Finding Inner Peace Through Past Life Regression

We’ve all heard stories of glimmers of past lives; some have even experienced inklings of times that once were be it in a connection with someone or a physical manifestation in the body. Could there be something there floating in the beyond that links us to each of the people that we once were? It seems tough to deny that we all have elements of ourselves our current incarnation cannot describe. Personally, I have an irrational fear of whole milk for seemingly no reason, but I digress.

To get a better understanding of what’s really happening, I sat down with Dr. Celia Im, who practices past life regression. Though she’s not specifically a past life regressionist—a therapist who helps clients access their past lives in order to work through their current ones—she frequently guides her clients through the process. Im calls her business the “harmonic resonance process” (HRP) which past life regression can play a large role in depending on the client and their needs. She’s also the founder of Lighting the Creative Spark LLC and an international, award-winning musician who has taught on the faculties of Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and George Mason University. Naturally, she also has a number of relevant degrees under her belt including a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Peabody Conservatory and certification in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music.

In the harmonic resonance process, Im uses music she composes specifically to help the listener’s nervous system connect to the mind, easing them into a meditative state with specific vibrations and muscle relaxation exercises. Resonating with the body’s nervous system, the experience shifts body and mind into an “expansive state” so Im’s clients are able to “reach into their inner being and free [their] conditioned selves,” according Im.

Im’s clients enter this experience with a specific intention or question, whether it’s an aspect of their current lives they’d like to change, or an incident in the past they wish to heal from. After they set their intention and relax, Im’s work with the psyche really begins. “When our minds are quiet enough to hear, we can listen to past lives and lots of other things in our subconscious.”

Next, Im asks her clients a series of mindful questions including, “What are you feeling? Where do you feel it in the body?” Once her client can respond, she digs deeper, and may ask the client to engage with that feeling. “They’ll get an image or a sense of something,” Im says. From there, the feeling “talks to you.” Typically, it takes about 12 visits.

For context, Im tells us the story of a client who came in break a negative pattern in her romantic relationships. Once Im helped her into the more mindful state described above, she asked her to engage with her feeling, and an image popped into her client’s mind. “She saw herself in colonial times with another person of the opposite gender,” Im says. It turns out that it’s possible for our genders to be different in past lives, and that if you identify as a woman attracted to men now, doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have been a man attracted to women in your previous incarnation. Once Im’s client envisioned herself in this situation, they were able to access her subconscious together. “In this scenario, there’s something that can free a person,” Im said.

Her client goes on to say, “I feel so much love for this person,” which lets Im know that she’s ready to continue. From there, she guides her through the vision to the source of pain. Though, due to privacy, she was unable to share the details, she divulges that her client envisioned herself making a choice that she regretted. Through a series of sessions, Im guided her client through that past life to make a different choice than the hurtful one she made the first time. As they progressed, Im’s client was able to identify what characteristics she wanted in a partner in her current incarnation. Eventually, she felt hints of that person before they even came into her life, and instantly knew when she saw him that he was the one she had been searching for through this journey. When she came across his profile on a dating site for the first time, “she felt a zap and she knew.” Turns out it’s a love story with a happy ending.

“The mind senses everything as if it’s now,” Im said. “When you go into that inner being or expansive state, past present and future do not exist.”

The psyche interprets everything as the present, so the positive change that Im’s client was able to envision in her past life gave her a sense of relief in her current life. “When they choose something different this time and it frees them, they’ll feel lighter in the body.”

As just one of the ways that positive change can be made, Im states that there are a number of other factors that may come up in a session including other types of memories including that of an inner child. This is why her work is more varied an expansive. Past life regressionists specifically help people to access their past incarnations, but she goes through multiple processes and access points. “The psyche will take you to your past life if it’s important. “Like a GPS system, it’ll take you where you’ll need to go next.”

When you think about it, it makes sense (and the reason why we go to therapy)—to push beyond what we’re holding on to and move on. If the psyche cannot distinguish between past, present, and future, perhaps past life regression can make us all feel a bit lighter and that much closer to finding inner peace.  

Sessions ranging from a phone call to a personal series ($175-$2,700) can be made with Dr. Im at celiaim.com.