Responsible regression therapy

by Jan Erik Sigdell, Dutovlje

To day a lot of “past-life therapy” is practiced, and in some cases in a less responsible way. Therefore, a clarification is needed.

Regression therapy is commonly called “past-life therapy”, which is not a very proper name, because it very often also leads into childhood situations in this life or the time spent in the mother’s womb, and not only into past incarnations.

The practice of this method to help people solve problems is spreading, since it in most cases is quite effective. In many cases it is very effective, indeed, but of course not in all. In roughly 10 % of the cases it doesn’t work well at the first attempt, but if the person is willing to try again, it will work in about half of these cases the second or third time it is tried. And if it still doesn’t work, it is advisable to seek another way for solving the problem.

The more traditional way to do a regression is by means of hypnosis, as it has been done since some 150 years. Since the 1960es we have non-hypnotic methods. What is the difference?

The hypnotic method is more invasive and can involve certain risks if not carried out in a responsible way. It may also happen that the client after the regression has no or little memory of what came up, the so called post-hypnotic amnesia. This should be prevented with the following suggestion during the hypnotic state: “When you wake up you will remember everything.” In hypnosis, the unconscious self can be manipulated and negative emotions and other things can be suppressed. In that case it is only a temporary help, since we are not free from what we suppress, but it stays hidden inside ourselves and will sooner or later again begin to cause problems. Actually, suppressing is a way to cheat ourselves. Of course, we already before suppressed such things, or we wouldn’t have had the problem in the first place, but if hypnosis is used to suppress them deeper and more strongly, it rather makes things worse in the long run.

But what happens in a hypnotic regression and what in a non-hypnotic one? Let us first look at the non-hypnotic regression. The best known regression therapist in the Netherlands is Hans ten Dam and he has established a concept that is helpful for the understanding, the concept of an elliptic state of consciousness. An ellipse has two focal points and it is like our consciousness shifts apart so that one focus remains in “here and now” and another is established in “there and then”. Thus we in the non-hypnotic method are still present in “to-day” but yet reexperience a situation from the past, a little like being I two places at the same time. This has the advantage that the client afterwards will remember everything, unless he really wants to suppress it (which would be rare). Another advantage is that the body of the client remains more or less under control by to-day’s mind and the client doesn’t jump or scream, or something like that. Still he relives the feelings and emotions of the past.

In a deeply hypnotic regression it is rather like the whole focus is shifted from “here and now” to “there and then”, and the person is not aware during the regression of who he or she is to-day and, for example, doesn’t know what a car is, if he is in a past life 200 years ago. He or she is again fully the person of the past and may in rare cases even speak another language he or she doesn’t know to-day (xenoglossy). Therefore we should in the beginning of a hypnotic regression make an agreement about which language we will use. The body may also more or less be under control of the past mind and act with the experience. One case I was told about is that of a man being regressed hypnotically, who suddenly sprang up and jumped out through the window! Luckily, it was on the ground floor and he landed in the grass outside without hurting himself… The regressor took him back in to investigate what happened. He had come back into a past life, in which he in the last minute had saved himself out of a burning house through jumping through the window, and his body did the same thing to-day. Such a thing doesn’t happen in a non-hypnotic regression.

A further disadvantage with the hypnotic approach is that the experience doesn’t become automatically integrated with to-day’s mind, since the latter is more or less asleep. In a non-hypnotic regression, to-day’s mind stays in the one focal point and partakes of the experience.

It is even possible that in deep hypnosis the aura becomes temporarily weakened so that – possibly – a foreign soul (of someone who died) or even an entity could attach to the client. This risk will be small, but it is not zero.

After a non-hypnotic regression the person usually has a feeling as if it didn’t take as long as it really did, maybe only half that time. In a hypnotic regression it is often the other way around. It may seem to have lasted considerably longer than it did.

But there is, of course, no sharp line between the two approaches. A regression can be more or less hypnotic and more or less non-hypnotic, and a non-hypnotic regression can spontaneously go into a pseudo-hypnotic state.

To day, most regressions are done with the advantages of the non-hypnotic way, in which the client is more or less in an alpha state, but the mind is not put asleep. This is actually the crucial point. Many persons working with hypnosis want to claim that it is the same thing, only in another way. But what does “hypnosis” mean? It comes from the Greek word hýpnos, which means “sleep”. Therefore, if to-day’s mind isn’t more or less asleep, it cannot be called hypnosis, since this doesn’t fit the definition of the latter.

Also when the non-hypnotic approach is used there are several things to observe and respect in order to do it in a responsible way. Here are the steps in a proper regression:

• Relive one or more essential causal situation(s) in the past (which will then be more or less traumatic, “original trauma[ta]” of the actual problem). Become aware what happened then (and to day became forgotten through the new birth or suppressed as a childhood memory).
• Become aware of the feelings in the situation (in principle for a moment going to the highest point of the actual emotion, but not “dwelling” in it; this can, however, be a bit prolonged if the client unconsciously resists); especially emotional feelings, but in certain cases also physical. Live through that situation until it is over, in a past life we usually continue to just after the death experience.
• After that: Go back to catch the negative emotional energies and take them to the “guide” and have them dissolved with his assistance. (This includes a spiritual plane and has certain relations to spiritual healing. The so called “guide” is our own unconscious self, here manifesting in a symbolical appearance, see below).
• Check if some negative emotional energy is still there in the situation. Repeat the release process, if needed.
• In the case of a victim experience: Uncover the karmic cause through re-experiencing the corresponding “perpetrator” life.
• Uncover possible (usually unconscious) feelings of guilt from that life or other situations. These can normally also be released.
• Realize the connection: Experience then → problem to day, and: Victim experience ← preceding perpetratorship (karma). The soul-injuring feelings belong there and are over; there is no need to have them still to day. Out of the context see the victim experience as a finished lesson and thus reconcile with one’s past.
• Inner reconciliation with souls who then were our perpetrators or victims.
• Reconciliation with oneself concerning past perpetratorship.
• Replace all released negative emotional energies with light energy.

