Exploring how past life awareness can support healing and growth
We have a fascination with reincarnation and past lives. Often we have such a strong identification with someone from history we wonder if we knew them, or even were them in a past life. For example, my friend knows what it was like to be Mary Magdalene, looking out her eyes and feeling her emotions as she washed the feet of Jesus or wept at the tomb. Sometimes we identify with a region and seem to know a lot about it, as I did when I visited Egypt as a child. I just knew where certain temples were and what people did to worship in them. Could we have been this person we identify with? Could we have lived in the geographic region during the historical time we are familiar with?
There are also times we have a certain thought process or behavior pattern that seems unaffected by any means we use to change it. For example, even after attending wealth seminars to release limiting beliefs, or after using affirmations or visualization work for months, a person may continue to have problems manifesting or managing money. This person may not be able to identify any limiting belief, especially if they remember growing up in a financially stable home with responsible parents who modeled abundance and responsibility. Could it be that this behavior is the result of something that occurred in a past life?
In past life therapy or meditation, this person might discover they had died in poverty and were carrying that imprint into their current life. Through hypnosis, a decision can be made to release that pattern and create a new relationship with abundance.
I am reminded of a therapist I knew who had trigeminal neuralgia, an extremely painful condition affecting three areas across her face. She was able to manage the pain with self-hypnosis and reduce her reliance on medication, but the underlying issue remained. In a past life therapy session, she uncovered a memory of being a young man riding a motorcycle with a friend on the back. The motorcycle hit a rock, and the friend was thrown off and killed by a blow to the head—injuries that corresponded to the same areas affected in her current life.
She realized she had been carrying guilt, believing she had caused her friend’s death, and was unconsciously punishing herself. During the session, she was able to release that guilt. The pain disappeared and never returned. That was more than seven years ago.
In my own teaching experience, I have also seen how this material can arise unexpectedly, even among those who are skeptical. When training senior students in regression hypnotherapy, they were instructed to guide one another back to an event in this lifetime that contributed to a current challenge or behavior pattern. Occasionally, however, a student would find themselves describing what appeared to be a past life experience. This sometimes created uncertainty, especially for those who did not believe in past lives or had not been trained to work with such material. In those moments, I would encourage them to approach the experience just as they would any other memory—by focusing on the emotions, insights, and meaning it held for the subconscious mind. Whether interpreted literally or not, the material was clearly relevant to the person’s inner world and could be worked with in a constructive and healing way.
Past lives can also be a source of strength and gifts that we can access. Many times I have seen people discover abilities such as healing techniques or intuitive skills from a past life. They are then able to bring those gifts forward into this life and develop them even further.
It is important to approach past life exploration with curiosity and discernment. Not every memory or impression needs to be taken literally; sometimes the value lies in the emotional insight it provides. Whether these experiences are interpreted as actual past lives or as expressions of the subconscious mind, they can still offer powerful opportunities for healing and self-understanding.
For those interested in exploring this work, it can be helpful to begin with simple guided meditations or journaling exercises that invite images, feelings, or impressions to arise naturally. Working with a qualified practitioner can provide additional support, especially when navigating intense emotions or uncovering deeply rooted patterns.
Some people become aware of past lives through meditation on their own. Others benefit from the guidance of a hypnotherapist or trained facilitator. However you choose to explore, past life work can open the door to a rich world of healing, insight, release, and personal empowerment.