past life therapists about phobias or chronic anxiety states of one kind or another. If the cause has not been found in a previous incident in the present life, then even conventional therapy might suggest exploring other lives. A common phobia such as fear of snakes, for instance, may well go back to a death from snake bite, or being lowered into a pit of snakes (sometimes as punishment, sometimes as an initiation). I have seen a case where fear of birds went back to being very badly injured in a battle, and regaining consciousness to find a flock of vultures pecking away at the apparently dead body.
A phobia which is seemingly much less common, but which I have frequently encountered, is fear of people vomiting. Almost everyone who suffers from this has regressed to a life where they were with a group of other people, usually in conditions of fear, who were vomiting uncontrollably. In at least one case it was on a ship during a violent storm, in several others it was during some kind of plague when all the sufferers were locked in a room together. It may also relate to one’s own death under such conditions.
Sometimes phobias are very specific. I had one client, for example, who could not stand deep, still water. She was fine with running water, rivers and seas. In the regression, she had drowned in a quarry pool.
Once the past life cause is discovered and healing done at that point in time, the phobia usually disappears or significantly decreases in the present life.
EATING DISORDERS
Whilst many eating disorders do have roots in emotional causes in early childhood, some may be a carry-over from other lives. A common cause of over-eating is starving to death in the past, especially when the last thought in that life was, “I’ll never starve again,” but I have also seen the then socially-acceptable practice of bulimic vomiting at Roman orgies being carried over into the present life as a repeating pattern. (This also surfaced in a fear of vomiting when the slave who looked after the vomitorium was run through with a dagger for himself involuntarily vomiting as his master did so.)
Anorexia too may be linked to past life beliefs about the body as ‘bad’ and sexuality as sinful and can link into past life sexual abuse. Fashion can play its part. Not that long ago, many girls starved themselves in England, for instance, in order to achieve the desired eighteen-inch waist.
If patterns like these are not changed prior to the new incarnation, the hidden thoughts remain and create over-eating, bulimia and anorexia. Going back to the between life state can be therapeutic.
EMOTIONAL BLOCKAGES
There are so many emotional blockages carried over that it is unusual not to encounter one or two during a regression session. Emotional blockages often surface spontaneously during bodywork as our physical body can hold the memory. The blockages arise from two basic causes: one, part of oneself being stuck in that old emotion, continually re-experiencing it; or, two, having been afraid to feel the feelings, continually holding back. The trauma may be too intense, we cannot allow ourselves to feel. But so many of our emotions are deemed unacceptable that we get into the habit of not feeling. The healing consists of either detaching from the feeling, or letting oneself feel it until it dissipates – acceptance is a great healer.
ADDICTIONS
If we die with the thought “There will never be enough …”, or desiring “More, more,” then we are likely to come back with an addictive personality. If the thought was, “There will never be enough love,” then the addiction is to relationships and what passes for ‘love’. If it was ‘money’, then the addiction is to material goods – the miser hoarding his wealth. On the other hand, that person may still be stuck in poverty consciousness: believing that there will never be enough money is often enough to ensure that there never is!
Denys Kelsey mentions addiction being linked to the practice of giving alcohol to deaden the pain of surgery in the days before anaesthetics. In battle conditions, on ships, etc, a bottle would be passed around those awaiting the surgeon’s knife. At least one alcoholic he regressed died with the thought: “There won’t be enough for me.”
People with this kind of strong desire often reincarnate quickly before any healing has been done, bringing the potential for the dependency back into the body. Something which has always struck me in my alcohol and drug counselling work is how young people are when they discover their ‘drug of choice’. I remember an alcoholic telling me with great relish that, aged 8, he drank a whole bottle of sherry and felt for the first time that he was totally satisfied: “It was something I had been looking for all my young life.”
Some drug addictions continually re-run an earlier dependency on ‘medicine’: sleeping drops, ‘nerve tonics’, etc, which contained morphine or other addictive substances. Laudanum was very popular with several generations of women. In some cultures, drugs were routinely used either as sedatives or as spiritual aids. Other addicts may be replaying an opium addiction – thousands of Chinese were introduced to opium by the British government who had a vested interest in maintaining the addiction; and the gin palaces of the British Industrial Revolution killed the pain of existence for many thousands more people.
HEALTH
Health is an enormous subject when looked at from the past life perspective. Old attitudes such as ‘hard-heartedness’ can affect the present life: hardening of the arteries and heart attacks being common manifestations. Old emotions, injuries and traumatic experiences create physical dis-ease. A woman who had constant heartburn in her present life relived drinking a cup of poisoned wine given her by a lover. The heartburn was easily cured by erasing the memory of the poison through her imaging drinking the antidote. We can also recreate our old feelings when we put ourselves in present life situations which resonate. Before therapy, having her current-life lover feed her a tempting morsel had almost choked her, as she could never be quite sure that he wasn’t trying to kill her.
The past life reasons behind present life illness are sometimes dramatic. An elderly lady had suffered from asthma all her life. When she arrived for regression she brought with her not only an inhaler but also a friend who was skilled in resuscitation techniques and had revived her on more than one occasion. In the event, however, neither were needed.
She was guided back through time until she found herself in the Middle Ages acting as a kind of go-between who received the reports from spies and informers and passed these on to the witch-finders. It was something in which she had unwittingly become embroiled and could not then break free. She described herself as an insignificant looking, lonely man. He felt suffocated by what he was doing but could see no way out. If he tried to leave or to protect people, he would be put to trial by his employers as they would assume that he had been bewitched. He wanted to commit suicide but this was a mortal sin and he was too afraid of the consequences.
Eventually the burden became too great to bear and he took a horse and rode off without caring what would happen. He was followed and was stabbed by a sword, which caused him to fall from the horse. The horse then rolled on him, crushing his chest. He died literally unable to breathe and gasped his life away in a most distressing manner that exactly matched an asthma attack. As the elderly lady relived it, the physical symptoms were very real. She gasped and fought for breath, making the most horrendous noises. But, because she was both reliving that life and aware of the present connections, she would assure me from time to time that she was ok. This was not an asthma attack. Knowing that she needed to go through this, I encouraged her to stay with it as she passed through death and into the between life state. There, the trauma fell away. Her breathing quieted, almost to the point of imperceptibility. We cleared the
