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WHERE REGRESSION THERAPY STANDS: TOWARDS A BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
Based on an analysis of the First World Congress of Regression Therapists, 2003 in The Netherlands
(Hans TenDam & Fons Van den Heuvel)
contents 1 Towards a professional body of knowledge 2 Practitioner workshops 3 Research workshops 4 Differences between practitioners 5 Proposed research
This analysis is based on the work of Fons Van den Heuvel, who was responsible for recording the congress and, in the framework of his graduation thesis, listened to all the recordings, read all the handouts and summarized and commented them. His work, which includes copies of the handouts of the workshops, can be ordered on CD-ROM at a.l.m.vdheuvel@chello.nl.
1. TOWARDS A PROFESSIONAL BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
How does a profession develop a Body of Knowledge? First, by professionals exchanging views. Second, by professionals exchanging experiences. Third, by research.
About what should we exchange views? We should start with the issues in which we differ and find out why we differ. We analysed the workshops and panels of WCRT 1 on the following eleven issues:
· Do we concentrate on symptoms or do we go straight to the underlying issues? · Is therapy about understanding and insight, or about emotional and physical release? · Is reality of apparent memories important or not? · Do we evoke spiritual help or do we avoid that? · Should we enter old agonies or avoid them? Do we first go into the Shadow or do we go straight into the Light? · Do we seek to establish boundaries or do we seek to dissolve them? · Is trance induced, and if so, how? Or is the trance used that is implicitly present in the symptoms (bridge techniques)? · Is regression sufficient, or are personifications (like in inner child work) and energy work (like in body work) either desirable or necessary? · Is entity releasement an important part of our work, a side show or a distraction (either irrelevant or a fantasy)? · Do we integrate subpersonalities like inner children and past lifetimes or do we send them to the Light? · Does the therapist become personally and actively involved in the process or not?
For clarity’s sake we have formulated the issues as either-or statements. But it could be that both positions are valid and the position chosen is a question of personal choice of the therapist. Assuming that clients will automatically find a therapist with the right approach for them. Or is it possible that sometimes one position is indicated and sometimes the other position. If so, under what circumstances is each position valid? Or is one position more effective than the other? Or is one position simply right and the other wrong? The present writers have strong opinions on most of these issues, but refrain from stating them, as they do not belong in this article.
What is driving these differences? Many different factors, presumably:
· Particular professional training and academic background · Particular regression therapy training; exposure to different teachers · Knowledge and experience in related psychotherapeutic fields · Particular religious or esoteric beliefs or personal convictions (this may well be the most important) · Trust or distrust in the paranormal; personal paranormal abilities or experiences · Personal experiences and discoveries in the therapy practice · Knowledge or lack of knowledge of relevant books and studies If the discussion doesn’t lead to clear answers, we need to exchange cases and see if they confirm or deny points of view or find in them explanations for the differences. This will also lead to clarifying criteria: how do we decide that a therapy has been successful? Of course, the clients decide. But how and after what time do we find out?
When analyzing the contents of the workshops, we found the issues that were mentioned most often were: · Is therapy about understanding and insight, or about emotional and physical release? · Do we evoke spiritual help or do we avoid that? · Is trance induced, and if so, how? Or is the trance used that is implicitly present in the symptoms (bridge techniques)? · Is regression sufficient, or are personifications (like in inner child work) and energy work (like in body work) either desirable or necessary?
Issues mentioned less were: · Should we enter old agonies or avoid them? Do we first go into the Shadow or do we go straight into the Light? · Is entity releasement an important part of our work, a side show or a distraction (either irrelevant or a fantasy)? · Does the therapist become personally and actively involved in the process or not?
Issues mentioned hardly or not at all: · Do we concentrate on symptoms or do we go straight to the underlying issues? · Is reality of apparent memories important or not? · Do we seek to establish boundaries or do we seek to dissolve them? · Do we integrate subpersonalities like inner children and past lifetimes or do we send them to the Light?
Ultimately, we will need research. Some research has been presented at the First World Congress. What does it say about the issues above? There has been other published research. What does that say about those issues? And what kind of research would be most fruitful to make our work and effective and credible profession?
