by George Schwimmer, Ph.D.
Dr. 
Schwimmer proposes that the impacts and the memories of both physical and mental traumas – from either past or present lives – become lodged in individuals’ chakras. These energies and images, along with their concomitant feelings, are symbols (often expressed as symptoms in the present life) for an underlying issue/lesson that an individual’s Higher Self is using to prod the Lower Self to work upon. However, the traumas are very real in an individual’s being, and therefore the negative images must be replaced by positive ones and the underlying disorder in the human chakras must be healed, in order to provide the individual with the psychic energy necessary to learn the needed lesson and to release trapped emotional energy as well.
In the Seth material, channeled by the late Jane Roberts (Roberts, 1970, 1972), Seth firmly states that all time is simultaneous, a concept that has also been put forth by mystics in the past. Some contemporary theoretical physicists speculate that time is holographic; still another way of saying that time exists all at once. Whatever the truth of these views of physics and metaphysics, in the mind of a human being time is simultaneous, since the past and the presently possible future sit side by side in the mind of each person and affect the actions, behavior, thoughts, emotions, physical body, and spiritual state of everyone.
This means that all images ever experienced by an individual – during past, present, and future lives – mold the present personality, with negative images hobbling the individual and positive images helping it forward on its path. Further, it has been shown by experimentation that the subconscious makes no distinction between reality and imagined reality in the creation of inner patterns of the mind and the outer reality of an individual (Maltz, 1960). In addition, hypnosis, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and other altered states techniques apparently are able to erase or replace negative images or negative charges in an individual’s inner pattern or energy system.[1] All of this seeming to be true, it then becomes crucial to replace or remove all significantly negative past-life images (or present-life images, for that matter) from the mind of an individual whenever possible. I consider this to be a form of healing.
As a past-life therapist I use a number of techniques to accomplish this goal, one of which is the healing and reconstruction – if needed – of the past-life body of a client. Keeping in mind the theoretical model above, clients are often carrying with them an image of themselves as damaged, or in some cases even totally destroyed (i.e., blown up in modern warfare). These individuals are, of course, holding within themselves the emotional charge of the damage as well.
Many past-life therapists assume that by releasing the emotional charge, clients purge themselves of the negative energies. However, it should be noted that the emotions are lodged in the feeling segment of a person’s mind, whereas visual images are stored in another part of the mind. Even if the emotions are discharged – and I have reservations about the need to always or even usually re-experience past-life emotions – a negative visual image is still subconsciously crippling to an individual. Trying to abandon such an image by instructing a regressed person that the past self is another person who should be left in the past creates an inner separation, whereas the goal of past-life therapy should be integration.
There is a third dimension – besides those of feelings and the visual – that has always been put forth by metaphysicians, and in recent years more and more by modern scientists, which is the concept of the human energy system, “energy body” or “fields of life.” Dr. Harold Saxon Burr of Yale researched this concept of a basic energy field in all living things for a great many years (Burr, 1972), Rupert Sheldrake has written of invisible organizing fields (Sheldrake, 1981), and most recently Kirlian photography appears to bear out this concept (Krippner and Rubin, 1974; Moss, 1979). In the United States, books on the subject by medical people have begun to appear (Karagulla, 1967; Joy, 1979; Badgley, 1985; Smith, 1986), and innumerable books or chapters in books about the Indian concept of chakras (Vaughan, 1986; Small, 1987–both therapists), plus Barbara Ann Brennan’s excellent work (Brennan, 1988) and two books by metaphysician Jack Schwarz (Schwarz, 1978, 1980). In England, David Tansley, a radionics practitioner, has delved into the concept of auras and chakras in many books (for example, Tansley, 1982, 1984).
We have long ago passed the point of “if” and are now deeply into “what.” Edgar Cayce predicted that the future of medical treatment would lie in the use of light and color.
