My journey to becoming a past life regression therapist - Part 2 (The Workshop Begins)

This post covers the preparation for the PLRT workshop and the initial days of the workshop.

It was the month of March 2018, when I had confirmed my participation for the Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT) workshop to be held for 5 days, starting 15th August.  I was serving my notice period with Unilever.  My job involved, handling the stakeholders, who were senior leaders across the Asia and Africa region, in addition to managing a team of 55 employees. It was my responsibility to ensure that the handover to my successor was smooth.  The notice period got extended from 3 months to 4 months as the organisation was trying to find a suitable replacement to fit into my role.  It is during the notice period that lot of people in the organisation reached out to me for a chat enquiring about where I was heading.  I was excited to tell them about my new consulting venture and I was even more excited to tell them about the PLRT workshop that I was going to attend.

In the month of June, Venu, the teacher and our trainer for the workshop, started communicating with the participants over email.  He started giving us assignments.  The assignments included reading books relating to past lives, mostly written by Dr. Brian Weiss.  Post completing the reading we were required to answer some online questions.  It was during this time that Venu asked us to start meditating.  He also recommended a mobile app called "Insight Timer", in the 'Playstore' which we could use for guided meditation.  The app is a free one, and by referring it to friends, clients and family, I felt I was helping these people as well as the promoters of the app.  There is a premium version available too, but the free one actually does the work.  I still use the app for my meditations.  As suggested by Venu, I started using the app, but found it difficult to remember to meditate everyday.

Finally, the day of the workshop arrived, 15th August.  It being the 'Independence Day', there was hardly any traffic on the otherwise choked Bengaluru roads, and I made it early to the workshop.  The workshop was being held in a 5 star hotel in the centre of the city.  The lobby had a board displaying directions to the conference room where the workshop was to be held.  I hurried down the stairs towards the conference room.  There were some participants already outside the conference room in the common area, waiting for the conference room door to be thrown open.  The registration desk outside the conference room was handled by Neha, Venu's wife.  Venu had taken only 10% of the fee as advance and the balance 90% was to be paid on the day of the conference.  After registration, I was provided with a course book.  I went and sat on the chair outside the conference room and exchanged pleasantries with couple of other participants as we waited for the doors of the conference room to open.  The doors finally opened and Venu walked out to welcome us.  Venu had a pleasing smile and soft tone as he greeted each one of us.  We  were about 30 participants and some of them had travelled from foreign lands for the workshop.  It was to ensure that the foreigners participants were comfortable with their food, Venu arranges the workshop in 5 star hotels.  These hotels provide a variety of food options - continental and oriental.  Every year Venu conducts two workshops - one in August and the other in December.  Each batch is given a name and our batch was called "Aster".  The hall had round tables with chairs around facing the projector screen.  There was soft music being played.  Venu started the workshop by introducing himself.  Venu is a software engineer and worked with a leading software company, before quitting to spend more time to help people through PLR.  He was still working for a start up promoted by his friends.  He had designed the navigation system at the Bengaluru International Airport (now known as the Kempegowda International Airport).  So, we had a computer genius talking to us about past life regression.  He briefly told us about his journey into PLR.  He has documented it in a book called "My Mystical Past Life".  The purpose of conducting the workshops is also to share his knowledge with others so that they in turn can help more people.  A very noble thought.

'Aster batch' with Venu in the black in the front row

After Venu's introduction, he decided to break the ice and asked us to introduce ourselves, and also narrate paranormal or extraordinary events from our lives.  Though the 30 of us had never met before, we had most of the participants opening up and talking about things which they would never share with someone who they were meeting for the first time in their life.  We already started feeling like family.  The first half of the day was spent on hearing each others life stories and what brought them to the workshop.  The group was a mix of army officer, doctors, engineers, accountant, healers, single mothers, retired persons and school principal.  The stories and incidents related to relationship issues, abuse, paranormal events, medical health and family.  The stories of the women participants had lot of pain and abuse when compared to the stories the men had narrated.  The time allotted for the introductions was about an hour but this stretched for close to 3 hours, as people were pouring out all their sorrow, pain and hardships they had been through.  Many of us were feeling agitated by the fact that we were overshooting the allotted time and would miss on important topics scheduled for the workshop.  After everyone had finished their long introductions, Venu having noticed the body language could feel the impatience in some of us.  He said one of the key attributes required for a PLR therapist is patience and the other is compassion.  We had understood the importance of patience in the most practical manner.  Venu made up for the lost time by stretching late evenings and starting early morning for the remaining days, whenever he felt we were lagging behind the schedule.  He never compromised on the topics to be covered.  After late lunch due to the long introductions, Venu started off with some theory around PLR, which also continued into the following day.  He told us about the other learned people who had documented past lives through thorough research.  His focus was more on western practitioners and advocates of PLR, as Indian advocates of PLR are not generally taken seriously by the participants.  As Venu explained the concept of karma, I could relate to my grandmother's summation of the "Bhagavat Geetha".  The Bhagavat Geetha or the "Song of the Lord", is an extract from the "Mahabharatha", where Lord Krishna provides spiritual knowledge to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurushetra.  Some of the key takeaways are that, 

