Have you ever had an ex you just can’t get over? Or a partner you repeatedly break up with, only to reconcile against your better judgment?
Perhaps you’ve found yourself embroiled in a love triangle that you can’t seem to break free from?
The laws of attraction can be hard to explain. But a growing number of women believe there’s a surprising reason we’re drawn to particular people repeatedly. And that it lies in the past . . . the very distant past.
Among them is Sam Scott, 52, who found herself ‘bouncing between’ two men – until she hit upon a controversial therapy practice that many dismiss as mere fantasy.
Lorraine Flaherty, 58, a clinical hypnosis lecturer and therapist from Balham, South London, discovered past-life regression during her training
During her 30s, Sam was engaged to a man named Alex*, but would dump him whenever a particular old flame came back on the scene. This happened five times within two years, with her heartbroken fiance – astonishingly – taking her back each time.
‘I behaved like a lovelorn teenager,’ admits Sam. ‘Whenever Sebastian came back into my life, all hell would break loose and I’d behave totally out of character.
‘I’ve always been respectful of people’s feelings, but my behaviour towards Alex is not something to be proud of. I left him perplexed and devastated.’
She was also angry and frustrated with herself, but couldn’t seem to control her magnetic attraction to Sebastian.
Now, however, Sam believes the reason she couldn’t tear herself away from these two men was that their complicated dynamic had been established centuries before, played out across several past lives.
And that only through ‘past-life regression’ – using hypnosis to ‘recall our former selves’ – was she able to find the strength to end things with Sebastian once and for all.
You might think her deluded, but more and more therapists and alternative healers offer past-life regression as a serious form of treatment. It draws on familiar ideas: a YouGov poll in 2021 found that as many as one in six Britons believe in reincarnation. And researchers at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine have spent 20 years collating more than 2,500 testimonies from children who ‘remember’ their past life.
Marilyn Devonish, 56, from Hertfordshire, is another who believes she has used her past lives to improve her future.
Reincarnation is found in major religions, including Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and some forms of Judaism. And the roots of ‘past-life regression therapy’ can be traced back to psychic Edgar Cayce, who answered questions about his past lives under a trance state in 1923.
Andrea Foulkes, a past-life regression therapist who trained at the College of Psychic Studies, says: ‘We have one soul, which experiences many lifetimes in all sorts of physical bodies, and it is our soul’s memories that we are accessing each time we regress.
‘Our subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between this life or another life. When you are regressed and witness previous lifetimes, you are given the opportunity to see, understand and then close the door on unhelpful past behaviours.’
Scientists point out that remembered ‘past lives’ could simply be the result of wishful thinking or unconscious imagination, or indeed a form of false memory planted – whether accidentally or on purpose – by a therapist.
Yet Sam, from Swindon, who has two daughters aged 23 and 19, is in no doubt. She describes entering her own ‘past lives’ as feeling like hurtling down the rabbit hole in Alice In Wonderland – and claims the results have been truly life-changing.
She attended Montessori teacher-training college before marrying in her early 20s, but the marriage ended when her husband was unfaithful. In her 30s she met Sebastian, an artist six years her senior.
From their very first date in a nightclub, she says the energy between them was ‘electric’.
‘Seb was dark and handsome, with the most beautiful bright blue eyes,’ she recalls. ‘The sexual attraction was irresistible. I just wanted to be with him and only him.’
They went on to spend two ‘explosive’ days together, during which they had ‘mindblowing’ sex. Afterwards, however, Sam says that Sebastian simply disappeared.
She later connected with Alex through online dating: ‘He was everything Sebastian wasn’t: grounded, calm and open-minded.’ Within six months Alex had proposed and she had accepted: ‘I was a single mum of two daughters, running a business – life was stretched in every direction and Alex offered me a sense of stability, love and kindness I needed at that time.’
But when Sebastian messaged her that Christmas, she abruptly broke off the engagement and fell back into bed with him.
‘Alex was beyond hurt, which I hated myself for,’ she says. ‘But the sexual pull of Sebastian was like a siren call.
I couldn’t resist him.’
