What is regression therapy? Does it help with health problems or is it even dangerous?

Psychologist Roland Schroll has delved deep into the subject. He experienced it first hand and later began to work with it. Here he shares his insights.

Regression therapy, also known as past life regression therapy or hypnotic regression, is a way of tapping into the subconscious (and/or the superconscious) to heal the body and mind. Research has confirmed its effectiveness. Yet many people are reluctant to try this new healing method. With good reason?

Some quick answers: Regression therapy takes us back to the roots of our problems. It heals old wounds and frees us from the shackles of our past. A few sessions are often enough to bring about lasting change. Past life regression therapy and inner child work are part of the regression therapy repertoire.

Under the guidance of a grounded and well-trained therapist, there is no danger of going back in time to explore and reactivate forgotten potentials. I will also provide you with a list of qualified therapists so that you can experience this method first hand.

1. Regression Therapy – Experiences

You may be wondering whether regression therapy is right for you and what you are getting into if you try it. Firstly, the list of physical and emotional symptoms that can be treated is long. Through regression we can work on clinically diagnosed depression, or something seemingly trivial like a chronic runny nose, or something physical like a long-term heart problem.

The success of the healing depends less on the symptoms and more on our willingness and openness to this new way of working. A few testimonials from my clients and some colleagues will give you an insight into our work:

Inner Child Work – A doctor without a private life

A client comes into the office complaining that he is unable to relate to other people. He reports anxiety and even panic in certain situations. He also feels cut off from his feelings and emotions most of the time.

Trisha Caentano – a well known colleague of mine – started working with him and helped him to focus his awareness on the current mood. A kind of trance began to develop. The next step was to begin a journey back to the source of his suffering.

The journey took them directly into a childhood situation and they began with classic inner child work. He sees himself as a schoolboy who has just won a prize for his watercolour. He shows this picture to his father, but he tears it up, saying: “Forget art. You will be a doctor and nothing else”.

These words made a deep impression on the boy: He became a doctor – and nothing else. Inner Child work helps to heal the boy’s past, strengthening him and freeing him from the father’s dominance and imprints. For the first time in his life, the client was able to relax deeply and learn to see the world with new eyes. Joy guided his steps and personal contact no longer seemed impossible.

Free from attachments – a teenage girl with suicidal thoughts

A 16-year-old schoolgirl is brought to my practice by her parents. The parents tell me that their daughter has had suicidal thoughts for more than two years, which have led her to commit dangerous acts.

Dozens of therapists have seen her, but without success. I helped the young woman to go into trance and connect with her soul consciousness. We discovered a strange energy, a dark cloud that seemed to live on the right side of her body.

It turns out to be an obsessive, traumatised soul that has been wandering around without its deceased body and has finally taken up residence in my client.

This soul was a young man who died as a soldier in the Second World War. His death was sudden. His consciousness could not process what had happened. The horror of war was still in his system and therefore in the system of my young client.

We healed the young soldier, made him aware of his death and guided him back to his soul light in the beyond. From then on, my client’s dark thoughts were gone and she was able to live a joyful life again.

Past life regression – cancer from a distant past

The following example is a report by my colleague and good friend Dr Natwar Sharma. I like to use this case as an illustration because the connections are quite obvious.

A woman with leukaemia (blood cancer) met my colleague. She believed that her illness had something to do with past life experiences. In the session, with the therapist’s help, she was able to enter a level of consciousness in which the life forces of her body were revealed. She discovers a kind of grey matter hovering just above her body.

The grey matter is removed and personified (brought into human form). It transforms into a man who had been her son in a previous life. The son had poisoned his mother over an inheritance dispute. The shock of this old memory was still deeply engraved in the client’s soul. Her flesh and blood had turned against her – and still does in the form of leukaemia.

Reincarnation therapy enabled her to understand the reason for her illness and to release the emotional undigested burden of a long forgotten past. The result was a reduction in the number of blood transfusions she needed, and this unexpected recovery gave her life a new lease of life.

Homing – feeling lost on planet earth

For as long as he can remember, my client has had a strong feeling of homelessness and ‘not wanting to be here’. He could not explain why he had this particular feeling and where it came from. There were no childhood traumas and he was leading a healthy and successful life.

