Abstract
Andy has been a Regression Therapist for over twenty years and is an international trainer for the Past Life Regression Academy and author of three books on regression therapy. He shares his thoughts and experiences about changes in regression therapy and the opportunities that are becoming available in the future includingvworking with the new vibrational energies coming into the planet.
Introduction
I remember when I was doing my four-year psychotherapy training in the 90s being told there was no need to go to the source of a client’s problem to resolve it, and a past life was dismissed as simply a metaphor. I was told hypnotherapy and neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) were the future of healing and any mention of a spiritual aspect in therapy was met by blank looks. I was introduced to regression therapy by the pioneer Roger Woolger who taught the opposite of what I had been told before—that there was no need for hypnosis, achieving a catharsis was the holy grail of our work—body movement with clients acting out old scenes from the past was the norm, and I was introduced to a spiritual dimension in what Roger called the Bardo and working with spirit guides giving spiritual guidance. For me it felt right. I knew this was the therapy I wanted to make my life focus.
Current Status
I was delighted to be a founding member of the Earth Association of Regression Therapy (EARTh) and, inspired by Hans Ten Dam, worked with colleagues to define the standards of regression therapy and the recognized school program (which today is the international standard for regression therapy). One of its strengths is that it defines the therapeutic areas where skills are needed, and allows freedom in the techniques used. For example, if the therapy is to go to the source of an emotional problem, the therapist can use a verbal bridge, emotional bridge, somatic bridge, an affect bridge with hypnosis or simply ask the client what was happening in their life when they first experienced the problem. It also leaves it open for others to bring in new techniques in the future.
Achieving a single standard for a therapy is in itself a significant achievement for our profession. In contrast, the UK has seen different hypnotherapy groups struggling to reach a unified standard for several years. But is having a common approach enough? On one hand, some see regression therapy as a therapeutic intervention that dramatically eliminates a client symptom, often in just a few sessions. For others, it can be seen as spiritual growth for the client. It reminds me of a trip I took to the Amazon rainforest a few years ago. Whilst doing a ceremony with a shaman, through an interpreter he said to me, “You heal people’s souls.” So did this simple intuitive native have a powerful message for everyone who uses regression therapy, that as well as transforming symptoms there is a deeper significance of the work? This is something everyone offering regression therapy needs to decide for themselves.
Personally, I don’t think a therapist heals a soul, it is the client who heals it themselves. And when the soul lesson is learnt through guidance from the therapist the symptoms disappear and the issue is completely resolved. One of the ways of assessing the widespread acceptance of a therapy is to include it in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. Athanasios Komianos (the most recent president of EARTh) and others attempted to create a Wiki entry some time ago without success, so with trepidation Peter Mack∗ and I set about trying a different approach. We used the chapters Mack (2011, 2012, 2014) wrote about regression therapy as a basis and ensured that contentious wording in the submission to Wikipedia were changed. So, for example, ‘past life regression’ became ‘past life stories’ and ‘spirit guide’ became ‘transpersonal experiences’.
With 57 references to support the article, we both felt excited that it would be accepted but this was not to be due to a lack of secondary sources (books or articles outside the immediate discipline, often peer reviewed, that refer to the subject). So, I asked the universe to help. Well, we all know what happens when you manifest something important, as within a few months I was asked to write a chapter on past-life regression and regression therapy for the third edition of Clinical Hypnosis Textbook by Professor Ursula James (2015). This is used as a reference book to train medical doctors in ten UK medical schools, and is now required reading for the MSc (Masters in Science) in clinical hypnosis at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. So we have another secondary source, and I’m sure more will follow in good time from others’ efforts.
One of the delights of the spiritual nature of regression therapy is the understanding that through the interconnectedness of everyone, healing can reach out further than just the client we are working with. I first came across this when working with a student in Norway. She had had a big emotional break up with her mother, left home and had not spoken to her mother for several years. As part of the therapy transformation she had a Gestalt-like dialogue with the soul of her mother and found forgiveness. Within 24 hours her mother, unprompted, had phoned her saying she felt different about her—and after an emotional chat they agreed to spend the weekend together.
Another student had lost her father from a possible suicide four years previously. Because of the nature of the death, the police had kept the open and her sisters and mother still carried the emotional wound from the unresolved death. In therapy, the Gestalt dialogue with the father revealed what had happened, and further dialogue with the police and family members brought closure. Within a week the police had phoned saying they felt the case could now be closed and all her family members had contacted her saying they felt differently towards their father’s suicide.
Using a proxy opens the door to working with clients that would otherwise be unsuitable for any sort of therapy—provided permission comes from the higher mind or spirit guide. When conscious mind permission is not possible, and the intent is made for the proxy person to take the place of the client, the process (remote regression) works. One of the early uses of this involved a student in one of my workshops whose child had selective mutism (she would not speak to any adult other than the mother and father). Working through the mother as proxy, a past life of the child was transformed. This was a man who had his tongue ripped out and then lived in solitude. After the therapy the young child just could not stop talking at school to everyone. This sort of work opens the door to working with a wide range of problems from the elderly dying with dementia, to clients with mental health problems and other contra indicators to normal therapy.
Integration with Modern Medicine
At this point I’m reminded of a story a fellow regression therapist told me. She wanted to spend some time in a spiritual retreat centre in Italy and did not have much money for the stay, so she asked if she could give past-life regression therapy to people in the centre in exchange for food and accommodation. She was taken to the spiritual guru of the centre to seek his approval. The guru was not familiar with this work, and went into a short meditation. Upon awakening he said, “past-life regression…that’s the psychiatry of the future.”
It’s worth recapping the difference between the medical and the regression therapy models. Based on classical science and the influence of Rene Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher and scientist, the conventional medical model sees illness as a random event, and the cause of disease and its cure as coming from outside the human body. A physical problem is treated with a physical cure—a pharmaceutical medicine or surgery. In contrast, regression therapy sees illness and healing as coming from within the individual. It is based on the principle that the patient’s body reflects the deeper struggles of their entire life. Hence, illness is deemed not to occur randomly, but when emotional, psychological or spiritual stresses have overwhelmed or weakened the body defences. The therapeutic objective is to assist the person to regain a healthy balance. So can regression therapy ever be seen as a complementary therapy in the medical model?
Inspired by an idea from a regression therapy trainer, Reena Kumarasingham, 14 medical doctors and 5 psychologists trained in regression therapy gathered for a two-day workshop in April 2013 in Porto, Portugal. It was decided at the meeting to create an association called the Society for Medical Advance and Research with Regression Therapy (SMARRT) (2013). Its mission: to bring about the integration of regression therapy and modern medicine, and to accomplish this through the development of medical research using regression therapy and promoting the research to the medical fraternity and the general public. In 2015 SMARRT published its first book, Inner Healing Journey – A Medical Perspective, about medical and emotional problems resolved with regression therapy. The book is available in English and Portuguese. SMARRT’s research activities can be seen on the SMARRT website (http://www.smarrt.com).
But does any of this matter to a non-medical regression therapist? In my view it does because medical doctors are seen by the general public as the custodians of health, and in many countries they direct patients to specialists for treatment. Also, any country or insurance funding for therapy normally requires some level of research establishing the effectiveness of an approach for a particular problem. Of course it takes great courage to bring non-physical treatments into the medical world. In some ways the medical authorities act like the medieval inquisitors of the past. Instead of burning non-conformers at the stake, they use psychological threats of medical practice licences being revoked or medical health practitioners being fired from jobs. But we have seen great change in the medical world over the last few years. Transcendental
meditation has been accepted for reducing stress and anxiety (MacLean, et al, 1997) and therapeutic touch (spiritual healing) to reduce stress and lowering blood pressure (Wilkinson, Knox, Chatman, et al, 2002). And, of course, hypnotherapy was accepted in the 1950’s in the UK and USA medical associations based on extensive evidenced research. Hypnosis is now taught in a third of accredited medical schools (Barabasz, et al, 2010).
Use on Energy in Regression Therapy
Of course everything is energy, as the world of physics reminds us, so regression therapy can be seen as energy healing. But it is mainly through the use of energy directed from our voice to our ears, or physical touch if body therapy is used. Some regression therapists may ask for energy healing from spirit guides or from the client’s higher mind, or even channel energy with techniques called Reiki or spiritual healing. Another use of energy is working with crystals. A close personal friend and regression therapist, Christine McBride, wrote a chapter of how regression therapists can use crystals in one of my books (Tomlinson, 2011). This covers raising the therapy room and therapist vibrations before therapy, using crystals to assist in clearing and smoothing energies, and clearing the room energetically after a session.
But I’m interested in talking about how this can be taken further. Over the years I’ve noticed more and more clients needing spirit attachments released before or during therapy. Also spirit attachments have become more difficult to clear. What seems to be happening is that the increasing vibration of the Earth is amplifying the dense energy of unresolved issues in the spirit attachments.
Other forms of dense energy are being agitated—left over energies from war, torture, various earth energies, and residual energy from previous civilizations’ energy experiments. I refer to all this as dark energy—simply a collective name for spirit attachments that are difficult to remove, including a range of intrusive energies or fragments that have a very strong energy source.
