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Daily Mail Article featuring my client Steve Robertson as an American soldier in 1945
Wednesday, Dec 01 2010 12PM
By JULIA LAWRENCE
Sonia Shah still carries a lot of guilt over the way she treated her former partner.
Drink played an ugly role in the disintegration of their relationship, as did the fact they were unable to have children together, with blame for their infertility falling, irrefutably, on her shoulders.
Sonia admits, with shame, that she regularly assaulted her partner, usually when drunk, and found herself isolated from friends and family.
She became bitter and lonely, and admits she didn’t like herself very much. All of which seems a touch melodramatic given that, according to Sonia, all this happened 200 years ago. In an African desert. When she was a man. Confused? Well, that’s reincarnation for you.
Sonia, a seemingly rational and intelligent 34-year-old language teacher from North London, is convinced that, in a former life, she was a Namibian tribesman - and an alcoholic, wife-beating one at that.
For that matter, she also believes she’s been an Italian miner and an Indian temple cleaner. As you do.
Sonia is a devotee of ‘past life regression therapy’ - a controversial form of hypnosis in which individuals are encouraged to travel back through time, to recover scraps of buried memory from a ‘previous life’.
It sounds beyond belief.
Yet earlier this month, regression therapy received an unexpected boost in the unlikely form of millionaire musician Phil Collins, who revealed that he believes he fought at the Battle of the Alamo in a former life.
The Chiswick-born drummer has talked freely about his sessions, and discovered that he was at the 1836 battle in which a group of 200 Texan rebels were massacred by a much larger Mexican army.
‘I don’t want to sound like a weirdo,’ he said, ‘but I am prepared to believe.’
He has since made regular visits to the site of the battle and has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on Alamo memorabilia.
Of course, on Planet Celebrity such beliefs are par for the course. Yet even in the real world, there are a growing number of otherwise ordinary, intelligent individuals who are devoted to regression therapy. People who are willing to risk the ridicule of their friends and family by speaking openly about their ‘past lives’ as warriors, slaves, princelings and wenches.
People like Sonia. So are they all mad, sad, or just a teeny bit deluded?
Sonia says she became fascinated by regression therapy after reading a book by Dr Brian Weiss, an American psychiatrist and best-selling author, whose book, Same Soul, Many Bodies, explores the concept of reincarnation.
Over ten sessions with regressional therapist Nicolas Aujula, Sonia claims to have regressed into a number of past lives, from a cleaner in an Indian temple in the early 1900s to that alcoholic wife beater in Namibia.
But it is her ‘recovered past life’ as an Italian miner in Florence in the mid-1700s, she says, that has convinced her there was more to what she was experiencing than her colourful imagination.
‘During this regression, I instinctively knew I was in the middle of political upheaval; a dynasty was about to fall, and the locals were in revolt over a hike in taxes.
‘Afterwards, I went straight to the library and I was right. The Medici family was ruling at the time, and they were overthrown by the Austrian empire. I also learned that Italy is the second-largest steel manufacturer in Europe, and mining is concentrated in the Florence region.
‘I can categorically say I did not know this before. I hadn’t read about it, or researched it. And if I wanted to invent a more interesting life, why cast myself as a miner or wife beater? And why periods of history where I could so easily be proved wrong? Why not someone famous like Cleopatra or Napoleon?
Andrew Hillsdon, 55-year-old regressive therapist and chairman of the Past Life Regression Association describes himself as a deeply spiritual person, who has always had an interest in the concept of reincarnation, in which he believes wholeheartedly.
The core element to the argument of whether the lives are real or not, he attempts to explain, is that intangible entity which spiritualists call the ‘soul’.
Andrew describes it as an indestructible energy that has existed for ever — long before the formation of the universe. And this energy is passed from person to person, over thousands, or even millions, of years.
‘Experience with more than 1,000 clients has proved to me that there is more to regressive therapy than simple memories and imagination. Time and time again, the level of detail and historical references continue to astound me. There is no way people can be just making these details up.
‘And no, they are not all Anne Boleyns or Cleopatras. I can say in all my years I have had just one king and two passengers from the Titanic. The rest have been from a wide variety of mundane and everyday lives, going back over many thousands of years.’
People like personal trainer Steve Robertson, 43, from Whyteleafe, in Surrey, who underwent regressional therapy three years ago following the death of his wife, Denise, and has come to believe that he is the reincarnation of a U.S. soldier killed during World War II.
‘My therapist, Lorraine Flaherty, said we carry certain character traits with us. I have had many past life experiences, and in all of them I am in a position where I am trying to look after people, often at great personal risk.’
The most notable of these, he says, was one where he found himself an American parachutist called Sergeant Peterson, who was being dropped into Germany in 1945.
His mission was to protect his men and keep them alive. He died in battle.
Sceptics could have a field day with this story - except that Sergeant Peterson did exist, served with the U.S. Army and received a posthumous medal for bravery - facts and details which Steve discovered only after he started researching his ‘past life’.
Perhaps the last word should go to one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, Socrates, who observed: ‘I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."
By JULIA LAWRENCE
Sonia Shah still carries a lot of guilt over the way she treated her former partner.