In general, we see two kinds of research immediately relevant to the profession:
1. Research into the effectiveness and efficiency of regression therapy · Professional vs. spiritual approaches · Mental vs cathartic approaches · Indications and counter-indications
2. Research into the mechanisms of regression therapy · What is happening in the body and why? · What is happening in the mind and why? · What is the energetic reality of problems, processes and solutions? (this involves parapsychology, if we like it or not)
2. PRACTITIONER WORKSHOPS
1.1 Angelina Ahumada Marroquin (Mexico): NLP techniques for RT
Angelina uses NLP with Gestalt. Verify the responsibility of the client. Is he or she willing to take a glass of water, go for a walk, going up the stairs, doing Tai Chi, every time he or she need a smoke? You give yourself an alternative, never say: ‘I stop smoking’, always give an alternative. Changing the perspective can be done in the debriefing or during the session. Angelina suggests imagining a timeline, where the client indicates with the left hand a decision on that timeline and with the right hand the direction of the future. She instructs to move the finger to a time that you have, for instance, patience and compassionately visualize yourself being patient. I am going to touch your heart to anchor that sensation of being compassionate and patient. Now you can get in touch with the time that you get more and more knowledge, you can get in touch with your knowledge, you can get in touch with your inner wise man. When I touch you on the heart, I anchor the sensation of knowledge. Every time when you touch your hart you will be in contact with you patience, your compassion and your knowledge at all time. It is available for you. Touching the heart activates the compassion, the patience and the knowledge and that will help looking to the problem from another perspective. Angelina reframes (if you don’t like the situation you are in, change your point of view) and anchors.
2.2 Chris Alisa (USA): Regression, Gestalt and Play Therapy for Children
Chris Alisa started her education with Gestalt therapy and was trained by Morris Netherton in regression therapy. She started with adolescents and later shifted to children. Some children are hyperactive; others have ADHD, some Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD). Some cases illustrate how Chris works. · Lela, a seven-year-old girl who had experienced a difficult birth and a difficult relationship with her mother. She is using a doll to replay the birth. · Peter of 12 years who went so deep inside of himself that he was disconnecting from his internal world, and from his family. His behavior and symptoms motivated his parents to bring him to therapy, it was the pain residing in his past lives that were freezing him up and shutting him down. · Javier, a three years old boy, who still was not able to walk. He babbled rather than talked, screamed when he was angry, and depended on the adults to get up and get a toy for him. An MRI. scan did not show anything wrong with him. · A boy with ADD caved in, hardly aware of the world around him and hyperactive. She worked with him when he was 9 until he was 11,5 year. He was always sitting in the corner of the classroom, saying ‘I want to die, I want to die’. The boy lived first with his mother. He now lived with his father and stepmother. He had ‘forgotten’ the abuse, so Chris had to regress him. His mother tried to kill him with a knife. This took a long time for him to remember. After that he started to heal. Nowadays he is the leader in the school and getting the highest grades. Some ADHD children have a pattern, ‘when I stop I die’. The move their body or they move around in their head. One girl always looked around in the room, hardly focusing. She did not understand the outer world. Regression brought her back in balance. She tells the children they are not coming for therapy but to play. A prerequisite is that the child is feeling safe. They have to feel they are in control. This does not mean that there are no boundaries. For instance, sometimes the child gets the choice first to do what they want to do and sometimes Chris gets the choice what to do first. Children are not allowed to hit Chris or hurt her or to throw things at the wall, but every thing else she allows. The most important tool Chris uses is a sand tray with many toys, including military toys and animals. War is often a. theme. Working with clay helps the children, e.g. to release anger. Sometimes they use a pillow for that or a scream box. When painting, Chris uses colors to let the child expresses their feelings e.g. pink for anger etc. On a whiteboard children can draw pictures. Children are resolving their stuff while playing. The child needs to feel it is respected. You communicate respect by really listening and by accepting. Go with the child, but stick to the rules you posed in the beginning. One boy had various lives as a warrior. In the preceding life he was with his present mother in a concentration camp in WW2. He was her brother who tried to protect her, but at the same time was mad at her. In the session Chris created a situation in which the son could protect his mother. This helped the son and it helped the mother to see what was going on. When children are young (2,5-8y) the parents are part of the session, because the child feels safer then. Parents should either participate or hold back.
Regularly, Chris evaluates with the parents if child behavior shows changes. Not the real situation is played, but a doll is used, who undergoes the trauma. Chris makes up a story and asks the child ‘is that the same with you?’ The child says yes or no or adds more information. She makes up a story to help the child going to a trauma or past life. She gently goes from dissociation, using the doll, to the association using ‘you’. When playing the drama of the birth sometimes the child (Lela in the handout) reacts physically and knows immediately where it hurts in the (doll) body. Chris avoids looking the children in the eyes, as that could be threatening and would be manipulative. She never says the name of the child. Chris leaves the choice of the subject to the child. Sometimes she says to the child: let’s talk about the past for 5 minutes. When the child agrees, she tries to extend that period after the 5 minutes. She negotiates with the child.
