Can Hypnotherapy Take Me Back to a Previous Lifetime?
In a word, yes. HOWEVER, it cannot guarantee that what you see in that previous lifetime is actually provably true. Let me explain.
Over the course of human history many people have come to believe that there is a soul inside the body that survives death and goes on to either experience Heaven, or Hell, or else be reborn into another life. Another chance to “get it right”, so to speak.
History of Reincarnation
Most of the world’s major religions teach reincarnation, with the major exception of Christianity. When Christianity began, it was the Roman Catholic Church, created in 325 CE at the Council of Nicaea. At that time, reincarnation was accepted, but by the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553 CE, the Church had decided to remove it from canon. The general consensus was that if people thought they could make up in the next life for their mistakes in their current life, then there was less incentive for them to behave properly and morally in their current life. So they removed it from canon and did not teach it. Specifically, It was Roman Emperor Justinian who in 545 CE made it against the law across the empire to preach reincarnation. Since Constantine, the Roman Emperors felt that the real purpose of formalized religion was to have the population police themselves, by thinking that the all-knowing God was watching their every thought and action and judging them by them, and thus make them easier to manage and control. So, in compliance with the decree by Justinian, the Church removed it from the Christian doctrine at the next Ecumenical council in 553 CE, and it has been either dismissed, denied, or simply ignored ever since.
Many medical doctors and scientists do not believe that anything "supernatural" happens at death, and that death is simply the end of existence for that person. This is their comfort zone.
Nevertheless, there has been no shortage of people, especially in modern times with the current medical technologies for resuscitation, who claim to have died on the operating table or at accident scenes and witnessed the beginnings of an afterlife. These are known as NDEs (Near Death Experiences), made known to most people through Raymond Moody’s 1975 book, Life After Life. A bestseller and the first of many best-sellers from many authors on this topic to come afterwards.
Then there are those who, under hypnosis, seem to revisit times and events in earlier lives where they lived out complete lifetimes as other people, and even opposite genders. What’s more, they seem to recognize other people in those previous lifetimes who are in their current lifetime but as a different person and in a different role. Perhaps paying back a karmic debt, or keeping a promise made in the past lifetime, etc.. The same souls seem destined to remain intertwined through the course of many lifetimes.
There are many, many stories and books written about these cases, and some can be quite compelling. A man who, only while under hypnosis, can suddenly speak fluently in a dead language known only to Viking fisherman in the era from 200 CE to 800 CE. A language not heard in 1200 years, and only known to a small handful of linguistics experts now. Or a woman who, only under hypnosis, can both speak and write in a dead language known only to the royal family of Persia and only practiced for about 60 years, 800 years ago. Or a man who remembers a previous life where he lived in a castle in medieval Germany and hid some papers inside a wall, and then some investigators went to that castle, found it still standing, and broke into that wall and indeed found those papers still sealed inside that wall for centuries, exactly where he said they were.
For people who believe that we live multiple lives, they say that each lifetime in this world is a chance to learn and grow spiritually. At the end of each life, there is a life-review process where we are judged for our deeds, good and bad, and assessed. If we are found worthy, we ascend into a level of cosmic consciousness, and become one with the creator of the universe. This is called Heaven, Paradise, Nirvana, or other terms. For those who are not quite finished learning and growing spiritually, they are allowed to plan their own next lifetime and to create the events and obstacles in that life that, by surviving and overcoming them, they will learn and grow into better people, to be judged again at the next life review. This process repeats until all the lessons are learned and the person is allowed into Heaven/Nirvana/Cosmic consciousness or whatever they believe is the final reward.
Officially, the HMI College of Hypnotherapy does not believe or disbelieve in the concept of reincarnation. However, that does not mean that regressing a person into a previous lifetime is not useful. Often it can be very useful as a part of hypnotherapy to understand causation and motivation for certain behaviors a client might like to fix.
The subconscious mind is an amazingly powerful thing, but it has its quirks.
1. It generates the emotions that a person feels.
2. It remembers everything that person is ever exposed to, whether it is in this lifetime or any previous lifetimes.
3. It cannot lie.
4. It cannot tell the difference between reality and a story/movie/TV show/Dream, etc.
Because of these facts, the current behaviors might be caused by any range of causes from events either real or imagined. For example, if a person believes that in a previous life they died by drowning, they might have a fear of water in this life. There is an emotional causality connection there, even if the previous life, or that memory of that previous death is not “real”. If it is real to that person at the subconscious level, then that can be a triggering cause. By uncovering this source cause, a hypnotherapist can begin a series of techniques that may include circle therapy, dream therapy, inner child, desensitization, or several other techniques to help ease the fear of water that is resulting from it. Just understanding that connection goes a long way to helping to dissipate the fear in the current life.
So past-life regressions are useful, regardless of whether they are “real” or not, or regardless of whether a client even believes in them or not. There is an emotional cause and effect relationship here which can be addressed in hypnotherapy.
I have used past-life regressions for clients that asked for them to find out some interesting things in their past that explains their current attitudes and behaviors. It helps to know these things.
As a hypnotherapist, I cannot determine if your past life that we discover in your subconscious is true, but I probably CAN tell if it is useful to your therapy. If you want to know if it is actually true and provable