Take me back

DRIVING across York for my appointment with hynotherapist Dr Keith Hearne, I try to predict what he might uncover from my past. Did I live a previous life in a different time? Had I walked the streets of Roman Eboracum or Viking Jorvik? Perhaps I'd been Mary Queen of Scots, plotting against husband, lovers and Elizabeth I? Or Flora MacDonald, lovingly rescuing Jacobite rogue Bonnie Prince Charlie by taking him over the sea to Skye?

I feel excited until I recall my husband's comments over breakfast. "I know what you'd have been in a past life. A slug."

Feet firmly back on earth, I meet Dr Hearne with an open but inquisitive mind.

Dr Hearne, from Egham in Surrey, is the principal of the European College of Hypnotherapy and accomplished in the field of past life regression. He has been brought to York for one day by Mandrill Television, a local TV company seeking to make a programme about past life experiences. I am one of six guinea pigs who will be filmed for the project.

The aim is for people to give clear details of their past lives: names, dates and descriptions, which could later be researched by historians and genealogists in an attempt to validate the experiences.

The jury is still out on the subject of past life regression. However it is agreed that it can help some people. There are many examples of problems varying from phobias to medical complaints being healed after the patient has undergone hypnosis and discovered a trauma in a past life.

Some cases are worthy of further scientific scrutiny, where, for example, under hypnosis a patient can speak in a foreign language they have never learned.

I am first on the couch and Dr Hearne asks about my general well-being. He looks every inch the mind doctor. The dark beard is suitably Freudian, the soft, slow voice and gentle manner perfect for sending you into a sleepy state where anything can happen.

Sitting next to me, he tells me to close my eyes. My hands rest over a box of tissues. He says even the slightest twitch of a digit can be a communication from my unconscious mind.

He asks me to imagine walking along the beach, feeling sand between my toes. I do this and start to relax. Next, he tells me to enter a cave. He leads me into several corners, each with their own gem stones. I am asked to absorb each of their colours, all the time taking deep and powerful breaths.

I fall into a deeply relaxed state, which I take to be hypnosis. I am surprised that I am aware of everything that is going on. I feel I could just stop at any time, but I don't want to. I am drawn to this new world. I feel very cold, so cold that I want to ask for the fire to be turned up, but I just can't speak. I know I just have to bear it. There are other things to focus on.

Dr Hearne tells me to imagine walking down a corridor until I come to a door, then go inside.

"What do you see?" he asks.

All I see is a bed.

"Look at your feet. What do you see?" asks Dr Hearne.

I see my camel-coloured leather boots, then quickly they change to bare feet.

"What else?" he asks.

Nothing, I say. "Step outside yourself and tell me what you see," he suggests.

I do this and look back to see a young girl with mid-length hair, in a pretty summer dress. Very 1970s, I tell him, although she is not me as a child.

"What happens next?" asks the doctor. Again, I shake my head. He tells me to imagine it being a film and to describe what happens in the next scene. But I can't. My mind is blank. All I can see is the girl and the hotel bed. I feel stuck. Ages seem to pass and then it happens.

A wave of emotion floods over me. Tears spring from my eyes and I say: "The little girl wants to say something. She's saying: 'Where is everybody?'"

With that, the girl walks across the room to a huge window. Before her lies a big city, such as New York. Next, she is walking in the streets. The sky is bright blue. She feels the sun on her face. She seems happy. But then I realise she isn't.

"She doesn't have anywhere to go, or anyone to see," I tell the doctor.

Next, she is in a caf. Again, I have another revelation.

"Why is everyone ignoring her?" I ask. "She's just a little girl, about seven or eight. It's cold outside, yet she's wearing a summer dress and no shoes. They should notice her, shouldn't they?"

Dr Hearne asks if she could be a ghost? I say I don't know. He asks me to imagine the little girl somewhere else. I see her walking barefoot in the woods. She is lost and starts to panic. She wants her mummy and daddy.

Exhausted, she collapses next to a tree. Dr Hearne wants me to tell him more, but I can't. Or won't, I'm not sure. But my mind empties. He tells me to imagine the little girl being absorbed into a bright light above which are angels. I do this and feel a warm light flood my inner field of vision.

Dr Hearne probes for some more scenarios but my internal movie has finished. He counts me out of the hypnosis and moves closer to share his analysis.

"I don't think it was a past life regression," he tells me. "At first I thought you might have had a spirit attached to you, but it's not that either. I think it is a sub personality."

I'm stunned. Sub personality sounds like a serious psychological disorder. Dr Hearne shakes his head. He explains that perhaps I was sad or lonely as a little girl and somehow have not been able to let go of that.

"You are allowing that little girl to influence your life now," he says. Reassuringly, he tells me he can sort it out.

He puts me under hypnosis again and tells me to hold a cushion, imagining it to be the little girl. My tears return as I hold this cushion and stroke it as if it were my own daughter.

Dr Hearne asks me what I want to tell her.

"It'll be all right," I say. Then he asks what does she want to say to me. "Have a good life," I say. He tells me to breathe deeply and absorb the girl into me. As I inhale and exhale the tears stop and I feel better.

As he brings me out of hypnosis, Dr Hearne tells me that I will have a new life from this moment.

I open my eyes and feel my mascara clogging up. My face is probably mucky, but I feel strangely cleansed and calm.

"Oh dear, I always make the ladies cry," says Dr Hearne, offering me a tissue.

I feel emotionally drained as I drive back to the office. It turns out that only one of the guinea pigs had what could be termed a past-life experience under hypnosis and that there is much work to do before any TV programme might be made.

So, I'm no clearer about deciding whether I believe in reincarnation. But one thing's for sure: I do believe in the power of hypnosis.

Updated: 10:20 Tuesday, February 17, 2004