Drink played an ugly role in the disintegration of their relationship, as did the fact they were unable to have children together, with blame for their infertility falling, irrefutably, on her shoulders.
Sonia admits, with shame, that she regularly assaulted her partner, usually when drunk, and found herself isolated from friends and family.
She became bitter and lonely, and admits she didn’t like herself very much. All of which seems a touch melodramatic given that, according to Sonia, all this happened 200 years ago. In an African desert. When she was a man. Confused? Well, that’s reincarnation for you.
Sonia, a seemingly rational and intelligent 34-year-old language teacher from North London, is convinced that, in a former life, she was a Namibian tribesman - and an alcoholic, wife-beating one at that.
For that matter, she also believes she’s been an Italian miner and an Indian temple cleaner. As you do.
Sonia is a devotee of ‘past life regression therapy’ - a controversial form of hypnosis in which individuals are encouraged to travel back through time, to recover scraps of buried memory from a ‘previous life’.
It sounds beyond belief.
Yet earlier this month, regression therapy received an unexpected boost in the unlikely form of millionaire musician Phil Collins, who revealed that he believes he fought at the Battle of the Alamo in a former life.
The Chiswick-born drummer has talked freely about his sessions, and discovered that he was at the 1836 battle in which a group of 200 Texan rebels were massacred by a much larger Mexican army.
‘I don’t want to sound like a weirdo,’ he said, ‘but I am prepared to believe.’
He has since made regular visits to the site of the battle and has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on Alamo memorabilia.
Of course, on Planet Celebrity such beliefs are par for the course. Yet even in the real world, there are a growing number of otherwise ordinary, intelligent individuals who are devoted to regression therapy. People who are willing to risk the ridicule of their friends and family by speaking openly about their ‘past lives’ as warriors, slaves, princelings and wenches.
People like Sonia. So are they all mad, sad, or just a teeny bit deluded?
Sonia says she became fascinated by regression therapy after reading a book by Dr Brian Weiss, an American psychiatrist and best-selling author, whose book, Same Soul, Many Bodies, explores the concept of reincarnation.
Over ten sessions with regressional therapist Nicolas Aujula, Sonia claims to have regressed into a number of past lives, from a cleaner in an Indian temple in the early 1900s to that alcoholic wife beater in Namibia.
But it is her ‘recovered past life’ as an Italian miner in Florence in the mid-1700s, she says, that has convinced her there was more to what she was experiencing than her colourful imagination.
‘During this regression, I instinctively knew I was in the middle of political upheaval; a dynasty was about to fall, and the locals were in revolt over a hike in taxes.
‘Afterwards, I went straight to the library and I was right. The Medici family was ruling at the time, and they were overthrown by the Austrian empire. I also learned that Italy is the second-largest steel manufacturer in Europe, and mining is concentrated in the Florence region.
‘I can categorically say I did not know this before. I hadn’t read about it, or researched it. And if I wanted to invent a more interesting life, why cast myself as a miner or wife beater? And why periods of history where I could so easily be proved wrong? Why not someone famous like Cleopatra or Napoleon?
Andrew Hillsdon, 55-year-old regressive therapist and chairman of the Past Life Regression Association describes himself as a deeply spiritual person, who has always had an interest in the concept of reincarnation, in which he believes wholeheartedly.
The core element to the argument of whether the lives are real or not, he attempts to explain, is that intangible entity which spiritualists call the ‘soul’.
Andrew describes it as an indestructible energy that has existed for ever — long before the formation of the universe. And this energy is passed from person to person, over thousands, or even millions, of years.
‘Experience with more than 1,000 clients has proved to me that there is more to regressive therapy than simple memories and imagination. Time and time again, the level of detail and historical references continue to astound me. There is no way people can be just making these details up.
‘And no, they are not all Anne Boleyns or Cleopatras. I can say in all my years I have had just one king and two passengers from the Titanic. The rest have been from a wide variety of mundane and everyday lives, going back over many thousands of years.’
People like personal trainer Steve Robertson, 43, from Whyteleafe, in Surrey, who underwent regressional therapy three years ago following the death of his wife, Denise, and has come to believe that he is the reincarnation of a U.S. soldier killed during World War II.
‘My therapist, Lorraine Flaherty, said we carry certain character traits with us. I have had many past life experiences, and in all of them I am in a position where I am trying to look after people, often at great personal risk.’
The most notable of these, he says, was one where he found himself an American parachutist called Sergeant Peterson, who was being dropped into Germany in 1945.
His mission was to protect his men and keep them alive. He died in battle.
Sceptics could have a field day with this story - except that Sergeant Peterson did exist, served with the U.S. Army and received a posthumous medal for bravery - facts and details which Steve discovered only after he started researching his ‘past life’.
Perhaps the last word should go to one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, Socrates, who observed: ‘I am confident that there truly is such a thing as living again, that the living spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence."
Past Life Therapy, Future Life Progression, Life Between Lives, Hypnotherapy, NLP, Spirit Release Therapy, Transformational Coaching, Workshops, Retreats, Self Hypnosis, Stop Smoking, Weight Control, Alcohol Control, Public Speaking