past life

What is Trauma?

By Hervé Boisdé

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When people think of trauma they often get an image of a horrific and tragic life event such a war atrocity or being the victim of a violent crime. To be sure, experiencing these type of events can be deeply traumatic and may even result in PTSD or other long-term negative effects. But not all trauma is the same and different people react differently to traumatic experiences. In fact some soldiers live through profoundly disturbing war occurrences without developing PTSD. Another person might go through something that would not, on the surface, appear traumatic and still suffer PTSD-like symptoms afterwards.

As a hypnotherapist I work under the assumption that most of the issues people will want sessions for are as the result of traumas they have experienced in their lives. Phobias, negative habits (such as nailbiting or binge eating), chronic stress or anxiety, and even physical symptoms such as migraines or digestive problems, can usually be traced back, at least in part, to negative experiences in the person’s past. Usually these negative events are from childhood. We can even use a regression method to go back to the source of an issue and do a “trauma reversal” on that memory, which is a powerful healing technique. Often-times the client is surprised by how a seemingly insignificant event from childhood can have a lasting effect. I’ve had clients speculate about the causes of issues only to realize that it was a much less “traumatic” event that was the source of the block. A block, after all, is a limiting belief that your subconscious mind has accepted and which creates some type of negative emotion. Something that seems quite mundane, like failing a test in grade school, can create a block that influences a person decades later. Many times we aren’t even aware of these blocks until they create new symptoms much later in adulthood. We might get triggered by a stressful situation or an event that reminds the subconscious mind of that previous trauma and, as a coping mechanism, we experience a new set of symptoms of negative effects of the trauma that occurred many years previous.

I think it’s important to remember that we all experience events differently and what might be traumatic to one person might not be traumatic to another. Similarly, we shouldn’t assume that because we weren’t negatively affected by an occurrence, that someone else wasn’t. Take a minor traffic accident for example. Let’s assume that 2 people are in the same car that gets into a fairly mild fender-bender. One person shrugs it off as a minor event and the other has insomnia or fears about cars from then on. It’s not that one person is mentally stronger. It’s that perhaps the second person already had some blocks in their subconscious mind that were triggered by that event, causing them to have symptoms afterwards.

Some people believe that traumas can be carried over from past lives. Since I was trained in Past Life Therapy by Dr. Brian Weiss I think there is something to be said for this. Many people have healed issues such as food addiction or phobias by simply revisiting past life traumas in hypnosis. I’ve also tried to regress a client to the source of an issue in this life only to find that there was no cause. A Past Life Regression therapy session was then used to provide healing for the problem. Whether or not we can provide proof of past lives, it’s clear to many practitioners, including myself, that past life therapy does create remarkable results for many people.

Is Past Life Regression real?

by Herve Boisde

 

Interest in past lives and ways of exploring possible past lives is growing. According to a 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Forum, 25% of Americans believe in reincarnation and a full 24% of US Christians do as well. In 2010 the New York Times published an article titled "Remembrances of Lives Past"  which talks about this expanding interest and how many people are trying Past Life Regression, through hypnosis, to try to remember these past lives. The article states that "The popular purveyors of reincarnation belief these days are not monks or theologians, but therapists — intermediaries between science and religion who authenticate irrational belief."

This is because many believe that Past Life therapy can heal traumas that affect us in our current lifetime. One of the therapists cited by the NY Times is Dr Brian Weiss, a physician and psychiatrist (and graduate of Yale and Columbia), who wrote one of the most famous books about Past Life Regression, 'Many Lives, Many Masters'. Dr Weiss was a traditional psychotherapist, that occasionally used hypnosis, who didn't believe in reincarnation until one of his patients spontaneously regressed to a past lifetime and started describing her experience in stark historical details. This patient was a simple woman with not a lot of formal education but this experience, as well as many other past life explorations, convinced Dr Weiss that her descriptions could not possibly be invention, fantasy, or an attempt to fool the therapist; especially after a historical discovery, following one of their sessions, confirmed some specific details she had described.  But what surprised Weiss the most was that his patient, Catherine, began to quickly heal her many phobias and emotional issues, even though long periods of traditional psychotherapy had failed.

I personally attended a week long training seminar with Dr Weiss for Past Life Regression therapy. As a certified hypnotherapist I was receiving requests from clients to explore past lives through hypnosis. I could have done a similar training earlier at the Hypnotherapy Academy of America, in New Mexico, where I got my hypnotherapy certification, but at the time I was skeptical, not to mention a bit creeped-out by going back in time to before I was born. Eventually I began to read more about the many people that had healed not only phobias and emotional issues, but medical ailments as well, simply by doing hypnosis regressions to explore their past lives. This made me consider that regardless of whether it was fact or fantasy, the healing potential alone is worth doing the training.

So away I went to the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY and was able to listen to Brian Weiss tell innumerable fascinating stories about the many ways this type of therapy has changed him and his life. He described how he went from being an extremely Left-Brained, fairly close-minded individual, to a deeply spiritual man with a passion for life, dedicated to spreading hope through his books and speaking engagements. And of course I had an opportunity to have an experience of my own. In one of the very first group regressions that Weiss conducted, I had a vision of a past life where I was a traveling soldier in a barren hilly landscape among men appearing to wear viking clothing and helmets. I eventually saw myself alone and trying to cross a bridge (made out of 3 ropes) over a turbulent stream and then slip and fall into the water, to drown and see my body from above as if floating over the scene. Dr Weiss said that to review a death scene would cause no pain or discomfort and was perfectly safe while in hypnosis, since the subconscious mind will only review material that the subject is ready to handle. This appeared to be the case for me since I wasn't startled by what I was seeing, even less than if it had been a dream I was having at night.

Afterwards I kept wondering if what I had experienced was real or imaginary. I did notice connections between the events in the "memories" and my current life. Some were obvious and some were subtle but even though I had made no intention to explore these specific connections they had spontaneously appeared in the regression session. Could my subconscious mind have been looking to find closure or heal some lingering traumas? The drowning part was particularly interesting because though I don't remember it, I did fall into a swimming pool when I was 2 years old. Luckily, my older sister was there to fish me out, but up until I did my hypnotherapy training I never considered it a trauma or something that was affecting my adult life because I have never been afraid of water. Maybe this regression session to a "past life" was a safe way for me to acknowledge that I came close to drowning as a child. Or perhaps, as Dr Weiss suggested, we tend to repeat traumas in multiple lives, until we finally learn the lesson that enables us to grow.  As far as whether past life experiences are real or imaginary, this is up to the individual. But even a skeptic could be surprised and enlightened by exploring the possibilities.