20 MINUTES TO MASTER ... PAST LIFE THERAPY

IN THE SAME SERIES

20 Minutes to Master Buddhism

20 Minutes to Master Feng Shui

20 Minutes to Master Meditation

20 Minutes to Master NLP

20 Minutes to Master Pilates

20 Minutes to Master Stress Management

20 Minutes to Master Wicca

20 Minutes to Master Yoga

20 Minutes to Master Your Psychic Potential

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Judy Hall is one of England’s most experienced past life therapists. A qualified counsellor and karmic astrologer, she has been practising past life therapy and karmic counselling for over forty-five years. She was initially trained by Christine Hartley, who herself had over fifty years’ experience. A former past life counsellor at the College of Psychic Studies, she has worked with hundreds of clients and conducted workshops in Past Life Exploration all over the world. Having identified a need for expert training, she taught therapists from many different backgrounds how to incorporate past life therapy into their work.

Judy is an experienced lecturer and writer. Her articles on past life therapy have appeared in magazines in the UK, USA, Germany and Australia, and she has appeared on television in the UK and USA to discuss past life experiences. She is the author of several books on crystals, astrology, psychic protection and reincarnation. Her Book of Why examines the life lessons we come to earth to learn and The Soulmate Myth explores the past life basis of present life relationships.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

This book is split into two parts. The first part, Principles of Past Life Therapy, is an original, previously published work from an expert in the field written over twenty years ago but still as valid today. It’s a comprehensive and insightful introduction, explaining the ideas and techniques that will allow you to develop a true understanding of the subject. The Resource Guide has been updated as far as possible but therapists and training associations have proliferated – and training has vastly improved since this book was written – and you should seek recommendations from those who have undergone therapy or from reputable organizations.

The second part is 20 Minutes to Master Past Life Therapy, which you’ll find here. This is your Past Life Therapy cheat-sheet – a short and lucid look at the ideas and techniques covered in the first section, which will only take you 20 minutes to read. It’s a powerful and invaluable resource that you’ll return to again and again.

If you want to truly understand what Past Life Therapy offers – in both the short term and the long term – look no further. The answers are here.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

In the Same Series

About the Author

About this Book

PRINCIPLES OF PAST LIFE THERAPY

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Into the Past

1 What is Past Life Therapy?

2 Possible Past Life Causes

3 Regression Techniques

4 What to Expect

5 How do Souls Reincarnate?

6 Past Lives: The Evidence

7 The History of Past Life Therapy

8 How to Find a Therapist

9 Self-Care and Self-Treatment

Recommended Reading

Resource Guide

20 MINUTES TO MASTER PAST LIFE THERAPY

Introduction: Into the Past

1 What is Past Life Therapy?

2 Possible Past Life Causes

3 Regression Techniques

4 What to Expect

5 How to Find a Therapist

6 Self-Care and Self-Treatment

Copyright

About the Publisher

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dave Gilbert for all his assistance with hypnotherapy – and for much else besides. Also Diana Keel and Bernadette Jaye of the College of Past Life Healing gave freely of their time and knowledge when this book was first written. My thanks to them and to all the people who gave permission for their case histories to be used in this book.

INTRODUCTION: INTO THE PAST

Do you believe you have lived before? Many people do. Do you wonder if you might have? You are not alone. More and more people are opening up to the intriguing prospect of having previously lived, and died. An increasing number seek aid in ‘going back to other lives’. They may simply want to explore the possibility that they have lived before, they may be looking for evidence of past lives, or they may have a more pressing reason for wanting to know what happened to them. In a recent poll, a surprising 49 per cent of people in southern Britain said they believed they might have lived before. In parts of the USA the figure is no doubt higher. In the East, almost everyone believes in reincarnation.

Reincarnation is the belief that, having inhabited a different body, in another time and possibly another place, and having then died, someone returns again to earth in a new body, in other words reincarnates. Knowledge of past lives may be accessed through spontaneous visions, flashbacks, dreams, or déjà vu; or it can be induced through hypnosis and other techniques.

A flashback is a spontaneous vision of, or a remembering of, a past-life experience. It may come out of the blue or be triggered by a place or a person, or by touching the part of the body where the memory is stored, or it may surface during meditation. Flashbacks may be experienced by more than one person, either at the same time or on different occasions. Such spontaneous memories may have started in childhood and carried through to adult life, as in the case of Jenny Cockell.

YESTERDAY’S CHILDREN: JENNY COCKELL

Throughout her childhood, Jenny Cockell had dreams and flashbacks of living in another place. She drew sketch maps of her ‘other home’. Over the years she gathered an enormous amount of material. She was convinced that she had been a mother tragically separated from her children by an early death with terrible consequences for those children. She was determined to find them again.

Though she is English in her present life, Jenny Cockell’s search led her to Ireland and to a moving reunion with ‘her children’, who by now are much older than her. Her ‘son’ said that, whilst not totally convinced about reincarnation (he had been a Catholic all his life), Jenny Cockell had knowledge about his family that only his mother could have. Events had taken place exactly as she recalled them. The house was as she had drawn it all those years ago. The family had been split up following her death, which had been traumatic.

