A desire to learn more about who I had been in my past lives was the catalyst for me ending up working in the spiritual field.

At the time I was living and working in Spain as a teacher. I got an Akashic Record reading, with information about my past lives, and the reader told me that the reason for my interest in past lives was because I had something from a past life that needed healing.

Over the 15 years that followed, I had 14 sessions of past life regression, I trained as a past life regressionist myself, and I learned to read the Akashic Records and tell others about their past lives (and research my own.) So I have quite a bit of experience with exploring past lives and in this article, I’m going to talk about the various options for gaining this kind of information about yourself, if you should be interested in your past lives.

Let’s have a look at the best ways to explore past lives:

Past life regression

My favourite way to gain more insight into how your past lives may be affecting you, is through past life regression.

However, I recommend the type of past life regression that is about healing. I’m not a big fan of exploratory past life regression, where you just find out about your past lives, but there is no healing available.

This is because in my experience, when we undergo a past life regression, we often end up going to the most traumatic past lives that require healing. These are the lives with unfinished business. The harmonious, happy lifetimes won’t usually come up in a past life regression, unless you set the intention for them to.

So, if you ever do an exploratory past life regression (i.e. with no opportunity for healing), make sure you only intend to find out about lives with no significant trauma. 

I’ve explored loads of my past lives in regressions. If you’d like to read more about my experiences, you can do so here — just a warning that some of them are quite intense!

I like the type of regression therapy that is practised by students of the late Dr. Roger Woolger (You can find a directory of Dr Woolger’s graduates here.) It’s called Deep Memory Process and it’s the most cathartic form of past life regression I’ve ever tried.

(I have worked with Patricia Walsh, who is a DMP trainer and practitioner, and can recommend her past life regression sessions.)

Past life readings

Another option for exploring your past lives is to get a reading with someone who knows how to read the Akashic Records. I go into past lives in my Akashic Record readings.

I’ve also trained many people in reading the records, some of whom specifically offer past life readings.

A past life reading is not usually as deep or as detailed as a past life regression but you could end up learning something that explains more about who you are now. Our past lives are like hundreds of forgotten childhoods (because they also affect us the way our childhoods affect us). 

I was once told in a past life reading that I was a British governess in the 18th century, who taught the children of a wealthy family in Tuscany, Italy. In that life, I was having an affair with the brother of the man whose children I was teaching and I received a marriage proposal from the father of the family, but I turned it down and returned to the UK.

The interesting thing about this situation was that although the reader didn’t know it, I was a teacher living abroad at the time. I had the opportunity to have an affair with the parent of a child I was teaching (which I’m grateful to my past self that I didn’t take.) I also had a picture of the Tuscan countryside on my wall since I was teenager. I had been so drawn to this picture when I saw it in a shop that I had to have it and it remained with me for years afterwards. When I looked at it, I felt a sense of comfort, like I was in a lovely dream. It had a hypnotic quality to it. 

You’d be surprised by how many details of your life, including your likes and dislikes, personality, patterns of thinking and believing, are a reflection of your past lives. 

Researching our own past lives

Another way you could find out more about your past lives is by learning to read your own akashic soul record. I offer a program which teaches people how to read for others in this way. Note that this is not the quickest route to find out more about your past lives, because I recommend reading for at least 12 people before you read for yourself. But this is one more option if you are also interested in reading for others, and you are able to be patient.

How many past lives have most people had?

The majority of my clients have had between 50 and 200 past lives. Whether you’ve had lots of past lives or not many, will depend on your soul group of origin. Some soul groups incarnate here on Earth a lot and others don’t like it and tend to stay away, incarnating rarely. I wrote more about this here.