- the soul is indestructible and moves from one body to another

- we all face the consequences of our karma

Karma has been loosely understood as "actions", but it includes even 'thoughts" and the PLR sessions would only confirm this in the future.

Venu spent time clearing the myths people had about regressions and said that it is safe to regress people.  Hypnotising is just one of the ways to calm the body and mind.  There are many methods to regress.  It is only when the body and mind are calm that one is able to access the information about previous lives.  Some of the common myths discussed and clarified were as below.

- person is not aware of what is happening around him during regression and the therapist can abuse the person.  This is not true as the person is fully aware during the regression.  It is not that he is unconscious, but he is actually in trance.

- the person can may get stuck in memories of past life and may forget the present life identity.  This is also not true.  The awareness that person experiences during regression is more like a dream.  Just like how a person comes out of the dream on waking up, the same with regression - the person just has to get up and he is out of it.

- the person may get stuck in the past life and may not come out of trance, if the therapist is not good enough.  This is another false fear that has been created.  Nobody can get stuck in the past life.  It is not a time machine.  The person has to just sit up and he would be out of trance.  Unless the person wants, he cannot be forced into trance.

- the therapist may give instructions to control the mind of the person and make them do illegal / dangerous things.  Again, this is not true.  The person is completely in control of their mind and cannot do anything against their wish.  It may be interesting to note that a person in trance can also lie or hide information.

At the end of day 2, Venu guided us through group relaxation and during the relaxation asked us to go to a happy moment in our life.  At this point, I had many visuals of happy moments from my life and each passed by very fast until I found it settling into the time of my birth.  I was looking for the happiest moment of my life.  I saw myself as a new born baby lying down on the bed next to the left side of my mother.  A window was visible to the right side of the bed.  This was my first experience of a past regression.  I reached home and checked with my mother about the layout of the hospital room and which side I was sleeping.  My mother's recollection matched the scene I had witnessed during the group regression.  I gave this a thought as to why I went to my birth when I was asked to go to a happy moment in my life.  There were many happy moments that I can recollect, but in trance, I went straight to my birth.  I felt that I was happy to be born and grateful to my parents for having given me this life.

Day 3, was more theory with Venu explaining us the nuances of PLRT.  Towards the end of the day, he relaxed us once again.  As some people had fallen asleep during the group relaxation the previous day, he kept this one slightly short and used counting technique to relax us.  As we all came out of the relaxation, he moved around asking how we felt after the relaxation session.  One of the participants said that she felt good during the initial part of the session, but started feeling scared when Venu started counting.  Venu realised that she was still slightly under trance, and started relaxing her so that she could identify the source of the fear.  After some time, she saw herself as a Buddhist monk in one of her previous lives.  The monk had died in the fire that spread through the cave where he sat meditating using the counting technique.  She carried this fear of numbers from that life.  This was my first hand experience of seeing someone being regressed to a past life.  I felt grateful to Venu for having given us this opportunity and bowed down to him.  He promised us that the next day, he would demonstrate a PLRT session for us.  There was to be a lucky dip of all the names of the participants who were keen to have the session done.  This would be followed by role play where all of us would play the role of a therapist and a client.  This got us all charged up and we were eagerly looking forward to the next day.

To be continued in Part 3...

I receive many messages asking when the next post is coming up.  You can click on the "Follow me" button on the home page, to receive notification whenever I publish the new post.

Please feel free to post your comments and questions, and I will try my best to answer them, with my limited knowledge.  The comments you post would appear after a day or two, as I have set up a spam check.  Thank you.