Many celebrities believe in reincarnation. Richard Gere, Tina Turner, Shirley MacLaine and a former Chief Constable of Manchester are just a few of those who have spoken publicly about their belief. General Patton, a Second World War hero, believed he had been both Hannibal and Alexander the Great in addition to several other lesser figures on the war stage of history. Interestingly enough, Alexander himself was a great believer in reincarnation, as was Plato. The Spanish painter Salvador Dalí remembered life as Saint John of the Cross. Napoleon Bonaparte was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Charlemagne, head of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin were both firm believers.

Having lived before implies a continuity of consciousness: the continuous existence of the human soul. After all, if you have lived and died before, the implication is that you will do so again … and again. This may well explain the imperative urge to ‘prove it’ that many people have. An urge that is now being catered for by television and magazines.

Actress Paula Hamilton was hypnotically regressed to a former life as a man, Ashley Brown, for a British TV programme. When questioned, Ashley gave his name and details of his family, including an address in London. He said he had sailed to Ireland from Parkgate, a little known, long disused port near Liverpool that once handled the bulk of Irish sailings. Paula Hamilton had never heard of the place, nor, in her present life, been to Ireland. In her former incarnation, Ashley ended up as a baker in Dublin, giving details such as the name of a (now vanished but verifiable from old maps) alley in which his shop was situated and the Protestant church close by in which he was married. He died of a lung disease due to ingested flour: a common cause of death in bakers of the period.

HYPNOTIC REGRESSION

Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness during which previously inaccessible memories are accessed. In hypnotic regression, the subject is taken back, or regressed, to another lifetime. There are other methods of regression.

A researcher employed by the programme was able to verify many of the details in this obscure person’s life, although it was not possible to actually prove Ashley’s existence as many of the relevant Irish records have been destroyed. The researcher did find someone named Brown at the London Kensington address, who could well have been a relative, but of Ashley himself there was, unfortunately, no mention.

This is one of the difficulties. It is not easy to prove beyond doubt that the apparent memories and experiences of past lives mean that reincarnation is true. But this does not stop people trying. It occupies serious researchers, sometimes for years as with Professor Ian Stevenson. There is a popular magazine devoted to past life memories, and many people have a vested interest because they believe they were historical personages. Tina Turner, for instance, believes she was the Egyptian Pharaoh, Queen Hapshepshut. Unfortunately, even if the details gained under hypnosis are confirmed, it is almost impossible to prove that a person now living was that long-dead person. There are other possible explanations, as we shall see. Notwithstanding, experiences like those of Jenny Cockell are compelling reasons to believe. Especially for the recallee. It is usually the experience itself that convinces, not the ‘evidence’. Paula Hamilton commented that what impressed her most was that, during her regression, she felt, and spoke, as a man would.

There is, however, another reason for exploring the past other than simply curiosity or a desire to prove the truth of reincarnation. This is that the key to the present can lie there. This is what past life therapy is all about. The value of past life therapy lies not in what it may prove about your former life, or lives, but in how it can enhance your present one. Past life therapists believe they can heal the past to change the present. Certainly, in my own practice, I have seen some dramatic improvements in health and well-being. Phobias dissolve, chronic diseases disappear, emotional disturbances heal, relationships improve. Nevertheless, it does not have to be dramatic, or traumatic either. Many people simply feel better able to handle their present life.

PAST LIFE THERAPY

Being guided to a time before birth in the present life, that is, into another life, to uncover and heal the causes of problems and difficulties that have arisen in the present life.

The sense of something suddenly clicking into place, of understanding the previously inexplicable, can throw light on many of our day-to-day feelings. A woman regressed to being a much loved only child. A real ‘daddy’s girl’. She was given a pony for her birthday and was ecstatically happy. She leapt onto the pony, which bolted. She was thrown and killed. Asked what connection this had with her present life, she replied that whenever she was happy she would start to worry. There was always a vague sense of dread. She associated being happy with fear and loss. Being killed in a moment of supreme happiness in that other life made sense of her fear.

In a similar way, another woman wanted to know why she had always felt so responsible for her sister and had a compulsion to rush to her side whenever she was unwell. As a young child, this had caused her great anguish when she was sent away to school on the other side of the world. As an adult of mature years, it created many inconvenient situations, continually disrupting her life. In the regression, she was a happy healthy child, with an invalid sister. It was her duty to stay with her sister, she was told, whenever she wanted to go out to play. Indeed, her sister would beg: “Don’t leave me, promise me you will always be here.” She was, not just in that life but in the present one too. Recognizing that fact allowed her to detach from the old, no longer applicable, promise.

The result of such an experience may not always be dramatic, but it can be. It may not always have physical repercussions, but it often does. The effect of a past life can be emotionally crippling. It may also explain a great deal about present life relationships.

