My Favorite Doylestown

I always look forward to giving my past-life regression workshops, but one coming up in Doylestown, PA on May 31 is very special.  What makes it special is that this is the first time in a few years I've done a workshop in Doylestown, and it's sponsored by my friend, Susan Duval. My history with Susan goes back to 2002 when she first invited me to do a workshop with her.  At the time, Susan was brave in starting what she hoped would be a continuing seminar series on topics of health and spirituality.  I was her second speaker.  At the time, my second book, Return From Heaven, had just been published and I was teaching around the U.S., Canada, and Europe, but had only done a few workshops in the Philadelphia area.  I was thrilled when Susan invited me to do a workshop in my own back yard (almost—Media, PA, is an hour away).

Over the next ten years I did many more events with Susan.  They were always special times, both because Susan is a joy to work with, and because of the wonderfully curious people she attracts to her events.

As in all my workshops, I do a group regression each time.  A group regressions is only a sample of the full experience of a private session.  Still, some people described having strong positive experiences that changed them—right then and there in the group regression.   I think the comfortable, healing environment that Susan creates for her workshops has something to do with the quality of the experience.

The group regression is the climax of the workshop.  Before that I explain the principles of regression therapy with adults, and tie it to my research of young children's spontaneous past life memories.   Some told me at the time how much my true stories of children’s memories meant to them—they validated what they were seeing in their own children or grandchildren, or what they had experienced when they were a child and never forgot.

I'm still in touch with many of the people I've met at Susan’s workshops over the years, and many have come for private sessions in my office in Media to continue their exploration.

Now I look forward to seeing new faces and making new friends.  It's always a treat for me to share what I've learned over the past twenty-five years about the connection between our past lives and our present life.  And it's a pleasure to be a part of one of Susan’s events again.

The workshop is Saturday, May 31^st, 2014 from 10:00-12:30 at 1 Scout Way, Doylestown, PA 18901.  The cost of the workshop is $55. 

For more information and to register, contact Susan Duval at Sduval53@aol.com or by phone at: 215-348-5755

http://www.SusanDuvalseminars.com

Synchronicity and the Samurai

I had an amazing past life regression with Carol in 2007. As the regression started, I was looking into a Japanese room from the outside, from a garden. I could see people mourning in an elegant space in deep brown reds and gold. The images were clear, but I had little sense of my physical self. Carol asked me to look at myself: my feet, my clothes. I then realized that I had no body; I was a bodiless orb, floating. I knew I was watching my own funeral. I knew that I had been a popular samurai. As a samurai, killing another man was elevated to a spiritual art. In that life, I found my core, a place of clarity that enabled me to remove another’s life and retain my own, and in that, know a deep inner purity. After realizing that state of clarity, and repeatedly reaching it, I no longer felt a need to kill. Others wanted me to continue, but I had to abandon the killing.

In 2011, soon after the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan, I volunteered to do clean-up work in Otsuchi. I had never been drawn to doing disaster work before.

One day, when the rains were too heavy to continue working, the group I was with decided to go to Chuson Ji, a temple not far out of our way. It had just been registered as a World Heritage Site that week. I really did not want to go to yet another temple or shrine. I was cold, wet, and tired. The earth was still shaking every now and then. And things were so muddy. But, I had little to say about the choice. I politely went along.

When we arrived, we walked around and saw gift shops, big trees, beautiful walks, and small buildings. We went into a museum building. The displays were interesting. Then one of the display cases caught my attention. There was a picture of the room I had seen in my regression! I stood staring at it. There was a description of the room in Japanese, so I couldn’t read it. I walked up a hill and arrived at the room I had seen in the photo in the museum. It was the same room I had seen in my regression. I got some headphones with an English translation which described the room. I learned that the space contained the remains of some of the samurai leaders. I started shaking intensely. I felt that the present me was in the same space as a mummified body of my former self! I suddenly felt confirmation and connection to the life I had seen in the regression. Being in that place, and seeing the room, made my story feel real. Had I not been in the room, and felt what I did, the images and feelings from the regression would have been more like an unlikely dream. I realized that the man I saw in the regression was part of me, and that I can connect with his strength.

Nightmare from the Past

One client came to me because she was haunted by recurring nightmares that had begun in childhood and continued to bother her into her forties. These nightmares were always the same: She was surrounded by a group of children; she was telling them to be quiet, feeling that she had to protect them from some looming danger.  She would awaken feeling very frightened and bad. We focused on these dream fragments in the regression and here's what she experienced:

She saw herself as a sixteen-year-old boy in poor clothing, in a ravaged, devastated landscape. She felt it was in Italy. She said that a priest had entrusted a group of 10 children to this boy, who was charged with hiding the children in a bombed out church. Some of the children were whimpering, and they were found. The boy was tortured to death; as he died, he felt guilty about not fulfilling his duty to protect the children. When my client  went through the past life death in that altered state, she realized that as that boy, he had made the ultimate sacrifice of giving his life for the sake of the other children.  My client was finally able to release the guilt that she had carried into this lifetime, which came up in her dreams of her life as that boy at the time of his traumatic death.

