08/01/2025
This is an article I wrote for the online magazine Brainz which should be appearing sometime in the next few days:
Unlocking the Past: The Curious and Healing Power of Past Life Regression Hypnosis
By Michael Jay Berkowitz
What if the stories of your soul stretched far beyond this lifetime?
Past Life Regression (PLR) hypnosis is a journey many embark upon out of sheer curiosity—seeking to discover who they might have been in another time, another place. But for some, it becomes something more: a path to healing emotional pain, breaking lifelong patterns, or even resolving unexplained physical symptoms.
At the crossroads of mystery and therapy, PLR invites us into the deeper waters of consciousness, where memory, imagination, and healing intersect.
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A Psychiatrist Who Opened the Door
The modern resurgence of PLR can be traced back to psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss, author of the best-selling book Many Lives, Many Masters. In the early 1980s, Weiss was treating a patient named Catherine using traditional psychotherapy and hypnotherapy to alleviate debilitating anxiety and phobias.
During one regression, Catherine unexpectedly began describing scenes from what appeared to be a previous life—a time and place that bore no resemblance to her current one. Exploring these memories led to dramatic improvements in her symptoms.
To Weiss’s surprise, one “past life” led to dozens, and with each one, more healing seemed to occur. “The proof,” Weiss later wrote, “was in the cure.”
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My Journey Into Past Life Regression
Once I became certified as a hypnotherapist, it seemed every time I told someone what I did, they would ask if I offered Past Life Regression. We had touched on the subject in training and even experienced group regressions, but I hadn’t seriously considered practicing it.
After being asked so many times, I decided to explore it further. Around this time, my wife and I moved to Woodstock, NY, near the world-famous Omega Institute, where Brian Weiss teaches his annual PLR workshop. My wife—already a trained hypnotist—attended the intensive training first.
During practice at Omega, she regressed a fellow student suffering from chronic back pain for over 30 years. Under regression, the woman recalled a life as a young girl in early 20th-century who had been run down by a horse-drawn cart, leaving her permanently crippled, encased in an iron body brace. Because she was both a female child and unable to move on her own, she became essentially an object, talked over and moved around by adults, never being able to express a will of her own. She remained in constant pain until her early death at age 11. When she emerged from trance, her back pain was gone and she had new understanding into her lifelong sense of unworthiness.
This experience fascinated me. I dove in fully: I read every book I could find on the subject, attended certification training at an international hypnosis conference, and began running group and individual regressions. By the end of my first year, I had conducted more than 100 regressions, many resulting in life-changing breakthroughs for my clients.
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What Happens in a PLR Session?
A PLR session typically begins with a gentle hypnotic induction to help the client relax deeply. We might regress through childhood memories, then to the womb just before birth, before asking the subconscious mind to guide us further back into a past life that might hold relevance to the person’s current challenges.
Clients usually describe vivid impressions: landscapes, homes, clothing, people, even emotions. At the end of each life, they often experience a “life review” and may enter a space between lives, where they receive insight and guidance.
Not everyone sees cinematic visions; some simply “know” or sense what is happening. Others receive metaphoric stories. The goal is not to prove reincarnation but to allow the subconscious mind to bring forward meaningful material for healing.
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Client Stories: Transformation Beyond Time
One of my first PLR clients was a delicately-built gay man in his mid-40s who had been diagnosed with a chronic illness. We had already used traditional hypnosis to eliminate most of his physical symptoms, but some stubbornly persisted. I suggested PLR to see if the roots lay deeper.
We regressed him first into happy memories from early childhood and then to the womb, where he recalled choosing to come into his family “to bring them happiness.” Then we moved further back, into two powerful past lives.
At first, he perceived himself to be a warrior king in a medieval kingdom. Initially, he could see nothing around him. He could only hear distant voices echoing in the darkness. Gradually, the image of a cavern emerged, filled with his soldiers resting after battle, their wounds being tended by the women of the camp. He remembered being thrown from his horse, dragged painfully by the stirrup, and escaping into the forest before returning to his men. When they saw him alive, the joy and loyalty he felt from them was overwhelming. Later, on his deathbed surrounded by family, he was given a potion to ease his pain and then ascended into a “between-life” space, where a golden figure told him he was loved and that his journey wasn’t over.