Until now he had been able to suppress these feelings by listening to music and daydreaming, but the new challenge of becoming a father forced him to confront his reality more intensely.

We travel back in time to find the reason for these feelings of homelessness. In the trance state, my client sees himself sitting in a kind of spaceship flying at high speed close to the surface of planet Earth.

When asked what he was doing, he said: “Gathering information, but it’s dangerous”.
Indeed, something unexpected happens. The ship loses its bearings and crashes into a rock face. His comrades on the mothership are unable to come to his aid.

His body, slightly larger than a human, dies, but his old soul wanders on, lost on a strange planet. He later reincarnates as a human and joins many families. But the deep feeling of being far from home remains with him all these years.

We clean up, salvage his ship, call his colleague and let his soul travel back to his home planet. Tears of relief run down the man’s cheeks. For so long his soul had longed for this experience of connection and home. Having merged with this force of his interplanetary former self, he felt ready to face the challenges of becoming a young father.

2. Regression Therapy – Therapists

Not everyone who advertises online that they offer regression therapy or past life regression has the necessary experience and techniques to carry out the transformation processes we have just mentioned. Some therapists are content to relive the traumatising situation. However, this is no longer sufficient for a full healing effect.

Two international associations set very high standards for therapists, thus ensuring quality. The fastest growing association is the Earth Association for Regression Therapy, or EARTh for short. Here you will find therapists mainly from Europe, the USA and India. But there are also therapists from Kenya, China and South American countries such as Brazil and Chile.

The co-founder of EARTh is my teacher Dr Hans TenDam, who runs the international therapy school Tasso international. I can therefore highly recommend all members of EARTh as therapists. However, if you would like to book a session with me and live far away or abroad, we can arrange an online session.

Another qualified association is the International Board for Regression Therapy, or IBRT for short. It is based in the USA and its work is mainly limited to the American continent.

3. Regression Therapy – Criticism

For a long time regression therapy was considered unscientific and ignored by conventional medicine and psychology. It is difficult to conduct research in this area using traditional methods of investigation. However, the first attempts were made 50 years ago by psychologist Hellen Wambach and through the work of Dr Ian Stevenson.

Wambach and Stevenson looked for historical evidence of their clients’ and subjects’ experiences and found a surprising number of matches. Stevenson was able to verify more than 1200 out of 2500 past life memories from children all over the world.

However, the aim of regression therapy is not to prove historical facts, but to alleviate suffering. It is therefore irrelevant whether or not one believes in reincarnation or the transmigration of souls. What counts is the transformative change in our clients.

4. Regression Therapy – Costs

The cost of regression therapy varies from therapist to therapist, but is somewhere between €80-140 per hour. I arrange three sessions with my clients, about 2-4 weeks apart. Assuming an average of one and a half hours per session and an hourly rate of €120, the total cost of the therapy is only €540.

5. Regression therapy & hypnosis or hypnotic regression

In the early days of trance work, therapists used hypnotic suggestions to induce regression therapy. Since then, however, regression therapy has evolved and more elegant and direct ways of inducing trance have been discovered.

For example, focusing on the feelings and corresponding physical somatics can initiate the regression process more quickly and to the point.

6. Do I need to feel what happened in my past?

In the beginning, hypnotic regression and past life regression therapy were all about remembering and understanding the past. We cannot get rid of all the burdens and impressions on our soul by getting only faint impressions. We have to RELIVE the situation. We need to make our body remember (not just our mind), reactivate the charges in our cells and then release them once and for all.

In fact, past life information is stored in our deepest tissues. As the healing process begins and the charges leave us, we experience a deep transformation, usually accompanied by the release of silent tears. We call this process of transformation katharsis. If there is no katharsis in a session, there may be no deep healing.

In reliving, we re-experience the situation only to the extent that is sufficient for our healing. Natural regression is not child’s play, and in overcoming our old pain we make a significant leap in our soul growth.

Conclusion

Regression therapy is already a powerful tool for healing, although it is still in its infancy. Its focus is not on suppressing symptoms. It focuses on the core issue of your problems. This is why its healing effects are long lasting. However, finding an experienced therapist is a necessary prerequisite.

The techniques themselves are also constantly evolving. Simple hypnotic suggestions are no longer at the forefront.