This client reported that after the regression, she never had the nightmares again.

Sometimes  past life dreams are clues to unresolved issues that have carried forward into our current lives. By using  dream images and feelings as an entry into the unconscious, and bringing up the past life memory, these unfinished feelings  can be resolved.

Past Life Regressions by the untrained

Here is a piece I wrote for http://www.reincarnationforum.com, which I started in 1997. Since then Deborah Barr has been charged with guiding a diligent volunteer team in responding to hundreds and hundreds of posts about reincarnation and past lives. There is a wealth of information on reincarnation on the Forum. I encourage you to check it out. The following post is in response to questions as to whether one can access past life memories through CD's or with the help of someone who has no training in past life regression--usually a friend who wants to "experiment". This does not necessarily apply to responding to children's spontaneous memories, as I describe in my books. That is a special case, since the memories surface on their own in early childhood. This is about prompting unconscious memories, mostly with adults. Here's my response:

Q.: What about regressions by the untrained? I know that many people experiment with self regression, having no experience other than following the example in books or from CD's. If they are lucky, they have some experience which might be beneficial, or a fragment of a past life comes through that is interesting. And, if they are really lucky, they gain some insight or actually resolve something in their present lives.

I have also heard from people who are not trained in past life regression techniques who guide regressions with others and get backed into a corner when they run into some difficult material (trauma) in the past life or PRESENT life and aren't quite sure what to do with it. That might cause some problems when you leave someone hanging with images, feelings, and even body sensations that they can't process or are uncomfortable for them.

My feeling is that past life regression can be very powerful in accessing unconscious material. If you run into something that relates to trauma in this life or a past life, you better know what to do to help the person move through it. If not, it's like leaving an open wound that might need suturing; it might heal on it's own or become worse.

I've had clients come to me who said they worked with a past life regression therapist who cut the session off mid-way because they were out of time. Or, they go through a past life experience without processing the death or trauma. I think that's irresponsible, unprofessional, and not helpful to the client.

There are certain aspects of a regression that need to be considered and worked with: understanding trance states, getting to the heart of the past life story, processing the thoughts and feelings around the death, sometimes re-framing the experience while in an altered state, and making the connections between the past life and present life. We do this so the client can "make peace" with the past life, forgive others or self, and release emotional and physical impressions from that life so they can let it go. By missing some of these steps, you may not resolve anything, and could make things worse by opening up the issue and not showing the client a way through.

If you want to explore past lives yourself, great. Read about it. Try it through meditation or with one of the CD's out on the market now. Often the best past life material comes up spontaneously in dreams or waking visions. These spontaneous experiences can actually heal us and give us great insight, and often prompt us to want to explore more.

Past life regression with others involves techniques that have been developed by therapists over the last 40 years or so here in the West. If you are going to regress others, you should know the territory first and be ready to take some responsibility for what happens when you start exploring the unconscious.

These are my feelings about the issue. I speak from 20 years of experience.

Chronic pain relief

Here's an example of what can happen as a result of a past life regression. This is from one of my adult clients:

"As you may remember I did two regressions in Nov, 2006 and Feb, 2007. Both of these have made dramatic changes in my life. I had decided to do past life regression because I had a short, very vivid vision, in the middle of the day, of being hit in the middle of my back with a tomahawk. Since I was having an ongoing intense pain in my back in that area, which had suddenly appeared about a year before and could not find relief, I made an appointment.

"In that first regression, I did not regress to the tomahawk incident, but instead went to a cold , damp debtor's prison in England in the 18th century where a woman and two children were near death from starvation. In watching from above, but feeling the woman's thoughts, I knew I was this woman- Catherine- who had been abandoned and had not able to provide for her children. She was dying and feeling very, very sad and especially guilty for the circumstances. It developed that she was also pregnant and she and all three children died as I watched. I slowly moved away from the images and came forward in time,  back to this time. In talking over the regression with you, I could see how this past life had impacted my present life. I have always been a rescuer of people with problems and tried to help, often to the expense of my own health.

"In the weeks that followed, I had many more insights and understanding as to why I am the person I am,  and why I respond to situations as I do. But something was still nagging at my mind and at my back.

I came for another regression in February and this time I immediately regressed to a log cabin in New York in early 1800s.  I was dying, alone, from a tomahawk wound. My husband and two children had been killed by the Indian attack. Again ,as in the first regression, I was dying and feeling very guilty because I had been the one who wanted to move from the civilized regions to the frontier and my family had been slaughtered because of my choices. This time, however, as I looked down on this scene and understood this woman's thoughts, I had three figures beside me- the deceased husband and two children on his other side. Without speaking, I knew that he did not hold his wife responsible and only loved her. With your guidance, I realized that this person was indeed my present husband and one of the children was my grandson.

"As you can imagine, these events have had a profound effect on my thoughts and attitudes, and the back pain has totally disappeared! I have become more comfortable with myself."