Do you believe in past life regression?

[Diemme]

I can't actually believe I'm asking that! But an old work colleague of mine gave it a go for help with her very complex relationship with her mum. She swears it's the best thing she's ever done and that she now has complete closure over difficulties which have plagued her for years. She gave me the name of her therapist and I started following him on facebook. He makes crazy claims about a massive success rate and close to 100% of his clients say that it works where other therapies have failed. So got curious. Has anyone used it?

[SidesteppinTheRona]

*die

[SidesteppinTheRona]

Excellent and informative posts, @Icantreachthepretzels 👏

As a PP said, so many past lives that people claim are of famous figures; or at least people in easy to imagine professions/situations. How convenient!

Up until relatively recently you were lucky to survive your own birth. If you did, you may not make it to 5. Or to ten. If you reached adulthood then you may live a longish life if you were lucky and managed not to due in childbirth.
Of all the possible past lives one could have, a sick or dying baby or child is most likely, but funnily enough we don't hear about those much. Wonder why.

[CathyorClaire]

Haven't used it and never would.

I don't subscribe to any form of woo.

[VenusClapTrap]

It’s the stuff that small children come out with, plus those sensations of ‘feeling at home’ in places people have never been before, and of thinking ‘oh it’s you’ on meeting someone for the first time that make me think there’s something in it.

[Paperdolly]

My mate’s DH went for a session and when we asked her what he discovered he was in his previous life she said “A pig!” 😂

I must say the first time I went to York as a teenager it felt really familiar. I was on the walls and felt drawn to a certain area up from the railway station. I felt ‘at home’. I normally don’t believe in such things and think spiritualists get people when they’re vulnerable.

[AtLeastThreeDrinks]

I'm not sure I believe in it but I find it fascinating.

There was a news story recently where a once-lost fallen jet from the first or second world war was uncovered by someone claiming they were the pilot in a past life. And occasionally those stories come out of children knowing minute details of people/places they've never been to. Although I suppose you never know how much the parents are hamming it up for the press.

I'd love to learn more about inherited memory. I had no idea about the birds @WaxOnFeckOff, incredible! There's a BBC article here that talks more about it if anyone's interested.

[Icantreachthepretzels]

@Diemme it's not really a regulated field at all so a lot of them won't have had the ethical side instilled in them - but a lot of them will know it and just won't care (for example stage hypnotism is riddled with unethical behaviour but is wildly popular and no one does anything about it). There are bodies hypnotherapists can belong to like the NCH and those practitioners tend to be more above board - they have recognised qualifications but having membership or even having qualifications isn't mandatory and isn't regulated in any way - so it's easy to get away with being unethical.

A red flag from the guy your friend went to see is that he makes claims about success rates. Practitioners shouldn't do that because how are they measuring? If someone comes to see him to quit smoking and they give up for a week is he claiming that as a success? What about if they go back to smoking six months after he last saw them? How would he know? How is he tracking this success rate?
Besides, when using hypnotherapy the real work is done by the client. It will work if they want it to work and it won't if they don't - the therapist is just facilitating and helping that and giving them some strategies. It is not magic and there are no guarantees. Again - any one claiming there are is best avoided.

[Gubbeen]

Look, small kids are imaginative. My now eight-year-old had dozens of imaginary friends, all with their own intricate backstories and characters and interactions. He also talked for years with remarkable casualness and detail about 'Babyland' where he lived before 'I zoomed down into your tummy.'

This does not make me believe either in the reality of his imaginary friends or his pre-life 'life'.

[GoshHashana]

People were never humble housemaids in past lives, were they? Or gnats or amoebas. They were always Cleopatra or Ivan the Great.

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

Should add, after about 5 he had completely forgotten these ‘memories‘ or whatever they were.

[GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]

Half of me thinks past lives etc. are a load of tosh.
The other half doesn’t, esp. after a friend told me how a small grandson (not yet at school so couldn’t read) said at once, ‘I used to live here!’ when they were on holiday and visited a site of Graeco-Roman ruins where none of them had ever been before.