Part of the technique which I utilize to “heal” the past-life body of an individual[2] comes, I was told, from the Sufi tradition. This tradition has it that powerful healing energies can be projected from a person’s eyes. I was given this information during a course in chakra healing and balancing given by Devorah Devi in New York City in 1982, and I later read that Russian scientists claim to have established that the human eyes do emit energies (Joy, 1979).
A second element of my technique comes from the concept of chakras. “Chakra” is an Indian word which may be translated as “wheel” or “that which spins.” Chakras are energy vortices which interpenetrate the physical body at certain points, there being seven major chakras which emanate from the spine in a cone-like shape, with the open end extending beyond the front of the human torso. Barbara Brennan writes that these chakras also extend in the same manner from the back of the torso. Each chakra is related to a specific gland, and each chakra controls certain life functions.
The first chakra, in the groin area, is related to all aspects of physical survival. The second, below the navel, has to do with sexuality, sensuality, and sociability. The third, at the solar plexus, deals with personal power. The fourth, at the heart, projects universal love. The fifth, at the throat, is used to express health, wealth, love, creativity, spirituality, etc.; it has been called the cornucopia center by one writer. The sixth chakra, in the center of the forehead (the “third eye”), has to do with psychic perception and inner visualization. The seventh, the “crown” chakra, at the top of the head (or above it), is a cosmic connection, probably one’s contact point with one’s Higher Self. There are many other smaller chakras, in the hands and feet, for example. The foot chakras “ground” a person, while the hand chakras are used for healing. There are also said to be chakras behind each eye (Brennan, 1988; Tansley, 1982).[3]
In addition to being energy transducers, the chakras can also be directed to project energies. Theoretically, very powerful transformational and healing energies can be sent both outward and inward from the chakras, simply by consciously directing the inner mind to do so. Apparently no training of any sort—at least not in the current life—is needed to be able to do this, though some persons project more energy for various reasons. My own learning and experience has been that healing energies may be directed from four sources: the eyes, the sixth chakra, the fourth chakra, and the hands–particularly the right hand. Over the past twelve years, I have developed some ability to actually feel these subtle energies with my hands. Further, I can demonstrate to almost anyone in less than five minutes that there are energies which can be projected from the palms of the hands and which can be felt.
Last, I deduced some years ago, from work with clients, that when the physical body – past-life or present-life – is damaged, the energy body of the person is damaged as well. I later found confirmation of this concept from one source (Tansley, 1982). Various other sources also note that a person’s aura “tears” or becomes weakened from physical and emotional stress or the use of any drug (Tansley, 1984; Fiore, 1987).[4]
Observing that clients sometimes bring into a past-life session what appear to be psychosomatic pains and then finding that these pains originated from past-life injury seemed to indicate that the past-life damage to the energy body was somehow either brought intact into the present-life energy body or else that the memory of the damage – very emotionally charged – was brought into the client’s present-life energy body, which then affected the present-life physical body. In either case, the individual was experiencing what s/he considered to be physical symptoms/pain.
Healing Techniques
Based on all of these theoretical considerations, the technique for healing a past-life body which I have devised is as follows (and I feel anyone can do this):
Normally, the healing is done for wounds in the physical body of the past-life person. Often, the wound is found in an appropriate area where a chakra exists (and may be symbolic, as well, of the client’s core issue – i.e., a dagger in the heart, indicating a blocked heart chakra, symbolizing an inability to be loving, for example).
While regressed, the client is first requested to visualize him/herself – in her/his current personality and body – going back in time and standing in front of the damaged, destroyed, or diseased body of the past-life self, usually after the death of the past self, but sometimes during the life if the damage came before death. If there is an object in the wound – a knife, arrow, bullet, etc. – the client is instructed to remove it. Sometimes the client is asked to clean the wound and the raw segment of a severed part of the body.