Next case was a boy, wetting his bed, playing video games al the time, not communicative. In the sand tray he made a war scene. Chris asked (in the Netherton way), if you were one of these soldiers, who would you be? He pointed out one and told what happened. He was in that past life immediately. It was in 19th century in US with the Indians. He was injured, had surgery, and could not speak anymore. After the therapy, the boy’s behavior improved, and he became more communicative towards his parents. Children are coming for therapy on average every other week. The duration of the therapy varies from 5 sessions to 5 months or even 2,5 years. It depends on the age of the child and its circumstances. With adolescents you can do normal regression. A youngster with headache is asked: what does your head say, what does it want to say etc (Netherton approach).
2.3 Linda R. Backman & Arthur E. Roffey (USA): Life between life regressions
Linda is using a rattle to get Arthur in trance. Induction is also done with drums and rattles. In general she uses relaxation to get the client in trance. Some use plants to go into trance. For regression in past life an alpha state is sufficient, to go to the life-between-life stage, a deeper theta state is necessary. It takes 20-40 minutes induction before going into regression. A session takes about 3-4 hours, with an induction of about an hour. To go to a life-between-life, the best way is to go to the death experience of the preceding life. Usually clients stay several hours in these realms. When the client goes deeper in trance, they can elaborate more. She asks open questions, but sometimes asks in the direction of what she has learned. (E.g. go to the place where the wise beings are.)
Whether people in regression know about this world or not, we always get the same type of description. For example, the library is never a square room, but a circular enclosure with domes. People see holographically, they can see it through it; they can go backwards and forward as they chose.
2.4 Marion Boon (Netherlands): Alienated Migrants
Alienation is about people who feel homesick or lost without a clear reason. Immigrants into a country with a different culture, like Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands, have the same symptoms. They don’t feel accepted here and they don‘t feel accepted there, in their parents’ country. Alienation easily attracts lost spirits. Marion asks her audience whether they feel alienated somehow, and whether her talk is triggering something in their body. Then she does a group session. Visualize a place where you feel present and a place you feel not present. Then visualize a connection between the two places and allowing the energy to flow. One participant experienced the ending of a South-American Indian culture when the conquistadors came. Another woman had a similar experience of a damned country. She feels the shame of that country. Marion is doing a short regression on that woman. She evokes during the regression someone representing that country (ego-state). She asks the woman to feel the shame and give back to them what belongs to them. Marion ends the workshop with a visualization of flying to an island; discover what is there, how far the main land is from that island, etc.
2.5 Carolyn Clark (Greece): Integrating Past Lifetimes
Carolyn brings all the past lives together in a sort of round table. You become aware and understand their quality and integrate them. She had once a session where 15-16 past life were integrated. Dorothy Neddermeyer suggests it resembles integrating alters, where you bring the alters together and ask them whether they want to be a part of the whole. In a demo, the client (under hypnosis) refers to unresolved issues she feels in her hips. Also the words injustice, hypocrisy and false truth are coming up. In the regression the client meets a man and a woman. Both have experienced the problem of hypocrisy in the time which they lived, the same is valid for the client now. Both feel caught in the same trap, just in different period in time. Society is hypocrisy; society is false truth. The man is a native Indian (Dakota) during the time they had to resettle in the Indian reservations. He did not finish the reason for coming to this body and left early. He could not deal with the hypocrisy of that time. The woman had done what she had to do, but suffered also from the hypocrisy of her time, but she could help him. At the end the man gave the client his energy and melted with her to face her problem with hypocrisy. He gave the following words as guidance: Walk with intent, walk with purpose and walk with the universal knowledge, that’s all you need. The client expresses that she had done several regressions on this lifetime, but now she got closure. She didn’t feel that the man possessed her. She got access to his energy; it was hers. The woman in the regression came to support him, because she had responsibility. The client tended to be overwhelmed by responsibility, resulting in asthma. At the end of the workshop Carolyn performs a half hour group session about finding the quality of past lives and take them to the here and now.
2.6 Martine Gercault (France): Holotropic Breathwork
Martine learned from Stanislav Grof how breathing can release tension in the body. She did also rebirthing but she feels that breath work is more constructive and educative, because you can experience the psychodynamic aspects of breathing. Some contra-indications in this work are surgery, hypotension, drugs, tranquilizers etc. She uses many different kinds of special music that is played very loud. The music will intensify the breathing. The clients are asked to breathe deeper and faster till they enter an altered state. During the breathing, the client may start moving the body. The therapist should not interfere. She is working with clients who had a difficult birth and with sexual abused women. If the client feels a pain in the body, then Martine may massage gently the painful part. She lets the client shout when it hurts. She asks what the client wants; indicating the client what she can do, e.g. breathing to the painful spot. When the client still says stop, she stops.
