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In association with Edinburgh Hypnotherapy

Scottish Woman magazine 2005

Billions of people believe in the theory of reincarnation . . . yet here in the west it is still regarded by the mainstream as mumbo jumbo, or little more than the fantasies of the deranged.

Who can forget the derision heaped upon film actress Shirley MacLaine in the 1980s when she insisted she had lived through many past lives in her autobiography. And more recently, we laughed at the TV sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, as it built its Christmas special around the daft exploits of Edie and her past life regressions.

Yet reincarnation - the belief that the human soul survives the death of the body, and is reborn into another body in another time and place - is a basic tenet of many of the world's major religions including Buddhism and Hinduism.

Christianity today frowns upon the theory of reincarnation, yet there is evidence to suggest that references to reincarnation do still exist in the Bible, and that other passages referring to it were removed by churchmen over the centuries.

Whatever your religious beliefs, it is a subject which is gaining more and more acceptance in the west, particularly in the field of therapy and healing. One of the leading exponents in the theory of healing present day ills with past life regression is Dr Brian Weiss, an eminent psychiatrist from the USA.

A former chief resident in psychiatry at Yale University Medicine School, he is a professor who has published over 40 scientific papers in the field of conventional psychotherapy. He said: "I knew nothing about the concept of past lives or reincarnation, nor did I want to."

However, one of his patients, a Catholic woman in her late 20s called Catherine, had not responded to over a year of conventional treatment for her fears, phobias, panic attacks, depression and nightmares.

Dr Weiss explained: "Since Catherine had a chronic fear of choking, she refused all medications so I could not use anti-depressants or tranquillisers, drugs I was trained to use to treat symptoms like hers.

"Catherine finally consented to try hypnosis, a form of focused concentration, to remember back to her childhood and attempt to find the repressed or forgotten traumas that I felt must be causing her current symptoms."

In the course of a session to uncover her fear of choking Catherine flipped back about 4000 years into an ancient Eastern lifetime, where she had a different face and body, different hair and a different name.

"She remembered details of topography, clothes and everyday items from that time. She recalled events in that lifetime until ultimately she drowned in a flood or tidal wave, as her baby was torn from her arms by the force of the water."

She then spontaneously regressed into two more lives Spanish prostitute in the 18th century and a woman in ancient Greece. Dr Weiss concluded that her 'memories' were mere fantasy or dreams.

But he added: "Catherine's symptoms began to improve dramatically, and I knew that fantasy or dreamlike material would not lead to such a fast and complete clinical cure. Week by week, this patient's formerly intractable symptoms disappeared under hypnosis as she remembered more past lives."

Dr Weiss' bestselling book Many Lives Many Masters detail Catherine's amazing stories of her sixty or so different lifetimes and the messages about mankind that he received via Catherine from so-called Master Spirits. He has also written several other bestselling books detailing his work and research and is now regarded as a pioneer in past life healing.

For Neil Robinson, an Edinburgh hypnotherapist, past life memories from patients also came as a bit of a shock. The quietly spoken therapist who works at the Edinburgh Hypnotherapy Centre said: "I was asked more and more often by patients to try past life regressions and although didn't really believe in reincarnation, I agreed to try it. The results were dramatic but I still don't really know if these are past memories or not. What I do know is that I have been doing these treatments for a number of years now with some remarkable outcomes.

"One client had mysteriously developed alopecia in her middle age for which there seemed to be no reason or cure Medication, counselling, stress control, all had no effect. When we used past life regression to find a possible reason she went back to a past life in which she had been trapped in a burning building. She died and as she looked down at her dead body (from her released spirit) she saw that she was badly burned and all her hair had gone. The age that she died in that life coincided with the age in this life that the alopecia started. After the regression experience her hair began to grow back."

Neil, who is a clinical hypnotherapist counsellor, uses hypnosis to cure fears and phobias, relationship issues, fear of flying, stopping smoking, weight control and so on. But he has seen a huge increase in recent years in the number of patients coming to him for past life regressions.

He said: "People don't just come for healing, although that is a big part of what I do. Some just want to know details of their Past lives or to find out if they recognise anyone from their previous lifetimes in this one."

It is very common for people undergoing regression to recognise friends, partners and relatives in past lives - indeed Dr .Weiss believes that we reincarnate with the same group of souls over and over again in order to learn lessons about love, tolerance, forgiveness etc.

Neil Robinson has even had requests for gift vouchers where a husband or wife buys a past life regression as a present for a spouse. He is also regularly asked to regress partners at the same time to see if they have any shared lifetimes together.

Regression

Neil has asked beforehand if I have a particular 'problem area' that could do with healing. I can't really think of anything specific, but I do have a recurring problem with pain in my neck which I don't mention. (See footnote)

I have never been hypnotised before and I'm quite nervous about it. My only experience of hypnosis has been as a spectator at stage shows where unfortunates make complete fools of themselves, eat onions thinking they're apples and try to get off with the hypnotist.

