A Typical Regression Session

A Typical Regression Session
by Ana Paula Miranda, DMP Practitioner

When a client seeks me, as a regression therapist, I usually start the session with an interview, with the goal of finding out what the recurring problems are and to explain that the regression technique is used as tool within a therapeutic process and not as mere curiosity.

In a second moment, I ask the client to tell his/her personal history, starting at birth, observing the occurrence of diseases and emotional disturbances, so that I can identify relevant facts.

Lying down, with eyes closed, after a simple relaxation exercise, the client is encouraged to say everything that comes to mind, while trying to stay open to whatever may appear on his/her own mental screen. As soon as the images, words and feelings become more intense, I suggest that he/she follows them so that a story - from this or from another life - may present itself. In this situation, religious faith or belief in reincarnation do not matter, one should just allow the story to manifest itself, as if it were real, during the time of that session.

It is very possible that the client sees herself in a body and with a personality very different from his own, or present one. Following the principles of psychodrama, the client is encouraged to relive, in its fullness, the most important and decisive moments of that other life, whichever they may be, even if they seem confusing and incoherent. He/she is then driven to its consummation, so that this memory is relived in the level of the physical conscience. Here a number of physical sensations may arise such as numbness, heat, cold, paralysis, tingling or shakes, because these are all part of the somatic process of spontaneous release, in other words, they express the release of blocked energy which was associated to an old trauma. It is the same principle successfully used with victims of war neurosis, according to which it is only possible to free oneself from a trauma by recalling it.

It is necessary to go through the memory of a story until the moment of death of that specific personality, because this is the only way to attain the feeling of consummation and of distancing. The death transition provides an opportunity to free oneself of thoughts, feelings and pains. It is in the after death period - the Bardo, as defined by Tibetan Buddhists - that one has the valuable opportunity to contemplate and reflect over the themes of that past life and its unresolved problems, in order to integrate them with more consciousness.

At times there are painful and sometimes even shameful aspects of the self which will have to be confronted. Roger Woolger says this is the elaboration of the shadow, in the Jungian perspective, which means that one must face these negative and unpleasant characteristics and not to further repress them.

The session usually takes about two hours to cover the three stages of the process: interview, intensive work, reflection and recovery. In the next step these experiences are incorporated to that person's therapeutic process as a whole, with the intention of having more data and more proximity of the themes that emerged. This method is quite different from others which, in spite of taking longer, don't involve the person in terms of experiences and, in the end, only work in the intellectual and interpretative levels.

I firmly believe that mental, emotional and somatic releases are irrefutably indispensable for a complete healing process.

To Learn More about Deep Memory Process we Recommend:

• Roger J. Woolger. Other Lives, Other Selves, Bantam, New York, 1990.
• Roger J. Woolger. Eternal Return (6 tapes), Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado, 1999
• Roger J. Woolger. "Body Psychotherapy and Regression: the Body Remembers Past Lives" in Tree Staunton (ed). Body Psychotherapy. Routlege, London, 2002.