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is often the person who is willing to help us learn the hardest lessons in life.

      THOSE FOR WHOM IT MAY BE UNSUITABLE

      Whilst it is possible that past life therapy may help a schizophrenic or Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer to bring together parts of a psyche that are fragmented, it needs an extremely experienced therapist to undertake this work. As a rule of thumb, anyone who has had psychiatric problems of any kind or who is taking drugs (prescription or otherwise) should approach the therapy with caution and should certainly be totally honest with any prospective therapist. Past life therapy can help, sometimes dramatically, with depression, phobias and some compulsive patterns. But it can also precipitate compulsions and obsessions of all kinds and may bolster up delusions and illusions through an apparent ‘reliving’. People with psychiatric problems could, therefore, find the overview offered by a past life reading, or karmic astrology, a gentler introduction to other lives.

      People who are prone to fantasy, and to living in the past, can use other lives as an excuse for not living the present life fully. Equally, it is possible to become obsessed by a character in a past life, or to become stuck in an old pattern. So many people say, “I can’t help it, it’s my karma,” notwithstanding the fact that past life therapy is designed to prove just the opposite. So, if you fall into these categories or are not yet ready to take responsibility for your own life (or lives), you may find a bodywork, emotional release or shamanic-based approach keeps you more grounded in the here and now whilst releasing from the past life patterns.

      Anyone out to prove they were ‘Someone’ may have difficulty with past life therapy. They may well reject perfectly valid lives, and the healing opportunities they embody, in the search for that elusive ‘proof’ of position, power and authority. This approach is extremely vulnerable to fantasy and wish fulfilment, both on the part of the practitioner and the client. Hypnosis is probably the best approach if you must have facts, figures and historical presence.

      Finally, anyone not prepared to look at their dark side should certainly steer clear of this therapy. It throws light on all of ourselves, not just those parts we find pleasing. Its value is that it helps to integrate our totality. But, if you are not ready for what this might entail, you are not yet ready to look at your past lives.

      USING PAST LIFE WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH OTHER THERAPIES

      Past life work deepens and expands psychotherapy, bodywork, emotional release and spiritual growth work. It combines well with flower essences and vibrational medicine, reflexology, crystal healing and many other complementary therapies.

CHAPTER 2

       POSSIBLE PAST LIFE CAUSES

      Each individual case is different, but ‘themes’ or common core experiences often underlie similar presenting problems. A few of these are explored below to give you an idea of the scope of past life therapy.

      PHOBIAS

      Many people consult past life therapists about phobias or chronic anxiety states of one kind or another. If the cause has not been found in a previous incident in the present life, then even conventional therapy might suggest exploring other lives. A common phobia such as fear of snakes, for instance, may well go back to a death from snake bite, or being lowered into a pit of snakes (sometimes as punishment, sometimes as an initiation). I have seen a case where fear of birds went back to being very badly injured in a battle, and regaining consciousness to find a flock of vultures pecking away at the apparently dead body.

      A phobia which is seemingly much less common, but which I have frequently encountered, is fear of people vomiting. Almost everyone who suffers from this has regressed to a life where they were with a group of other people, usually in conditions of fear, who were vomiting uncontrollably. In at least one case it was on a ship during a violent storm, in several others it was during some kind of plague when all the sufferers were locked in a room together. It may also relate to one’s own death under such conditions.

      Sometimes phobias are very specific. I had one client, for example, who could not stand deep, still water. She was fine with running water, rivers and seas. In the regression, she had drowned in a quarry pool.

      Once the past life cause is discovered and healing done at that point in time, the phobia usually disappears or significantly decreases in the present life.

      EATING DISORDERS

      Whilst many eating disorders do have roots in emotional causes in early childhood, some may be a carry-over from other lives. A common cause of over-eating is starving to death in the past, especially when the last thought in that life was, “I’ll never starve again,” but I have also seen the then socially-acceptable practice of bulimic vomiting at Roman orgies being carried over into the present life as a repeating pattern. (This also surfaced in a fear of vomiting when the slave who looked after the vomitorium was run through with a dagger for himself involuntarily vomiting as his master did so.)

      Anorexia too may be linked to past life beliefs about the body as ‘bad’ and sexuality as sinful and can link into past life sexual abuse. Fashion can play its part. Not that long ago, many girls starved themselves in England, for instance, in order to achieve the desired eighteen-inch waist.

      If patterns like these are not changed prior to the new incarnation, the hidden thoughts remain and create over-eating, bulimia and anorexia. Going back to the between-life state can be therapeutic.

      EMOTIONAL BLOCKAGES

      There are so many emotional blockages carried over that it is unusual not to encounter one or two during a regression session. Emotional blockages often surface spontaneously during bodywork as our physical body can hold the memory. The blockages arise from two basic causes: one, part of oneself being stuck in that old emotion, continually re-experiencing it; or, two, having been afraid to feel the feelings, continually holding back. The trauma may be too intense, we cannot allow ourselves to feel. But so many of our emotions are deemed unacceptable that we get into the habit of not feeling. The healing consists of either detaching from the feeling, or letting oneself feel it until it dissipates – acceptance is a great healer.

      ADDICTIONS

      If we die with the thought “There will never be enough …”, or desiring “More, more,” then we are likely to come back with an addictive personality. If the thought was, “There will never be enough love,” then the addiction is to relationships and what passes for ‘love’. If it was ‘money’, then the addiction is to material goods – the miser hoarding his wealth. On the other hand, that person may still be stuck in poverty consciousness: believing that there will never be enough money is often enough to ensure that there never is!

      Denys Kelsey mentions addiction being linked to the practice of giving alcohol to deaden the pain of surgery in the days before anaesthetics. In battle conditions, on ships, etc, a bottle would be passed around those awaiting the surgeon’s knife. At least one alcoholic he regressed died with the thought: “There won’t be enough for me.”

      People with this kind of strong desire often reincarnate quickly before any healing has been done, bringing the potential for the dependency back into the body. Something which has always struck me in my alcohol and drug counselling work is how young people are when they discover their ‘drug of choice’. I remember an alcoholic telling me with great relish that, aged 8, he drank a whole bottle of sherry and felt for the first time that he was totally satisfied: “It was something I had been looking for all my young life.”

      Some drug addictions continually re-run an earlier dependency on ‘medicine’: sleeping drops, ‘nerve tonics’, etc, which contained morphine or other addictive substances. Laudanum was very popular with several generations of women. In some cultures, drugs were routinely used either

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