by Margaret Lento, Ph.D.

Margaret Lento presents some ways to heal the client who was wounded as a child in a past life, using three clients’ cases as examples. Especially interesting is the way she follows her client’s lead as to the best way to heal the child and then to bring the child’s good qualities into the client’s “here and now.”

The benefits of current-life inner-child healing are very well known and accepted. But uncovering and reliving a traumatic experience as a child in a past life may reveal fears that have been built up over the years, over many existences. These fears must be eliminated before the regression can be permanently beneficial. I refer to it as “transforming the wounded child into the wonder child.”

It occurred to me from my work with clients who relived a past-life trauma as a child that the same negative energy that was present in the past life remained in the cellular memory of the client. This realization prompted me to develop techniques that would allow the client to go back into the lifetime, retrieve the child, and remove that negative charge or belief by releasing any residue that was still affecting the client in the present life. I have found that the client knows the best way to do this, and combining the client’s insights with my own techniques, I found that this release was rapid and effective. After the client experiences a past-life trauma as a child, I ask the client’s inner mind and higher wisdom to take them to a place where they can heal that little wounded child. Three cases illustrate this technique.

Joanne

Joanne is a 42 year old divorcee who works in the travel industry and lives with her only son. She came to me with a very unusual phobia after attending one of my lectures. Joanne told me she would love to be in a relationship and that she often met very nice men. She said that she liked men and intimacy, but there were times when she had seriously inhibiting fears and revulsion toward sex and even men. Even as she was telling me this, she was visibly distraught and kept repeating the fact that she had no idea why she had these fears. This was almost as frustrating as the actual phobia. On further probing, it was discovered that this intense fear was at its height at dusk (her word). In fact, she hated to meet men after work for a drink or dinner, especially at their home or hers, and she would avoid doing so. Needless to say, this made it impossible to develop any long-lasting intimate relationships with men and created feelings of hopelessness and sadness. She even asked me if I thought she was crazy. I reassured her, of course.

I hypnotized Joanne and had her visualize herself in a beautiful garden which was filled with brilliant light and suggested to her that this was her very own safe place and that she could bring herself to this place any time she wanted. She indicated that this was something she needed to hear as she was quite anxious about what she might find under hypnosis.

At this point, with all my clients, just before I start the regression itself I have the client invite their spirit guides, guardian angels, or protectors to go with them and protect and guide them from that moment on. I find that this is beneficial in every case. I then asked Joanne’s subconscious mind to take us to the source of her fear of being with a man at dusk or in early evening. She immediately responded with “I’m in Mexico.”

She then related an incident that was very traumatic: She was a young girl of about 7 or 8 living in the mountains with her family. She found herself outdoors, wearing a white dress; her feet were bare. She was a very pretty child, but she felt very sad. I asked her what made her so sad and she said she couldn’t possibly tell me that. I reminded her of our purpose and also that her guides were with her and she then opened up and began crying.

She said that it was that time again when her father came home from the fields and he always told her to go into the bedroom. She knew that there was nothing she could do about it; she went, and he followed her and raped her. This happened systematically every evening at this time. Joanne immediately recognized the parallels and said she wanted to let those memories go now.

She felt a great relief, and we could have ended the session there. But before I ended the session I asked her to communicate with her guides and ask if there was anything else that needed to be done. In this way I elicited her own insight about the best way to heal. After a short silence, she said she needed to go back and cleanse that little girl. She told me then for the first time that she, Joanne, always felt dirty and didn’t know why. I suggested that she bring the little girl into the special garden. She did and found a brook with a little waterfall where she washed the child with cool clean water. I then asked her to make this little girl very, very tiny and put her in her heart center and just keep her there all the time from now on and assure her she is safe and clean, letting her know that she is wonderful, a wonder child, especially at dusk!

This healing took only one session and when I followed up a few months later, Joanne said she was doing fine and had not been bothered by the fears since the regression.

Bill

Bill is a 40-year-old computer salesman whose greatest ambition was to own and operate his own farm and become self-sufficient. He has a very supportive wife and 2 children. Bill came to me because of a tremendous fear of wild animals or more precisely, of being attacked by a wild animal. He admitted that he has never told anyone of this fear. He felt that he was lacking in courage and an adventurous spirit, and he never did anything physically risky. He wanted to “get to the bottom of it.”

I regressed him to the origins of this fear and he described a scene in ancient Israel; he was a young boy who tended the sheep during the day, under the watchful eyes of the elders. He was interested in a particular cave, but was warned not to go there alone. One night when everyone was asleep, he sneaked out of the house and made for the cave, feeling very adventurous and brave. Suddenly Bill started to panic and told me his left arm hurt very much and he was feeling very scared. I asked him to go into the pain in his arm and find the source of it. He said he saw two eyes staring at him, very close up. His panic increased and he started to cry. I assured him he was safe in the here and now, but he shouted “No, there’s a huge wolf attacking me, oh my God, it’s torn my left arm off!” It then tore him to pieces, killing him.