Martine starts with a relaxation and encourages the client to start breathing. She encourages the client to feel her body. In the demo the head was trembling. She encourages feeling the trembling before another music starts that has again a rhythmic drum and vocal native Indian tribe music. Martine encourages the client to go on with the breathing and feeling of the body. Martine encourages her to feel and heal the problem. After about half an hour of music, the client slowly comes back in the here and now. The client felt her hand and mouth burning, like electricity and fire. She loves her hand, but she can do nothing with her hand. She likes to make clothes etc, do something with her hands, but she is afraid. Why? During the session she felt an intense pain in her hand; she did not know what it was. She did not see anybody around her, although sometimes she sensed she was afraid of someone. She felt the pain like a knife; during the session she was able to release the pain. In the beginning she thought she couldn’t speak anymore. Finally, she could ask for some water. She thought, now I can’t die because I get water. It was 'nice' to explore the feeling to be scared to death. She thought that when she would make a gesture, she would be killed. It was the first time in my life that I felt something in my hand, it was like electricity and fire; it felt terrible. Martine: clearly she had a wound from a past life. During the process a healing started with her hand. When a part of her body is not used, she does not express enough. In a real therapy, Martine would explore her block in expressing herself. The client doesn’t like to be touched: don’t touch me or I will kill you. She did not allow anybody to touch her.
Trance music can open up people. When people have an emotional opening or trauma, an attachment with a similar emotion or trauma can jump in. Martine is aware of that and therefore cleanses herself and keeps her boundaries. With this type of breath work the energy is released while not knowing the story behind the blockage. (In conventional regression therapy the phrases, don’t touch me or I will kill you.’ and ‘when I makes a gesture, I will be killed.’ would be starting points for a regression.)
2.7 Andreas Gosztonyi (Switzerland): Integrating Past-life Therapy in the work of a medical professional
Patients are asked to meditatively relax, to open themselves and to find their spiritual guides. He tries to work on 4 levels with his patients:
He is giving eight examples from his practice. Not all patients were freed from the problem, but at least gained peace and acceptance, which led to a cure later or at least did stop the disease from worsening. More than 50% of the patients suffered a pain they caused their victims in a perpetrating past life. As a MD, regression therapy enables him to see the complaints of his patients in a broader perspective. His therapy has the patient get an insight of his past life that originated his present problem.
2.8 Mary Lee LaBay (USA): Family dysfunction and pre-birth choices
Most of the time when we die, guides are waiting for us and helping us with our choices. Normally people have full choices, but some are making calculated choices. One client was sexually abused by her parents and in the regression she said she recognized her parents from her soul group with much love. So she incarnated to help them, however their parents were too far gone and dragged her into this abuse. She was altruistic, but she should have chosen for herself. The parents and the child do not always make a choice on the soul level. When you die, your consciousness expands, but not fully, when you die, you don’t have a full consciousness. Just because of your death, it does not make you smart. We do not become wise and all knowing when we die. Dying is for many persons a frightening and disorienting experience. A woman in her 50s experienced during a regression sexual abuse by her father and grandfather in her childhood in a cultish environment. The client, as a spirit, was misled by an evil spirit (her grandfather) to be born. She did not want to, but found out too late she could not go back. She is vaguely aware about her spiritual soul, but she is misguided. The source of this misguidance starts in Atlantis. The evil spirit acted as if it was a higher being She has a very advanced guide he can see way in the lifetimes and in the future. When you have the wrong advisors, you may make the wrong choices for a life.
