I Did Past-Life Regression Hypnotherapy
What made me decide to do this specific type of hypnotherapy
This article is part of an ongoing series of stories leading up to my experience with witches, reincarnation, past-lives, mediumship, psychics, and the paranormal. All of these have been beautiful, life-changing spiritual experiences that I’ve had after I left a lifetime of Evangelical Christianity, where any participation in these things was prohibited because they are considered “evil” and “demonic.” If you’re interested in following along, please consider subscribing.
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I walked into John’s1 office excited, but nervous, about our session. I had never done hypnotherapy. I’d never even considered it until a few months prior.
He escorted me through the small waiting area, set up like a home living room. The room was filled with warm, ambient lighting from floor lamps next to a couch facing a fireplace and sitting on top of a thick, deep red antique rug spread across the tiled floor. The walls were covered in beautiful canvases of art he painted himself, dispersed between shelves of books. At the back of this homely living room was a small nook where a massive, plush recliner chair sat in front of a wall of windows perpendicular to yet another wall of full bookshelves. “Please, have a seat.” he pointed to the recliner. I immediately felt at ease as I sunk into the recliner’s lush cushions.
I had been apprehensive about having a male hypnotherapist since I felt that hypnotherapy is such a vulnerable modality. And as a woman, I have experiences that give me reason to be apprehensive about giving a man access to my vulnerability. But the type of hypnotherapy I was looking for was a specific modality that required a specific type of certification and when I searched the Life Between Lives (LBL) website for certified LBL hypnotherapists near me, there was no one certified in my area. I expanded my search and when I saw John’s picture, his kind face gave me the feeling of a safe, fatherly figure. I’m not usually one to be swayed by appearances alone, but I felt it in my gut that I should give him a chance. So I reached out to him despite my apprehensions about having a male hypnotherapist.
We had an hour-long phone consultation where he asked me many curious questions about myself and my reasons for wanting to have an LBL hypnotherapy session. Then he talked at length about his passion for this work. This passion, along with his kindness toward his clients and his empathy toward humanity, gave me the green light to book my hypnotherapy session with him.
Within a few weeks, I drove four hours from home and was sitting in the recliner in John’s office for my first past-life regression hypnotherapy session.
Six months earlier I was scrolling my Instagram search page. “Have you been called an old soul?” the post read. I had many times. And I’ve felt like an “old soul” my whole life; like I felt a deep sense of…something…beyond the time, place, and body in which I was born. I clicked the post and read through the slides where they talked about the idea of reincarnation, karma, the spirit world we experience between our incarnations on earth, and the evolution of our souls.
“This information is based on studies done by hypnotherapist, Dr. Michael Newton.” read the caption of the post. “You can find more about this in his book, Journey of Souls.”
For months I was sitting with an openness to learn and understand more about reincarnation after I watched the Surviving Death documentary. I closed Instagram, ordered Journey of Souls immediately, and inhaled its contents.
If it’s not obvious from reading my previous articles in this series, I’m a voracious learner. My footnotes are almost always filled with resources I’ve devoured that I like to share in case you, reader, are interested in a deep dive into the things I write about. I (try to) satiate my desire to learn through reading books and watching documentaries written and created by people who are smarter than me and who have different lived experiences than I do.
Even though I no longer believe in the Christian God for my own personal belief system, I do still believe in something Bigger than us. And I believe that Something Bigger — that Source — can intervene in our lives by sending us nudges we can intuit and choose to acknowledge and act on. Source will use what’s in front of us to speak to us. In Christianity, they often used my daily Bible study to speak to me. On this day, I was scrolling Instagram and Source used that random post to nudge me to pick up Michael Newton’s book, Journey of Souls, to set me off on the most transformative portion of my path so far.
Dr. Michael Newton was a licensed psychologist and a certified Master Hypnotherapist who discovered, through hypnotherapy, how to enable people to access the wisdom of the spirit world and their higher guidance whilst living their lives.2
In the late 60s Newton was working with a hypnotherapy client to treat chronic shoulder pain. In the middle of this hypnotherapy session, the client regressed into a past life as a WWI soldier where he had been stabbed. “Michael asked all manner of questions about his unit, commanding officer and even the badges on his uniform, before desensitizing the pain and resolving the issue. The client went away bewildered, though healed.”3 Newton confirmed the client’s story through War Records in London.
He then treated another client with depression who regressed into the afterlife — a period of time between her incarnated lives. From there she learned the deeper meaning of her existence.
He then spent the next 25 years collecting data from hypnotherapy clients for a comprehensive scope of the spiritual realm and formulated a modality for hypnotherapists to follow to facilitate these spiritual experience with their clients through past-life regression hypnosis and Life Between Lives (LBL) hypnosis.
I devoured Journey of Souls along with several other books written by medical professionals who study and write about the afterlife, past-life regression, and Life Between Lives hypnotherapy.4 The only spiritual experiences of the afterlife that I knew of that we could probably experience were through a medium, a ouija board, or a seance.5 But I had no idea that there is long-documented evidence of spiritual experiences through hypnotherapy. Even hypnotherapy was teetering on the demonic in my evangelical world, so I was conditioned to stay away from it.
My willingness months before to be open about the idea of reincarnation made sense once I read these books. I needed to sit in my discomfort and curiosity for a while so I could be open to learn this new information about LBL hypnotherapy.