My first solo regression was instigated by someone saying to a friend of mine: “I see you dressed as a nun.” His method of regressing people was to ‘tune in’ to their past lives himself, and tell them what he saw. The person was then supposed to join in. It triggered a ‘flashback’ in her, but one she strenuously tried to block out. She immediately began to shake her head emphatically and to make a most distressed noise. Tears poured down her cheeks. As the ‘regressor’ was not looking at her, he did not at first notice what was happening. When he did, he simply said: “Oh, don’t want to do it? Ok, I’ll go” and did, leaving me with a woman still deeply distressed and violently shaking her head. The noise had risen to a crescendo and she was wringing her hands. Clearly something had to be done.

I took her through a difficult incarnation as a nun, one with no physical comfort at all and little spiritual sustenance. She had, apparently, been put into the convent to stop her marrying her great love, and she missed him every moment of her life. To her, love was something set aside and sacred. It had nothing to do with physical life. The regression was graphic: she had body lice and scratched at them continuously. Her clothes were heavy and uncomfortable and she pulled fitfully at them. Her hands and knees were raw from kneeling and scrubbing floors. On the rare occasion she took a bath, it was in cold water in her linen shift. She never saw herself naked. The body was anathema. Her hair had been hacked off by the mistress of the novices, and her scalp never healed properly. Interestingly enough, she commented: “And she bloody well did it in this life too.” I had to return to that comment later as I felt it had great bearing on her life now.

The only way out of that life was to take her forward through death, but she was still wearing the robes in the between life state. She took them off and burnt them. She pictured having a bath to clear the lice and fleas. We grew her hair and used lotions on her skin. She dressed herself in silken clothes. Eventually she burnt the convent down, but she kept the chapel as she had found what little sustenance and comfort she had there. All the time her language grew stronger and bluer and she was not a person who ever swore. Indeed, in her present life she prided herself on never having lost control of herself, “in anger or in passion”. Burning down the convent seemed to be a release for great feeling, of deep anger that had lain beneath the surface all through her present life.

I asked her about the ‘she did it in this life too’ comment. She explained that, as a 15 year old, she had gone out with a boy against her mother’s wishes. Her enraged mother hacked off her waist-length blonde hair with shears, cutting into her scalp as she did so. Her mother, whom she hated in her present life, had been the mistress of novices in that past life. Her great love then was her great love now. But she had not married him. Her mother had broken up the relationship. However, they had continued to see each other every week for over forty years as they were “deeply in love”. The dichotomy between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ love was strong in her. Her distaste for the body and ‘things of the flesh’ all too apparent. She had married someone merely to have children. When she had a child, the sex stopped and eventually the marriage broke down. She had never had sexual intercourse with the man she ‘loved’. She said she did not know what it was to ‘make love’. Her emotional life was frozen back in that previous life. Her difficult relationship with her mother certainly seemed to be a reflection of just how much she had hated that mistress of the novices. These were just some of the many correlations between that life and the present. Much reframing and releasing needed to be done.

THE BETWEEN LIFE STATE

A state of non-physical being to which souls pass after death. It may be a bright light, a place, a colour or energy. Cultural and religious expectations influence the experience. People see what they expect to see: heaven, hell, paradise, Valhalla, or whatever. Conscious awareness and memory is retained and expanded here and an overview of all lives is possible, forwards or backwards. In some levels of the between life state, the soul may appear to be housed within a body, while in others it is non-corporeal. Healing and reframing can easily be carried out here and the effect carried forward into the present life.

REFRAMING

To reframe a past life experience involves changing the ‘life script’. It may entail a change of scenario, replaying it with a different outcome. It may need to be seen from a different perspective. Changing the past in this way changes the present life experience.

That that ‘regression’ was precipitated by someone else and not carried through illustrates one of the pitfalls. Not everyone is prepared, or able, to deal with something that traumatic. They may activate it but not know how to handle it. I was fortunate in that I, as well as having a natural affinity with the work, had been in training with an expert who had over forty year’s experience, and so I was able to pick up the pieces.

But!! It is difficult to ensure that all past life therapists are knowledgeable, experienced and properly trained. There are some gifted amateurs who simply fell into the work and found it came naturally, as I did. But most of us supplement that natural ability with other training. Many therapists come into past life therapy via other disciplines such as psychotherapy or hypnosis. But even then, extensive experience in the specific work of past life therapy is essential if the therapist is to be able to deal with everything that arises. Some hypnotherapists do not believe in past lives, and if they trigger one, they will not work with it.

There are several approaches. Techniques differ. The number of sessions required will vary. The approach you seek will depend on whether you simply want to explore other lives, or to deal with deep-seated problems. Some therapists merely re-run the past life. Others work at reframing and healing the root cause, utilizing a variety of therapeutic options. Which one will suit you depends on your reasons for seeking therapy in the first place.

Whatever your reason, prospective users of past life therapy should seek knowledgeable guidance and a reputable therapist. Personal recommendation is always a good start, but the right therapist for you is still very much an individual matter. Do not be afraid to ask questions before you book a session, or to go for an exploratory chat before a regression. You need to feel safe and well cared for by an experienced and empathetic professional. Such people do exist. This book will show you what to look out for, and your life may well change for the better as a result of meeting such a person.