Past Life

There was a man lying on my lap. His blood was warm as it seeped through my long skirts. All I could see from my position on the floor was a ring of knee-high leather boots. They were caked with the same mud I had waded through to get to work. The men chanted “Jacobite” over and over again. I felt numb rather than afraid. The wooden floor was hard, but clean, as I had swept it carefully not an hour earlier. The air smelled of ale, leather and the pies I had baked for the customers. Irrelevantly, I visualised slicing the onions and carrots, and mixing the suet pastry. Looking down, I knew Jack was beyond my help or comfort. The spark had gone from his amber eyes. The troop of soldiers sensed it too and began to disperse.

I had always wanted to experience past life regression, but this was beyond anything I had ever imagined. This was real. This engaged all of my senses. It changed my perception of the world.

The opportunity came unexpectedly when I was on a residential course in 1996 in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Two hypnotherapists were attending the course and they offered to do past life regressions one evening. My first time came during a power cut. It was Halloween and the room was lit by candles. I was the second person due to be regressed, but I felt myself slipping into a trance as soon as the first person was being prepared.

“You are walking down a long corridor,” the hypnotherapist began.

“No, I'm not I'm sat under a tree,” I replied.

I was carrying a basket which was full of the walnuts I had been collecting. I walked back to a rough stone cottage with a large rambling rose outside. I can still see the range fire. My mother and brothers were full of love for me.

The life which I experienced took place in Shropshire. The therapist asked me to go further on into the life and suddenly I was walking to work through muddy ruts. I worked in an alehouse, but was far from my stereotype of a barmaid. I was soberly dressed with a lace collar. Then came the dying scene and I recognised the corpse as a former lover in this lifetime.

My second regression was two days after the first. This time I was a nun in a convent. I could see and feel the stones on which I knelt to pray every day. I could remember being given to the nuns by my starving parents. One of my duties was to hand out bread to the poor, I felt the texture of the loaves and smelled their yeasty odour. There was monotonous chanting coming from the chapel. My love was given to the walled garden. A young monk, called Dominic, worked there. He taught me how to harvest seeds and to tend the plants which grew from them. The abbess noticed our friendship and had him sent away. I was still in the nunnery in my 50’s, still tending the garden and mourning the loss of Dominic. I knew by then that he had died years earlier of a fever somewhere in the north. The scents and colours of the flowers and earth were very vivid, as was the itchy wool of my habit.

As a result of these regressions I trained as a hypnotherapist and began a new career. Has anyone else experienced past life regression?