I spent months cycling through each of these books, reading them several times. What I read made so much sense to me and for me.
Life Between Lives helped me make sense of existence and my role in it. The more I sat with it, the more grounded I became. And the more grounded I became, the more I was willing to accept that it could be true. It made the most sense for me, personally, in rebuilding a spiritual framework for myself, than any other spiritual framework I had encountered in my deconstruction.
It wasn’t a structured religious system.
It wasn’t a hierarchical bureaucracy.
The idea of our souls living multiple lives to learn lessons that help us evolve into higher forms of consciousness and divine love made sense for me.
It helped me see the interconnectedness between every person and between humans and every living thing on earth.
The concept of soul groups helped me see the spiritual importance of the relationships in my life, both the beautiful, life-giving ones and the ones that have been painful and toxic.
This helped me make sense of my personal suffering.
It helped me see the humanity of every single individual.
And it helped restore my autonomy that was shriveled from years of sacrificing it to a cult.
It helped give me a sense of purpose. In evangelicalism, I lived feeling like a constant failure because I wasn’t making massive, public waves for God like I had been told was my highest calling. I no longer had to do great, big things in the world like I had been taught was my responsibility. My big things shifted to my immediate world that I live in rather than focusing on the world at large. My focus became on what, and who, was right in front of me in my present moment. It could be as “small” as smiling at someone, taking a moment to notice another person, or letting them know in some way that they are seen and heard. These small actions with our fellow humans have immense value and matter intensely in this life. They are some of the most important parts of our existence as humans.
But possibly the greatest thing I took from this is that my soul chose to live this specific life. I chose this exact point on the timeline, in this body, with this story. So whenever I have an existential spiral (which is often), it has helped me to remind myself that I chose this life for the experiences and lessons I’m meant to learn and that nothing has caught my soul by surprise. And it helps shift my victim mentality into an empowering quest to learn the lessons I’m meant to learn in this life and to grow into the highest form of love while I’m here.
Though Newton’s collection of data about the spirit world had substantial evidence through thousands of people’s common experiences, it still isn’t provable. It isn’t absolute truth. Believing in what he presents is still a form of faith. As I spent months reading, I needed to analyze all this new information in my left brain before I was willing to accept it as an embodied experience for myself. I was careful to my susceptibility to jump immediately into a spiritual framework since I had recently broken up with my life-long Christian faith. It’s like when you break up with someone and are vulnerable for emotional connection with anyone to fill the void left from the breakup, so you know you need to take a moment to figure out who you are before making a commitment.
There was nothing in Newton’s work or the books that I read that tried to convince the reader to believe what they were presenting. There was nothing prescriptive. But I’d been emotionally manipulated with spirituality innumerable times and my guard was high. I spent a majority of my life in charismatic church spaces where intense emotions were used to manipulate the crowd and before you knew it, people were running around the sanctuary, screaming in tongues, and sobbing at the altar. I guarded my emotional response carefully.
I kept my guard up, continually self-searching the reasons behind why I would want to have a hypnotherapy session. I wanted to prove to myself that I can rely on my own gut and intuition, rather than having someone on the outside facilitate a spiritual experience for me.
For six months I audited my motives.
Out of pure curiosity I finally went to The Michael Newton Institute’s website just to see if there were any hypnotherapy facilitators in my area. When I saw John’s face, something in me told me to reach out. I had no intention of booking a session but after we spoke, it felt like the right time.
I was ready for hypnotherapy.
John sat down in a rolling office chair opposite me in the recliner. “Please, feel free to make yourself at home.” he said. I kicked off my shoes, pulled my legs up, and criss-crossed them into the recliner as though I was getting comfortable at home. He handed me a blanket and we spent the first two hours doing an intake where I told him more of my story and he asked many questions that would help him facilitate my session as best as possible.
“Thank you for trusting me with your story and with this process. It’s an honor for me.” he kindly said. “I’m ready to begin when you are.”
I uncrossed my legs, reclined the chair, and placed an eye mask over my eyes. I took several deep breaths and melted into the cushions, open to whatever was meant to happen for me in this past life regression hypnotherapy session.
Read the continuation of this story here.
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His name has been changed to protect his identity
Some of the books I read:
•Destiny of Souls by Dr. Michael Newton
•Wisdom of Souls by Dr. Micael Newton
•Life Between Lives by Dr. Michael Newton
•Memories of the Afterlife edited by Dr. Michael Newton
•After by Grace Greyson M.D.
•Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
I have seen a medium to communicate with my grandmother. You can read about that here. But I don’t have any interest in ouija boards or seances because, while I don’t live in fear and don’t believe in evil spirits like I did in evangelical Christianity, I do still believe in negative energy that can attach itself to us if we don’t set strong intentions and I don’t have the stamina or margin to deal with that at this point in my life. So I stay away from them.
My story and yours have similar beats to them so far. And in the last couple of years, I’ve found my way to NDEs, a more expansive view of consciousness, remote viewing, and I’m sitting with the idea of reincarnation right now. Finding your Substack was a very welcome synchronicity. Thank you for sharing your experiences-I can’t wait to find out what happens next!
As always listening was pure joy and recognize the need to n read. You're inspire my weary soul.