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How to run Past Life Regressions

by Bob Makransky

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“We manufacture whatever immortal souls we have out of the bits of difference we make by living in this world.” - Sue Hubbell, The Sweet Bees

Running past life regressions is a good way to introduce yourself to the practice of magic. It’s so simple to learn that you can easily master the basic method in less than an hour’s time; yet it is so far-reaching in its ramifications that a few months of playing around with it for an hour or so every night can completely transform your life.

Most of us New Agers believe in the reality of past lives, even though we can’t actually remember them. We embrace this doctrine because it seems logical: it explains the vicissitudes of our present existence as the patterns and choices we ourselves made in other lives. The ability to actually remember past lives seems to be the possession of a fortunate few, like Edgar Cayce, who are born with mysterious psychic powers far beyond our reach. But in fact, the ability to recall past lives can be easily learned by anybody – all that is required is an open mind. And there are incalculable insights (and surprises!) that await the adventurer willing to explore these byways of his or her own subconscious.

The entry technique here is adapted from William Swygard’s excellent booklets on Awareness Techniques. Choose a time when you are calm, alert, and will not be disturbed. If you are an astrologer, you can use a lunar planetary hour; however this is merely a help, not a necessity. Have a notebook and pen (or tape recorder) at hand. Remove your shoes, loosen any restrictive clothing, and lie down on your bed. Take some deep breaths, and then put your attention on your toes and relax them with a deep breath. Move up to your feet and relax them with a breath; then relax your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, and so on up to your head.

Then take a deep breath and imagine yourself swelling up like a balloon to twice your volume; then release the breath and imagine returning to normal size. After you’ve succeeded at this, take a breath and imagine yourself inflating and filling the entire room; then return. When you can do this, take a deep breath and imagine yourself engulfing the entire house; then return. Next, take a breath and swell up until you are bigger than the house and float upwards into the sky. Look down as you rise and imagine you are seeing the house, the neighborhood, the surrounding countryside, as if from an ascending balloon.

Then command yourself to descend lightly back to earth in another lifetime. Look down at your feet; how are you shod? Look at your clothes; what are you wearing? Look around you; what kind of place are you in? Are there any other people around you? Who are they? What are they doing? What time or country does it seem to be? What are you doing in the scene? Why are you there? You concern yourself with these sorts of questions until you feel you’re plugged into the past life; then you just let the thing flow and take you where it will.

When you first come down the scene will be fuzzy at first. You look at your feet, then your clothing, then your environment, to put the pieces of the picture into place. You ask questions of the regression to connect yourself to it – to make that life vivid and bring it into focus. For me (who is not especially psychic) regressions are rather murky; I can’t usually make out faces clearly, nor colors unless they’re very bright. You see the regression with your mind’s eye, but it’s more felt than seen – more like a series of emotional tableaux than a movie. You usually only hit the high points of a given life; you don’t see all the day-to-day routine. It’s not unlike a daydream or fantasy, except you soon realize that something other than your conscious mind is running it, and that something is your feelings. The experience will be more or less vivid depending on how much you block it. Don’t judge the experience (by thinking, for example, “This isn’t real – this is just my imagination!”). Just let it happen; if you want to evaluate it, wait until it’s over. This is not an exercise for your conscious mind, so tell your conscious mind to butt out and keep its judgments to itself.

(excerpted from Bob Makransky’s book The Great Wheel)

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at: www.dearbrutus.com
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