Familiar Feeling or Just a Fantasy? The Truth About Past Life Beliefs
While we all get that weird sense of deja vu from time to time - the feeling that what we’re experiencing is so familiar we must have been through it before - some people take this feeling one step further and believe they’ve quite literally lived a previous life.
From fairground fortune tellers to tarot card readers and online physics looking to delve into your past for a sizeable fee, the idea of a past life is a bizarre yet interesting phenomenon.
So is there any truth to this concept of having already existed in some bygone era? Or is the idea of a past life nothing more than a phoney figment of our imagination?
As exciting as it would be to think we may have lived out a glamorous previous life as a Roman gladiator or an ancient goddess or maybe even a 1920s movie star, the fact is that past lives are more than likely just a delusion created by overactive minds.
Yet the fact that past lives aren’t a proven phenomenon doesn’t make the belief in them any less common. From doctors to psychologists, medical professionals regularly encounter patients who truly believe they’ve experienced past lives (for a while, the most common past life figure people believed they’d been was none other than Jesus Christ!).
The not-so-scientific practice of past life regression
In fact, this phenomenon even has its own (somewhat questionable) branch of hypnosis known as past life regression - a method that uses hypnosis to recover what practitioners believe are memories of past lives or incarnations.
While most hypnotists and hypnotherapists stay away from this practice due to the fact that its widely discredited and unscientific, you can still find advocates in certain hypnosis circles. These advocates of past life regression generally tend to believe in reincarnation - a belief that forms part of certain religions such as Hinduism.
The past life regression technique involves getting the subject to answer a series of suggestive questions to ‘remember’ (and I use that term loosely!) aspects of the past life they claim to have lived previously.
The problem with this practice is that it’s very possible for the practitioner in question to influence the subject through their line of questioning, resulting in distorted views and false memories. By leading the subject in a particular direction while they’re under hypnosis, they may believe they can remember situations that never even happened.
The one past life hypnosis technique that actually works
Whether or not you believe in past lives, the fact is that right now, you’re living in the present. You have this fabulous life right here in front of you, waiting for you to embrace it so you can live out your dreams, reach your goals and achieve your full potential.
The more time you spend obsessing over the details of a past life, the less time you’ll be living in the here and now - which is where all the great stuff in life happens!
If you’re feeling a little unsure about your past or your future, I’ve got a hypnosis technique called timeline therapy that can help bring you back to the present and feel at peace with whatever’s happened and whatever is yet to come.
Here’s how it works...
I want you to imagine a long line in front of you. This line is your future. I also want you to imagine a long line running behind you. This line is your past.
Right now, you’re somewhere in the middle of this timeline - here in the present moment.
Take a moment to settle into this position on your timeline. Experience the feelings and sensations that come up as you reflect on where you are. Look ahead into the vastness of the line that represents your future and then turn around so you’re facing the line behind you.
You’re now looking into your past - the place you’ve come from that brought you here to this point. Now, I want you to slowly begin to put one foot in front of the other and gradually move down this line.
If memories or feelings come up as you move along the timeline of your past, simply ignore them - you can move past them without being affected by them. Keep making your way deeper and deeper into the depths of your past until you find yourself at the very beginning of your timeline, right before you were born.
Now you’re back at the very start, you can begin to look around you, assess what’s there, and remove what’s no longer useful. Think of yourself as a landscape gardener, diligently pulling out the useless weeds in order to reveal the beautiful fruit and flowers - all the good things waiting to be unearthed.
Walk back along your timeline pulling out everything that doesn’t need to be there. You’re in complete control now, gardening your life all the way back to the present moment.
As you reach the present moment, you can now face the future with newfound confidence. By tidying up the past, you’ve changed who you are - you’re now in a much stronger position to move forward with purpose and clarity.
The future is yours for the taking, so go ahead and grab it with both hands!