Sam Scott, 52, found herself ‘bouncing between’ two men – until she hit upon a controversial therapy practice that many dismiss as mere fantasy
For one weekend the couple were inseparable: ‘It was so unlike me; I’m normally very conservative, and would never dream of any kind of overlap in a relationship. I’d never flirt with someone else either.
‘But I cancelled work appointments, got Mum to look after the girls and threw myself into Sebastian’s orbit.
‘By the second evening, we were drinking a bottle of red wine together and could finish one another’s sentences. He knew I liked my omelette cooked a certain way. We had similar mannerisms including pushing strands of hair behind our ears. It was like I’d known him for ever.
‘The sex was phenomenal, we each said it was the best we had ever experienced. We even joked our relationship went beyond this time and place.’
And yet, once again, according to Sam, the following day Sebastian calmly walked out of her life for a second time. ‘Confused and upset, unable to get hold of him, I was utterly broken-hearted,’ she says. ‘I picked myself up and did the thing I knew would offer me safety and stability – I went back to Alex and asked him to forgive me.’
Alex did – and over the next two years, this toxic pattern continued.
Seb would contact Sam approximately every four months and she would, again, break things off with Alex. ‘Alex was always incredibly upset and confused when I got cold feet and called time on our engagement. Then he was so understanding and decent about giving me the space away from us. I didn’t deserve his kindness.
‘If I could have made things work with Sebastian I would have, but the slightest thing set us off and we’d have explosive rows. As electric as things were in bed, normal humdrum life can’t sustain those dramatic arguments.’
It was after their fifth failed reconciliation that she tried past-life regression when she was offered a session through her work as a coach for business leaders. ‘I was sceptical, but we started with a straightforward guided meditation to relax us. Lying on the floor with eyes shut, our guide asked us to walk through a door in our mind’s eye.
‘Suddenly, I found myself in the Middle Ages wearing a floor-length dress; I was very Celtic looking, with long, red hair. I saw myself in a field working with my husband, who turned out to be Alex.
‘It was as though I was in a film – my mind suddenly “jumped” to the next scene, in the hall of a castle. The man who owned it was clearly wealthy. When I saw his face, I gasped because it was Sebastian. I discovered Sebastian could ask for any woman in the village to be sent to him and the husband wasn’t in a position to refuse.
‘This arrangement had gone on over time and the landlord and I had developed secret feelings for one another, yet couldn’t be together. It felt so real, but the regression ended when the landlord went off overseas and never returned.’
According to Sam, hypnosis differs to a dream in that you are conscious and can answer questions: ‘I was able to sense what I was feeling and saying, but at the same time I had an overview of each “scene” unfolding, too. It was utterly remarkable. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.’
A number of women believe there’s a surprising reason we’re drawn to particular people repeatedly. And that it lies in the past . . . the very distant past.
Sam went on to have other past-life regressions and ‘discovered’ that she and Sebastian had been lovers in various lifetimes.
On one occasion she had been a servant girl working in his property, but in each scenario, the common theme was that when they consummated their relationship and fell in love, he died or simply disappeared. ‘It made me realise how strong forbidden sexual energy can be,’ she says. ‘This cycle had been going on between Sebastian, Alex and me for two years, and I finally recognised I had to stop it and break things off with both of them.
‘I didn’t tell Alex about the regression, but I did tell Sebastian, who was very open-minded about it. I had to work hard to let him go – it’s as though my soul knew he was my lost love. Now, I understand why our sexual chemistry cast such a spell on me – it had been going on over several lifetimes.
‘That awareness has helped me cut the cord once and for all. I realised there had never been a happy ending for us, and there never would be.’
But it’s not just relationships that past lives are thought to shine a light on. Lorraine Flaherty, 58, a clinical hypnosis lecturer and therapist from Balham, South London, discovered past-life regression during her training.
When the plane she was on nearly crashed in her early 30s, she finally decided to embrace a long-held interest in spirituality and healing and signed up for a three-year diploma in hypnotherapy, which she now teaches to medical students.
‘Hypnosis helps people access their subconscious mind, the storehouse of all memories, good and bad,’ she says. ‘As part of the course, we were encouraged to practise past-life regression on one another.
