I Found Out Who I Was in a Past Life

I’d always been a bit curious about past lives. The concept itself has always been intriguing, with the idea that you can not only understand your present self better through understanding your past self, but also carry your different experiences from one life into the next. Gaining a better sense of self, as well as a grounding in my own knowledge of who I was or who I can be felt like something that I should try, so, I did.

I scheduled an appointment for a Past Life Regression with Diane Ross. Ross has been interested in altered states of consciousness since the 1970s. She moved to Orlando in 1983 and opened her private practice for hypnosis and meditation. Ross has recorded more than 100 self-hypnosis and meditation CDs, as well as her book, Meditations for Miracles, available at local bookstores and on Amazon. She told me that she herself has experience at least ten different past lives (that she could think of during our conversation, but she knows that there are more) and informed me that each person has had numerous past lives, when I had assumed people likely only had one.

In Her Office...

Ross started our session by explaining a bit about the different levels of consciousness and explaining why people may be apprehensive to hypnosis. She described that our conscious and unconscious mind may use familiar reference points, such as movies or television shows, to help us connect with our past selves in a way that we can understand. Ross helped me to feel comfortable with the notion that “all hypnosis is self hypnosis” and by connecting your unconscious mind to your higher self, you can better understand the numerous different lives that you’ve lived.

When it was time to start the hypnosis, Ross had me sit in a comfortable reclining chair and gave me a warm blanket. I slid off my boots and began following her instructions to close my eyes and visualize the prompts that she gave me, answering her questions one by one as I felt myself relaxing into the chair. I was completely at ease, my whole body feeling numb and relaxed, while my mind remained alert and awake.

After a bit, she asked me to visualize the symbol of my higher self and then describe it out loud to her.

With some more guiding prompts, I had visualized that I was sitting in a beautiful library surrounded by intricate novels that all depicted my different past lives. I was able to sit in a red reclining chair, lean back, and look up at a screen that would show me one of my past lives. I started looking and before I knew it, I had crossed into an entirely unique and different experience.

I began answering Ross’ questions and looking down at the hands and feet that I visualized. I was a woman in India, my hair long and black over one shoulder, my right foot adored with a ring on my toe. I was wearing a beautiful orange sari, and my hands were delicate and small. My right hand was covered in a beautiful mehndi (henna) design: a flower near the base of my thumb with a swirling line connecting it to the base of my wrist. My fingers each had small tear drop designs just below my fingernails. It was a pattern I’d never seen before, but somehow I had imagined it in my head.

This design was actually incredibly beautiful, intricate, and detailed. The flower sat near the base of my thumb, the intricate squiggles near my wrist, dots on my fingers.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’ve seen my fair share of mehndi designs. Some of my best friends in high school were Indian, and I spent a lot of time playing with mehndi, eating a lot of dishes packed with flavorful curry (looking at you Aloo gobi. That cauliflower curry combo is amazing), and watching Bollywood. I’ve had experience with India, but have never visited, nor had I seen or read anything about India prior to my session with Ross. I was astonished.

In the moment when Ross asked me to say my name in this past life aloud, I said a name that I haven’t ever heard before: Nomi, which I later realized was short for Naomikia. The story continued with Nomi losing her family to people that had invaded her home, killing her family in search of something valuable. She had a son and a husband that she cared for very much and finally died whilst trying to get across a river and falling to hit her head on a rock before drowning.

Ross allowed a process of removal of guilt for Nomi, which required letting go of any apprehension, tension, or sadness harbored because of having to leave her family and their death not being something that she could prevent. Near the end of the regression, I was able to take the lessons that I was meant to learn from this past life (being that it was okay to protect myself and that I have to be cautious about who I trust) as well as have Nomi and Vanessa say one thing to each other.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Nomi.

“I know”, Vanessa replied.

Crazy right?

To be frank, I was both a mixture of awestruck and confused by the whole experience, There’s a lot to say about being able to go back and see a life that you might have lived, and in the process of guided hypnosis be allowed to have an experience that changes your life and your understanding of who you are.

In my reflection on the experience, I’ve made a few connections. I too have a deeply rooted fear of losing my family. The people that are important to me matter more than anything else in the world, and the thought of them perishing (whether in death or generally leaving my life) is absolutely terrifying. Additionally, as someone who has suffered with migraine headaches since she was just four-years old, the head injury that Nomi suffered in her death could be thought to correlate to carrying that pain in my present life (at least, according to past life regression standards). My mother has also explained that in my childhood, I had a deathly fear of water, even though now I can’t get enough of the ocean or swimming.

All of this, in a sense of past life regression standards, is causation for the experience being meaningful to sort through my fears, sorrows, or present day struggles that could manifest themselves as new issues in my current life.

Ross explained this regression for me as an experience of the heart. I had connected to some form of emotional healing and grown in my ability to reconcile with my own grief and who I was today being different from who I was then. Whatever your beliefs, whatever your understanding of the universe may come from, experiences that provide a sense of healing in your heart, soul, and body are once in a lifetime. You have to take all the opportunities to have them that you can.