2.9 Charlotte Muthesius (Germany): Configuring past lives in groups
Charlotte was educated by Morris Netherton. She is also influenced by Bert Hellinger with his family constellations. The past life trauma is causing a person to feel too much fear, too much anger, too much sadness so he shuts down. It is like the emotions are frozen in the cell memory. When somebody e.g. is burned in a past life, the last thing he/she experiences is smoke and fire; they take words in that have been said about them. They experience a lot of pain anger and confusion. His soul takes it with him as a picture. The past life emotions and senses are coming alive when triggered by a similar event in this life. The person will smell smoke and feel the anger and confusion. The body will show all the symptoms of the past life. The soul is experiencing the disorder, which it felt at the death of the past life and try to create order, because it is still alive. With this picture (of disorder) in the head it is hard to heal, it has become a part of the life. You can take the disorder out of the head and place it outside (dissociate). Then the person can take a distance from it. To do that she is not letting the past life itself evolve, but using representatives to do that for the client. Charlotte uses the family constellation as a regression technique. She uses the representatives of the past life drama to relive the past life. The representatives are coming in a morphogenetic field of the persons past life. He will feel the emotions, feelings or thoughts, which he will express. He will feel compulsion to change his position or Charlotte will try to put him in another position. This goes on until the picture is in complete order again. If the person, with the past life trauma, sees that, his whole process will change so his emotions will change too. After that the person takes the position of his representative and he can feel how this would be for him. You have to do it, to feel it. Charlotte starts a family constellation around a problem in this life of one of the persons in the audience. All members of the family are set up, also the members who have died. Charlotte is giving an example about a man who had a daughter and he said it is not my daughter. The daughter said yes, my mother said that you are my father. She set up the father and the daughter and immediately they drift apart and they said they felt no connection whatsoever. The daughter started to look in certain direction and said: somebody should stand there, a man, so they set up a man. The daughter said that’s my father. Charlotte took the mother in too. She shouted to the man and she felt so angry and said ‘why do you do this to me’? The original father withdraws and said; 'I am just a phony'. The mother did not want the daughter to go to the father, because he had hurt her too much. She kept the relationship a secret, as he was a priest. The daughter went to the father anyway and there was much love and hugging. The mother relaxed and went also to the man. Here a family secret was revealed by the family constellation, which cleared the whole thing up. Charlotte: Hellinger is even letting the persons afterwards go to the person (parents for instance), they have had trouble with and let them say: ‘I honor you that you are my parents’. This is very confronting. Another constellation was set up using a past life from Arthur Roffey: a life of a native Indian in the time that the whites practical wiped them out. He lived but everybody else was killed, he had nothing to live for. This life is connected to a life as a peasant who died after a battle where he was defeated, but it was a slow and bleeding death. Also here Charlotte is taking the family constellation to resolve this problem.
2.10 Yoshiko Matsumura (Japan): Effective and Fast Spirit Releasement
Yoshiko finds entity attachment is about 20% of her clients. With schizophrenics it may be 50%. In spirit releasement we have to find where the entity is attached to the body or aura. When an entity is connecting to the client, the client must already be damaged. Important is how the therapist communicates with the entity. When the entity refuses, we should not continue. When the entity is saying no, it can be seen as beginning of communication. It is a matter of to draw out someone. Yoshiko tries to convince the entity to go back. Most of the time the entity is confused, and doesn’t know what to do. Yoshiko leads the entity to find their way. Everything has positive intentions; this is also valid for the negative entities. Yoshiko lets them experience what love is. She gives the entity a new choice; she uses the timeline of NLP to make this new choice. If the entity cannot go back on its own she asks for an escort for bringing him/her to the Light. Yoshiko gives an example: ‘Look your mother is coming to pick you up’. After the detachment we have to repair the weakness at the client, otherwise a new attachment can come in the client. Barbara Bachmann: what are you doing when you find out it is a demon? Answer: I always communicate with him. I respect the entity who wants to talk to me. Bachmann: often the negative energy is hiding itself and with the help of the angels she throws the demon in the Light. She therefore finds it hard work. Yoshiko is also asking the angels to help Do you talk to the entity directly or do you talk to the entity via the client? Answer: In some cases the client incorporates the entity. The entity is regressed and it is checked where the entity is attached to the client. With one client the attachment came in the womb just before birth. The mother was injected when in labor and because of that, the energy of the baby was damaged. The attachment was an unborn child who was jealous that the client could live and he not. So he attached to the client all his life. The attachment was not aware that he did not have a body at the time of the attachment; it was still a baby. The entity could be persuaded to leave, when he saw his name at the altar at his mother's house. He realized that he was dead. So he left to go to his mother, who also had died meanwhile. He apologized for what he had done. Yoshiko asked the client to repair his energy where the entity was attached and to make harmony in the body, since he had such long time the attachment with him. Afterwards he asked his mother about his birth. The mother knew there was another baby in the hospital, but did not know what happened with that baby. A mother was an attachment to her daughter, because she was so worried about her. She was very stubborn and refused to go, because she felt responsible. Finally Yoshiko asked the higher self of the client to come and when the mother saw that, she was so impressed that she let go. A client calls over the phone for help and via the phone the entity emerges and Yoshiko convinces the entity not to harm the client before doing a session and finally the attachment agrees. Question: Can an attachment be a past life? Answer: Yoshiko is always asking the client about it. Question: Do you also find clients who are exposed to black magic, cursing etc. Answer: Yoshiko is drawing on the white board the diagram of a client with an entity 1, whowas controlled by entity 2. She does a session with the entity 1 and later entity 2 so that the entity 2 can go back to where he belongs.
