I just met Gary. He’s a handsome, well educated, successful scientist, but it could never work out for two reasons: he’s dead, and I used to be him.
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I discovered Gary through past-life regression hypnosis. I may not be a deeply spiritual person, but I’ve always felt I was born with a set of pre- etched beliefs and understandings. As a child, I’d get lost in worlds of vivid and detailed imagery, none of which I’d encountered in my limited experience.
I thought a session of past-life regression might help explain all that. If it couldn’t, at least the process might make me laugh.
I found my past-life regression hypnotherapist, Alicja, on Google. I picked her because she was inexpensive and could see me the next day. The fact that she also offered “eyebrow shaping” and “body painting,” didn’t exactly bolster my faith in her abilities. But her website was one of the few without pictures of crystals and/or constellations.
“Lots of people come in here with delusions of grandeur,” Alicja said. “They’re certain they must have been Cleopatra or Napoleon in a former life, only to discover they were floor-sweeping peasants or undecorated soldiers.”
She said she sensed in me a deep wisdom coupled with a childlike sense of play. I accepted her compliment but felt she was just lubing me up to more easily probe my soul. I told her what I was seeking, and she told me what I could expect to find. I then sat down in a large, comfortable armchair, took some deep breaths, and we went (cue Huey Lewis) back in time.
There’s a mystical element to hypnotherapy that’s given it a bum rap in the world of psychology. The Ontario Psychological Association lists only 12 psychologists in the Toronto area who employ it in their practice.
“It’s rare in the field,” says local psychologist Kate Hays, “but I see it as a technique that needs to be treated with respect.” She notes that stage acts (think pendulum and “look into my eyes”) have given people the misconception that under hypnosis “you’ll end up looking silly and not be in control.”
Hays uses the technique to help her patients “focus very deeply… to let go of everyday thoughts and concerns,” but acknowledges that while some of the memories and images that come up can be accurate and factual, others are “elaborations from an almost dreamlike state.”
“I would not use hypnosis to discover facts,” she says.
When I ask about the specific practice of past-life regression hypnosis to explore former lives, Hays says, “I consider myself a scientist, and [past-life regression] moves from science into some other realm.”
Even the Association of Registered Clinical Hypnotherapists (one of many groups regulating a practice that is in no way standardized) rejects past-life regression therapy. So if hypnotherapy is the black sheep of psychology, it appears that past-life regression is its anus.
Still, I could see the details of Gary’s life so clearly. It was 1956. His wife’s name was Deb. She was plain and had a bad perm. Gary resented her because he felt he hardly knew her. He felt trapped by a life that society had chosen for him, and eventually, following the death of his adolescent daughter (I saw that coffin so clearly), he left Deb and his son to find his true self. He went to Cuba, where the poor guy in the end succumbed to alcohol-related cirrhosis and died alone in a hospital bed. A football game played on the television as he took his last breath.
Maybe that’s why I deeply empathize with those struggling with addiction. Maybe that’s why fear of losing a child makes me wonder if I could handle having one.
Maybe Gary was one of many souls who helped form the beliefs and fears I was born with. Maybe all these images did come from somewhere – I couldn’t just invent this stuff. Or maybe I just did.
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