The client is then instructed to imagine (image) sending a beam of healing light – of any appropriate color (chosen instinctively or not specified at all, but usually either white, gold, blue-green, or violet) – from the sixth chakra, the eyes, and the fourth chakra, the heart, converging into a single beam like a laser, which is to be focused on the damaged area. If the entire past-life body was damaged, the client is instructed to expand the light to cover the whole body. The client is asked to perceive the wound healing from the inside out and to tell me when the healing has been completed.
At the same time, I place my hand, palm down, about six inches above the appropriate chakra, which either is indicated by the issue the client has demonstrated in regression, or by the location of the wound. If the appropriate chakra is not clearly evident, I hold my hand a couple of feet above the body of the client and send energy to all of the chakras. I may also simply trust my intuition as to the proper chakra, and place my hand in the area above that part of the client’s body.
Having placed my hand where it feels appropriate, I then simply stipulate that I am channeling the proper sort and amount of energy that is required, and think no more about it. I feel that my subconscious mind knows exactly what to do. In most cases I feel nothing in my hand when I do this, but in a few instances I have felt enormously powerful energies passing through my hand, so I know something is taking place. Additionally, clients sometimes report feeling the energy from my hand impinging on their aura as a physical sensation, usually of heat but sometimes energy or color, even when I have not told them that my hand is above their body or that I am doing healing.
Note that the client is asked to heal him/herself. When I first began to utilize this healing technique, I would do the healing with my own chakras by myself, until it occurred to me that a much more constructive method would be to have clients heal themselves. Additionally, I first ask clients if they want to heal their past selves, since on a few occasions a client has at first refused to do so – saying that the past person was not really him or her, and this refusal is an issue that must be addressed before the healing visualization is attempted.
I also use this healing visualization if the person died of a debilitating disease, such as cancer, or if the person died of various complications of old age. In cases where a portion of a body has been severed – head, arm, leg, etc. – the client is asked to visualize the severed part(s) placed against the appropriate point of the body and then – using the chakra beams – have the client imagine welding on or joining the severed parts of the past-life body. In one regression a female client had her past-life son – who was her present-life ex-husband – castrated, and when she healed both that wound and the wounded relationship of that past life, she later reported to me that her ex-husband had become “much more friendly” to her.
One regression can serve as an example of how this technique is used in therapy. The client, W., a woman in her forties whom I met at the healing center of a large metaphysical convention in August of 1985, reported a recurring problem localized in her throat. At that time, her throat was very swollen and she was coughing: “The whole throat area was ballooned out and I was incredibly blocked,” she later said. She wanted to find out if this came from a past life and whether anything could be done about it.
When regressed to a past life, W. stated that her name was Eta, that she was thirteen years old, and that she was a Greek slave in a Roman family, helping to educate the family’s children. Eta reported that her parents were not present at that time in her life.
G.: Did anyone ever tell you what happened to your parents?
W.: That’s not spoken of.[5] It’s like a family secret and not spoken of because it’s too painful.
G.: And it pains you to think about it?
W.: Yes.
G.: It pains you not to remember your childhood and parents?
W.: That’s not to be spoken of.
G.: So you won’t even allow your feelings to surface (express themselves) because you’re not allowed to speak about it?
W.: I feel it in my body now.
G.: How does it feel?
W.: Like a vibration in my arms and legs…and the heart racing.
When taken back to an earlier time in that life, Eta saw herself at age five, and she immediately became quite emotional. She reported that her family was being “stolen” by Romans, and that “the vibration is very bad.” She told me that her hands were “hurting badly – enormous vibrations in the hands,” and that she was being dragged. She finally was able to see that someone had her around her throat (fifth chakra) and was dragging her away like that, with the pain from that radiating down through her shoulders, arms and hands.
Taken forward in that life, she eventually saw herself at age sixty-three, when she said that “it is necessary to be remote.”
G.: Did you ever give out any information?
W.: No, would not. (Closed down her fifth chakra).
G.: Did they do anything to force you to give information?
W.: Yes.
G.: What did they do?
W.: Tried to frighten me.
Eta reported that the family had eventually been taken away anyhow, and she herself had died.