2.11 Dorothy Neddermeyer (USA): Treating Sexual Abuse Trauma
Betrayal of trust, especially from the parents is important. This betrayal often starts when a child is 18 months. The child is first encouraged to walk and talk, and afterwards is restrained in doing just that. Dorothy asks her clients, how did your parents discipline you? And did your parents ever hit you? Sometimes clients do not want to discuss their parents, out of loyalty and to protect them. When clients are in denial, Dorothy asks them to write down their dreams. When discussing the dreams, flashbacks may come up. Or clients write down their thoughts and feelings about what is going on now and has been going on in the past. When clients do that, you hear the language coming up and you can find an entry into the problem. Symptoms like headache, a band around the head etc may indicate abuse. Were you (sexually) abused? needs to be asked. Some women respond, I don’t think so’, ‘my father would never do that’, ‘I wondered sometimes, but I don’t think so. They pause long; seem nervous, their eyes wander. The abused person avoids direct eye contact. Their eyes are going into a circle. They don’t want to see an event and they want to be invisible. Most have a memory gap of the period of the abuse. If they have not been abused, the answers are clear and firm. Dorothy works with abused clients for 2-3 years in weekly sessions. To get rid of the pain, one has to go into the pain. You have to build up the client and that’s taking time. Reframing is not enough to rebuild self-esteem. The relationship between the therapist and the client will be the first (she repeats the first) that the client will trust. Religious beliefs also may hold back healing. Most perpetrators are survivors of abuse themselves. She does not get any credit from the traditional psychologist that she is treating the perpetrators as abuse survivors. She also finds energy attachments (obsessors). Sometimes the client doesn’t know who the perpetrator is, however only 1% of the victims don’t know them personally. The victim needs to get a face for those who abused them. 67% of the girls and 38% of boys in the US have been sexually abused by the age of 18. People are only accused of false memory syndrome in relation to sexual abuse. Spanking is not. Why is that? When we do a regression we have to notice what was authentic and what not. Was there body response? Was the description of the event detailed? When a therapist is pushing a pillow against the client during the regression at the event and pushes hard on the client, who needs to push back to release the tension in the body. She is not doing bodywork herself and there is a taboo on this when the therapist is male and the client is female. Therapists who are doing it, usually have somebody else in the room. When a client does not release the energy enforced on her during the sexual abuse, it will eat her up: she will get sick, can get cancer and could die. Confronting the perpetrator eyeball to eyeball is the ultimate test. Some feel that by doing that, they are getting their energy back.
2,12 Terumi Okuyama (Japan): Dialogue with the Light
He explains how regression therapy was introduced in Japan in the 90s. Now he has his own clinic and a waiting list for patients of 2 years. He guides his patients into the Light and let them dialogue with it. They meet masters in that Light, but interpreting those being would requires deep religious explanation. I do not have enough time to go into this now. I think it can be called Higher Self or God. . ‘While clients are in the Light, I guide them ask the Light the cause of their issue and how to solve it. Then I let them ask the purpose of this life. Some can access the core of the issue like peeling the layers of an onion with this process . . . After they have asked their questions to the Light, I guide the patients to face the ‘past self’ who came up together with them. I lead them to ask their ‘past self’ to give them a message or advice. Almost all those messages are positive and give them insight. This process is to review the message from the Light from the different aspect . . .. If I do not sense any danger, they hug or shake hands with their ‘past self’ and let them feel the energy from the ‘past self’. I direct the ‘past self’ to go back into the Light. Even if they had a really miserable past life, the ‘past self’ is willing to go back to the Light.’ Terumi lets his patients experience the Light and the past life. He may do some energy work, bur no body work.
2.13 Michael Pollack (USA): The Road to Forgiveness
Michael lets people feel how it feels when one can forgive another. He tries to show how that negative energy is influencing a person’s life. Take a person in mind that did you wrong. Imagine you forgive that person. Are you now more relaxed? If you do not forgive someone, you keep a negative energy in the person. Real forgiveness is in the heart, not in the mind. Nothing what we do to the perpetrator is going to help us heal. Various diseases are connected to holding to our anger. Michael has the participants imagine looking to the bad side of life and to the good side of life, like changing the channel on the TV. Don’t look to the horror channel, but switch over to the nice channel. When you see the good side of life, the bad side is not so bad anymore. Remark from the audience: It looks like dissociation, when a negative emotion comes up, dissociate and look to the good side. The problem is not felt or faced. Then this exercise does not work for you. Michael shows the past-life representations that he loves them unconditionally. He is not repeating the events that happened, the previous personality has done that already. He talks with the egostates and convinces them that the past is gone. He tells the egostates their lives are over and done with and they have no blame. It is now out of time and out of place and that it is inappropriate to live via this client and it’s time to let go of the client and go into the Light. Then they volunteer to leave. He shows his clients their energy connections with the egostates. He removes unwanted cords and heals the wounds with Light. He is cutting the cord that a client’s past life is connecting and surrounds them in a bubble of white Light and the same for the client. Then he sends them off. There is still contact with the past life, but the energy is disconnected. He always asks guides to escort them and the client watch them al the way. He lets his client imagine a rope of energy coming out of them while they are leaving. The rope is burned and the ash is scattered over the centre of the universe, where it instantly transforms to a healing energy that is coming back. He believes that he is bringing regression to the basics again, without the glooming and whooping. Michael last exercise is to ask the Higher Self to show a probable future, say 5 years ahead, when you would hold on the negative energy. And when you would have forgiven and released the negative energy. Michael advocates painless (or emotionless) regression therapy. Do not relive the trauma; just cut the connection and get your energy back.
2.14 Arthur E. Roffey & Linda R. Backman (USA): Shamanism and Regression
Arthur and Linda use shamanism in their therapy. They are members of the Michael Newton Institute for Life-Between-Lives Hypnotherapy, which does between-lives research. In an out-of-body experience using a power animal (he slips into a jaguar aura to do that) Arthur journeyed to a (sleeping) sick friend. He saw what the illness had done and he cleaned her energetic body. The morning after the ‘visit’ her symptoms had vanished. Arthur learned from regression that the level of healing depends on how far the client is in his general learning process. The regression therapist facilitates the healing that the client is doing himself. Before a shaman heals somebody, he asks the spirit, do you wish this, is this convenient for you and does it serve your soul? In shamanistic sessions, the client is lying on his back and the shaman uses his rattle, possibly with a drum (or CD) to go into altered state. He connects with his animal form and asks his teachers what to do: extraction or soul retrieval or both. An extraction removes an intrusion, something that intruded energetically into the body. She moves her hand over the body and finds hot spots or intuitively knows where her hands should be over a certain part of the body. She extracts what needs to be extracted. Shamans do that with the mouth, but she was learned not to do that, because you don’t know what you are extracting, you could be infected. For a soul retrieval Linda rattles until she shifts, then she lays down on the floor with the client, she touches the head, the hips and the feet, so she is journeying for the client, not for her self. She sees life events of the client. Sometimes images or symbols. She asks the client whether these images or symbols mean anything to them. Usually, they are about traumatic events. With one woman she saw a rocking chair, a baby bug and a blanket. She moved her hands, they stop at her heart and then she is blowing the soul energy back to the heart. Then she seals the soul retrieval. She asked afterwards the women whether she recognized the symbols. She said yes, when she was 18 month she had a spinal disease. She was taken to a hospital where she was rocked for hours, and this has caused some trauma. This soul retrieval does not give instantaneous healing; it is subtle and gradual. When someone in a past life died through an arrow in his chest, Arthur feels the residue of that in his body. Art sees it as an energy that has stuck in a man’s body that needs to be removed. He is using a feather, rattle or flower essence, which he blows over the energy to move the energy. When the energy needs to be extracted, he is doing that with his mouth and spits it out. (Arthur is trained in the traditional way.) In doing past life and remove energy, we can pick up energy that can make us sick. Clean yourself after a session to disinfect any residual energy. Both Arthur and Linda talk to the client to integrate the experience in the present.
2.15 Jan Erik Sigdell (Slovenia): Emotional reliving, release and reconciliation
Emotional reliving is necessary. Only remembering and understanding does not heal the trauma. Jan Erik is against suppression of memory, not against reframing where one puts the story in another perspective. But rewriting the story as if it never happened is wrong. Lies don’t solve problems. He does not like the term past-life therapy, because many problems come from this life, mainly early childhood. Jan-Erik uses the guide of the clients, which personifies their own subconscious Self. The guide can be male or female or sexless. He lets his clients imagine themselves high in the sky and go to a place where they will meet the guide, under the guidance of the higher Self. He starts in the first session with the Higher Self. That is necessary to release blockades, negative energies etc. Sometimes the Higher Self tells the therapist what needs to be done next. When meeting this guide, how does it feel? The guide could be a disguise for somebody else with no good intentions, an obsessor or other spiritual being. If in doubt, he asks whether it is coming in the name of Christ. When the answer is yes, it can be accepted. He adapts this question to the belief system of the client. Or he asks the entity to show a religious symbol. Dark entities cannot present those. It is a dialogue between the guide and the client. The therapist asks the guide e.g. 'can the guilt be released?' and the guide says 'yes'. The client doubts, can I really release that guilt? and the guide explains why. He asks the guide to convince the client that the situation was not his fault. The guide burns the negative energy from the client in a fire. The client imagines how the energy looks like before it is burned. The therapist has the client relive the experience to check whether the pain or the agony disappeared. If something remains, the guide will put that too into the fire. When everything is out of the body, he asks ‘is the body still open or is it closed. When it is open he asks the guide to close it by using light energy. At the end of the regression Jan Erik lets the guide put an envelop around the client; a light of love. He says: ‘keep that light around you’ and then ends the session. An important part of the work of the therapists is to overcome the resistance of the clients. Also here the guide is asked whether there is a block. So he asks the guide to take out the block. He asks the client what it looks like (stubborn child, stone etc). If the situation is a stubborn child, the guide leads it to the Light. The guide rarely says it is not appropriate to go into this situation. Erik Jan always asks why? If the case is plausible and not an excuse, he will respect this. Question: You don’t believe the client but you do believe the guide, why? Answer Sometimes the brain wants to interfere and that’s why I ask, who said no, you or the guide? Forgiveness on the soul level is important. The test is that the client during the regression can embrace the person who has done him wrong. When a person has forgiven someone else, the other can feel that on the soul level.
