My "Past Life Regression," London.

I am lying down and begin to be aware of my breath. I imagine that I see a large house out in the country. I am led into this house and see myself at the top of ten wide and safe steps leading downwards to the large front door. As Doug (the therapist) counts down from 10, I am to follow his lead and take each step down towards the door, feeling 10% more relaxed with each passing step. At the bottom I open the door and see a large space with trees and grass and a fountain. I walk toward the fountain and Doug suggests I find a chair. I sit and look up into the bright day sky. I see many clouds and notice a distinct one larger than the rest coming toward me. It engulfs me and whips me up into the sky moving back towards the house of whenst I came. I pick up speed, moving faster and faster. Following Doug's suggestion, I am asked to recollect a past life.

Darkness.. silence.

Doug asks me to look at my feet. I see a scrawny pair, naked from the waist down. I stand in a dark room and the floor seems/feels grimy under my feet. I try to see what is around me and I imagine reaching out with my left hand touching a cold, stoney wall through the darkness. I find a similar wall on the left. Everything is very dark, but I make out a passageway/corridor and follow it. I see light coming from the top left of my hindered vision, walk up stairs leading to it, and open an underground cellar type door allowing myself to be bathed in sunlight. My eyes have not adjusted, and I can only make out the bottom of tree trunks and grass that surround the cellar doors. This is one point in many where I doubt my regressive 'experience.' Doug presses onwards. "What is going on now?" or "What do you see?" I imagine myself standing on the higher steps of the cellar with my waist above ground level. It takes many moments to try to see my surroundings, doubt and skepticism reigning over my thought processes. With much difficulty I step out of the cellar and start running towards the trees. At this point, I step out of my "body" and see myself as an 'art dummy' in a running stance. When asked, I interpreted this to mean a sort of tabula rasa (blank canvas) for my life.

Darkness.. silence.

Doug prompts me to go to another past life. I vaguely see the top part of an arch. It's greyish-white and made from big chunks of lumpy stone. I walk through it and find a large sqauare space/room/chamber. It has similar archways on the opposite side, right and left. 3 or 4 steps leading down to a lower level with a raised circular basin/container with clear blue water. I look into the basin and I think I see a light-haired female in the reflection. I look down and see on my body a thick brown robe/skirt, and think that I must be a nun or priest of some sort in a monastary because the space I am in is imbued with a deep sense of peace. I dip my right hand in the water and move it gently back and forth, making a serene sound with the waves it produces. I walk around the basin once and when nothing happens, attempt to walk through the archway on the right. I am unable to do this and feel that I'm not supposed to.

Upon suggestion, I am brought back to the life-end point of my first past life - scrawny man running into forest. I see a wooden texture in front of me, it's dark. I reach out to feel it. I am lying in a coffin, but am not dead. Doug asks me to go to the final moment of this life. I struggle and find no experiences arising. Even though a normal reaction of being alive in a buried coffin would freak anyone out, my breathing was normal and there was no sign of panic. Maybe in this life I knew that the life-force never dies, and that there was nothing to fear. Or that this imagining was completely artificially made up by my mind with obviously nothing to fear. I wasn't sure.

The longer I stayed "under," the more frustrated I got. Doug attempts several other methods and questions to keep the session moving, but I only got more uncomfortable and frustrated. I wanted to just sit up and end the session as I had had enough.

I came away from this experience initially discouraged. I had come into this hoping to substatiate and confirm my suspicions of reincarnation and perhaps rediscover some explainations of my personality. Instead, I felt no relief from the "therapy." I felt like I was creating my experiences more than recollecting memories of past lives. Plans to study hypnosis and past life regression therapy in Singapore in august is thwarted because of my own underwhelming experience. At this point, I am uninspired and it would be inauthentic for me to pursue this avenue of alternative healing as a profession. But when one door shuts, another opens..