‘My training partner took 20 minutes to hypnotise me while I sat in a chair. Once I was under, he asked me to walk down a corridor towards a past life. I walked through a door, looked down and saw I was tied to a stake, about to be set on fire. The local villagers, and my mother, watched me burn.
‘I had a strong feeling that when I died, I was upset my mother hadn’t tried to save me. It appeared that she and I were midwives, herbalists and healers. We were called to help a pregnant woman in distress, but my mother felt her belly and said there was nothing we could do. I wanted to prove we were worthy so, when she wasn’t looking, I performed a kind of hands-on healing.
‘Months later, the woman gave birth to conjoined twins, and as a result I was accused of being in league with the devil and condemned to death.
‘But as I watched the regression play out, it became clear that, far from judging me, my mother had simply been powerless to save me. I’m not a crier in everyday life, yet the tears rolled down my cheeks. It wasn’t about the pain of the flames, more the sadness and hurt I could finally let go of.’ In past-life regression therapy, this moment is known as the catharsis or release.
Lorraine believes that accessing this ‘past life’ allowed her to remove an invisible barrier which had deterred her from working as a healer.
At 34, she opened a practice offering clinical hypnosis for clients with anxiety, phobias, and low self-esteem. She estimates she has experienced 150 past lives, including as a seer in Egypt and a Native American medicine woman. She now believes her purpose in life – in all her lives – has been to help people: ‘As long as I follow my intuition, I know I am on the right path.’
Marilyn Devonish, 56, from Hertfordshire, is another who believes she has used her past lives to improve her future. She was working as a management consultant when she encountered problems with a senior manager at a global company.
‘At work, I was always dressed smartly, wearing a dress and Prada shoes, and carrying a leather briefcase. But still I found myself being undermined and bullied by this man who clearly felt he could belittle me.
‘I’d end each conversation feeling awful about myself and very much “less than”. He didn’t just bully me, but others, too. In round-table meetings he would talk over me, interrupt me and behaved extremely rudely.’
She was a firm believer in past lives, and suspected that her inability to stand up to her bully might be linked to a former existence.
‘There was something about this man I couldn’t put my finger on, but I just knew
that our paths had crossed before. Luckily, I had done lots of training in how to meditate and access past lives. So I knew how to probe my
subconscious mind. One evening, when I was nicely relaxed, I was able to “ask” my subconscious about any relationship with this man in a past life.
‘My mind took me to Victorian England – I could hear the clip-clop of hooves on the cobbles. I saw a woman who I intuitively knew was me, a matchbox seller in London, as low as you could get in society.
‘I recognised the supercilious man who sneered at me as he stepped down from his carriage to buy matches as the same posh bully from my current life.
‘Except that in the Victorian era you would never stand up to a man like this, nor speak unless you were spoken to.
‘My regression showed that when I did try to speak to him once, I was horribly patronised. “Speak up! Has the cat got your tongue?” he bellowed. I bowed my head and mumbled an answer. I instinctively knew he was a regular customer who had always spoken to me rudely. Witnessing this scene made me feel empowered to break the pattern with him in the present.’
Marilyn reminded herself that she was a management consultant with ten years’ experience; she could change this dynamic once and for all.
‘I woke up the next morning and called the bully. I said this behaviour stops now and if it continues, I will call you out every single time we are together. As unbelievable as it sounds, from that point on, his behaviour changed. I’d broken the mismatch of power.’
Some would say that Marilyn challenging her bully was all it would ever have taken to stop his behaviour. But she is convinced that only regressing to a past life allowed her to break free of his ‘power’.
So how can you tell if a past life is playing havoc with the present day? Expert Andrea Foulkes says signs include having an ‘irrational fear about a person, thing or place’, a feeling of ‘bad vibes’ that you can’t explain. She says: ‘We all know of someone who takes an instant dislike to a new person at work or in their friendship group for no apparent reason. That will often be as a result of a past-life encounter.’
As for Sam Scott, she occasionally still hears from Sebastian, who jokes: ‘I’ve loved you for hundreds of years . . .’
They are both single, and she admits she still sometimes thinks ‘what if’ – but she stays strong. ‘Thanks to the regression, I know we’re not meant to be together,’ she says. ‘We have had a phenomenal connection across the ages, yet this lifetime was about closure.’
* Some names have been changed.
