Past life regression - fact or fiction?

Many hypnotherapy practitioners offer past life regression, based on an idea that in a previous life whatever it is that is bothering you now must have come from some activity or trauma in a previous life. My interest in reincarnation started when I was still in my cot, as a series of dreams and memories plagued me for a time which only made sense later when I was a teenager and I found those places were real. This interested me and I started to research deeper.



I joined the society for psychical research in London and read a great deal on past life regression. I then found the work of Dr Ian Stevenson, a psychologist who spent over 40 years investigating reports of alleged past life memories. Dr Stevenson found a good case for evidence for reincarnation and before anyone fobs off this idea, I suggest you read some of his work or the work of Dr Jim Tucker first. The University of Virginia where these two men worked also looked into past life regression, and came to the following conclusion.

In short "A marked emotional experience during the hypnotic regression provides no assurance that memories of a real previous life were recovered. The subjective experience of reliving a previous life may be impressive to the person having the experience, and yet the "previous life" may be a fantasy, like most of our dreams."

I trained as a clinical hypnotherapist so I could research into the subject further, and I cite two case studies which highlight why I believe that PLR is our brains inventing stories, as our brains are always active and in the hypnotic state the right hand part of the brain and the anterior cingulate cortex are more active and these look for patterns and meanings.

Please read two of my case studies which highlight some of the problems with PLR.

Also see > Case Study 1 / Case Study 2 / Conclusion