What is here called a “guide”, also called “counselor”, is a kind of a technical term for making the unconscious self of the client become visible in the inner image. It could be like a human being, very often like a light being, or something else. We can ask questions and get answers, which really come from the unconscious self, as it speaks through the “guide”.

So what errors are sometimes committed in regressions? These can be:

• One lets the person merely look at a trauma causing the problem, but nor relive and dissolve the emotions (information without release).
• One interrupts an emotional experience before it has been taken to its end and the emotional energy has been released and dissolved (sometimes because the regressionist fears not being able to handle the situation; this can make things worse).
• One doesn’t understand the importance of reaching an effective release of negative emotional energies, or doesn’t know how to do it. (This can also make things worse.)
• One lets the person cast the guilt on others, affirming the problem, instead of seeking reconciliation with the other souls involved (which is a part of the healing process).
• One doesn’t let the person recognize the relation between a traumatic victim experience and a preceding own perpetratorship, so that the former can be understood as a lesson,
• and if it is done, one conjures up feelings of guilt instead of releasing them and achieve self-reconciliation,
• or hidden feelings of guilt are not uncovered (still remaining hidden in the unconscious self).
• One gives up too quickly when there is resistance against one’s own relief, or one doesn’t know how to overcome it.

It would also be wrong to attempt to manipulate the memory of a traumatic experience in the past and make the client believe that it in reality never happened, but he or she only thought that it did, and that it was a misunderstanding. Because if it really did happen, we that way the give client a lie to live with. Deep in the unconscious self remains the knowledge of the truth, that it really happened, and that will probably some day pop up again and reactivate the problem. What we really want to reach is this: “I know that it happened, but it doesn’t matter to me, anymore. I am free from it.” Something similar can sometimes be done with rescripting and reframing, two techniques used in modern psychology. I don’t mean to say that such techniques are basically wrong, but they can be used in a wrong way.

It is not a matter of reprogramming the past, but it is a matter of becoming free from it. If I still know that it did happen, but it doesn’t matter to me anymore and all the hurt, all the fear, all the sadness, all the feeling of guilt, all the anger and all the hatred are gone, then I am really free; still more so if I can even forgive. That is what we want to reach in a therapeutic regression. The way to such a catharsis is to relive the pain and the hurt in the actual situation, release it and dissolve all its energy! To avoid the pain or just look at the past situation like watching a movie is not the way. It only gives the person an explanation for the problem, but not a real solution. The hurt is still there, even if it is suppressed and hidden. Any hatred or wish to have revenge, that is still left, only affirms the problem. To hate is to hold on to it. (It even happens that a person unconsciously doesn’t want to be free from hurt because then he or she cannot hate anymore, which actually means that one prefers to keep the problem and instead compensate with hatred, which is really one of the most silly things we can do to ourselves.)

So how can we stop hating and instead forgive? If we understand why it happened to us in the past, we can. Everything has a reason and in all that happens to us there is a lesson involved. We had it to learn from it. Often the reason is karmic. We had to experience the pain we once gave to others and therefore become victims in a situation similar to one in which we once were perpetrators. Thus we on the soul level learn what it really was what we did and to never do it again. The perpetrator has a one-sided experience and doesn’t even want to know what the victim feels. The experience is incomplete. The missing part has to come later, usually in another lifetime, where we find ourselves in a similar situation, but now on the other side. Our mind doesn’t know it, but our soul knows very well why this happens to us and learns from it. Once we have become conscious of that, we see the victim situation in a different light: “So that is why! Now I understand!” and we accept it as a lesson, give up hatred and can even forgive, so much more if it turns out that the one who did it to us was our victim in the earlier life… This is not always so, but sometimes. So did he take revenge in such a case? Not really, he unconsciously became our teacher… But don’t try to make “being a teacher” an excuse for conscious revenge, or you just make it worse for yourself! Such things work that way only unconsciously and on the soul level. They never work in the mind nor with conscious intention.

Like the Bible repeatedly states: What you do unto others will be done unto you, and what you refrain from doing unto others you cannot expect to have done onto you.

Such things are also what we seek to achieve in a responsible regression. But one more thing we seek is to increase the understanding of love. How can you expect to be loved if you don’t show love yourself? It may, at most, work only for a short time and then no more… One of the basic laws of love is: You won’t get more love than you give! What you get is what you give, and if you instead give hatred that is what you will get. Therefore, to be loved you have to give love, there is no other way! And if you wait for the other one to take the first step, you may wait until another incarnation… So what do you have to loose in talking the first step? At most an illusion…

But how do we show love? Certainly not through material gifts, which are merely a replacement and a kind of excuse for not giving it the way the recipient needs to have it, especially when it is a child. The natural, language of love, and the only one a child intuitively understands, is body contact: to be touched, hugged, taken on the lap, caressed, comforted when hurt and told that we are glad to have it. Material things are for the body and its rational mind, only. Very many children have well fed bodies and materialistic minds, but their souls are starving…

    Who has no feelings cannot love.

                Who shows no feelings cannot give love.

                              Who gives no love cannot be loved.