Can Hypnosis tap Reincarnational Experiences?


Hypnotic Age Regression: A Neglected Area of Human Potential
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I recently wrote an article on my use of hypnosis and possible reincarnation. My experimental goal was to enhance the subject’s ESP, but her intense imagery interfered. I use an almost non-directive hypnotic technique. Here is an excerpt that some might find interesting.
“At our next session, she slipped into a deep hypnotic state more rapidly and easier. Her eye movements became more active, as if she were actively processing the visual image.
I asked where she was.
“In a cave,” she answered. “An ice cave.”
I reviewed non-leading questions I could ask her without knowing where, when, or who she was. I suggested she look down to examine if she wore any garments. If there were, she was to describe them.
Under her lids, her eyes looked down. “Fur. I’m wearing some kind of fur.”
Filled with uncertainty, I searched my thoughts for the next questions. She needed to see herself, to describe her clothing in more detail. “Look around the cave,” I said. “Is there anything shiny? Something that could reflect your image?”
She looked about, then said, “A pool of water.”
“Good,” I replied. “Look at yourself and tell me what you see.”
She tilted her head forward again, then said with faint surprise, “Oh. I’m a man.”
Asked to give more detail, she said her skin was dark and that s/he had long, coarse unkempt hair.
I had never encountered anything like this before. Was this a fantasy or, possibly, a reincarnational being? What practical use would this be and how could I ever verify it? I didn’t know that in a few minutes Mallory would unwittingly offer a form of proof.
I decided to end the session and took every precaution to bring Mallory out of hypnosis safely. Afterwards, we spoke for a while. She remembered every aspect of the experience and was as puzzled about it as I.
She put on her coat. As we talked near the door, I noticed that she rubbed her right arm occasionally. After a few minutes, it was obvious.
She added more details, continuing to massage the arm through her coat sleeve.
My suspicions were aroused. I asked if her arm bothered her. As she was a nurse, I thought she might have strained it that day.
However, that wasn’t the case. My intuition urged me to stay a while longer. I asked her to remove her coat and recline again. She agreed.
Because we had explored three time periods that day, I was unsure when her arm began to bother her. She slipped into a deep hypnotic state again. I gave her an open suggestion: to go to “wherever” she was when the arm felt different.
She became quiet.
Exhausted, I waited silently. I’d worked with patients all day; it was now near midnight. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes awaiting her response.
After a few minutes, I felt a sharp chill, real enough to cause me to open my eyes. I examined the drapes on the window over her, but felt no draft. Then, I asked, “Where are you?”
I was bewildered. How was it that, in my fatigue and in a closed office, I could feel that sudden chill, as if a cold breeze wafted over me?
“I’m in the ice cave,” she answered.
“Look down at your arm and tell me what you see,” I said.
Under her lids, her eyes looked down and towards her right arm. Then she answered in the same untroubled tone: “Oh. I don’t have one.”
Surprised, I asked what had happened to the arm. “A bear,” she replied. “A white bear.”
A dark-skinned man wearing furs; an ice cave; a change in gender. All these things led me to suspect that, if there was any truth to this, he was possibly out of the past, perhaps prehistoric. However, my frame of reference may have been wrong. Instead, if this was a true reincarnational memory, it suggested a possible Inuit living closer to the present. Still, there was no way to verify the experience.
My immediate problem was clinical, not research! Somehow, she carried the injury–fantasy or reincarnation–into the present. What could I do? My education and experience offered no answer to this problem. I reasoned that if her body image had changed while she was the man, I might alter it back to the original. I rubbed her arm, suggesting that it was like pliable taffy, capable of stretching to reach her fingertips. After a few minutes, I asked if there was improvement. She said that there was.
When Mallory was brought out of hypnosis again. The sensation was gone, vanished, and she was left with no aftereffects only the memory of strange feelings in her arm.
What transpired in this curious event? Apparently, something quite astonishing. According to the Journal of Trauma (2008), “phantom pain and phantom sensations are often long-term consequences of amputation. Amputees experience phantom sensations and phantom pain within 1 month after amputation, a second peak occurs 12 months after amputation.” Phantom limbs typically decrease and disappear over time.
Mallory’s experience was clinically significant because she did not report the missing arm during or after her “visit” to that time period, even after coming out of hypnosis. Oddly, the “ice man” had already adapted to the missing arm—or the change in his body image. This adaptation to the loss of an arm carried over into Mallory’s experience somewhere beyond her normal conscious state.
This suggests that, if this was an authentic reincarnational memory, we tapped into it at least one year after the man’s injury, when his body image had adjusted to the missing arm.”

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