Many of my clients have asked me how they could best prepare for their past life regression session so that they can get the most from this experience. As everyone’s personal requirements and abilities are so varied, I’ve selected the following top 10 factors which I commonly take my clients through during an initial consultation, and prior to the session itself. I’ve found that this to be a big help in improving the quality of the experience; the richness of the information retrieved, and to boost the overall level of satisfaction experienced.

1 What do you want to achieve from the session

For example, are you simply curious to know what you may have been in a previous life? Are you interested in reincarnation because you feel drawn to a particular era or period in history? Are you seeking a healing in order to overcome and let go of a particular behavioural pattern, or to find out if there is a past life connection to a physical complaint you may be experiencing? Do you want to explore the possibility that you may have had a connection with someone, such as a partner, a close friend or family member in a past life? Do you want to experience a ‘between-lives’ state, or open up to a deeper connection with your spirit guides or explore your spirituality?

By discussing with your therapist your particular motivation for this work, your therapist can work with you to help you to acquire these insights, experiences, changes and information. While it is impossible to guarantee success in all these areas, like anything in life, if you plan and focus on what it is you want to achieve you are far more likely to succeed.

2 Choosing your Past Life Regression therapist

Once you are clear what it is you personally want from your session, you will then be in a better place to choose a therapist who best meets your needs.

Some therapists may be unwilling to take on a client who is purely a ‘curiosity’ seeker, as they would prefer to be working therapeutically with their clients. In a similar vein, if you want to do some in-depth emotional releases or healing during your session, you will want to choose a therapist who is experienced and prepared to work with you in this way.

Does your therapist offer a free initial consultation whether in person or over the phone? You may find this facility helpful in order to ask any questions you may have about your session, to discuss any fears, and to establish whether you feel comfortable with the therapist and able to maintain a good rapport.

I generally encourage clients to come along for a free initial consultation prior to any session, as this gives me the opportunity to explain how I work, to answer any questions, to manage my clients expectations and to assess their suitability for this work as well as giving them a brief taster of what it might be like.

You may also find it helpful to ask for your therapist’s qualifications or training in this work, what their particular interest is in it, and what their experience level is. For example,how many years have they been doing this work? Have they ever handled spirit releases?

Will you be charged a fixed price for the session, or will you be charged by the hour? Different therapists work and charge in different ways. If you want someone else in the room with you such as a friend or a partner, it is best this is negotiated in advance. Personally, I won’t work a session with anyone else in the room, as it often puts the client under too much pressure to perform. The client will retain an awareness of the other person in the room and there may be scenes that they experience which they wouldn’t want the other person to be party to. Often having a friend or partner in the room can be very disruptive in terms of energy flows, so I personally wouldn’t encourage it.

3 Discuss any fears or worries before the session

Once you’ve chosen your therapist, use their time wisely. If you have any particular fears or worries now’s the time to raise these issues. Do you have any general anxieties about hypnosis or trance work? How will your therapist handle the situation if you start to experience a traumatic memory? Have you had any problems with previous past life regressions or hypnotic experiences?

Any unresolved fears or worries may inhibit your ability to relax and gain the best from your session, so they are best dealt with before the session begins.

Asking about such issues will also help you to feel more comfortable with your therapist and help you to gain a greater insight into how they work and how much experience they have in the work and in handling any difficulties which may arise. For example, some people worry that they won’t come out of a trance state at the end of the session (don’t worry, this doesn’t happen), or are frightened about experiencing the death of the past-life character or a between-lives state. So it’s important to find out how your therapist would handle these situations, and how open they would be to ceasing the session at the point the past life character dies – if that’s what the client wants.

4 Read about other people’s past life experiences

There are a number of good books on this subject. Among the more widely read are the books by Brian Weiss. From reading more about this work you will gain a sense of what other people have experienced, the fact that you may be male or female in your past life regression, be experiencing a rich or poor life, be located in any part of the world and in any period of history, and that you can enter into your past life experience at any age (although more commonly between the ages of 10 to 25 years old).

You can also discover the healing that other people have achieved from their sessions, the connections they have made, the patterns they’ve been able to break. But do bear in mind that you will, of course, always be reading about the successful experiences the writer has observed and the particularly noteworthy experiences people have had – your own initial experience may be more basic.

5 Work your mental ‘muscle’ and build up your ability to focus and concentrate

The clients who achieve the richest experiences are usually the creative writers in this world. This is because they are used to holding plots and scenes in their head, and following a creative story line which sometimes unfolds itself spontaneously, or in which the characters have their own very clear voices, personalities and issues.

The next best thing to creative writing is to allow yourself to read copious amounts of fiction, which will encourage you to visual characters, scenes, and the development of a story line. It will also get you using your other senses – smell, touch, taste, hearing – as the story progresses.

Daydreaming is also helpful, and meditation is great for helping to build up the mental stamina you will need in order to focus and concentrate for the duration of what can be a fairly lengthy session (often up to 2 hours). Guided visualisations can also help you to learn to visualise, and to keep focused.

