In a Past Life, I Was …

I was… I don’t know. In this life, it turns out I am hard to hypnotize. Or, at least I think I am. Actually, I am not sure…

(recall that on Friday I announced I would be hypnotized over the weekend and taken through past-life regression)

The Pre-Show

So, I get there early so I can view some videos about hypnosis. They were pretty interesting, and gave me a better idea of what hypnosis really is. They describe practically any kind of trance-like state as a form of hypnosis, like if you zone out while driving, or if you get into a deep meditative state. They talk about four “layers of consciousness” and essentially what they are for, and how hypnosis alters them.

Since I’m there early, I suggest we try it before the audience arrives. The therapist agrees. The method used to induce hypnosis (at least by this guy) was basically progressive relaxation, coupled with authoritative suggestions spoken with an unusual cadence. I’m trying to focus on his voice, and I’m telling myself that I want to allow him to alter my mental state. But, my brain just wasn’t cooperating. He’d say “your eyes are relaxed, your left eye your right eye your left eyelid your right eyelid…” with a strange lilt, and I’d be thinking “ah, so the unusual timing is supposed to create slight confusion, just like I’ve seen Derren Brown do.” Or when he says “you’re at the top of a stair case, and with each step down you will be further relaxed,” I was thinking “that self-hypnosis book I read in grade school used this technique.” And on and on.

But, I’m trying to be a good candidate, and I am essentially meditating and trying not to get caught up in my own observations. And, in the process I did get very relaxed. He started suggesting that I was looking at my 5th grade teacher, my 3rd grade teacher, on down, and I was surprised that in most cases I could pull up a vivid picture of them. Even sitting here now, I can’t do that.

I will have to try that image recall thing next time I meditate for a while. The problem with doing that, though, is that in the process of deciding it’s time to start, and deciding what image to pull up, I will probably have pulled myself out of the meditative state I’d need to be in. I guess that’s why self-hypnosis people make tapes.

Pre-Show, Part II

Well, in the videos he showed me, it said to trust your therapist to know if you were actually hypnotized or not. Fair enough… I told him I wasn’t sure at all that it had worked. He said, “well, I could see some things,” and he didn’t go on to say what those things were, or what they meant to him. But, he said we’d try again.

So, we go again, and I am more relaxed this time, but I still feel pretty much like I’m in a light meditative state. This time, he does the “all the joints in your arm are locked” bit. And he says “even if you tried, you could not move your arm,” to which my brain replied “actually, I think I can.” Bad sign! I moved my arm. Worse sign! He did it again, and though I could still move my arm, it did feel more difficult. By this time, I was feeling tingling in my hands and feet. I’ve read people often feel that when they are hypnotized. I’ve also gone through this tingly phase as a step when trying astral projection. But that’s another story. So, was I under hypnosis at this point, then?

Next, he put my hands together, and told me that they were glued together, and that I could not pull them apart. But, I was able to. When I started to move my hands, he pushed them back together and told me again that they were glued together. I pulled them apart again. So, was I not under hypnosis, then?

Pre-Show, Part III

There’s not time to try again, as people are starting to file in. Further, because of this, he’s not interested in discussing with me how well (or not) the second session went. My feeling was that it went pretty poorly, given my flexible arms and free hands. The guests are like 20 feet away on the other side of the room, and he goes off to greet them and talk to them. He gives me a bottle of water and tells me to relax until we start.

So, he’s off with the guests far away from me, and I figure the best thing I can do is meditate. It felt like at least half an hour that I sat there, and we had already been doing the progressive relaxation thing. So, by the time they came over to me to start the presentation, I felt freaking incredible. I had that extreme peaceful glowing feeling that you can get (if you don’t meditate, and even if you do, you may not know what this is like… but it’s amazing).

During most of my time sitting, I was disengaged from everyone’s conversation… you don’t tune them out so much as you reduce their words to sounds. Hard to explain. Anyway, before I got to that point, I heard the therapist telling them that he had just had me in a pretty deep hypnosis, and that he thought this was going to go very well. Did he mean that, or was he putting on a show for the audience, or did he want me to hear that so that I would believe I was under? I had no idea.

The Show

So they all come over, and I’m feeling awesome, if not a little drugged. I didn’t even say anything to the group… I just sat there smiling like a doofus. I was very happy. It helped that my glasses were off and I couldn’t really see them as anything but people-shaped blobs.