In the second life, he was a tall, well-built, muscular gay man living a glamorous life in Cinque Terre, Italy, in the early 20th century. He remembered wine-soaked dinners with friends under grape arbors, swimming in the ocean, and the unconditional love of a soul mate who died young. That lifetime, in stark contrast to the bullying and shame and physical weakness he had endured in his current life, gave him a sense of pride and wholeness he had never known.
These experiences profoundly changed how he saw himself. He carried the strength of the warrior king and the confidence of the Italian aristocrat into his current life. Five years later, he told me the changes were still with him—he was more self-assured, more loving toward his family, and far more comfortable in his own skin.
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Details That Validate the Experience
Some PLR experiences even bring verifiable details.
A client from Great Britain came to me searching for life direction. He had a degree in religious studies but was unsure of his career path. We regressed him through several lifetimes, most of which involved a strong connection to religion.
One life in particular stood out: he was a young woman in Sweden in the late 1800s. He described sitting in a dimly lit classroom, frustrated that he was barred from studying theology because of her gender. She longed to make a difference but died in her 50s, still regretting that she had never followed her true calling.
We then visited an even earlier life in ancient Crete, where he was a priestess preparing a festival for a goddess. He described in detail the temple courtyard adorned with flowers, the rhythmic drumming, the ceremonial offerings laid out with great care. In that lifetime, unlike the one in Sweden, she died fulfilled, having carried out his sacred duties to the end.
After our session, he was able to research many of the details of his life in Sweden in historical records—names, dates, and the very restrictions on women’s education he had described—and found uncanny matches. The validation strengthened his belief that his current calling in the field of religion was part of a soul-level pattern he had carried through lifetimes.
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Other Stories of Release and Healing
Another client struggling with gender dysphoria remembered being a young boy in 19th-century Italy. He was taken from his family by the church to be castrated so his beautiful singing voice would be preserved for the choir. He rose to fame as a celebrated singer, but his true love was forbidden. Eventually, he ran away with his nobleman partner and spent the rest of his life living disguised as the man’s wife.
In a post-session discussion, they revealed they’d never heard of castrati, who were fairly common in Italian church choirs before the last century. (The Vatican banned castrati in 1903, and the last known castrato, Alberto Moreschi, died in 1922.) Reviewing this lifetime shed light on the client’s current struggles with gender identity and helped them feel more whole.
One woman with chronic financial difficulties recalled a past life as a Mother Superior in a French convent who had taken a vow of poverty. At the end of that life, surrounded by the other nuns—three of whom she recognized as people in her current life—we helped her release that vow. Soon after, she found unexpected success in business.
Another client’s session revealed an extraordinary birth memory. While regressing to the womb, she described seeing a light bulb exploding at the moment of her birth. Curious, she texted her mother during the session, who was shocked and confirmed that a bulb had indeed exploded in the delivery room—a detail she had never told anyone.
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What Experts Say About PLR
Brian Weiss isn’t the only expert to study past-life memories.
• Ian Stevenson, founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, best known for his forty years of international research, in which he amassed three thousand cases of children who claimed to remember past lives. In many cases, these memories were able to be proven true.
• Dolores Cannon, author of Between Death and Life, spent over 40 years exploring PLR and “between-life” states, documenting themes of soul groups and life purpose.
• Michael Newton, a clinical psychologist, wrote Journey of Souls, based on thousands of regressions, mapping what he believed to be the stages of existence between incarnations.
• Carol Bowman, known for her research into children’s spontaneous past-life memories, has shown that these recollections can resolve phobias and traumas even in very young children.
While mainstream psychology remains cautious, these authors’ work, combined with countless anecdotal accounts, suggests that PLR can be a powerful therapeutic tool.
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Healing Through the Subconscious
You don’t need to believe in reincarnation to benefit from PLR. Some clients view the experiences as metaphorical creations of the subconscious, which can still lead to profound healing.
As Brian Weiss often says, “Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, these experiences can be therapeutic, liberating, and transformative.”
I’ve seen clients release lifelong pain, gain new confidence, and even transform their relationships after PLR. For many, the process is a reminder that we are more than our current circumstances—that we are capable of change at the deepest levels.
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A Journey Worth Taking
Ultimately, Past Life Regression is about expanding the story of who we are. It invites us to see life through a larger lens, one that honors the mysteries of consciousness and the incredible capacity of the mind to heal.
Whether you discover yourself as a medieval healer, a Renaissance artist, or simply uncover a symbolic story that shifts your perspective, you may emerge changed.
And that, perhaps, is the real magic of Past Life Regression.
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