Ann’s Story
Although raised in a conventional Catholic home, I had been fascinated with reincarnation and the stories of prior lifetimes that people recalled under regression from an early age. However, I questioned if I could really have such an experience myself. When pursuing my mid-life career change from business management to counseling, I had an unusual experience in graduate school which convinced me I indeed could.
The professor of my Therapeutic Imagery course at Santa Clara University decided to wrap things up by showing us how to work with a client who appeared to have gone into memories from a prior lifetime. He then invited me to be his demonstration for the class, investigating the origin of a problem I had with my feet that was inhibiting various athletic activities I enjoyed.
These were not the optimal conditions for a regression: I lay down on the not-exactly-clean carpet in front of the class. My professor put me in a relaxed state, then directed me to the time and place where the problem with my feet originated. I was startled to find myself “seeing/sensing” an adolescent girl with Asian features and identifying with her. She — I — was extremely upset because my very prominent family insisted on binding my feet, so I was determined to run away with the help of a household slave.
I share the rest of the story in detail in my book, The Past Life Perspective. For now, let it suffice to say that as the story unfolds I eventually take my own life for rebelling and dishonoring my family. A fascinating part of this experience was my legs quivered uncontrollable as I lay in front of the classroom, apparently releasing energies that had been locked in. The very next day I was back on the tennis court with no foot distress, and the problem has never returned.
Professional Training
I was living in California at the time and earned my license as a Marriage & Family Therapist in the 1990s. Despite my own concrete example of how quick and effective past life work could be, I didn’t give much thought to using it in my practice for some time. I focused on conventional counseling modalities for about 6 years, gaining excellent experience working with family systems, trauma, addictions, spirituality and transpersonal psychotherapy - all of which come into play with past life work.
At that point, I realized something more was calling to me and was able to gain invaluable professional training from both Dr. Brian Weiss and Dr. Roger Woolger (a British Jungian analyst, now deceased), who were renowned for their pioneering work with past life regression. Over the years I have studied with a variety of other regression greats, have added training in various forms of energy work, and delved even deeper into the spiritual aspects of human existence.
I have been taking clients through this amazing process of exploring their past life memories for healing and change since 1998, working with people all over the world and from all walks of life. As that has been my professional focus for so long, and with a move away from California, I have recently retired my MFT license. All the skills are still there, however!