Grandson went on very happily to point out remains of his former house, and a friend’s house, plus the cave they used to hide in, and the pool (bath) where they used to swim. He even gave the friend an appropriate, though slightly garbled, name.
Needless to say, all the rest of the family got the serious shivers!
GS was perfectly happy though.

[DaisyDreaming]

I don’t believe it at all but find it fascinating the crap people come out with during its. The brain is an amazing thing and it’s amazing all the detail people ramble during it but it’s just the human brain

[bottleofbeer]

If it helps then I promise you it's the placebo effect.

[Diemme]

That's so interesting icantreach and makes the whole thing sound seriously unethical. Do you think that every plg therapist has also been trained to understand this and chooses to ignore it? Or do specific plg trainings teach that there actually is proof that the memories emerging under hypnosis are of a past life?

[lipstickonapig]

I don't, but a friend gave me this book, which I found interesting. A lot of people believe there is an omnipotent celestial being, how is that different? I think it's best not to judge other people's beliefs.
www.amazon.co.uk/Journey-Souls-Studies-Between-Lives-ebook/dp/B001MTENOC/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=journey%20of%20souls&qid=1597030248&sr=8-1&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

[Icantreachthepretzels]

I'm a trained hypnotherapist - I studied memory regression in my training though not actually past life regression, though it did get talked about during that particular course and the trainers gave their stories of people they had regressed (and of one of their friends who performed a past life regression on a man who turned out to be Robert the Bruce - much to every one's amusement).

The thing with ethical hypnotherapy is you have to make it abundantly clear that whilst the process can help you come up with details you had buried, there is absolutely no proof or evidence that they are in fact correct. The memories can be false whether invented or mixed up with something you saw on T.V or read or just plain misremembering.

This obviously goes doubly triply quadruply ad infinitum when doing past life regression. Just because you remember a 'past life' does not make it in any way shape or form real.

According to the people who trained me (who were very open about the fact that they - like everyone on the course - did not actually believe) people did tend to claim to be just ordinary people from the past (Robert the Bruce not withstanding) and sometimes they did come out with details that when later checked were uncannily accurate ... but there are a million and six more reasonable explanations about why a person might know something and then bring it up in past life regression than that they are actually that person. Whether they once saw a documentary about fishermen of the Shetland Isles or took a school trip to a place where Mary Jones once worked as a washer woman or they saw an old photo of Bert the groundskeeper in a local museum ... it all gets stored somewhere in the brain and can potentially be accessed when in trance - and then mistaken for a past life. To the casual observer it seems amazing but - it's not.

If you want to have past life regression for a bit of fun then it probably is a huge amount of fun - being put into trance is lovely even if nothing happens. And I guess if you want to believe then you're not harming anyone - but any ethical practitioner will make it clear that there is no proof any memories are real. However, if you think you're really going to get some kind of understanding from it or fulfil an emotional need and the practitioner gives you any kind of assurances then they are dodgy as fuck and you need to back away from them.

[babydisney]

Tried it and researched it absolutely is not a thing and does not work.

[Chitlin]

About as much as I believe in pixies.

[GrumpyHoonMain]

The science aroumd Buddhist transmigration ideals (rather than reincarnation) could potentially stand up. If we believe that energy doesn’t leave the universe (just transforms) then it’s possible the energy our brains use to power our thoughts / memories could influence the universe.

On top of this we already know that mental health affects telomere length. For example pregnant women who live under extreme anxiety (think domestic violence / war zones) not only have shorter telomeres themselve but can potentially pass this on to their children and grandchildren (through daughters). Who knows whether some Memories / phobias could be be passed on in the same way?

[maras2]

No.
It's nonsense.

[AfterSchoolWorry]

Nope.

[WaxOnFeckOff]

Agree with all comments above.

However, i'm open to some sort of inherited memory the same as they've found with birds and others. We only know a fraction of the power of the brain but seem to use the bit we know about to waste on gobshite.

[Whyarewefruit]

Its cruel and exploitative.

[DramaAlpaca]

No. It's a load of old nonsense.

[uniglowooljumper]

No. It's bullshit.