2.16 Andy Tomlinson (UK): New Techniques in working with PTSD
According to a survey 40% of the population has experienced, within a 4 years timeframe, some form of a traumatic event (accidents, death). Another survey found that 30% of the women have been sexually abused in their childhood and 20% of the men have been physically or psychologically abused in their childhood. Symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are: anxiety, panic attacks, black holes in the memory, nightmares, flashbacks, body pains, lack of openness, negative mind states ‘it must has been something I did’, outburst of anger. PTSD can be the result of life-threatening situations. It can also originate from a past lifetime. Traumatic events trigger thoughts, feelings and body reactions. When the energy, induced by the trauma, is not released, it becomes physical. Mental memories are recorded in the front cortex. Physical memories are stored in a completely different part of the brain, which is based on the old reptilian part of the brain right on the top of the spinal cord and that’s where the control of movements occurs. If you want to release a frozen experience and all you can do is talk therapy, you get nowhere. You got to unlock the source of traumatic experiences via the physical body. If you don’t unlock the energy in the body it gets stuck, so the energy of the trauma in the body needs to be released. The emotional therapy that was popular in the 60s and 70s worked for a time but did not last. People did not get closure because the body was not taking into account. During the catharsis the therapist has to concentrate on the body, letting the energy out. He encourages the client to let go the energy and go into the shaking, weeping, fighting or whatever symptoms the body is showing. Sometimes the body gets numb. Ask for sensations all the time and use the words the clients use to describe their sensations. Or suggest, Show me what the body wants to do. Sometimes you have to touch the client. Of course with permission . One fellow-therapist in the audience lets the body sensation grow until it is almost overwhelming and then asks what emotions the client is associating with that and this starts the catharsis. Another colleague uses an animal that is doing the movement for the patient. One case illustrates the use of questions like what are your legs saying/wanting? The second case is about a sexually abused woman, who came in a frozen state. When doing bodywork she regressed into a past-life. As if her psyche decided, I can’t work with this body, but I can work with a past life. She was a soldier trapped in the rubble and in vain tried to crawl away. The regression helped her to crawl away now. Sometimes people need to know about the end of the story before going into the trauma.
3. RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
3.1 Barbara Bachmann (Switzerland): A Walk-in Case
Barbara’s workshop focuses around a walk-in she encountered during her practice as a regression Therapist. She investigated the case with the help of a psychic to confirm her findings. The case is about a man (Tom) who took over the body of another person (Tommy), who at the time was in a coma. Tom just died and had the strength to revive the body of Tommy. So Tom lived again in the body of Tommy. He still had vague memories from Tommy before the coma, but without emotions.
Walk-in Diagram
Tommy – Switzerland Tom - Truck-driver USA Birth: Death of mother and twin brother Loves freedom 18 months: Father dies in car accident flat country and Adoption straight, infinite roads. 14 years: falls in love with Annie Feels lonely, owns the truck 16 years: Accident drives 700 to 800 miles/day Region of San Francisco
Bike accident in CH Truck accident in USA Coma, unconscious death unconscious death
“ACCIDENT” BODY IN COMA Tom walks-in during 6 months, 2 weeks and 2 days
Tommy dies Tom Lives.
Tom had vivid memories as a US truck driver, which he could not have been since the body where he was in now, was too young. The truck driver Tom has also the memories of his previous life as Tommy. To explain for himself what ‘happened’ to “Tommy” at the age of 14, before the accident: He sold the truck and came to Switzerland. If one looks to Tom’s present memories, one gets the following scheme: .
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