Past Life Regression...

[mwhalley]

[Gandalf]

Many, many of my clients would not agree with you sir.
If a phobia, a fear, a block is removed then how does your opinion stand with that? And what is wrong with that! Are we not suppose to be helping people?

But hey, Im sure your right, after all Sigmund Frued, Carl jung, Otto ranks... (The list goes on) What do they know ..Right?

[mwhalley]

So you don't have any credible evidence supporting PLR as a genuine phenomenon then?

Phobias, fears, depression, and anxiety disorders and many others can all be improved with the help of supportive therapy from an empathic therapist - just because clients leave feeling better doesn't mean a particular technique had a specific effect. And if you want to demonstrate a particular effect from a specific technique then you need solid evidence to prove it. Good information on this in Bruce Wampold's book which talks about processes of change in psychotherapy http://www.amazon.com/Great-Psychotherapy-Debate-Findings-Counseling/dp/0805832025

What I think is really wrong when PLR is used as a therapy is that vulnerable clients part with their money on the basis of something that is scientifically and rationally untenable. I'd have a similar problem with any form of mysticism used as psychotherapy, especially when good validated therapeutic techniques are available.

As ever, Professor John Kihlstrom expresses himself more eloquently than I could ever hope to:
http://www.psychwww.com/asc/hyp/plr.html

[MarjorieCameron]

Was invited to contribute so here goes:

"I'm not really sure I believe in this one yet."

Always work with the client's 'model of the world' and if it contains PLR, little green men, work with it.

Be well,
Marjorie

[Gandalf]

[Gandalf]

[MarjorieCameron]

You have not understood what I wrote YET. As to beliefs, they are only beliefs which does not make them facts. Facts are mighty few and far between and beliefs are easy to change.

Then as we say in hypnosis "You will never do anything against your morals or beliefs". Think for a moment - two teenagers in a car, one is invited to the backseat -- how quickly do beliefs change?

If we are going to be discussing hypnosis, perhaps a revisit to the history of hypnosis would be in order since "psychology" and "Sick-man Fraud" seems to be making appearances.

Stay well,
Marjorie

[Gandalf]

[TheGreyMouser]

I have experienced PLR and I have also led other people through it. This was prior to my involvement with hypnotherapy. I came across PLR because I am Pagan and was involved with a group where one of the members did PLR using the Christos technique, which he also taught us to do. This involves relaxation, some preliminary exercises using the imagination to the point where you imagine yourself "stepping out" of your own body, and then a question and answer session in which the regressed person, prompted by the guide, describes what they can see, touch, smell, etc.

I found the experience remarkable, as did most people who volunteered, but I did not connect it with hypnosis until I began reading about the subject, prior to applying for my course. I then realised that the experience shared many features with the experience of being hypnotised, most notably time distortion - everyone was surprised by how much time had passed during the regression - and a sense of divided consciousness. We were all aware of our normal consciousness seeming to co-exist with, and observe, our regressed selves - and yet we experienced the emotions of the "past life" very strongly, as if we were living through them. When I started reading books on hypnosis, suddenly I realised, "Hey, this is very familiar..."

Whether it was a genuine past life or a vivid imagining, I don't know. Being a Pagan and having a belief in reincarnation, I probably find the idea of PLR more acceptable than most people do, and yet I couldn't swear that the details were not being produced by some very active part of my imagination. Certainly in the life I recalled most vividly, I was very different to my modern self. For a start, I was a man, and I was an officer in an army of occupation - I've worked out from the details that it was probably the Roman army, from the days of the Republic - and I was a harsh authoritarian, who despised "lesser" races and all forms of weakness. That just ain't me! In this life I'm a bit of an ageing hippy... It didn't worry me, as has been suggested, that I wasn't a person whom I liked, because I had a strong sense that that life was "then" as compared to "now."

Since starting my studies, I've met several people interested in PLR and my tutor says he has worked with clients who've consulted him for regression, though he remains neutral about the reality or otherwise of their memories. For therapeutic purposes, I would have thought the important question is not "Is this really a past life?" but "Does this experience help the client?" I'm just a beginner, though, so maybe I'm wrong!

[Gandalf]

In many cases recorded in the early days of PLR (early 1900's) after hours and hours of therapy, exploration, analysing etc, the therapists of the time decided that in not being able to pin point the event that led for the client to created a repression, leading to a symptom, phobia etc, that they would work with the scm and allow 'it' to go to the point where the event took place...

Many clients instantly went to being in the womb, many went instantly beyond the womb and into what is now called a past life.

Anyone that can describe in full the purpose or the function of the scm, in total, maybe has a right to question some forms of hypnotherapy That person does not exist.
We are all a part of the process that mankind is journeying through, to understand the scm, and beyond.

*As a very wise man once said, "Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities."