I tried Past Life Regression
In the meantime, I've become 38 years old. Ouch, it hurts! Scary to be closer to 40 than to 35. On the positive, I can still look 25. At least this is what most people guess about my age.
Looking youthful can be the result of many things. Like the diet, I started in my late teens: no sugar, no refined products, no gluten, or wheat. I couldn't follow it religiously but managed to drastically reduce the intake and tried to eat more naturally. On my skin, I use a few and mostly natural products. I live a low-stress life. I sleep. I don't sit around too much, I move my body, and go outside. I don't hold grudges or negative feelings for others and reduce contact with people who do. I basically try to let go of everything and everyone that don't support my wellbeing (mental, emotional, physical). Maybe some of these things contributed to tricking my biological age. I also heard that lightworkers age slower. Or maybe I have left something unfinished in a past life at around the age of 25? Just wondering.
Past Life Regression (PLR)
It was not the above, but to find answers for my health-related issues that built up the curiosity in me toward PLR. I, however, received a different message during the therapy that left me to ponder over this age thing. I also received a clue why I might be scared of spiders and feel discomfort in the dark.
Past life regression is a method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations.
There are youtube videos about guided PLR therapy or meditation that I looked into but they didn't work for me. And it's better to have an experienced person with you who can ask the right questions to guide you through the journey. So I paid for a one-on-one session when I heard that my massage therapist's cough problem got healed after one PLR session.
If you're interested in what happened, read along, I am going to share my experience.
Let me start with how I prepared. I have a tendency to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for upcoming events/ plans/ travels. In this case, I had a chat with myself asking my body to co-operate with me and to open up to the experience. I focused on my head, more specifically on the third eye chakra, and reminded myself of what I was looking for answers for.
As soon as I arrived in the room I felt a bit uneasy. I was curious and excited yet my body signaled something else. The therapist asked me to lie down but I didn't feel safe doing so. I simply felt too vulnerable in that position. I should have let the therapist know and ask her if I could sit instead. On the spot, however, I thought it would be good for me to practice to overcome this unwanted feeling and lied down with some tension in my body. Interestingly I never had a problem lying on the massage table but this time it was different.
"Lying down is associated with some emotionally charged ideas: sleeping, being vulnerable to harm, sex, dreaming, being in a crib as a baby, resting comfortably, etc., etc. So lying down in a therapy session is a sure-fire way to access some provocative thoughts and feelings, which can be clues for the therapist about how to be helpful to the patient." by Carol Campbell, MFT
As I was surrendering to the therapist's voice and instruction my eyelids started flapping and I found it hard to keep them closed. Eventually, I gave in and opened my eyes, and asked for a towel over my face. Both my therapist and I thought it was a sign that my soul was not ready to or didn't want to see what was about to come. Anyway, the towel helped, my eyes stayed shut. We continued on.
It didn't come easy for me to see or feel anything at first. And if I did, it felt surreal and unclear. By the way, during the therapy, the clients stay aware, yet experience a different realm. It felt like being in two places at once.
I saw a girl in her mid-twenties in a white dress and with long hair. I was barefoot in the desert (California or Arizona?), walking on the road and tumbleweed was tumbling next to me (just like in The Big Lebowski intro song: Sons Of The Pioneers - Tumbling Tumbleweeds). The therapist asked where I was going. It took a while to see the next image which reminded me of a village from a western movie with dusty roads and wooden houses with swinging style doors. At this point, I was thinking maybe my brain brought these images forward from the movies I watched years ago but I continued to focus to stay in the experience. I entered one of the saloons and just sat at the bar. The therapist asked me to look around if I see any familiar faces. I didn't see faces at all. I saw dark silhouettes of cowboys sitting at the tables. Everybody and everything was darkish around me. I was the only white thing in that place. I had a feeling that the reason why I only saw dark silhouettes was (1.) these characters were not important to me, or (2.) they were dark souls. Which made me seem to be the pure soul barefoot in the white dress. Dark and light. Because nothing meaningful came from these images the therapist directed my attention to my feet and asked where I left my shoes. Then I felt myself being in a bedroom, sitting up on the bed and choosing not to put the shoes on. I could sense that there was a man next to me in the bed but I didn't see him. Then we were sitting in a wide black Cadillac driving on the long empty road in the desert. Everything felt fine until the therapist asked me to fast forward to the time when I died ("What happened an hour before? 10 mins before? 1 minute before you died?"). Then I saw a man and me standing on the cliff edge and at the same time, I felt the sensation of some bugs were crawling on my hands in real life. I knew that it was impossible to have spiders on me but it felt so real that I touched my hand and asked the therapist if she saw something crawling on me. She reassured me that there was nothing on my hand and directed me back to the cliff edge. Within milliseconds my legs started to shiver, I felt something heavy on my chest, I couldn't speak just broke into tears. I saw the man grabbing me and punching me off the cliff *. Then I was floating gently underwater where I felt calm and at peace again. The man was a dark silhouette, faceless. I tried to find a connection between him and people in my current life but nothing came except for the word jealousy. Later the therapist and I discussed that I was probably dead by the time I reached the water that's why I felt at peace in it. It seemed that I was not drowning. She also pointed out that there were no cars in the wild west time, which is often referring to the period of the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century. The popular Cadillac era in the US started in the late '60s and the model I saw under hypnosis was closer to a 70s-80s model like Cadillac DeVille or Cadillac Seville (yes, I did some research on Cadillacs, lol!). So I might have been on a movie set as I read that around that time from 1977 "Movies hired people other businesses excluded—women and immigrants. In film studios, women’s jobs ranged from plaster-molders, set designers, and film editors to writers, directors, even production executives." So a lot of women actually started to work on film sets. This actually makes a lot of sense to me because since a young age I've had an aspiration to be recognized for my talents and creative ideas. And I still have this feeling in me unfulfilled. And P.S. I love the desert!
