Curious About Previous Lifetimes? What To Know About Past Life Regression Therapy

Past life therapy presupposes reincarnation, the concept that our soul or consciousness lives on through multiple lifetimes.

As child psychiatrist and past-life researcher Jim B. Tucker, M.D., tells mbg, past life therapy operates from the idea that there is "carry-over from one life to another," and we all possess "some type of consciousness entity (or in religious terms, a soul) that experiences successive lives."

Some people believe that memories, feelings, and even traumas from past lives can still affect them today. Past life regression expert and author of The Past Life Perspective Ann Barham explains that most of her clients want to explore their past lives in order to resolve issues from previous lifetimes or simply learn more about themselves and the nature of reality in general.

"Usually a client comes to me because they have some issue or problem they can't resolve," she says, whether it's within a relationship or an internal struggle.

When you receive a past life regression therapy session, the therapist guides you into a relaxed state (not unlike hypnosis) and prompts you to recall memories from your past lives.

Barham, who's been doing past life regression therapy for over 20 years, explains that this can help you identify details about the individual you were, the circumstance of your past life, key events, places where energy or emotions have been blocked or stuck, and even other people in that prior lifetime that may be here now.

In a session, you also might be guided through the death of that past life and into the realm between lifetimes, she adds.

There, "we can do a life review and look at the lessons [from past lives] and how they might be impacting the person." Once someone figures out what aspects of their past lives they're carrying into their present one, she says, "we do additional release work to let go of whatever they're still carrying from that experience."

According to Barham, doing past life regression work on yourself is very different from going through a guided session. However, there are some strategies that she believes can help you tap into your inner knowing and potentially a past life memory, which she outlines in her book.

As with most gnostic disciplines, past life regression therapy (and even the idea of past lives in general) isn't supported by modern science.

There are some anecdotal reports of children making claims about past lives and saying accurate things about a period of time they should arguably have no knowledge of—but additional evidence remains elusive.

Tucker, the director of the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies, since the late '90s has been studying children who report past-life memories. And while he finds past life regression therapy interesting, to say the least, he and his colleagues are "quite skeptical of it" and do not recommend it.

"Although there is evidence that some young children have memories of a life in the past, such as in the cases we've documented in our work at the Division of Perceptual Studies, there is very little to suggest that past-life regression typically connects with an actual life from the past," Tucker says.