Transformational session – transpersonal regression therapy

What is transformational regression therapy? Who is Yuvraj Kapadia? And what has this all to do with Auroville? Sigrid, the Aurovilian homeopath and regression therapist who organised the event, explains.

“Let’s start with Yuvraj. He and his family have been closely connected with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and he met the Mother when he was only eight years old. After a business career he got into practicing, teaching and researching hypnotherapy. In September 2010, he and his team gave a 5 module course on hypnotherapy in Auroville to about 30 Aurovilians [see AVToday # 256, October 2010]. He then studied a further advanced method: “transpersonal regression therapy”, developed in The Netherlands by Hans TenDam and Marion Boon (who will be visiting Auroville in the near future). Yuvraj brought this cutting-edge therapy to India and taught it to more than 100 therapists. The workshop in Auroville was an opportunity for many of them to meet and share their experiences.

“Transpersonal regression therapy is a deep healing modality. Its aim is to become aware of or increase awareness of those parts of the being that, subconsciously, influence one’s behavior and may be the cause of psychological and even physical illnesses. It is a deep work to heal – or better transform – trauma e.g. accidents, abuse, violence or childhood traumas. This modality can be used to overcome repetitive psychological patterns including depression, anxiety and phobias. It’s a suitable modality to working on addictions, obesity and eating disorders and even auto-immune disorders.

“All these problems have causes, but most of these causes have been forgotten and stored in a person’s subconscious. The forgotten life experiences often contain emotional wounds that never healed completely, or have triggered stubborn, half-conscious beliefs in our mind. Such beliefs only change when we understand how they started and why we hold on to them.

“In transpersonal regression therapy, the patient regresses to these memories, facilitated skillfully by the therapist. But, contrary to hypnosis, there is no need for the therapist to induce a trance, because the patient’s own – still active – ‘natural trance’ does it all. The moment a patient focuses intentionally on his bodily and emotional memory a powerful ‘bridge’ is formed which lets him or her access information from the time and space where the incident occurred. This could be a childhood event, something that happened in the prenatal period or during birth, or even a past life event.

“There is then a reliving of the previous traumatic occurrence, but this time with understanding and overview, which enables the transformation of these undigested experiences. The emotions are ‘discharged’ and the client is now able to feel and understand how the present complaint was connected to the past experience. Once this understanding surfaces, integration of those formerly unconscious parts with the conscious part of the being takes place. What we as therapists are doing technically is giving the conscious mind the logical explanation of what has happened. The moment that deeper understanding dawns, the adult personality becomes fully in charge and the problem resolves. This understanding is not purely mental. The therapist also works with body sensations to release trauma energy.

“For example, I recently worked with a patient who for many years was fainting at the most unexpected moments. She had no idea why. Through personal regression therapy we discovered that this might be caused by childhood sexual abuse, which the patient was hardly aware of. As the therapist, I facilitated her inner vision with overview: now, she was able to see what had happened with the support of the consciousness of her own inner adult. We got the story straight, followed by healing of the psychological as well as of the bodily trauma. My work was giving a structure, to help open up the memory as effectively as possible, not to go into detail, but to assist the patient in her self-discovery and healing through her own strength.

“The opening up of memories by itself is just a first step, and would be counterproductive – if not dangerous – if left like that. The second step is energy work: the inner child of the past is still there and is still in shock, and that stuck energy has to be released. Now the adult persona of the client can come forward and give the support necessary to release the sense of helplessness and the resulting trauma.

“This is done releasing the body charges and then releasing the trauma by letting the abused “inner child of the client’s past” finally speak up. The inner child of the past is healed and then integrated in the client’s present adult life. This changes the client’s energy patterns in the present and future.

“This is the ideal situation. But regression therapy is not always successful, as dealing with trauma is such a sensitive issue. For example, a common confusion is with pre-natal and past life memories and later incidences. There have been cases of people who ‘remembered’ childhood sexual abuse in regression therapy, and who have then gone and accused people, but who later said that the memories that arose in regression therapy were false.

“The therapist must be very skilled to prevent the emergence of such false memories. Students of transpersonal regression therapy therefore receive in-depth training. Only experienced psychologists or psychotherapists can apply to get selected for learning these advanced techniques. They undergo six mandatory sessions with their teachers and have to do 25 supervised practice sessions before graduating. All this is done to ensure the therapeutic effect and to minimize the risk of misdirection in memory. Statistics show that 60% of regression therapies led to a positive change in a person’s life, and 20% to some change, while 20% was unaffected.

“Regression therapy is not only about processing traumas, discharging stress, and releasing and digesting stuck emotions or restoring lost memories. There are also forgotten hidden treasures to be discovered, and access to unblocked intuition and creativity. With regression therapy, memories of positive feelings and talents that have been lost can be reactivated.

“There are mental, emotional and bodily results of regression therapy. Mental results are the gaining of clear-mindedness and self-knowledge, understanding people, and liberation from mental prisons and tunnel views or preconceived ideas. Emotional results are inner calm, self-acceptance and self-reliance, restoring empathy and positive emotions. Bodily results include the disappearance of tensions and psychosomatic problems like low energy, low resistance, and hypersensitivity.

“An integral part of transpersonal regression therapy is facilitating a client’s regression to the forgotten first years of childhood, and to the prenatal experiences between conception and birth or to birth itself. The birth experience is often the most consequential, but some pre-birth experiences can also have lifelong consequences, such as an ‘overheard’ talk of a tentative abortion.

“Some patients apparently access former life experiences. A good therapist will take care to not encourage romantic beliefs, as most problems are caused in the present life. But sometimes, the cause of a problem lies in a previous life. Sometimes, a traumatic death, which has led to undigested fears and pains which have become interwoven with the present life, is relieved. Even psychiatric delusions may be due to the remnants of undigested past-life traumas. While some of my non-Auroville patients have questions about the concept of rebirth, for us in Auroville reincarnation is commonly accepted, as Sri Aurobindo has written extensively about it and The Mother wrote and talked in detail about it in her conversations with the children of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

“For me, discovering transpersonal regression therapy and becoming a therapist and supervisor has been a highly rewarding development. I have confirmed over the years that this technique based on a client-centered approach is completely in sync with Sri Aurobindo’s and The Mother’s teaching. I see it as one of the effective tools for many in Auroville to deepen the understanding of their own psychology and to transform the patterns that veil their psychic being.”

For more information on transformational regression therapy visit www.tassointernational.com, www.ekaa.co.in and www.auroville-holistic.com. Two English language movies about regression therapy, “Why Regression Therapy: the view of the experienced” and “Discovering Regression Therapy: a Love Story”, can be seen at http://www.earth-association.org/earth-movies/. Recommended reading on rebirth: Sri Aurobindo “The problem of Rebirth”, The Mother’s conversation of 27-06-1956 in Questions and Answers 1956 and Hans Tendam “Deep healing and transformation”, ISBN, 078-1-312-30365-2.