In the Journal of Regression Therapy (2012, pp 12-17) and the book Transforming the Eternal Soul (Tomlinson, 2011). I discussed new energy techniques to remove dark energy. The process of removal is actually quite simple. First, an energy portal needs to be created from the client to Source through intent. Second, an energetic link needs to be established from Source to the therapist’s crown chakra and out the therapist’s heart chakra to the client. This allows the higher energy vibrations of Source to be transformed through the therapist and adjusted to a level needed to flush out the dark energy from the client to Source via the portal. The flushing energy level can be adjusted intuitively by the therapist or with spiritual help. After healing energy is given to the client, the therapist needs to check they are clear of dark energy fragments themselves. Normally, if they follow the recommended protocol. This will not happen, but if any is detected it needs to be removed from the therapist immediately. This technique also clears spirit attachments and all their energy in a few minutes as an alternative to talking to them.
I’ve now used this technique with hundreds of clients since 2011, and have been teaching it to regression therapy graduates in the Academy since 2013.
Feedback from clients and various independent checks have confirmed it works consistently. Indeed, it has been so successful that I’ve personally used it clearing dark energy from areas of land, in particular ancient religious sites and energy portals, during trips to Peru, Singapore, India, Greece, South Pacific, Hawaii, Mexico, Russia and New Zealand. The only constraint to using high vibrational energy is that permission from Source is needed to connect with this energy. Normally, a therapist needs to have cleared their personal issues first. In 2014, this work was extended to clear energy from other parts of the cosmos with a variation to the techniques discussed above. With the ‘thinning of the veil’ all sorts of energies seem to be entering our planetary system, so this work is becoming more important.
I’ve found energy management needs to be included in all Academy training workshops. This involves creating a safe energy space for the training, clearing any of the energies previously discussed that may have come in with students, and teaching students basic energy management. I remember a student who came to one of my workshops complaining of headaches, and was energetically affecting the other students but did not know what was happening. Following a short talk with the student, it appeared she liked to astral travel at night and allowed herself to remain energetically open all of the time. It’s not surprising she was riddled with what I call inter-dimensional energy from another part of the cosmos. After clearing the energy and teaching the student how to open and close her personal energy field, the problem was resolved and she was able to fully integrate with fellow students.
Further techniques of working with high vibrational energy became available in 2014 through my work with regression therapist Reena Kumarasingham. These techniques include how to use different types of high vibrational energy, including resolving emotional problems, and healing disease in organs. If differs from the work of other energy healing in that it uses high vibrational energy, so it is more potent at raising the energy vibration of the client’s disease part and speeds up the client’s own healing. Also, rather than acting as a passive channel for the energy, the therapist consciously and intuitively directs the energy. My initial finding is that these techniques are very quick and can also be used as an alternative to catharsis and body therapy to clear a client’s blocked energy. They can also be used on clients who would otherwise be a contra indicator for regression therapy. While the techniques are still being fully evaluated, they are being passed on to a selected group of therapists to ensure the results are transferable and to speed up the evaluation.
Summary
Regression therapy has come a long way from the days when I was trained. The medical world may be slow embracing it and may seem to be acting like King Canute of England who tried to command a rising tide to go back. For some, the future is to embrace the spiritual nature of our work and include more proxy work. For me it is embracing the use of high vibration energy in regression therapy to make our work even quicker, to be taken to a wider client base, and be more effective with the therapy process.
References
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Mack, P. (2011). Healing Deep Hurt Within. Christchurch, UK: From the Heart Press. The International Journal of Regression Therapy, V. 25, 2017 75
Mack, P. (2012). Life-Changing Moments in Inner Healing. Christchurch, UK: From the Heart Press.
Mack, P. (2014). Inner Healing Journey – A Medical Perspective, Christchurch, UK: From the Heart Press.
MacLean, C., Walton, K., Wenneberg, S., Levitsky, D., Mandarino, J., Waziri, R., Hillis, S., Schneider, R. (1997). Effects of the transcendental
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Society for Medical Advance and Research with Regression Therapy (2013).
Retrieved at; www.smarrt.com.
Tomlinson, A. (2012). Spirit attachments – new approaches, Journal of Regression Therapy, Volume XXI, Number 1 pp. 12-17.
Tomlinson, A. (ed.). (2011). – Transforming the Eternal Soul, Christchurch, UK: From the Heart Press.
Tomlinson, A. (2015) A Past Life Regression, In James, U. Clinical hypnosis textbook (third edition) Hunstanton, UK: Widely Press.
Wilkinson, D. S., Knox, P. L., Chatman, J. E., Johnson, T. L., Barbour, N., Myles, Y., Reel, A. (2002). The clinical effectiveness of healing touch. J
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