Unlock Your Past

Hypnosis has been called the world’s second-oldest profession. Helping professionals like doctors and healers have used these techniques (under various names) to aid persons in a number of beneficial ways for millennia. Egyptian healers, Hindu fakirs, the
Persian magi, the Indian yogi, and the Greek oracles all practice similar techniques.

The oldest written record of cures by hypnosis is to be found in the Papyrus Ebers, revealing some of the theory and practice of Egyptian medicine before 1550 BCE.

Greek physician Hippocrates, known as the father of modern medicine and whose name and legacy inspires the oath most all new physicians take, discussed Hypnosis, stating at one point, “the affliction suffered by the body, the soul sees quite well with the eyes shut.”

The Romans imported trance healing from the Greeks, and its use was widespread throughout the Roman Empire.

Viennese doctor Franz Anton Mesmer popularized modern use of these techniques in the late 1700s, hence we have the terms, “mesmerism” and “mesmerized.”

The modern term, hypnosis, comes from the name of the ancient Greek god Hypnos, who was the personification of sleep. Scottish surgeon James Braid coined the term, hypnotism, in 1841 as an attempt to differentiate his more scientific, clinical approach from the more entertainment-focused techniques of his contemporary Mesmerists.

Psychoanalysts in the late 1800s regularly utilized hypnosis, such as the great Carl Jung, known as the father of analytical psychology. Hypnosis was also widely used with Veterans of World War I.

In the 1950s both the American and British Medical Associations acknowledged the healing value of hypnosis as a medical intervention.
Prominent American psychiatrist and psychologist Milton Erickson is known as the “father of hypnotherapy” and founded the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis in 1957. Ericksonian techniques and innovations continue to influence a wide spectrum of therapies from family therapy to cutting-edge neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

Interest in past life regression hypnosis rapidly grew following the 1956 book, The Search for Bridey Murphy by Morey Berstein. This was one of the beginning chapters of a new shift in human understanding of the spiritual state and what lies beyond the human life experience for the soul.

Well-known pioneers in this field of practice include psychologist Michael Newton, physician Brian Weiss, and self-taught hypnotist Dolores Cannon.

Michael Newton was a Counselling Psychologist and certified Master Hypnotherapist, who also held positions in the faculty of higher educational institutions in Los Angeles. Newton had been skeptical about exploring the metaphysical, in fact, he originally refused repeatedly to undertake past life regression sessions which had become popular in the 1950’s and 60’s. Even with his original skeptical nature towards past lives and a personal atheist belief structure, his developing deep trance work with clients in his mid-adulthood led him down a path of the accidental discovery of Life Between Lives (LBL) which was truly ground-breaking.

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In the late 1960s, Newton treated a client for psychosomatic pain of the shoulder with traditional hypnotherapy. This man had sought hypnotherapy, having exhausted the medical model where they could find nothing wrong with him. In a deep trance state, Newton asked him to go to the source of his pain, assuming some form of unconsciousness trauma lay beneath the condition. The client landed in a scene from WW1 where he was being bayoneted in a trench during the Battle of the Somme. Newton asked all manner of questions about his unit, commanding officer and even the badges on his uniform, before desensitizing the pain and resolving the issue. The client
went away bewildered, though healed. Newton, ever the researcher, wrote to the keepers of the War Records in London and confirmed the client’s story. It was a historical moment of deep personal and professional significance, which ultimately set Newton on the path leading to where we are now.

In 1968, Newton first experienced the expanded LBL state, when he treated a woman with depression. Again taking her to the source of her pain, she naturally flipped into the afterlife, a period in between her past lives, and met her soul group there. Her profound experience of loneliness which had caused her depression was resolved after this
reunion. She remembered in her LBL leaving her soul friends behind to learn independence.

From Newton’s discovery of the healing that could be facilitated through deep spiritual regression, he developed over many years his own intensive age regression technique to effectively take hypnosis subjects beyond their past life memories, to a more expanded and meaningful soul experience between lives.

Newton began to explore and meticulously research the afterlife through the eyes of his clients. It was over 25 years before Newton first shared his work with the world, having researched and assembled a model of the spiritual realm compiling the consistent experiences of over 7000 clients. Newton’s journey towards these discoveries is
presented in his best-selling books Journey of Souls (1994) and Destiny of Souls (2000). Today, the Michael Newton Institute trains facilitators to help clients globally to experience their soul state and a reconnection to the wisdom of the After-life / Inter-life.

Brian Weiss is a psychiatrist who had a similarly unexpected entry into the world of past life regression. In 1980, one of his patients, “Catherine,” began discussing past life experiences while hypnotized. Weiss did not believe in reincarnation at the time, but after confirming elements of Catherine’s stories through public records, came to be convinced of the survival of an element of the human personality after death. Weiss was astonished and skeptical when Catherine began recalling past life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring nightmares and anxiety attacks. His skepticism was eroded, however, when she began to channel messages from an entity she called her spirit guide or “Master” who made remarkable revelations about Weiss’s deceased father and son. Weiss’ 1988 bestseller Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives as well as numerous other bestselling books, audio products, workshops and conferences have positively impacted hundreds of thousands of lives.

These pioneering leaders witnessed the beginning of a shift in human understanding of the afterlife and discovered how to help people discover their own soul’s experience.

Many clients come to hypnosis facilitators such as the professionals at Transcendent Hypnosis Services after having read books or seen YouTube videos showcasing the life’s works of Newton and Weiss, among others.