I am fascinated with past lives. This is a very beginner friendly book for past life regression work. I like that it not only had instructions but also included stories.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. This is my honest review

I have to be honest—this book was just a little bit too out there for me. While I’m very open to experiences of memories from past lives and have been compelled by accounts of young children recalling strangely specific details from another life, for example, Joy’s accounting of her work with past-regression clients fit such a crisp, linear narrative of how souls “work” that it was very difficult to get past the feeling that some other motivation might be at play. The language of this book is very definitive, claiming to present the truth of how souls incarnate based on Joy’s conversations with clients in hypnotic trance, and while I did my best to turn my science brain off and my spiritual brain on, I couldn’t ignore the strange consistency of client accounts. If your aim is simply to read some fun, interesting accounts of past lives from a hypnotherapist’s perspective, the tales are certainly compelling, and there are some useful practical lessons you can find in these pages. But I think a healthy degree of skepticism is warranted here.

The book is organized linearly, describing a sort of system of souls from “youth” through their first incarnations on earth, challenges of disconnection from source, and re-connection. Joy narrates direct language from clients taken from sessions where they are frequently speaking in the voice of a past life, or sometimes relaying information from a guide or other being. She heavily contextualizes the tales with information about how the whole system works, taken in part from the work of fellow hypnotherapist Michael Newton. This information is presented as something she (and Newton) learned directly from working with clients, but I have to wonder about the role of the therapists themselves and the specifics of the therapist-client relationship.

The challenge with this format is that you don’t really get the client’s perspective. Clients use very similar language (to each other, and to Joy), so the reader must assume that these stories are either paraphrased, compiled, or heavily edited. I wish that we’d had the opportunity to also hear directly from clients about their experiences, or more about the specific methodology. I wonder, for example, how much the therapist’s own perspective affects the questions asked, and how much the client’s expectations for a session play into their responses. My doubt is less that regression is possible, but more a doubt that so many clients would have such a similar, concrete experience of the “life between lives.” Of course such a collection wouldn’t include clients who did not experience a past life or experienced details too hazy to make an interesting narrative, but it’s still strange how the details match up.

Beyond the simple consistency, there are some obvious connections between the way the soul world is described and modern Euroamerican perspectives. Joy does note in the introduction that our current lives and perspectives influence how we understand the soul system, but I’d expect more vagueness in this case. It seems a strange coincidence that souls just happen to reincarnate in a linear order through time, that there is a hierarchy of souls, that Earth is unique as a location for incarnation, that past selves somehow know exact years and ages and locations where they were born in times where that information wouldn’t be available, and that there would be so many movie-like features in the soul realm (from a teacher with a magical orb to a hospital where souls go to heal to a room full of televisions in the afterlife). Any of these things could be true, or reasonable ways the human brain would interpret the truth, but the certainty throws me.

It’s hard not to notice that this book enshrines a certain worldview. Indigenous societies and religions are presented as primitive and early steps on a soul’s evolution. Souls are supposedly supposed to experience masculine and feminine early on, but there’s no actual discussion of say, a nonbinary incarnation or a different take on gender as a soul evolves. Free will is emphasized, but there’s also an element of a “divine plan” and weirdly literal descriptions of guides and soul groups planning out the next incarnation. Guides are strangely judgy, compared to my own understanding of the concept. We’re currently in a time where many souls are “graduating,” apparently, which feels very New Agey.

More concerning, I think, is the way the framework and the specific stories might cause actual harm in the real world for clients or readers who believe what they read. There’s a victim-blamey tone in some places—for example, narratives of cheating suggesting that it’s the person cheated on’s fault / lesson to learn that they’re too naive, or a fairly universal presentation of not having children as a problem. “Lack of trust is the path of blame, anger, and bitterness,” Joy writes. “In other words, victimhood, which means looking outside of ourselves for the cause of our distress. Eventually we learn to look inside.” Sure, there are times when we need to turn inside rather than blaming others, but this absolutism goes much too far.

More generally, the view that a serene acceptance is generally the way to go could be carried out to scary extremes. Horrible experiences seem to be justified by saying that they are soul lessons, and we’re encouraged to sympathize with everyone from Nazis to rapists. Spiritual surrender is one thing, but this feels like a dangerous path.

This is a good beginning book to past life regression. It has instructions so you know how to do it the right way.

A solid look at past life regression work, with stories and instruction. I don't really think the author is breaking any new ground with this work, but for those new to the concepts presented here, I think it is well-written and a valuable work, as well.