We go through a similar process to before to put me “under.” This time, I noted he steered clear of the physical stuff which I seemed to be able to thwart every time. I felt like the fact that I could note that was probably a bad sign. Shouldn’t I be enthralled, or something? I don’t know.

We get to the point where it’s time to take me to a past life. He says that there’s an event from a past life that has an important lesson for me (earlier he told me I could choose a very happy time, or other choices, but I decided to go with “important lesson”). He said I should go back to that important time now. I waited a second for the suggestion to kick in, but nothing seemed to be happening.

I decided that I wasn’t going to make something up… that just didn’t seem right. But, then, I had a pretty vivid vision. This will happen during meditation, and you’re just supposed to watch it as if it’s nothing. Happily, this wasn’t an abstract or supernatural-looking image. So… I described it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a very exciting image, either. It was just a bunch of leaves. But, the therapist stepped in and helped guide me to fill out the description. Remember, I made a decision not to make stuff up. But, the therapist would ask “can you see your hands?” and suddenly there would be hands in the picture. I would describe them. He would ask further questions, and my mental picture would mostly oblige him.

Now, during this time, I have the distinct impression that this is probably not a past life memory. I was happy that this vision I was having didn’t have too many details to it… nothing that would need me to embellish it. He asked my name, and, determined not to create fiction, I waited for my imagination to throw me a bone spontaneously. I came up with a name (Sean Tully, if you care). When he tried to get me to go other places, my imagination mostly didn’t oblige. When it did go somewhere else, I kept it to myself, because I really wanted a limited-scope presentation.

I don’t know, maybe I should have just gone with it and described everything I saw. Maybe I would have been surprised. I mean, maybe that’s what hypnosis is… where my brain pulls up stuff the therapist asks for. But, I didn’t really feel like I was under his control, or whatever.

He got me to say the year by asking me for the digits one at a time. I said the first numbers that came to mind.

The Past Life

So, when all was said and done, I had described a middle-aged man with cracked, blistered hands, out in a field with a lot of leaves on the ground. He is near a run-down house with fire coming out of the chimney. Early on, he was using a hoe or a small shovel and I think he was trying to bury a doll. I kept seeing a broken doll. And I kept looking up to see the house, and I kept looking up to see a tree. Also, there was a dog nearby, whose name I didn’t know. It was the fall of 1875 and my name was Sean Tully.

The Post-Show Discussion

The audience ate it up. Even though I had said very little, they commented that I had painted a very vivid picture. They decided I was dead in the field… that’s why I kept looking up, and that’s why I couldn’t seem to move. Since it was 1875, they got the idea I was a former slave (they were assuming I was in America, I guess) near some run-down living quarters. They decided it wasn’t my dog, since I didn’t know the name. They mostly ignored the doll, since that didn’t really fit into their story. They went back and forth over whether I was buried there, or just out in the field, dead.

Some of the audience had been through past-life regression before, and had witnessed others. None of them seemed to think my case was unusual. I even referred to the fact that I wasn’t sure if what happened was normal several times, and none of them said anything doubtful or negative about it.

So, did I have a real past-life regression? Is that what it’s supposed to be? If so, are all the visions I sit through when in deep meditation also past-life regression? There are two main schools of thought on these regressions. One is, you have past lives and you remember them. The other is, your subconscious/unconscious mind produce imagery to symbolically help you work through issues. Did I have either flavor, or none? So confusing!

After a while, the group had split up and we were still discussing. I overheard the therapist saying that he could tell I was under deep hypnosis because my eyes were rolled way up, and “other things” he didn’t specify. I often do the eye thing, though, as part of meditation (it’s part of a “third-eye” technique I use a lot). So, still, no real confirmation.

After everyone had left, I stayed back. I thought maybe when we were alone the therapist would thank me for going through the motions even though I wasn’t hypnotized. But, he didn’t. I asked if he thought it went well, and he seemed completely pleased. In fact, he reminded me that if I remember more things from the session, I should email that to him and he would forward it to the audience (apparently, it’s common to remember more details after the session).

The Audio

He gave me a CD of the entire session, all on one track. The sound was pretty horrible, but you can mostly make it out (the part I listened to, anyway). I may try to cut it down to something more reasonable in length later this week. And if I do, I’ll post that, if anyone is interested.