* When I was in my teens I had a dream that my best friend turned into a vampire and pushed me off the cliff. I remember I woke up shocked and sweaty. This was the time when I learned the expression 'energy vampire' and not much later I met a fortune teller in our town who told me to be careful because there was a person around me who didn't want the best for me. She is the same person I refer to as my karmic friend in previous blog posts. Ex-karmic friend to be more precise. We're not in touch anymore but she still appears in my dreams from time to time.
We tried to go into another past life after this Western mystery, which was difficult for me. I started to feel I was less under hypnosis and more in my real life. I opened my eyes at times - I still had the towel on my face - I felt somewhat exhausted yet I was able to see within and continue. The sensation of the bugs crawling on my body stayed with me till the end of the session. I continued to feel them on my wrists, hands, ankles, and on my neck.
In this second past life, I was in New York. Again I just saw shapes and silhouettes of buildings that gave me the hint that I was in the streets of New York. The therapist asked me if I was a boy or a girl? I had no idea. So she guided me to a display window where I could check my reflection in the window glass. I still didn't know the answer. I felt I could be anything I wanted to be and because I was a girl in the previous past life journey I chose to be a boy in this one. (How weird that is??) Within a millisecond I created an image of a bald middle-aged man wearing a brown Dick Tracy trench coat with a briefcase in his hand. I entered a shop which first seemed to be a confectionery/ café but then I felt closer to say it was a dry cleaner place. There was a man behind the desk in a white shirt and another one who turned up suddenly from behind the counter and shot me in the head. The feeling I got was money laundering but I wouldn't swear for it. I felt urged to say something for the questions of the therapist "Where are you now?" "Where are you heading to?" "What is happening there?" etc. I kept long pauses because I didn't see or feel anything I could relate to and it felt like my imagination painted this story. I wasn't even sure if I was this man at all. But I believe there was a reason why I got to create this story and not something else like swimming with dolphins (lame example, don't judge me).
"Occasionally, clients worry after the regression that maybe they ‘just made it up’ or it was only their imagination. In the scheme of things, that isn’t particularly important. In the first place, we can treat the past life stories as illustrative metaphors for the issues and influences in a person’s current life." Ann Barham, Certified Past Life Therapist
Once I returned to consciousness and reconnected with my body, the therapist and I summed up the experience and she made sure I was okay before I left. She said I was probably buried alive and that's why I felt something was crawling on me. I had the same feeling about it but I didn't say it to her because I didn't see evidence of it. I don't know if it's possible but it seemed as if two past life experiences overlapped.
As I was walking home in the city my eyes got teary and I really just wanted to break down and sob for a while but it would have been weird to do it in public. I would have loved someone to hold me. Why don't I have a boyfriend?? I had just re-lived a trauma that had not cleared out from my system immediately. And by the time I got home, I didn't feel the need to cry anymore. I just wanted to be alone for a while to digest the experience.
Despite I haven't found the answer I was looking for, I think I've got closer to it. The therapist said that I could receive further messages in dreams or in my environment relating to the past life experience now that I managed to connect to them and triggered these memories. But to tell you the truth, I haven't received anything that I would recognize. Neither in my dreams nor around me. I would love to do another PLR to find out more about this 'buried alive' feeling which might be helpful in connection to my question.
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If you read this, thank you.
If you want to ask/ tell me something, reach out to me.
If you know a good Past Life Therapist, let me know.
Until next time.
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