After looking over that past life, Eta was first taken back to the age of thirteen and told to express her feelings about her situation to those who had told her not to speak of it, which she did. Eta was then taken back to the age of five, and W. used the laser technique to give healing to Eta’s throat, shoulders, arms, and hands, while I channeled energy to W.’s throat chakra. I then repeatedly told Eta that it was all right for her to express herself in any way at all, that it was now safe to express herself, that it was now safe to open her throat – at which point my client began to sob and continued to do so for several minutes, expressing her emotions.
Finally, Eta was asked to move her consciousness to that of her Higher Self, from which level the Higher Self stated – through W., of course – that it was important and necessary to open W.’s throat center at this time in her life for communication needs – speaking and channeling – which would come in her future.
When I concluded the regression and asked W. if there was anything else that she had not reported, she said,
W.: I just realized – the sixty-three year old – the tongue was taken.
G.: They cut out the tongue because you wouldn’t speak?
W.: Yes.
I requested W. to close her eyes again, return to the past, see Eta after her tongue was cut out, find the tongue and wash it in sparkling clear water, replace the tongue in Eta’s mouth, and re-attach it, using the laser method of healing, seeing all the muscles, blood vessels, and other tissue connected properly. I then directed W. to see her self in her present-life body standing in front of Eta, who I told her would say something to her. I had no idea what this would be.
W.: (Eta says) it is well. I am healed.
With this the session concluded.
During the chakra-healing segment of the regression, I sensed intuitively that the throat chakra had opened and that all sorts of energies were rushing out of other parts of W.’s client’s body and were exiting through her throat center. Since I thought this might simply be my imagination, I asked W. if she had felt anything like what I have described above, and she responded that she had felt exactly that. The combination of release and healing were so powerful that W. told me that she was – and acted – so weak that she could barely walk, and I had to help her from the room and down a flight of steps.
I felt concerned enough about this to locate several healers who happened to be at the healing center and asked them to help her. Three healers had to work with her for over half an hour before she felt strong enough to leave. This weakness was not caused by her emotions, I feel, since she had not expressed that much of them, but by the transformational energies – whatever they are and however they are constituted – being processed and expressed by W.
When I later reviewed this session, it was obvious to me that there was undoubtedly a pattern of several past lives involved with this issue of communication, but since both the Higher Self and Eta had said that the needed inner healing had taken place, I had to assume that the underlying issue had been addressed.
I should like to emphasize, however, that healing the past-life body does not necessarily resolve a client’s problem, for I feel that any current-life “problem” is a symbolic signal from the Higher Self to the Lower Self, requesting the Lower Self to become aware of an underlying issue and to work toward resolving this issue. Thus, normally, a follow-up with very traditional therapy or counseling may be required. This healing technique is just one of many that I use to bring resolution to a client’s learning process. It is not to be thought of as a “magic bullet,” therefore.
A phone call to W. in February of 1992 elicited more valuable information and insight. W. reported that she had felt very debilitated and very chilled after her regression in 1985, and that it had taken her a day to recover. Despite this, she stated:
…that although that felt like a bad regression for me – since it was, first of all, a painful regression and then I felt so incredibly weak after it – what it did teach me, however, was that chakras are real, which up until then I had had to take on faith. Because I could feel energy streaming out of every chakra.
She also reported that although she had channeled in the past while writing, she was now doing this vocally, speaking before groups and on a radio program:
Although I haven’t done any channeling, per se, deliberately, I know very well that when I get up to speak in front of a group, I am, in effect, channeling. A lot of this has to do with increasing self-confidence. I think it’s a multi-faceted thing.
When questioned, W. said that in the past (of the current life) she had been concerned about speaking out in public. The reason for this quickly became clear. The man who had killed her in her past life as Eta had come back into her present life – prior to seeing me – and not only had he been creating havoc for her, in both her business life and private life, but also had actually threatened to once again kill her:
And this was why I was totally blocked in the throat. I was scared stiff…I took his threats seriously…If you have any experience whereby you expressed yourself and were murdered for it (in a past life) and then you meet the same person again (today), it gets very bad. The memory is so strong that – even though you’re not consciously aware of it – it’s still operating and having a very profound effect. But, I’ll tell you, I feel a lot better about this now than I did at the time of my regression six years ago.
