Past Life Regression Workshop

On Wednesday, January 10th, my mother and I took part in a past life regression workshop at the Crystal Lotus Shoppe, located in St. Albans, WV!  And, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but apparently I was a patient in an insane asylum sometime during the 1940s. But, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself...

The workshop of about 9-10 students was led by Arken Skywalker. Arken works at the Crystal Lotus doing massages, readings, and offering various other services and handmade products. While the participants passed around a bay leaf, giving over any negativity we carried to it, Arken prepared the room with a smudging. The bay leaf, containing any unwanted thoughts and baggage of the room, was then burned. We were ready to start the process.

We got comfortable in our chairs. The room was lit only with a single candle and the sounds of binaural beats provided the background noise. Arken then verbally led us through a 45-minute guided meditation, deep into our subconscious, where we would hopefully be able to catch a glimpse of a former life. After the exercise, we wrote down everything we remembered and then had a brief discussion about what we experienced and past-life regression in general.

I don't want to give too much information about what I experienced, because it is somewhat personal. However, I DID experience something. We were led through the meditation to walk down a hallway and to choose a door to enter. My door was a large, heavy wooden door with a Victorian flair and a rounded top. However, as soon as I reached to open it, that door literally fizzled away and in its place was a fairly modern metal hospital door.

As I stepped through that door, I stepped through time and found myself as a 16 year old girl. I was barefoot, standing on dirty, dingy, yellowish tiles. I was wearing a hospital gown. My nails were bitten down to the point where they were bloody. My long brown hair was disheveled, and I kept hearing someone in authority telling me to do something, but I either couldn't hear them or didn't care. I felt both anxiety and an overwhelming sense of sadness, to the point where my physical body actually teared up a bit.

I was released about a year later, and I remember getting on a train with a man who was slightly older than me. I was wearing a burgundy skirt suit and matching hat. My once-disheveled hair was pinned up in a classic 1940s style, and I was carrying a small brown suitcase. We were then taken further into the future, and I saw myself as in my 30s, looking at a photograph of a man in an army uniform, as I sat in front of the fire. I had three children, a boy and two girls, yet I felt something was missing from my life. I was not happy. As we progressed further, I saw myself in my 40s, lying in a hospital bed, dying.

From what I could gather of my visions, I was someone suffering from severe depression. I was first hospitalized at what I think may have been Weston State Hospital (better known as Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum) while in my teens. Over the years, I would go be admitted several more times, and received electro-shock therapy at least once.

I don't think that life was productive to my soul's spiritual journey---as we were led out of the room we had entered and back into the hallway, I saw my reiki guide standing there. There was a man, who I couldn't really see, but understood to be more powerful and 'higher up' spiritually than my reiki guide, there as well. My reiki guide looked at my sympathetically and patted me gently saying "We'll try again next time." We were then led back out of the meditation and invited to start writing our impressions.

I filled a whole page and was still writing long after everyone else seemed to have stopped, lol.

During the discussion following the guided meditation, I learned that what they show in the movies isn't necessarily true---when you go through a past life regression, you don't automatically start at the life previous to your current incarnation. You can end up anywhere, especially if there is something going on in your current life that could benefit from the wisdom gleaned from a past life experience.  I also learned that the actual meditation may not be the end to this particular experience, and that dreams and 'flashbacks' sparked by the regression could occur following. As of this writing, I haven't fallen asleep yet, so I can't vouch for the dreams...but almost immediately I started to have flashes of more information.  What's even weirder is that I think the universe (or at least, my guides) were preparing me for the information to come. I weirdly had a few things happen today that make a LOT of sense now, such as a phantom smell I experienced, an odd pain that popped up out of nowhere, and some other things that are personal.

I am so glad I took this workshop. Before we were guided out of the meditation, we made a plea to leave behind any hang-ups from that life that are affecting our current one. I am hoping that the path I'm taking now (which is eerily mimicking the one I saw during the meditation) will be changed for the better. It was a really interesting experience, and I would recommend it to anyone, at least once!  If you're close to the St. Albans area, make sure you follow the Crystal Lotus Shoppe on Facebook for updates. There will be another past life regression workshop later in the year, but the shop offers plenty of classes, workshops, and other events in addition to their regular services, such as massage, reiki, yoga, and psychic readings.