knows best in these cases. Let it be your guide!
Reaching a dead end
You step through the door with excited anticipation of entering into and exploring that past life and . . . nothing! Zilch! Not a sausage! Nothing except a big sense of disappointment.
So what’s going on? Why aren’t you getting anywhere on this journey? Well, there can be several reasons, the main ones being:
You’re not ready to go back. Perhaps it was too early to try a PLR.
Maybe you need to do some more work in the present before you attempt to go back into the past. Yes, you believe in past lives, but maybe you have fears about going there. Perhaps you don’t fully trust your therapist yet, as that all-important rapport hasn’t been sufficiently built up yet.
You can address whatever issues are putting up the roadblock with your hypnotherapist, and try PLR once they are resolved.
The route back was not right for you. If you don’t like the method of transportation (maybe the enclosed space of the tunnel makes you nervous, or the height of the hill seems too steep), the likelihood of reaching your past life destination is minimized. Why? Because if you feel a little uptight and tense, your unconscious mind protects you from taking a path that is not right for you.
To resolve this, discuss your feelings with your hypnotherapist and agree on a route that is more acceptable to you.
Something in your current life needs to be resolved before you can go back. Maybe an issue in your current life is demanding attention.
Sometimes these issues can be very selfish and won’t let you go back despite your strong desire.
Your therapist can use techniques such as dissociation, or a regression, to the event in this life talks about these techniques), to help clear the current life roadblock (which, by the very fact it’s demanding attention like this, needs to be addressed), and therefore re-opening up your path into time.
The problem doesn’t stem from a past life. If the genesis of your problem is not in a past life, you can’t go back to resolve it.
Of course, after you resolve your current life problem, your therapist can take you back through the portals of time just simply to have the experience, if you wish.