I asked if the man was now out of her life, and she replied that he was, indeed, gone, as a result of her own efforts and the synchronistic help of a professional expert on victims of abuse. When I told her that this indicated to me that she had taken back her inner personal power, which had been either lost, diminished, wrenched from her, given up or blocked, she replied, “Oh, yes, I would say it (her personal power) had almost disappeared altogether, but now it’s back.”
- also stated that although the physical condition of her throat had not changed for a long time after the regression, it eventually had improved. This was consistent with metaphysical theory that change first takes place in the “subtle bodies” and then slowly filters down to the physical body over time.
Discussion
This feedback from W. confirmed for me that: (1) past-life traumas are lodged in the chakras, (2) symptoms are symbols for an underlying issue/lesson, and (3) a person’s Higher Self uses these symptom/symbols to prod the Lower Self to take charge of her own healing and growth.
I have totally insufficient data to make any evaluation of what effect these visualization and chakra healing techniques have on the physical body of a present-life person. My purpose in using this technique is to achieve inner healing at much deeper levels than the physical body. However, since the body, mind, emotions, and spirit are interconnected, one can assume that when the underlying issue is resolved, the physical body will resonate to this healing. In any case, I feel certain that some sort of healing or restructuring always takes place when this visualization is utilized and that at some level of consciousness the client obtains significant benefits, as was seen in the case study presented above.
References
Badgley, L. E. Energy Medicine. San Bruno, CA: Human Energy Press, 1985.
Brennan, B. A. Hands of Light. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988.
Burr, H. S. The Fields of Life: Our Links with The Universe. New York: Ballantine Books, 1972.
Fiore, E. The Unquiet Dead. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1987.
Joy, B. W. Joy’s Way. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1979.
Karagulla, S. Breakthrough To Creativity. Santa Monica, CA: De Vorss & Co., 1967.
Krippner, S. and Rubin, D. (eds.) The Kirlian Aura. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974.
Maltz, M. Psycho-Cybernetics. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1960.
Moss, T. The Body Electric. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, 1979.
Roberts, J. The Seth Material. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970.
——— Seth Speaks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Schwarz, J. Human Energy Systems. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980.
——— Voluntary Controls. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978.
Sheldrake, R. A New Science Of Life. J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1981.
Small, J. Transformations. Marina del Rey, CA: De Vorss & Co., 1987.
Smith, F. F. Inner Bridges: A Guide To Energy Movement And Body Structure. Atlanta, GA: Humanics New Age, 1986.
Tansley, D. V. Radionics & The Subtle Anatomy Of Man. Saffron Walden, Essex, England: The C. W. Daniel Co., 1982.
——— The Raiment Of Light. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Vaughan, F. The Inward Arc. Boston: New Science Library, 1986.
[1] See the various books and articles by and about Milton Erickson, Richard Bandler, and John Grinder.
[2] Whether this is “actually” back in time or just in the mind of the client is irrelevant, as it affects the mind, energy field, emotions, and body of the client.
[3] I was told the same by Devorah Devi, in one of her classes of chakra healing. Devorah said this knowledge came from the Sufi tradition. However, I have been recently advised by a Sufi teacher that although healing light is sent out by the eyes, these energies come from the sixth chakra. This minor type of discrepancy is common in the literature about chakras, since very few individuals can see the human energy field and those persons sometimes describe one or another chakra differently (though not disagreeing about most major aspects of the major chakras and energy bodies).
[4] Also the lecture notes of Devorah Devi and Dr. William Baldwin.
[5] All italics are mine. Note that this refers to the fifth chakra, the throat, expression, communication.