Background

    Regression Therapy is a subspecialty within the umbrella of hypnotherapeutic techniques.  In regression therapy, the client's awareness or consciousness is directed back to a point in time to fully understand the details of a previous experience.  In general, each regression session will investigate a single previous experience that is still affecting the client's current life in a negative way.

    The distinct difference from traditional hypnotherapy is that we may now investigate not only repressed memories from childhood, but also investigate experiences prior to the client's birth.  Controversial as this may seem to some, there is a rapidly growing body of knowledge and documentation which deals with experiences felt within the mother's womb prior to birth, and even with experiences prior to conception (pre-womb).  These are both discussed below.  

The Womb Experience.  There is very convincing evidence that our awareness or consciousness extends back in time well before we learned the language of our parents, and could describe what is affecting us on our physical, emotional and mental levels.  Our awareness exists well before we are born, as evidenced by the growing number of transcripts of sessions where clients have been regressed back to a time when they were in their mother's womb.  These sessions are exceptionally useful in investigating and resolving emotional issues existing between a client and his or her mother or father.

    For instance, a client's feelings of rejection or unworthiness may be traced back to a womb experience where the unborn child was not wanted by the mother.  The unborn child grows to term in the mother's total energy environment, not just her physical body.  The mother's total energy field, including her mental thoughts and belief systems stored in her mental energy body, as well as her emotional reactions to these beliefs stored in her emotional energy body, determines the total energy environment in which the unborn child develops and grows.  If that energy environment includes feelings of guilt, shame, or anger at being pregnant, the child within her also begins to take on those mental and emotional patterns of its mother.

    The unborn child has little analytical ability, since that comes after the brain is developed well after birth.  Therefore, the unborn child can only receive these repeated emotional feelings of the mother and begin to incorporate them as a part of its own developing energy patterns.  If, for whatever reason, the mother's thought pattern is "I don't want this child," the unborn child may begin to form an energetic mental body with the thought pattern "I am not wanted" or "I am unlovable".  The unborn child has taken on the faulty thoughts and mental patterns of its mother.

     The unborn child's energetic emotional body then forms with feelings of rejection, anger, helplessness, unworthiness, or a host of other negative reactions.  It is essential to release these faulty emotional and mental patterns imprinted from our past or from within the womb in order to move ahead in the present with joy, love, balance and harmony.

Pre-Womb Experiences.  During many regression cases, experiences are described which are clearly not part of the client's prenatal, childhood or adult experience.  It is clear that our awareness extends to realms or times which we do not consciously consider part of our current lifetime experience.  Yet these glimpses into these other dimensions are repeatedly encountered during hypnotherapeutic sessions which involve regression.  Therefore, we also need to be able to understand what is happening during such a regression and why, so that our rational mind can make sense of this new information and process it in a way that does not confuse us, and which aids the greater understanding of ourselves and the world we perceive.

    During regression sessions where pre-womb experiences are clearly described in detail by the client, both the client and the therapist need to have a framework in which to understand what these experiences mean and how they are related to the client.  I have conducted numerous sessions in which the client described participating in a chariot race in ancient times, or described in detail how they died at the sword of a Russian soldier hundreds of years ago, and other scenes quite vivid and real to the client.  

    I myself have physically cried out in agony as I described in detail a scene where I was speared in the chest and died in front of my Stone Age cave.  So how do we make sense of these experiences?  Obviously, we must first broaden our beliefs of what we perceive as reality and how we participate in our reality.  Is reincarnation real?  If so, what is the reason it exists?  Must I accept that concept to make sense of my world?

    We must first understand that in order to repattern our energy field so that faulty thought forms are released completely, we must know what pattern is there and why it was created.  Every thought form or belief system in our energy field is there as a result of some previous experience.  If a previous experience resulted in a Faulty Thought and a negative emotional reaction, these can not just go away on their own.  They will stay there in your field until they are forgiven and released through some process.  You created them, and only you can release them.  

    There are at least three processes which may accomplish this: Divine Forgiveness, release through karmic repayment, and release by repatterning the energy bodies.  Depending on your beliefs, Divine Forgiveness may be given to a person as a result of living a particularly pious or selfless life of service to others.  However, a debate on the relative merits of the beliefs of different religions would not be productive here.  Further, I prefer to believe that our sojourn on earth is a continuing series of learning experiences, ones where we learn of our true nature through interactions with others and, ultimately, of our own place in this universe we inhabit.  

    For many centuries, eastern philosophies which embrace the concept of reincarnation have recognized that one of the Universal Laws which governs this universe is the Law of Karma, or the Law of Cause and Effect.  The central Truth here is that whatever you do is ultimately returned to you in kind.  This is stated very succinctly in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  Notice, however, that is does not say that whatever you do unto others will be returned to you in this lifetime.

    The karmic notion allows for the fact that it might not be in your best interests (i.e., for the evolvement of your highest understanding) that a negative, hurtful or unkind act be repaid in this lifetime.  To do so might interfere with the learning of the lesson you came here to learn in this lifetime.  But at some point in time, you will be given the opportunity to experience exactly what you have previously projected into your world.  That may be loving kindness, compassion and understanding, or it may be prejudice, hatred, disease, or greed.  Ultimately, each person is totally accountable and responsible for his or her own situation and circumstances in life.  This is determined by the nature of the previous actions and what each soul has agreed to experience in order to learn the lesson of those actions.

    It is believed that many hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of lifetimes are experienced before the balancing effect of karma is erased and the soul record of earthly incarnations is cleansed to the point that the soul begins to become aware of its true nature as an evolving, spiritual being.  In this earth experience, its actions in the denser third dimension reality are set into a progressive timeline from past through present to future; this permits the evolving soul to become experientially aware of the results of its actions.  There is no judgment in this process at all; it is merely an opportunity for the soul to experience both sides of the coin for each of its actions, and thereby gain a greater understanding of the most productive manner in which to exercise its free will choice for subsequent actions.

    Although it may be easier to explain and discuss previous life experiences in terms of reincarnation, it is, however, not absolutely necessary to believe in that concept.  If reincarnation is difficult to accept, one may think in terms of previous experiences instead of previous lives.  Carl Jung, the renowned psychiatrist of the early 1900's, theorized that all human thoughts and beliefs are somehow collected into a vast universal storehouse that he called the Collective Unconscious.  Further, he taught that, at some higher level of awareness, all human consciousness is connected in a way that allows each person to access this information storehouse under the right conditions.  Therefore, experiences recorded by one individual in 1600 may be available to another individual in 1990, even though the reason the two lifetimes may be connected is not obvious.

    Although Jung resisted the idea that these different people were separate incarnations of the same soul, this philosophy allows one skeptical of reincarnation to accept the possibility of previous experiences that affect the current lifetime.  In regression therapy, the therapist must look for the psychological truth for each particular client, and not focus excessively on whether or not the experiences related by the client are the literal truth.