While I know that Neil Robinson is a 'proper' hypnotherapist who has done this thousands of times before, I am still worried that I might tell him something I'd rather keep quiet about, do the toilet on his leather couch, or get trapped in a past life and live out my days in a padded cell.

Obviously, none of this happens. The only way I can describe being hypnotised is that it feels as if you are not hypnotised at all. I feel deeply relaxed, at that stage just before sleep, but I have complete control over myself and the situation and I know I can stop this at any time I like.

He asks me to go back in time to a relevant past life and I find myself in what at first feels like a forest floor. I am a boy aged around five or six, and I'm hardly wearing anything at all. My body has got mud daubed on it and feathers hanging round my waist from a thong. My skin is brown and I am in among the trees with other boys.

We are not playing, we are working. It is our job to shin up the trees and collect the long ropey tendrils (the kind that Tarzan used to swing on) which will then be woven into thick ropes in the village. Our village is up high in the hills in a clearing at the edge of the trees, and consists of about eight round huts in a circle. I'm not sure if this is our permanent home or whether we are nomadic.

I am older now and aware of a vice-like pain. Neil asks me what has happened and I tell him that I fell out of a tree and am now paralysed. My neck was broken and as a result my head is at a funny angle and my back is twisted. I can no longer speak or communicate properly and am in constant pain which I keep at bay by chewing pain-killing roots and leaves or by drinking the local hooch which is brewed in the village.

I have my own hut at the edge of the village and am completely dependent on the villagers, who I think are all family, for my needs. I am the proverbial village idiot, but in lucid moments I know that my brain has not been impaired by the accident, and that I know a lot more about what is going on than the villagers realise. A large woman stirs a cooking pot in the centre of the village and gets children to bring me bowls of food every day. She reminds me of my best friend, Anne. However, no-one really talks to me and I am left to my own devices, to sit outside my hut and watch the goings on.

The huge, heavy ropes that are made in the village are taken down to a harbour town where they are sold for use on large boats. I am always taken down to the harbour for these trips, and am placed, my wasted legs in front of me, on the busy quayside with a begging bowl.

This is a very busy port with large numbers of wooden ships with colourful sails coming in from many foreign countries, sailors and merchants buying and selling damask, silks, spices and livestock. I can see richly dressed merchants from India, Asia, black faces from Africa who I say are Berbers and the long robes of Arabs too. I do very well with my begging bowl - in fact I make much more money for my village than the rope-selling. The merchants throw tiny rough, uneven coins into my bowl. Neil asks me what they are made of but I don't know - maybe tin. He asks what is on them and I think it is the head of a bird. It might be an eagle or a condor.

Neil asks me if I know my name - I'm not sure but I say it is Ka'ak. He asks if I know the name of this town - I say Berberis, which my conscious mind knows is the name of a hedging plant. He asks for a year - I immediately say 327 AD. He asks what country I am in and although I say South America because I feel more Indian than African, another part of me feels I am somewhere in Africa.

When the sun goes down, I am loaded back onto an open wooden cart with two wheels and two long poles and we make the long, arduous journey back up to the village.

Neil asks me if I long to go away on the boats and see the world, but I answer that I am quite happy just to sit and watch.

Neil then asks me what I have learned from this lifetime, and what its purpose was.

I answer that I learned that everyone has their place in society, and that you have to make the best of your situation. Despite my disabilities I had an important place in the village - my job was to beg and make good money for the rest of the village.

I said that others would have left me to die as I was a definite burden, but they found the best use they could for me and despite having no wife or children, I was very grateful for the life I had.

After the regression I went home and looked up Berberis in a reference book. As I'd thought, it's a hedging plant. But next to it, under the heading Berbera was the following: "seaport in Somalia with the only sheltered harbour on the south side of the Gulf on Aden," A further search on the internet revealed that 'Berbera has been a mercantile trading post since before the time of Christ, where the ancient Egyptians and Phoenicians sold textiles and bought spices, slaves and livestock. It has been a major trading place for merchants from the Indian, Asian and Arab continents for centuries.'

So, do I believe I regressed to a past life? The truth is I have no idea, but how mind-boggling it would it be if it were true? What if our bodies die but there is an immortal soul that lives on and on? What if our lifetime here on earth really is just one of many, and that each life is one of many lessons we are here to learn? It certainly goes some way to explaining the tragedies and traumas we see unfolding around us every day, and why some people are born into obscene wealth and others into extreme poverty. I do want to believe it, which is why I'll be going back to Neil Robinson for more sessions until I've made up my mind.

By Esther Harris

(Footnote. Esther subsequently told me that the lifetime trouble with the pain in her neck, which had confounded medical science, treatments and specialists and for which no explanation could be found, has now disappeared.)

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