I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Dr. Brian Weiss in person and attend a week-long past life regression training workshop that he and his wife, Carole, presented at the Omega Center in Rhinebeck, NY, in July, 2019.

There were 150 attendees, with sixty per cent of them being from approximately fifty other countries. All continents were represented except Antarctica! I was so amazed that people, many of them professionals who use hypnosis in their work, came from all over the world for this training. He stated that he had learned over the years of presenting the workshops that it is important to also have participants who are not professionals so the "therapists" have "clients" to practice with.

Dr. Weiss presents three of these week-long trainings a year, this year in May, July, and October. (See more details on his website.) He feels that it is important and his mission to teach about reincarnation and who we humans really are, as well as to train as many therapists as possible to use past life regression in their practices.

We met morning and afternoon, Monday through Friday a.m. As well as teaching about reincarnation and life in general, Dr. Weiss led whole-group regressions twice a day. He also did one or two demonstrations daily of individual regressions with a volunteer from the group. Some very amazing past life stories emerged from the demonstrations. On Wednesday afternoon, participants worked in small groups to practice hypnotizing each other. I chose to be only in "the client" role and not the "therapist" role, although I could have done that if I wished.

Dr. Weiss and his wife (who led one type of group regression) taught and demonstrated several techniques. One called "progressive relaxation" is the most important and most used, they explained. There is one called "rapid induction" which puts the person into a deep trance state within one or two minutes. I found that fascinating to watch. And Carole Weiss demonstrated one called "gentle rapid induction," which was a bit different.

"Hypnosis itself is only a form of focused concentration and relaxation. It is not rime travel, and it is not mysterious. In this relaxed and focused state, memory functions are enhanced." ( Messages from the Masters, p. 13) Dr. Weiss stated that "all hypnosis is self-hypnosis . A therapist is only helping. It is not magical. All the techniques work." He also stressed that being hypnotized is perfectly safe. There is no danger.

I have had a fascination with hypnosis since I was in high school, and a physician from our church did a demonstration at my church youth group. Afterward, I began to hypnotize my sister! We got pretty good at demonstrating it for a parlor game. I dabbled a bit with it at college also. At some point, I decided against doing it any more because some people (my dad included) seemed not to approve! I did write my high school term paper about the practical uses of hypnosis, such as for pain during surgery and stopping smoking, etc. As far as I know, hypnosis was not widely used for past life regression at that time. It wasn't until about ten years later that I learned about Edgar Cayce and how he would go into a hypnotic trance and diagnose illnesses in people and later speak about their past lives. BUT--that's a whole 'nother story for another time!!