Into Your Soul - A Beginner's Guide to Past Life Regression

Chapter 1

Introduction to Past Life Regression

I am writing this book for the beginner—those who have never heard of past life regression work and those who are new to it and want to learn more. Twelve years ago I had never heard of this topic, yet here I am, a certified past-life and between-life regression therapist who recently changed careers after thirty-plus years in the information technology (IT) industry. There is a reason you chose this book!

Many people ask me how on earth did I move from IT to past life regression work. It’s an interesting story and one that will resonate with many of you who feel a calling to do something different, going outside your comfort zone of familiarity and security. For the rest of you, I hope this book opens your mind to other possibilities for gaining awareness and clarity, and bringing forth healing in your lives.

This book is also for those who are interested in or new to exploring reincarnation, past life regressions, and spirituality. I didn’t learn about spirituality until I was in my forties. Apparently, I had other work to do before it was time for me to venture onto this path, a path that has been both typical and atypical. Some of you will resonate with my journey. My hope is that my story may start you on your own journey or, at least, confirm that the thoughts in your head are not silly.

I do this work because of the healing it provides to my clients. It is a service to others that I am honored to facilitate. While working in the business world and transitioning to my next career, I was surprised at the number of people who had never heard of past life regression work. More surprising were the number of interested people who responded with, Tell me more about that. Now, during my speaking engagements and workshops, I am often reminded of how new or peculiar this topic is for many people—hence the writing of this beginner-level book.

As with any practice or study, many of us become learned or knowledgeable in a topic and our understanding of the vernacular grows with experience. It’s often easy to forget that not everyone understands the terminology. Therefore, my intent with this book is to begin at the basic level and build from there. My intended audience encompasses all persons who are open to the possibilities about life, past lives, the afterlife, and everything in between. It doesn’t matter to me if you are religious, non-religious, spiritual, or agnostic. Your belief system is your own and I honor that. If you have an open mind and want to learn about past life regression, this book is for you. Again, there is a reason you chose this book.

Throughout the book I reference many accounts from my client sessions. I have consent from each of them to share their stories; to maintain their privacy I have changed names and other personal identification information about them.

Chapters 1 through 6 describe the specifics of how a past life regression works and why people choose to have a session. The tone may be reminiscent of academic textbooks since it’s presented in a teaching or didactic manner. In Chapters 7 through 14, the tone softens as I elaborate on various aspects of YOUR soul that are brought to your awareness using past life regression. As a bonus, I have included my workshop exercises at the end of seven chapters (3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12) to help you work through the concepts presented.

There are many terms in this book that may be new to you. Please reference the Glossary of Terms in the Appendix to review a list of these words and their definitions.

Chapter 2

How I Got Started

Most people who know I spent thirty-plus years working in the IT industry look at me and ask, "How did you get from there to doing this ? By this" they mean becoming a past-life regression therapist with speaking engagements and a long list of clients. After decades of working in the IT field as a computer programmer, system designer, systems analyst, project manager, high-level administrative manager, and a short stint in academia as an industry professor, how did I get here?

To answer that question, I often state that I have observed three tracks in which people begin their spiritual journey:

People born with special gifts. These individuals go on to develop their gift to the point where they can help others. This is the case with many psychics, mediums, and shamans. Typically, such people recognize their gift early on, seek a mentor to help them hone their skills, and then proceed to use the gift to help others.

People who have a near-death experience (NDE). Many people who survive a brush with death come back with a new awareness, clarity, insight, or a gift they wish to share with others. Some die during surgery or in an accident; when their heart stopped beating, they returned to life via medical intervention or they naturally came back on their own. Often such people return with newfound experiences, awareness of spirituality, increased knowledge, and helpful information to share with others. Many have written books about their NDE, describing what they saw, heard, and experienced on the other side, and some have received beautiful messages to share.

People who experience a traumatic event. These people experience a trauma, usually a major loss as in losing a loved one to death, a relationship ends or drastically changes, a job/career ends, or a very serious health diagnosis is received. These events are known to take many people into the dark night of the soul, to a place where they are finally broken open, where they surrender and stop challenging everything. That is what occurred with the death of my youngest brother, Jimmy. His suicide broke my heart and took me to a place of surrender—I was transformed. This traumatic event knocked down the walls of my well-planned life and finally opened me up to many experiences that I would have ignored before his death.

Personal Story

I learned of Jimmy’s death in July 2009 via phone call—he was thirty years old. Anyone who has experienced the sudden death of a loved one knows the shock and numbness that takes over your body upon hearing such awful news. Suicide, a last resort for people who have lost all hope that life will ever improve for them, is discussed further in Chapter 11. I will not use these pages to discuss the details of Jimmy’s death, but rather explain how this traumatic experience triggered a series of interesting events that changed my life.

Not long after my brother’s death, I could sense his presence around me. I do not have psychic or mediumship abilities; therefore, I could not actually view him or hear his messages, but I definitely felt the energy of his presence. In my own way, I began asking Jimmy questions in my mind such as, Where are you?, What do you do all day?, Do you visit your children? Two weeks later an acquaintance handed me a book and said, I thought you might like to read this. It was titled, Letters From the Afterlife by Elsa Barker.

As I read the book, I realized I was getting answers to the questions I was asking my deceased brother. It occurred to me that perhaps this was his way of communicating with me. Two months later, I attended a talk presented by a local physician, Dr. Jeffrey D. Millman. He discussed his belief in reincarnation, his experiences with past life regressions, and specifically how meditation and such regressions helped him in his current life. He also mentioned several books that changed his life: Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian Weiss, Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, PhD, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I quickly purchased and read those books and soon found my interest in past life regression growing as more books, speakers, and workshops continued to attract my attention. I then veered onto a new career path! I say new career path because I spent over three decades working in IT and then suddenly my career took a 180-degree turn when I switched to past-life regression therapy.

Going from the corporate high-tech world to spiritual work is hardly typical but the gist of my story is this: I stopped over-thinking the opportunities being presented to me, as in I’m too busy to read that book, I don’t have time to attend a weekend seminar, I shouldn’t spend money on that training, and so on; instead, I began walking through doors of opportunity that presented themselves. I bought and read the books, attended the seminars, listened to guest speakers, and proceeded into past life regression training. (See the Recommended Readings section in Appendix.) Doing this work helps individuals perceive obstructions in their life, remove blocks, and move on to the beautiful life they were meant to have. That is why I love doing this work.

Past-life regression work has been around for a long time but it did not become an established and accepted practice until the 1980s and 1990s when two well-trained and educated practitioners started writing books about the subject. Brian Weiss and Michael Newton have written a plethora of books, several of which are listed in the Appendix. I consider some of their books to be the classics due to their ground-breaking, deep dives into the realities of the work. A list of contemporary authors is also provided in the Appendix. There are many others who wrote about the phenomenon of past lives and past life regression (e.g., Jane Roberts) before the 1980s, but Newton and Weiss are the two I am familiar with.

Chapter 3

Signs That You Have Had Past Lives

"These are the signs you have been with the same souls in past lives.

Whether positive or negative, our souls retain the memory."

As I meet people on my path, many open up to me about their thoughts of past lives when they learn about the work I do as a past-life regression therapist. These thoughts range from, I don’t know if I have had a past life,