As child psychiatrist and past-life researcher Jim B. Tucker, M.D., tells mbg, past life therapy operates from the idea that there is “carry-over from one life to another,” and we all possess “some type of consciousness entity (or in religious terms, a soul) that experiences successive lives.” Some people believe that memories, feelings, and even traumas from past lives can still affect them today. Past life regression expert and author of The Past Life Perspective Ann Barham explains that most of her clients want to explore their past lives in order to resolve issues from previous lifetimes or simply learn more about themselves and the nature of reality in general. “Usually a client comes to me because they have some issue or problem they can’t resolve,” she says, whether it’s within a relationship or an internal struggle. In her work, Barham has seen that learning about past lives can help people “look at what’s been carried forward [into this lifetime] so it can be processed and released,” noting that sometimes, our prior life experiences can affect us in ways we’re not consciously aware of. Barham, who’s been doing past life regression therapy for over 20 years, explains that this can help you identify details about the individual you were, the circumstance of your past life, key events, places where energy or emotions have been blocked or stuck, and even other people in that prior lifetime that may be here now. In a session, you also might be guided through the death of that past life and into the realm between lifetimes, she adds. There, “we can do a life review and look at the lessons [from past lives] and how they might be impacting the person.” Once someone figures out what aspects of their past lives they’re carrying into their present one, she says, “we do additional release work to let go of whatever they’re still carrying from that experience.” In this work, it’s not uncommon to call on higher guidance, whether from a spiritual guide or your higher self. Barham notes her clients will “often get some pretty deep and helpful guidance for the next steps in their current life or an overall message.” Before you get started with any of them, she cautions that you never know what could come up (upsetting memories aren’t off the table) and should proceed slowly and with caution. There are some anecdotal reports of children making claims about past lives and saying accurate things about a period of time they should arguably have no knowledge of—but additional evidence remains elusive. Tucker, the director of the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies, since the late ’90s has been studying children who report past-life memories. And while he finds past life regression therapy interesting, to say the least, he and his colleagues are “quite skeptical of it” and do not recommend it. “Although there is evidence that some young children have memories of a life in the past, such as in the cases we’ve documented in our work at the Division of Perceptual Studies, there is very little to suggest that past-life regression typically connects with an actual life from the past,” Tucker says. So far, the division’s research indicates that while “the subjective experience of reliving a previous life may be impressive to the person having the experience, […] the ‘previous life’ may be a fantasy, like most of our dreams,” and even if past life regression therapy improves various physical or psychological symptoms, it “does not provide evidence that a real previous life has been remembered.”