Bill recognized immediately where his fear of being attacked by a wild animal originated, and intellectually he was able to release it. He felt a tremendous sadness for the young boy that somehow reminded him of the feelings he had had while growing up with this fear; he had always been preoccupied with protecting himself and hadn’t known how to stop it.

I agreed with him that it was indeed the little boy inside him who never felt safe, who always felt the need to be vigilant. I asked his subconscious to take him back to that little boy; then I had Bill put his arms around him and take him to the top of a hill, where together they could see the sheep grazing and the beauty of the landscape.

But Bill told me that the boy had so much “hard stuff” stuck on his body that he had trouble feeling anything. This was Bill’s insight, and it was important. Using my own imagination, I then gave Bill a hammer and chisel and had him gently chip away at that cement-like armor until it was all gone and the wonder child could once again emerge. He took the time he needed and finally said that the boy was now smiling and looking at the blue sky. He gave him a big hug and assured him he was safe from now on. I then suggested that any time that fear might reappear in the future, he simply had to take a deep breath and repeat to himself several times, “I am safe.” He practiced this for a while before I awakened him and terminated the session.

Today Bill has his farm and works it part-time. He even has sheep, perhaps a positive legacy from that little boy who watched the sheep in ancient Israel. At follow-up, he told me he had no more fear.

Mary

Mary had a problem that embarrassed her terribly. Every time she went into a bookstore or a library, she developed a sudden desperate need to use the bathroom, with diarrhea-like symptoms. This had been going on for years. A professional woman, one of her passions in life is reading. She loved bookshops, but invariably, within five minutes, she had to leave or look for a public washroom. Often she’d be with friends or family and the symptoms became excruciating for her, for she did not want to tell anyone of this problem.

I regressed Mary and she found herself in 19th-century London, a little girl of about 6, with a white starched apron and bonnet. She was very clean and pretty. It was a dismal, rainy day and she was walking through a cobbled courtyard which she felt was part of her home. She could see a window of her house or flat as she was walking. A terrible smell came upon her and she looked toward its source and saw some horses nearby; just below the window was a huge pile of odoriferous horse manure.

Mary was rather shaken by this and I asked her to go to something very significant that would shed light on the problem. She found herself in a classroom at school. Library shelves with books were placed against a far wall and she was standing looking at the books when some children approached her and called her names, holding their noses in mock disgust. They said things like “you smell like a horse” or “stinky” and the little girl was devastated. This apparently happened frequently, and always out of the hearing of the teacher. The child would run out of the classroom, her heart in her mouth, feeling sad and somehow cheated. She realized that her father owned the horses and sold the manure to farmers to augment his income, but she felt humiliated and would run to the washroom and scrub her hands vigorously.

Mary saw the association with books and the feelings that created the cramps and diarrhea symptoms in the present. She also mentioned at this point that she had a need for excessive cleanliness, and related this to the past-life experience. Reliving that humiliation and shame was cathartic and she felt a great relief, but wondered if the effects and hurt would go permanently now.

I asked if she could go back and comfort and assure that little girl. She did, but decided that she needed to cover the pile of manure to make it less visible and aromatic. Together we found a large tarpaulin and covered up the manure; then the little girl started smiling and felt safe enough to go on.

Mary was skeptical of this whole process. She insisted that she must have been making it all up, so she decided to test it. She was amazed and delighted to find herself spending almost two hours in her favorite bookstore later that week, and after several visits to libraries and bookshops, she called me and told me the good news. The little girl had been healed and the symptoms were completely gone.

Summary

What all three of these clients found most beneficial was the effect derived from returning to the “scene” and rescuing and reassuring the child with no sense of blame or guilt, but with love, understanding, and tenderness. But specific actions, suggested by the clients, were part of the rescue process. Joanne needed to wash the little Mexican girl clean; Bill had to chip away the hard armor that he said had formed over the young boy; Mary had to cover the manure to make it more socially acceptable and less humiliating. These ideas came from the clients themselves, as the best way to heal the child.

Some other very positive results came in the form of comments. Joanne said: “If someone had related this experience to me, I would have been very skeptical, but after going through it, I am profoundly touched and grateful and so is the little girl!” Bill said: “This now solidifies my belief in reincarnation and gives me a strengthened sense of hope for our planetary healing.” And Mary, still not so sure, is enjoying her leisurely browsing in bookstores and libraries anyway.

In presenting these three cases, I have attempted to demonstrate this technique and also the long-term benefits that are experienced. Trusting the client’s insight and inner wisdom may be the best route to healing.