Over thirty-five years ago I read a book by Barbara Erskine called Lady of Hay. I still have that copy of it. That book sparked a lifelong interest in regression and past lives.
Is this really our first life? Is it our only life? What about all those déjà vu moments? Were there other lives?
At the time, in the late 1980’s, I remember telling my mum that I would love to be regressed but that was pre-internet, and it was difficult to track down a therapist via the Yellow Pages. Plus, would I really trust a total stranger to do that kind of therapy with me even if I did fine one?
The thought floated through many times over the years, but I never acted on it until now.
If you are a total cynic about past lives, re-incarnation and the like, you might want to stop reading here and come back next week.
Still with me?….
A couple of weeks ago while I was scrolling through Facebook, I spotted a post from a friend celebrating her success with two recent training courses. There was a lovely smiling photo of her with her two certificates. Two words on once of the certificates caught my eye. I zoomed in – past lives.
Ok so now you see where this is going….
After a quick telephone chat with the lovely lady herself, I made an appointment for a past lives’ hypnotherapy session.
If you Google past life regression therapy or past lives’ hypnotherapy you get an AI overview that explains “it’s a hypnotherapy technique that guides a person to access supposed memories of past lives to resolve current issues.”
I wasn’t going into this with the naïve expectation of learning that I’d been a princess living a fairy tale life or been a famous author or anything overly specific. Ok I might have been curious to learn if I’d been tried and hanged as a witch. (None of my close friends would have been surprised if that was the case!)
I didn’t go into the session itself with any expectations. I went in with an open mind.
What followed was the most amazing and surprisingly relaxing ninety minutes or so.
It would be unfair of me to go into too many specifics of the session here. (It might also make for a boring read if I relived it chapter and verse here and now.) Instead, I’ll cover the salient points that I feel comfortable to share.
I’ve never experienced any form of hypnosis before and that was perhaps the part I was a little anxious about. I needn’t have worried. That part was incredibly pretty and relaxing and led to me visualising a dark night sky (although my night sky was a colour I refer to as Reiki purple.) criss-crossed with a web of silver silky cords.
In my mind’s eye, with the therapist’s gentle encouragement, I chose one to follow and picked it up. Over the course of the session, I was encouraged at points to let go of the cord and “drop into” that life, starting each time by looking at my feet.
I saw several pairs of feet. The first pair were crammed into shoes that were too tight. I could actually feel my feet being squashed even though in my current life they were encased in a comfortable pair of Converse. Next were bare feet belonging to a girl of about twelve or thirteen. Men’s brown leather lace up shoes followed then it was back to bare feet. These bare feet belonged to a little boy about eight years old and they were filthy! Emerald green silk shoes followed on, and the final pair of feet were in well-worn black leather shoes.
Each time I got a sense of the lifetime that those feet led rather than feeling that I was in that lifetime. In the brown leather lace up shoes’ life, I was in a printshop with a huge old-fashioned printing press surrounded by piles of paper. I could smell the ink.
The lifetime with the emerald green silk shoes was the one that made me feel uncomfortable. That woman had led a life dominated by a controlling husband and was sad and lonely.
The final pair of feet in the comfortable black leather shoes provided the most vivid images of the session. I was asked to describe what I could see at one point. My reply almost made the therapist giggle. “Chickens. Brown hens everywhere. I like the eggs, but the hens are a nuisance!”
In future blogs or short stories, I may reveal more details of the lives each of those pairs of feet led but for now it feels right to keep most of that private.
The session did give me an insight into where one fear I have may have come from. I don’t like the dark. I get quite scared if I have to walk into a dark room or an unlit hallway. I’m fine outdoors in the dark. It’s indoors darkness that scares me and I’ve never known why. The little boy with the dirty bare feet shared the same fear.
Several of the pairs of feet lived in coastal areas so perhaps that explains my love of being near water and needing to see an expanse of water on a regular basis. I could never live inland.
The therapist had assured me before we said goodbye that I wouldn’t take any of these past lives with me when I left. The past stays in the past. But, as I drove home, I couldn’t shake the image of the cottage with all of those brown hens in front of it.
When I went to my refrigerator to get something out to cook for dinner, I went to pick up the packet of chicken breasts and paused… It ended up being pasta for dinner. I just couldn’t face potentially cooking one of those pesky brown hens!
If any local friends want to experience their own past lives’ hypnotherapy session please reach out to
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086909415191
(Image sourced via Google- credits to the owner – no watermark on image)
Coral McCallum 