Although it is perfectly possible to conduct a past life regression session using senses other than visual, most people are so used to using their visual sense to the detriment of their other senses that if they don’t get clear and profound images they tend to feel they are doing something wrong, or that the information coming through is not ‘true’. This isn’t helped by the depiction of past life regression sessions on television, a very visual medium, where there is usually a backdrop created by the producers displaying what the regressed person is ‘seeing’ – which can be a rather false experience and expectation-raiser.

Many people struggle to hold more than a snapshot of visual information in their head at any one time, so to be able to see movement and scenes flowing seamlessly one into another can be quite a skill. It all comes down to how much you can exercise your creative mental ‘muscle’ and build up your ability to focus and concentrate. Deep trance cannot create or enhance this ability, as this is very much down to the individual and is what the individual brings to the session.

6 Choose a time for your session when you are feeling refreshed and mentally alert

This is very important. Many people feel they will be more relaxed at the end of the working day, able to put the cares of the day aside and therefore be able to focus more clearly. This may not be the case for you. If you are relaxed into a deep trance state in the evening,for example, and are tired from your working day, you may be more likely to fall asleep for part of your past life regression session – which will be frustrating for both you and the therapist who will need to spend some time bringing you back up to a level where you are focused and responsive.

Far better that you attend earlier in the day when your energy is higher and when you are mentally more alert, or at the weekend when you may feel more rested and under less pressure.

Your ability to focus, concentrate and use as many of your senses as possible is very important to the successful outcome of a session. If this is to be your first trance session, I often tell my clients to liken it to the day of their first driving lesson, but where instead of just driving around the back streets for an hour we’re going to be driving the equivalent of London to Edinburgh. This generally helps them to understand the degree of concentration which is required.

7 Don’t drink or use recreational drugs before or after a session

This very much ties in with concentration. Whatever your particular habits are, if you drink to excess or take recreational drugs the day before, or after your session, not only will you potentially be unable to focus clearly during the session, you are quite likely to lose the deep emotional connection with the past life character and their experiences after the session. As the emotional connection is what for many people makes the whole experience feel very real and worthwhile, this can have the effect of devaluing the session.

In addition, trance work can have a tendency to intensify experiences, and anyone presenting in a less than clear-headed state is likely to have any substances which are remaining in the body strengthened to the point where they might feel nauseous.

8 Keep the rest of the day relatively clear

A point of particular note for anyone embarking on this work for the first time. As these sessions can be quite exhausting, physically, mentally and emotionally, it is often better to allow yourself some time to relax and recover after a session. This will also give you some time to reflect on the session and any lessons you have learnt, or information which you have gained.

Many of my clients benefit from keeping a journal of their thoughts and feelings about what they have experienced. This can, of course, be augmented by a recording or transcript of the session. Most therapists will record or take notes during the session, or allow you to make your own recording. You should check with your therapist whether they make any provision for this in advance of your session. There may be a charge for this service.

9 Keep an open mind and leave any analysis to the end of the session

This is very important. Although most people relax easily into a trance state, the moment they are asked to start describing what they are experiencing whilst in the trance state, they start to doubt what they are describing and start to analyse it instead. There’s no quicker way to come up to a more conscious level than to start to critique or analyse your experience.

I usually brief my clients about this in advance, and advise that even if what they are initially experiencing seems contrived, or derived from the realms of fantasy, to just go with it. If it isn’t related to a past life experience the scene will soon change and the experience will begin to deepen.

When you first start to describe what is going on, for example, what you are wearing on your feet, your body and the length of your hair etc. you may feel quite silly, as if you are making it all up. Don’t analyse, just go with it and fairly soon you will start to feel much more settled and established in your role as the past life character.

Also, once you are asked to speak during a session, you may feel that you are not quite so deeply relaxed as you were at the beginning of the session. To a certain degree this is true, as you will need to come up through some of the hypnotic levels in order to speak, as this is a much more conscious-state function. Once you have described for the therapist what is going on, don’t worry, you will be able to relax back into the story line and a deeper trance state.

10 Post-session support can be helpful

Most therapists will be happy to discuss any points with you post-session, either to help your understanding, or to fill in any missing gaps. You may want to check that your therapist is willing to support you should any issues come up after the session which you find strange or concerning. Some therapists offer phone or e-mail support for a limited time post -session to help you clarify any issues which may arise as a result of your experience, and you may want to check this with your therapist in advance.

Enjoy

As with all new experiences, the more times you do something the easier it becomes. If you are embarking on your first past life regression, be kind to yourself, make sure you’ve done some visualisation work prior to the session and have practised going into a meditative state, and allow yourself to trust that what comes up in the session will be the most appropriate experience for you on the day.

What you are about to embark upon can be a truly profound, rich and rewarding experience.

Patricia Bishop is an experienced Past Life Regression therapist, Hypnotherapist and EFT practitioner with a busy London practice. Pat has helped hundreds of people through her regression work, helping them to discover their previous lives, to heal old traumas; to connect more deeply with their core spiritual self and to take some of the lessons learnt from past experiences into their current life experience in order to inform and make life-defining changes.

For more information please visit: http://www.pat-bishop.com/?page=past_life_regression