You do not have to relive a painful memory to heal from it. If a distressing scene comes up in the hypnotic state, I have you step out of that body right away and watch as an objective observer. It is a lot like watching a movie on a screen. From that safe, detached distance you can pick up the soul lesson the scene is holding and release the energy that was stuck there, without going through the pain again. You stay aware the whole time, you can speak to me at any point, and you are in the driver's seat. Clients often tell me the scene they were most afraid of turned out to be the one that helped them most.

Dolores Cannon developed the Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique, known as QHHT, over decades of guiding sessions. Her approach begins with a past life experience and then makes space for a deeper conversation with what she called The Subconscious, her term for a level of awareness beyond ordinary conscious thought. I began studying with her in July 2008 in Fayetteville, Arkansas, after three different people independently told me my work sounded like hers, and I kept returning to study with her for the next four years. I had already been doing hypnosis for five years before I took her first class. As I tell my students, I have taken what I learned and made it my own. The full story of my years with Dolores is in the Teachers and Influences section of my blog.

Because your imagination is the delivery system. We normally take in information through our eyes and our ears, and this is not like that. The information comes through your inner senses, it enters your imagination, and you use your imagination to translate it into words so you can share it with me, so it can seem like you are making it up. Here is the difference between this and a dream, and a friend and fellow regressionist puts it perfectly. In a dream your conscious mind is asleep, so if purple pigs fly by carrying blue umbrellas, you do not question it, you just let the dream unfold. In hypnosis your conscious mind is in the background observing, and it may object that pigs are not purple and they do not fly, especially not with blue umbrellas. Yet when a dream ends and you look at the imagery, there is always meaning in it. So say the first thing that comes to mind, keep making it up, and save the analysis for after the session. We will talk about it once you open your eyes.

No, your future is not set in stone. The way I understand it, you take part in a planning process before you are born. Your soul chooses your parents, your body and the main lessons you came here to learn, things like compassion or patience. What I have seen in sessions, though, is that this plan is a high level outline of major milestones rather than a minute by minute script. Once you are here, you have full free will. When you reach a crossroads in life, your choices decide which way you go, so what lies ahead is a set of probable outcomes rather than one fixed destiny. The plan gives you the big picture. How you walk it is up to you.

Because a Life Between Lives session asks for a great deal of hypnotic depth and a very quiet mind, and that takes some preparation. LBL is the pinnacle of spiritual regression, and a Past Life Regression or QHHT session comes first. When I check a client's readiness for LBL with my pendulum or muscle testing, my guides often suggest waiting two to three months after that first session. The gap gives you time to process and integrate what came up in the past life work, builds up what I call your hypnotic muscle memory, and leaves you energetically prepared to enter the spirit realm comfortably. In my experience that patience pays off in the depth of the LBL session itself.

A stubborn emotional block, a professional anxiety or a relationship pattern in this life often traces back to what hypnotists call an initial sensitizing event, or to a self protective contract your soul made in a past life. I use a technique called regression to cause. It guides you back to the exact moment that block or belief locked into place. Once you examine and understand the original situation, your subconscious gets to see that the old protection has done its job and can be set down. What tends to happen is that the contract releases, the modern block loosens with it, and clients often tell me they finally feel able to move forward with confidence.