The past few weeks, I have been receiving requests for past-life hypnotic regression.

Some are just curious. They want to know who they were, which is not a good reason.

Others, especially women, are confused and don’t know what to do—after developing a strong attraction to someone. This is made more complicated if one or both parties are married to someone else.

Then there are those who want regression because of some phobia they could not explain, such as fear of heights or of an enclosed place.

Past-life regression is a mental process or technique where one is guided to a memory of past lives, to understand what triggered present problems or issues.

One man, for example, could not explain his immediate hatred of a guy in his office, from the time he met him.

Uncontrolled jerking

Put under the supervision of the guy he hated, the man developed an uncontrolled backward jerking of his head. His condition was diagnosed as a pinched nerve.

His wife suggested that he undergo regression. It turned out that in a past-life encounter, the other guy killed him by hacking his neck with a bolo.

After he was told this, his jerking movement disappeared. His condition was triggered by a past life memory, not by a medical problem.

Since not everybody can be hypnotized (experts say only 70 percent can), not everyone who undergoes regression can see the past clearly.

The word “hypnosis” is problematic. Most people have a wrong notion of it. They associate it with magicians who hypnotize a subject and make him or her walk like a duck or bark like a dog. The hypnotist apparently controls the mind of the subject.

Nothing like that happens in a past-life regression. The subject remains in control of his or her mental faculties, but enters a state of profound relaxation, although still awake.

The subject can accept or reject anything the hypnotherapist tells him. It is like daydreaming—knowing about the present yet a part of the mind becomes aware of past events.

What a person sees or experiences during regression depends on the subconscious mind. And the subject comes back to the present life because he or she never left.

Past-life hypnotic regression is very safe in the hands of a trained hypnotherapist. Don’t let an untrained person do regression on you, because there could be risks.

For example, the hypnotist may make unwanted or unintended posthypnotic suggestion. He or she may not know what to do when a hypnotized subject remembers a traumatic incident in a past life, and becomes emotionally agitated.

What a person sees or experiences during regression, only he or she will see, no one else. After his regression, I discuss with him what he experienced, and we try to connect any random information or scenery in the past to the present life.

To succeed in regression, the person must remain relaxed and passive. I guide him or her to this state. That’s when the subject enters an altered state of consciousness, a light, hypnotic state.

One need not go into deep hypnosis to see one’s past life or lives. There are instances when the hypnotized subject sees as many as four or five past lives.

How to know that one is not merely making up scenes in a past life? During a hypnotic state, what a person sees comes from the subconscious mind and not from the imagination.

However, it is possible that the subject may really be making things up. For example, seeing oneself as an important historical or famous person, like Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Jose Rizal or Mary Magdalene, that’s almost surely a fantasy.

It’s more believable if the subject thinks he or she is a farmer or ordinary employee in a past life, rather than an emperor or queen.

Years of doing past-life regression have made me notice that Filipinos usually saw themselves as foreigners, or living in a foreign land. And foreigners I have regressed see themselves as Filipinos.

Some scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists have dismissed past-life regression as unscientific. But many studies have reported its value for uncovering causes of present problems.

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