The Council of Elders is a group of highly advanced, loving spiritual beings you meet during a Life Between Lives session. They are not there to judge you. Think of them more as a loving board of trustees who review your past incarnations and your soul's progress with you. During this meeting I bring in the list of questions you prepared, so you can ask the Council directly about your overall life purpose, the lessons you chose, and the agreements you made before choosing your current body and life path. My clients often describe this as the most meaningful part of the whole LBL experience, because the answers come from the beings who helped plan the life you are living now.

Most people have already read Michael Newton's Journey of Souls, and often Destiny of Souls too, before they ever reach out to me. That is usually why they want to do the session in the first place, because reading the book provides encouragement to want to experience this world. I do not think it has an impact on the experience itself. Just recently I talked with someone who had read it and was blown away by it. So I cannot give you a cut and dry answer, do it or do not do it, because it is up to the individual. Here is what I would say. If you have not read it and you are concerned that it might give you expectations, then just do not read it. The session does not need the book. And if you have already read it, like most of my clients, you are in good company.

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.

Repeating the same difficult situation, whether it is a relationship pattern, an emotional block or trouble standing in your own power, is often a sign of a soul lesson that is still open. If your soul ran into that challenge in a past life and never fully understood or resolved it, the lesson comes around again in this one. In the hypnotic state we trace the pattern back to where it started in a previous lifetime. Once your subconscious recognizes the lesson underneath the pattern, something shifts. Clients often tell me that understanding the original source is what finally lets them resolve it and step out of the cycle instead of living it one more time.

I cannot answer that specifically for you, because everyone is different, and that lifelong feeling of not fitting in is more common than you might think. It is one of the things people bring to a session as a question. I do not tell you where it comes from ahead of time, and I do not paint a picture during the session either. I ask you what you notice and let your own experience do the explaining. What I will say is that when someone finds the source of that feeling for themselves, the grief tends to lift, and settling into life here gets easier. The discovering is what helps, and it works best when every bit of it is yours.

You do not need to deliver eloquent descriptions for this to go well. There is no right or wrong way to experience trance, and once the analytical mind steps aside, words come more easily than you expect. I keep my questions gentle and open, things like what do you notice and tell me more, and I let your impressions come out at their own pace. It is a collaboration rather than a performance. Quiet and anxious clients typically find they feel comfortable within a few minutes and share their journey just fine, and some of the richest sessions I have facilitated came from people who barely said a word in everyday life.