What is Past Life Therapy.
Our therapeutic approach.
The Past Life Therapy (PLT) is a transpersonal psychotherapeutic technique which, basically, consists of making conscious what is unconscious. When this happens there arise to consciousness unresolved traumatic experiences which were hidden in the unconscious. In these experiences the patients tend to identify himself in another body and another time period, and experiment the death of that body, therefore the technique was called Past Life Therapy.
Then, contrary to what is commonly believed, the PLT is not based on reincarnation, but the past lives arise as a consequence of the therapeutic work. If the therapist knows how to work in depth on the symptom shown by the patient, at a given time of the therapeutic work there will appear an experience which does not belong to the framework of his present life.
Even if the PLT started to spread in a universal and extensive way starting in the period of the 1970s, it must be pointed out that actually it has been developing for over one century. It was in 1904 that Albert de Rochas, a colonel of engineers and manager of the École Polytechnique in Paris, after studying for a number of years the deep states in hypnosis, he discovered the phenomenon of successive lives. Rochas called this process a memory regression, which is the name still used today to identify this technique.
In 1978, Doctor Morris Netherton published his first book, under the title of Past Life Therapy, so establishing the name. As a matter of fact, the title arose through a consultation among three hundred students of a California university, which by great majority chose the name which would identify this therapy from then on.
In 1988 Dr. Brian Weiss published his book Many lives, many masters. This book became a best-seller which gave the final thrust on a world level to the Past Life Therapy.
Though the Past Life Therapy is considered a transpersonal healing technique, it is more properly defined as a soul therapy, since the pain is in the soul and it is the soul which must be healed. But we may add something else. We have said that the PLT consists mainly in bringing to consciousness what is unconscious. Now, André Breton defined surrealism as a spontaneous verbal expression of the unconscious, so if we follow Breton we might also say that the PLT is a surrealist healing technique.
How does the Past Life Therapy work?
In PLT it has become a custom to use hypnosis, however, it is not necessary to do so. Our therapeutic approach is based on the idea of the soul being caught and that we have the record of all our experiences, but such record is excluded from physical consciousness.
For the soul time does not exist, the souls is timeless, so that any event which happened fifty, one hundred or ten thousand years back for the soul it is as if it had just happened.
When an experience cannot be solved emotionally in a satisfactory way, when one cannot feel and live all that is happening in a traumatic situation, then the conscience gets caught, and this is true both for facts which happened in past lives and for the present life. Experience can be so terrible and unbearable that it becomes impossible to feel consciously all that is happening on a physical, emotional and mental level.
Besides, should death happen at such a time, the soul would be left without a body and would not be able to assimilate all that was happening. In the soul dimension we are energy and the unresolved pains and emotions are also energy. We need a body to be able to put an end to that experience. Without a body the experience cannot be assimilated and brought to an end.
This causes the conscience to be caught. On the one hand the body dies, but as a consequence of the soul being timeless, the conscience keeps trapped in a sequence which keeps repeating itself in an endless cycle. The body dies, but the experience gets on and from that experience in which the conscience is trapped, emerge the symptoms shown by the person.
When a person cannot get into a lift because he cannot breathe, feels a choking sensation of impending death, it is because there is another part of him which is choking in an experience which did not finish and which is happening in another reality. Suffocation, tachycardia, and the feeling of impending death belong to that part of the conscience which is trapped in the experience in which the person lost his body and where he is still agonizing or fighting to get out. The person cannot know what is happening because all of it is taking place at an unconscious level, out and away from his present physical conscience, but he experiences the symptoms and the perceptions as if he actually were going to die. In some way we are trapped in another reality, a non ordinary reality, as if we were living two different lives at the same time. And from this other reality, in which we are trapped, come the symptoms which we cannot avoid feeling in our present life, and for which we have no explanation. But this other reality is happening here and now as we carry on our daily life. This is the reason why an event, which has happened in another body and another life, may upset and influence our present life.
When we understand this we see there is no need to resort to hypnosis, not even to an exercise of relaxation or induction. Also, there is no time travel because for the soul time does not exist and everything is taking place here and now, in two different realities. And that other reality, which is excluded from our consciousness, is here with us, all the time, only it is taking place at an unconscious level. All we need to do is to bring to our physical consciousness the experience which is already taking place at an unconscious level. As we said at the beginning, to make conscious that which is unconscious.
Therefore, PLT lies basically in bringing to physical consciousness the experiences which are already taking place in the reality of the unconscious in order to be handled therapeutically, in the here and now of the present day physical body. And it does not matter whether it is a fact from a past life, from foetal life, from birth or from one’s early childhood. At an unconscious level, all experiences coexist at the same time and that which the patient’s soul needs to heal is the one that will come up.
In a therapeutic session the therapist will help the patient to bring to his physical consciousness what is already taking place at a subconscious level. Once the traumatic experience, which was excluded from consciousness, becomes conscious, the person will be urged to repeat the experience as if he were there. It is clear that not all persons live it in the same way. Generally speaking, most of the patients experience this with deep physical feelings, but some people are very mental, or rational, and these find it difficult to feel what others find natural.
As far as this is possible, it is necessary to exhort the patient to feel in his physical body that which is taking place in the not ordinary reality. Here is where the therapeutic task is carried out. During the session, the therapist will help the patient to consciously feel the physical, emotional and mental reactions, which are upsetting his present life, and will help him to put an end for good to all those sensations.
As it is a past life experience, it is inescapable to experience death in that life to finally get away from the deception.
Depending on every personal history, it may be necessary to handle foetal life, birth and early childhood. Sometimes this happens spontaneously. Sometimes it can be done in the same session. More frequently this will have to be tackled in later sessions. For some people, birth was the most traumatic experience in their lives, and they may solve the problem that troubles them by just tackling gestation and birth.
With the PLT one can handle all the emotional sufferings or conflicts which are the usual cause of consultation in a traditional therapy. The most frequent causes for consultation are phobias, fears, anguish, anxiety, insecurity, a sense of guilt, obesity, insomnia, psychosomatic changes, chronic migraines and sexual dysfunction among others, besides difficulties in affective ties, fear of affective commitments or conflicting relationships.
Contraindications are relative and depend mainly from each person particularly. You cannot work on a person with weak or altered mental faculties as it is necessary to have an intellectual understanding in order to carry on the therapeutic work. It will neither be possible to work, evidently, with people with an acute infarct of the myocardium, or with an ongoing arrhythmia, but it is possible to work with persons who carry out their ordinary activities without difficulty. With respect to children, it is possible to work with them as long as they can maintain a relationship with the therapist, but it is better if the specialist has experience in working with children and is trained in the PLT.
With the Past Life Therapy it is possible to go beyond the solution of the original symptom. If the person is consistent with the therapeutic approach, he may attain another awareness of himself and of the world at large.
The Past Life Therapy may help the patient to understand the reason of the present circumstances, to take the responsibility of his present life without blaming anybody for the situations he must face, and, finally, to find the true purpose and sense of this life.
Dr. José Luis Cabouli, August 2017.
Translation : Loto Perrella.
Link to the original article in Spanish in the website of the Asociación Argentina de Terapia de Vidas Pasadas (AATVP) [Argentine Association of Past Life Therapy (AATVP)]: