Steve Burgess: Exploring Past Lives, Reincarnation & the Power of Hypnotic Trance

Steve Burgess is a renowned hypnotherapist specializing in past life regression. With 33 years of experience, Steve has facilitated over 15,000 sessions and conducts workshops around the globe, including in the UK, Norway, Canada, and the US. He brings a unique blend of therapeutic and spiritual approaches to hypnotherapy, gaining deep insights for his clients into their current lives from past life experiences. Steve is also an accomplished author with three published books, highlighting his profound understanding and experiences in the field of regression therapy.

Register for Workshop here:https://www.nativeyogacenter.com/ap-past-life-regression-group-workshop-w-steve-burgess-saturday-december-6th-15pm.php

Visit Steve on his website: https://steveburgesshypnosis.com/

Key Takeaways:

• Regression therapy utilizes hypnosis to access the subconscious, revealing past life experiences that can offer insights into current life issues.
• Hypnosis is a natural, trance-like state, similar to everyday experiences like daydreaming or focused activities, and is integral to past life regression.
• While belief in reincarnation can enrich the experience, an open mind is sufficient to engage in past life regression workshops.
• Regression therapy can uncover emotional traumas from not only past lives but also from the present life and ancestral experiences.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Past Lives Through Hypnotherapy and Trance States
• 8:22 Exploring Past Lives and Their Impact on Present Realities
• 18:27 Healing Through Regression Therapy and Subconscious Exploration
• 21:18 Healing Emotional Pain Through Past Life Regression Therapy
• 25:30 Understanding Hypnosis: Myths, Realities, and Personal Experiences
• 28:13 From Hypnotherapy to Regression: A Journey of Spiritual Awakening
• 32:39 Harnessing Hypnotherapy and Affirmations for Personal Transformation
• 42:44 Exploring Hybrid Workshops and Past Life Regression with Steve Burgess

Transcript

Todd McLaughlin: 0:33

Welcome to Native Yoga Toddcast. So happy you are here. My goal with this channel is to bring inspirational speakers to the mic in the field of yoga, massage, body work and beyond. Follow us at @nativeyoga and check us out at nativeyogacenter.com. All right, let's begin. Hello and welcome back to Native Yoga Toddcast, I am your host, Todd McLaughlin, and today we're jumping into the fascinating doorway personal insight and inner wisdom known as past life regression. My guest is world renowned hypnotherapist, Steve Burgess. He's a practitioner with over 30 years of experience and more than 15,000 regression sessions under his belt. Steve is known for his deep, compassionate approach to regression therapy and his ability to guide people into the subconscious, to uncover memories, patterns and stories that often shape who we are today. We're also excited to welcome Steve to Native Yoga Center on Saturday, December 6, from one to 5pm for a special Past Life Regression Group Workshop, Whether you're simply curious, seeking insight or looking to understand the deeper layers of your inner world, this workshop offers a safe and powerful space to explore. In today's conversation, Steve and I talk about the purpose of regression, what people commonly experience, and why you don't have to believe in reincarnation for this work to offer real value. All right, check out the links in the description. You'll see the Steve's website, and also a link to the actual event that we're holding. And let's go ahead and begin. I'm really honored to have this chance to speak with Steve Burgess, Steve, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me on I appreciate it. So thank you. Well, it's an honor. I'm also privileged or excited that you are going to be offering a workshop at our studio on Saturday, December 6, at 1pm and the title of the workshop is past life regression group workshop. You are a hypnotherapist, so I guess I'd like to start with, can you talk a little bit about what you do in these type of workshops and what is the goal of a past life regression workshop.

Steve Burgess: 3:08

Okay, so as a hypnotherapist, I specialize in regression, working with clients day after day, helping them to heal, using regression as a means of releasing the emotional causes of issues, and I've been doing that for 33 years now and completed over 15,000 sessions from a workshop perspective. However, it's not about therapy. It's really an interesting afternoon. The idea is to help group members as a group to go into a past life and explore one of their past lives during the workshop, very safely and gently, and then to share as a group what what everybody shares, sits around afterwards and shares what they had or what they got in the session. So it's not therapy, it's for interest and it can be fun, I will say, quite a lot of people who come to the workshops, and I run them for years now in the UK and Norway and in Canada and the US, often, people will get quite some insights into their life now and how it connects back to the previous life. And that may be just in terms of who they are now, but also very often, the relationships that they have now, because we live so many lifetimes, and we live around the same souls, life after life after life in different ways. And so sometimes people in the workshops are able to understand that the daughter now was the husband in a past life, for example. And so there's all that sort of fascinating side of things as well. The whole. Whole process, for me, the whole process of regression, of past life regression, I find absolutely fascinating, even after 33 years. And the beautiful thing is, is that when people are able to access past lives, they can get some fascinating and quite amazing experiences. They really can incredible.

Todd McLaughlin: 5:18

Can you tell me, does hypnotherapy lend toward understanding past life and or is it necessary to have a belief or an understanding of reincarnation to make the leap between hypnotherapy and past life regression.

Unknown: 5:44

I think the first thing is, most people who come on the workshops tend to be already in tune with the concept of reincarnation. However, it isn't necessary, and even a belief in reincarnation isn't necessary. The most important thing is just to have an open mind and just to allow the process to unfold in the actual workshop itself. So hypnotherapy, let me just cover what that is. Because people think hypnosis is something strange or unusual or weird. It isn't. Hypnosis is a totally natural process. We all go into hypnosis. We call it trance. That's our jargon word. You know, in your position as a yoga teacher, you have jargon words in hypnosis, we have the same trance is what we call the hypnotic state. And we all go into trance all the time, every day, at least 24 times a day, when we daydream, when we drift in and out of sleep, when we are driving on automatic pilot in the car without realizing that we're driving, that's hypnosis. That's trance. When we're focusing on something, when we're watching a movie, reading a book, those are all trance experiences. So trance is completely natural. It's something we do as human beings without even realizing it. So all we're doing is using a gentle state of trance, which tends to be more of a gentle state of relaxation than anything else, in order for people to go inwards and then to tune into the deeper mind, which is the subconscious mind. So how this is achieved in the workshop, for example, and I know probably at some stage we'll talk more widely about past life regression, regression as a as a subject. But from a workshop perspective, people will come on Saturday, everybody will sit down or give them a bit of a preamble to start with. But then for the actual regression, people will just lay down. And we always ask people to bring blankets if possible, or cushions or anything they can lay on to make themselves even more comfortable. And I know you've got yoga mats, but the more yoga mats, the better, because, you know, when I'm resting on the floor, I like to be very comfortable, and then I just guide everybody through a gentle relaxation process to begin with. And what that does? It allows the conscious mind to slow down a little bit. It allows the deeper mind, the subconscious, to open out and blossom. So the mind is very much like an iceberg. The tip of the mind is the conscious thinking mind, the point not 1% of our minds, but beneath the surface of the waves in the mental iceberg, is the subconscious, or, as you wonderful American people would call it, the unconscious, which is the 99% of the mind. Of course, this is one reason why hypnotherapy is so powerful as a therapeutic process, because we're using the the engine room of the mind to help our clients to with all sorts of issues. And so what happens is, as we begin to relax, we begin to just gently move in, very naturally, into the deeper mind. And then what I do is I guide everybody back, using a visualization process in their imagination to then start to going back into a past life. And they choose a past life. And then we work through it. We explore it in more depth. See it, where you lived, who you were, with all sorts of things. We go back through the death as well, just for the sake of completeness and to take people through the death. People don't die in the workshops. You know, I've done these for nearly 30 years now, and have not lost anybody yet. So people just go into go through the process quietly. You know, everybody's laying down together, and then at the end of that, bring everybody back, and everybody just sits and shares their experience. What they got? Some people get some fascinating experiences, and they get some very deep experiences. So that's a bit of an overview of the process. It's not therapy. It's for interest. But I often find people get some deeper insights into who they are now, and. Which is very intriguing as well.

Todd McLaughlin: 10:01

Yeah, that was really cool. How you explained that trance is such a natural thing that we are already interacting with whether we're aware of it or not. Can you? Can you talk a little bit about when we go into the subconscious, if I have some sort of visual experience while in there. How important is it that the details are very clear? I guess, what I'm thinking is, do, is it possible that I could have some sort of vision that could be relating to my present life, but appears as maybe an alternate life, and vice versa. I guess I just I'm curious what type of I'm thinking. You probably have had the question a lot from people. How do I know if this is real or not? What you know? What do I What can I take from this? It seems I'm curious about my imagination, and how much is the imagination a part of our actual reality.

Unknown: 11:11

In one way, as a general rule, we can't actually prove whether it's real or imaginary and so and the reason for that is that at this level, we're not actually looking for specific information in a past life which could be later on verified. So the second thing, of course, is many past lives, it's impossible to verify the information anyway, because you know, if you go back into a past life in Romania in the 15th century, the chances are as a peasant, the chances are a shopkeeper. There's going to be no record of that anyway. So there's no way to verify in those sort of cases with in some cases, though, when we work, when I'm working one to one with clients, for example, then I can go looking for more specific information. The in the workshop process, we're just, it's a broad brush through. We're just getting the people to go into a past life, which may or may not be imaginary, but which, in my experience, very few of the past lives are what I would call imaginary now, although, because remember, we're still conscious as well. When we're in trance, the conscious mind doesn't shut down. It's still aware and we're analyzing even when I do my regressions, if I'm in a past life, I'm still thinking about it. Is it real? Am I you know what's happening here, but I'm already I let it come through so that my body can work through stuff and release stuff. But so most people are still analyzing all the way through, but everything that comes through in 99% of the past life experiences is all congruence. It all makes sense. So what we don't find is that if a client is or if a person on the workshop is in a past life in 18th century Texas, and they're sitting on the back of a horse clopping the way through forest or a town, what doesn't happen is, all of a Sudden, in their imagination in their experience, a gang of Hell's Angels suddenly rolls around the corner on motorbikes. Interesting. That doesn't happen now that would be obviously imaginary and fantasy, yeah, and I mean, I've done over 15,000 sessions so I can spot a fantasy past life 100 paces. They are just so different to what I would call a real past life, because the real past lives have congruence to them. It all fits in, and quite often, it all fits into my to the person's life now as well. So they do get quite a few learnings out of it. So to answer your question more succinctly, we can always say, is this definitely a past life, but quite often, the person who's experienced it will just know it's real. They just know it's real. They'll just have this feeling that is real. So we don't even need to worry about that, because the other thing is, if, if it is an imaginary past life, it's been created by the subconscious for a reason. We don't always know what that reason is, but for example, in therapy, when I'm using regression in therapy, if the past life is a metaphor, a historical metaphor, it will still help my client to get better. Now, from whatever the issue is that we're working on so in one way, it doesn't matter whether it's real or not, because it will still heal the client. From a workshop perspective, we're not going into that depth to look for specific information, but often people just know it's real. That's so cool. Let me give you an example of from please my first book. I mean, I've written, I've had three books published now on regression. The first book was famous past lives. And this is some clients who have had in past lives, not many, but who have been famous in their previous lives. And one client came she was actually the reincarnation of Queen Mary, Bloody Mary, Queen Mary in England, who lived in the 1500s and in the therapy sessions, in the regression sessions I did with that lady, a very man. This lady had never read a single thing about Queen Mary, and never knew anything about her before we started to do the sessions, she came through with some very specific, detailed information, and I had to go to history books and biographies of Mary, and then I found, as I'm ferreting away, what she said was absolutely true. It was there in the biographies of Queen Mary, but there is no way on earth my client would have known that information. So occasionally we do get very specific details that just come through naturally,

Todd McLaughlin: 16:03

not that's cool. It sounds to me that there's some similarities between the concept or idea or reality of the Akashic records or astral travel, this idea that every experience that's ever occurred in the past is how we that we have the potential to access that. What is the what is your understanding and or belief in relation to what we're talking about in terms of a person having a memory or regression from a past life, and the idea of tapping into this sort of, like, like, almost like an internet like a, like, a long standing historical record of every event, emotion, feeling, that's ever occurred. What are your thoughts on this?

Unknown: 16:58

There are two things, I think, from Akashic Records point of view. I mean, there are some clients, some regression therapists will use a regression process of taking the client back visually in order to imagine opening up their Akashic records from their previous lives. And they will then open up those Akashic records and they will see a past life. So that's no different to what I'm doing in regression sessions. The concept that everything is every thought, etc, that's ever been thought is all out there at the same time, like some vast web of information, is obviously quite mind blowing. And the chances are that is very much the case. I think my way of looking at this is not it's not a random thing. I don't believe that clients in regression and even on a workshop just happen to randomly go out of themselves, into the ether, into this web, and they just pick something out from a past life that is nothing to do with them. It's just something that's happened in some way at some point in history that doesn't tend to happen. I don't believe that happens. I think my clients go and the people in the workshops go into their own past lives, and in fact, the language and the terminology that I'm using to guide them back is about going back inside themselves, into their inner mind, to find their own past lives and to find a past life that's relevant to them. I don't believe that they're just random past lives that they just sort of happen to pick on. It tends to be much more specific than that. Interesting.

Todd McLaughlin: 18:43

Can you give an example of why do I want to access this? Like, what? Why? What is my why? When I I'm sure each person can come up with a personal why I'm doing this because I'd like to gain clarity on a certain aspect of my life. But from seeing and observing and guiding people through this as many times as you have, can you give your own personal why or what you think the main benefit, or one of the big benefits, is of this type of work.

Unknown: 19:22

Again, there are two answers here. From a workshop perspective, it really is just interest. You know people, most people who come are generally interested in the concept of past lives. They've maybe read about it. They've maybe listened to Dolores Cannon or Brian Weiss, etc. And so it's mainly an interest type of thing for people on workshops. Occasionally, some people will get a sense, well, maybe I need to know a little bit about something, and then as they go back in the regression workshop, they'll have that thing in the mind and the subconscious will possibly take them there. So. From a workshop perspective, it's mainly just interest and fascination. For some people, they want to know, you know, I believe in reincarnation, but I want to really make sure that it is real. And therefore, by having a past life experience, it tends to suggest the reality of it. From however, a therapeutic perspective, and obviously, as a hypnotherapist, as a regression therapist, my work day after day after day is helping clients to heal from a vast array of issues. And those issues, the concept of regression therapy, as I say the workshop, is not therapy, but from the my day to day work. The regression model is that all of our issues as human beings come from locked in feelings and emotions from past traumas. That's the regression model. So that means that every issue we have as human beings are caused by locked in feelings from past traumas. And the range of issues can be simple things, not simple, but anxieties, depression, lack of confidence, relationship issues, physical issues, cancer, sexual issues, you name it. Every issue has emotional causes, and the regression modeling is about going back to wherever those traumas have taken place in the past that are causing the issue now. And in regression therapy, there are three areas that we regress back into. The first area is the most obvious, and that's this present lifetime. And we've all got baggage from this life, whether we like to admit it or not. So quite a lot of regression work is just regressing back into traumas in this life, perhaps childhood, perhaps birth. We do a lot of rebirthing, releasing birth trauma that can damage people. Trauma in the womb, pre birth, can be can affect people all their lives. So a lot of regression is about going back into this life, releasing trauma, healing the inner child. The second area, past lives, and I'm one of the few therapists in the world who takes past lives very, very seriously as a regression, as a healing process. And the third area, our ancestors lives, because we can inherit trauma from our ancestors, from parents and grandparents and great grandparents. So for some of my clients who come with issues, we need to work in all three areas. For other clients, we're just working in one we just the subconscious knows where we need to go. My client may not know consciously, but their subconscious does, and once we working in trance and the subconscious, the I believe the subconscious is the higher self. I believe we all have a higher self, and I believe the subconscious is either the intimately connected to the higher self or is the higher self. So when we're working with that, we're working with the all wise part of the person, the mind, which knows how to get them better and knows where to take them. And so this is often why a client will come with a an issue. Let's say I had a client came years ago who was an alcoholic, okay, and severe alcoholic. He was a top London barrister, you know, very big name in the world of legal profession in London, standing up in court in doing top cases. But he was an alcoholic, functioning alcoholic, and he sat down in front of me in our first session and said, Well, you know, I don't know why I'm an alcoholic, but I've got all these, you know, I just feel chewed up all the time. I remember alcohol is just a means of anesthetizing emotional pain as any addiction is all addictions are just a means of anesthetizing emotional pain. But he said, I don't believe in past lives. I know you do all this past life stuff, Burgess, don't even, don't even think about past lives of me. I was brought up a Catholic, and that's what I am. So end of story. So guess what? His subconscious took him into a past life in the session where he was a French aristocrat in the French time of the French Revolution, and he was madly in love with a woman, an aristocratic woman, but the revolution tore them apart, and although they didn't die in the revolution, she had to leave France, and she never returned. And so for all of his life, he the loss of the love of his life was just the main thing, as that man had to live with that pain for the rest of his life. So he'd brought that emotional pain into this lifetime, and his way of anesthetizing it because he couldn't verbalize it. He didn't know it was there was through the alcohol. Wow. So the subconscious knows the best healing process. And, you know, I always trust the subconscious. It knows what. It knows what to do.

Todd McLaughlin: 24:50

That's fascinating. That's so interesting. Did he have benefit from these sessions to help? Yeah.

Unknown: 25:00

We needed to do more than he actually came because his girlfriend, who was also an alcoholic, she came to me sometime, some years earlier, and she she'd been a functioning alcoholic for 16 years. We did one regression session, and she never touched a drop of alcohol again. Wow. And that lady, this is 30 odd years ago. I call a Wonder Woman. I still keep in touch with her. That doesn't happen very often, you know, a one hit wonder, but, you know, it's just a mark of how deep this work is as well. You know, I'm working with serious issues. I'm working with depression. You know, a lady came to me years ago, she was a counselor with depression. She'd done lots of counseling, nothing had worked. I guided her into trance. The subconscious indicated that there were, I think it was, seven past lives that were causing the depression. And over several sessions, we worked through each past life in one of the past lives, she was a woman in the past life who had a young son, and the son died of sickness, and she couldn't come to terms with that. The pain was too much, so she eventually killed herself to get away from the emotional pain, the agony in another past life, she was executed as a witch. She wasn't a witch, but she was persecuted and killed as a witch. In another past life, she was a man who ran away from a battle and felt ashamed of what he'd done. So we worked through all these past lives, released the past life energy, the depression, just dissolved away. Wow.

Todd McLaughlin: 26:39

I have had the opportunity when I was in high school and going to a therapy session where a therapist used hypnotherapy with me, and I remember it being a profound experience. I didn't believe that it could be real, and after the experience, I was extremely curious. And I kind of thought, what was that that was so interesting? Can you talk a little bit about, for those that have never experienced hypnosis, what the feeling is like, What the I like? Personally, I just remember feeling like I was sinking deeper down and and like, there was just a very unique feeling associated with it. I'm I don't know if I'm sure it's different for every single person. Can you talk a little bit about what some of the common sort of awareness, what type of awareness there is during these sort of processes?

Unknown: 27:40

Yes, what I always talk about with trance and hypnosis is to talk about what it isn't because people think it's some form of sleep state. And this is partly because I've seen a stage hypnotist and say, sleep all the time, and people flop down and they think those people on stage are asleep, they're not asleep at all. If they're asleep, they wouldn't respond to His instructions. Because when we're asleep, we're asleep, we're not hearing anything. So it isn't sleep. It isn't going into a coma where you don't know what on Earth's happening. It isn't being under anesthetic again, where you don't know what's happening. I tend to say to my clients, think relaxation and you'll be on the right track. Anybody who meditates regularly does hypnosis regularly, because meditation is a form of trance. So hypnosis and meditation are sisters. They are just so similar. The difference tends to be with meditation, we tend to be sitting upright, of course, and focusing on something. There's always an object to meditation, but with trance, where we tend to be just resting back, and we don't focus the mind, we just let it drift a little bit. But I often find people who meditate regularly actually going to trance really quite well. So it isn't about going. And the word people use, which really pisses me off, is the word under, you know people. At the end of I can often explain to my clients for 15 minutes that you're not going to be asleep, you're not under anesthetic, you're not in a coma. You'll know what's happening. You'll hear the sounds outside. You'll be and still, they'll come out of trance. At the end of the session, they'll say, Well, I don't think I was under. And they always use this bloody word under, because they expect to be under anesthetic or under my control, I could, I could hear your voice. They'll say, I could have opened my eyes. Well, yeah, you were just relaxing. That's it. Think relaxation. You'll still hear things. Your conscious mind will still be ticking over. So the myth about trance work is that you don't know what's going on all the way through. That's the myth. That's the Hollywood myth. Yes, trance is just this focused inner state where we tend to feel more calm. Our conscious mind tends to slow down so we feel less busy inside. And there are different depths of trance, light trance, medium trance, deep trance, and the. The deeper you go, the more calm you tend to feel, the more focused you tend to be. But all the time you're still aware, you still can respond to the outside world at any time. It's a bit boring, really. There's nothing magical about it. My role as a therapist is just to facilitate that going inwards. Yeah, yeah, as a meditation teacher would do, as I've taught, I used to teach meditation for many years, you know, and it's just teaching people to go inwards, and it helps the mind to become more still and to become freer. What was

Todd McLaughlin: 30:37

the catalyst for you in your own journey that got you inspired and excited to facilitate this?

Unknown: 30:46

Well, I mean, I became a hypnotherapist quite by accident, when my father had stopped smoking using hypnosis and couldn't understand how it had worked. How was it It tried everything to stop smoking, and for all of his life of 30 years, nothing had worked, and he went to see this hypnotherapist chap who laid him in a chair, talked to him softly and gently. My dad didn't want cigarettes anymore. That's what we call post hypnotic suggestion therapy. So that's standard basic hypnotherapy. Regression is a deeper process, but just taking people into trance and feeding the subconscious with positive suggestions is what most hypnotherapists do, and it can be very powerful. So he stopped smoking. He was fascinated. How would this work? He was a scientist. My dad is a scientist by profession, and he couldn't make sense of it. They just didn't logically connect with this left brain. I'd laid in a chair, and this chap talked to me, and I don't want to smoke anymore. That doesn't make sense. So he started to read up about it, and he became fascinated. And then he trained as hypnotherapist and just worked from home as a hobby privately, just helping friends and family and people who were recommended to him. And so then I was a director of publishing company, which went bust, and my dad said, Well, why don't you look at being a hypnotherapist, and so I trained, never really looked back. I was lucky. I'm a natural therapist. The right move for me.

Todd McLaughlin: 32:09

That's amazing. That's interesting, that like to watch your dad smoke all day, every day, and then have him just be like, Okay, I'm done. You'd be like,

Unknown: 32:18

what I mean? What a difference. But as a regression therapist, it was I wasn't a regression therapist to start with, until I had a client who spontaneously regressed in a therapy session with he had severe anxiety, and he went back into a past life in the Second World War when him and his children and family were being murdered by the Nazis. And he released that in a big way. He was screaming and yelling in the chair, which is very unusual, but he released the energy of all the anxiety it had for years, and he got completely better in 15 minutes. Wow. And so I started to look at past life regression more seriously, well as a therapy I'd already I mean, I believed in reincarnation since I was 15. I became a Buddhist when I was 13. I was a practicing Buddhist for many years, but as a therapist, I hadn't trained in regression, so I realized I needed to start training in regression, and then I developed a way of working. I have my own regression system that I've created that I now train therapists around the world in in order to help, then hypnotherapist to become regression therapists and to do the work very seriously, because it's very serious, deep work. You know, regression is something that people shouldn't play at, not in a regression therapy process. Certainly workshops, different workshops, fun and light, the therapy process is much deeper and much and quite different.

Todd McLaughlin: 33:46

Understood what occurred at age 15 that caused you to have a very clear, I understand reincarnation now.

Unknown: 33:55

I think I had a spiritual breakthrough, and I'd been nothing made sense in life, you know, 1314, I was at school studying religious knowledge and trying to make sense of Christianity, and it was being pulled towards that, but it just didn't make sense. And then I heard and read a little bit about reincarnation and everything made sense. The whole of life suddenly made sense. For the first time in my life, I understood what it was about. Because Christianity doesn't feel that at all. It's all about belief and faith in stuff that doesn't ultimately make sense. Sometimes a lot of it does, of course, the teachings on love and compassion and caring for others, but all the a lot of the other stuff is really just doesn't make sense. Reincarnation just fits that gap. It's like we live over and over. We live many times. We change lives. We learn over those many lifetimes. We grow as souls, until ultimately, we don't have to get reborn anymore. We're able to move off. From the Earth and move off into other spheres of light or spirituality. You could say,

Todd McLaughlin: 35:06

that's really cool. That's awesome. I agree with you. Is there? You know, when I think about positive affirmation, I come up with, say a mantra that if I, you know, taking the situation that you said about your dad, if I was a smoker and I decided, okay, I'd like to stop smoking. So if I use a positive affirmation in the conscious mind, maybe I pick something like, I don't I have no interest in smoking. I have no interest in smoking, and I repeat it. And I repeat it, if, if we work in the subconscious and and you're mentioning that through like a hint or suggestion, the power of suggestion, while in that state, that it can have a much deeper effect, more like real effect. Is there a way that we can do that in our own lives and in our own meditation? Is there a way that we can bring that into more clarity, even in our own experience, and if so, is there a technique or a way of making that a little more real than our conscious mind, positive affirmation work that we might do?

Unknown: 36:11

Yeah, so there are two things here. First of all, I have a YouTube channel called Hypno for all. And on the YouTube channel, Hypno for all, there are 26 free hypnotherapy recordings that can help people with all sorts of issues. So these use basic standard hypnosis guiding I guide you into trance as you're listening to the recording, and then you'll feed the mind with positive suggestions and or visualization. So I would say to people who are interested in getting into hypnosis, or looking at ways for hypnotherapy to help. Then look at Hypno for all. Some of the recordings are for IBS. Some for anxiety. There's one for smoking, there's some for weight loss, childbirth, natural childbirth, all sorts of things on there. It's my way of giving stuff away to the world, because I believe everybody should have the option to experience hypnotherapy in some way. That's one way to do it. The second way is to use gentle relaxation combined with creating affirmations which are done in the right way. So your affirmation there is, I'm no longer interested in smoking, is a rubbish affirmation. It really is, sorry. It's not the best. So when we make an affirmation, it should be in The Now I am now, and we say what we want, not what we don't want. So if we say, you know, I'm going to try to stop smoking. Well, try is a crap word anyway. As soon as you say the word try implies failure, so you know, but as soon as you say, I'm not going to do something that's negative, the subconscious doesn't like the negative. There is even a belief that the subconscious doesn't hear the word not it just hears a blank there. So with an affirmation, it should be in the now, and it should be positive. I when I create affirmations, I like to use the phrase I choose to be. I think it's just a lovely way to be. I choose to be free. I choose to be calm. If we're looking at anxiety, I choose to be relaxed. I choose to be smoke free. I can be smoke free. I am now a non smoker. Because non smoker is a generic term that we use for somebody who's let go of cigarettes. I now am calm. I am at peace with myself and fully relaxed. So affirmation should be in the now, and they should be positive. Say what you want, not what you don't want. So I don't want to feel anxious. Is a terrible affirmation,

Todd McLaughlin: 38:48

desperately that makes perfect. I am

Unknown: 38:50

calm and relaxed. I'm at peace with myself. And for relaxed is a better affirmation if you can accompany that, if you're visual with imagining yourself well or healthy, or whatever it is that also can help the subconscious to to create the you that you want to be. So stopping smoking, imagine yourself at home free from cigarettes, out socially free from cigarettes, whatever, whatever. So running a movie of how you want to be and getting a feeling of that you can get the kinesthetics in. How do I feel? How would I be feeling if I was if all that anxiety stuff and all that stress was no longer bothering me, how would I be feeling? How would I be feeling very free and calm right? Feel it now. So those two things for me go together, affirmations and visualizations.

Todd McLaughlin: 39:41

Great advice, Steve, I really appreciate that. I'm curious. I What is your thoughts then on the future? Because in relation to positive affirmation, it seems that we might be attempting to, like, magnetize ourselves. Toward a desired outcome. I also understand that, like present moment awareness, like if I'm choosing to be peaceful, then the experience of being peaceful in the moment is achieved, and therefore that future becomes real in terms of past life. Is there any credence toward future life, or is that not possible? Because do you believe in free will and that through choice, we can't determine what our future is? I'm curious where your thoughts are in relation to past and then future. Okay? I

Unknown: 40:43

mean, I was all I can really go on is my reading of things and what comes through in my client sessions. So, you know, I don't, nobody knows for for certain, what I can say is what tends to happen. Apparently, what happens is in between lives. So before the life we live now, to me, to me, before the life we live now, in spirit, before we were reborn, we tend to map, roughly, map the life that we're going to come down into. And it's a sort of a template for the life that we're about to live. But because we have free will when we come down here, we can change that template. And if we are actually, if we separate from our intuition, which most people are, unfortunately, we tend to make the wrong decisions. So the more we can tune into our intuition by being in a state of oneness, we tend to stay on the right path, the path that we've chosen for ourselves before we come in. So that's one way of looking at things. Secondly, from a future life perspective, it is said that we can create future lives by focusing into them. And in fact, there's an English colleague I have, an yersh, and she does all of her client work, taking clients into future lifetimes or ahead in this life to create things at a deeper level, and she gets some great results for people. So, you know, time is malleable, and you know, who knows whether now is the future or now is the past or now? Is just now? Nobody really knows. And there's all these extraordinarily complex ideas about time, which, which are just mind blowing. So I think, as much as anything else, for me, I try to keep it very simple, being in the now and being in the now and being as calm as one can be, that then creates an energy of calmness which runs through our lives, generally. And of course, if we're able to, you know, live in a state of non duality, especially when we're just in the in the state of oneness and awareness, then that, for me, is a much healthier way to live our lives, without living with expectations, without living with predetermined thoughts. Because the concept of non duality, of course, is that everything just is. And if we're in that beingness, then I think we're living in a more natural and spiritual way as well, having said that, there is nothing wrong with wanting to manifest nice things for ourselves or good things or a good way of life, but I think manifestation has to be done from a perspective of of being in a calm state as well being in the now and being happy with, satisfied with whatever is going on right now, but then thinking of what we would like to happen and what we would like to have, and again, believing we have that feeling that we have it so it isn't just good enough to sort of visualize that I want this red Porsche in the next two years to drive around in a fancy car. But if you're actually feeling yourself in that car, and you do that often enough, then the concept is your subconscious will take you towards that it will create that positive outcome in some way. But I'm thinking most of the time it has to come from this centered beingness, perspective, position of just being in the now and then, from that very grounded position, thinking of what we would like and how we would feel to have that, and then I think we're more likely to manifest,

Todd McLaughlin: 44:32

well said, Good explanation. It dawned on me during the session that the workshop will be here live in our studio in Juneau Beach in Florida, and I have listeners that are not local. Do you ever if in future, I know we didn't set the workshop off up this way? Is it something that can be facilitated online as well? Like, if, if you were doing the workshop and we did have a zoom camera on you, is that something that works? Or do you find that there's it works better if you don't hybridize it, where, when you're in studio with people, you're working with people, when I'm in that group, and if you're doing online, then you can focus within the online community. What have what has been your experience now that clearly you work in both mediums regularly, what are you finding?

Unknown: 45:30

Yeah, I mean, first of all, from I do all of my therapy sessions online. I actually prefer doing therapy sessions online now, and I have clients all around the world, and the therapy sessions go very, very, very well, which I would never have believed 10 years ago, but having sort of thrown myself into working online, I love it now. I think it's I think it works better from a regression workshop perspective, it is possible to do it as a hybrid now I haven't done a hybrid workshop. I've done hybrid training courses. So when I I run regression training courses and inner child training courses for therapists in when I go back to the UK and we run them for people in the room and online as well, and they work well, it's harder for me to facilitate. It's certainly more hard because you've got to be keeping people involved, you know, in the room and or outside the room. It would be possible to do it from a zoom perspective. But I haven't done the workshop as a hybrid So, but I've certainly have colleagues who they would do their past life group workshops solely online. So, you know, yes, it's possible to do it in that way. That's cool. It just takes a lot more concentration, because it's harder to keep everybody involved. And of course, you know, it's one of those things we'd need. If we did that, then the people in the room would need to be able to see the people online as well, and vice versa. So when I'm in the UK, we have a screen behind me and I'm on and so there's a lot of technicalities. Yeah, I much prefer doing the workshops just in house, though, I really do. Yeah, I just think. I just, I just love the afternoon. It's such a great afternoon, understood, and it's more and it's fun as well, but it is. It would be possible to do it as a hybrid.

Todd McLaughlin: 47:28

Yes, that's cool. I was curious. Well, Steve, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to answer all my questions. I'm really excited for the event. Is there anything else that you would like to share? Can think of that would be important for the listener in relation to the conversation we've had, or anything that we've left out that you'd like to add.

Unknown: 47:52

I mean, my books. I bring my books along on the workshops if people want to buy any more books, and of course, I'm happy to sign them as well. That's what we famous authors, do you know? No, I think we've gotten, we've covered a lot there. And I think the most important thing from the workshop perspective, is it's fun and it's and it's light and it's entertaining, but it's there's also, there is a depth to it as well. There's a spiritual depth to it, which also comes in very clearly for the people that are there, and certainly I'm in the last few weeks, I've run the workshop twice in California, and, of course, the small groups as well. That's the thing. I think it's nicer to have a small group. I'm not Brian Weiss, who does workshops for 100 people. That's not my thing. These small, intimate groups, I think people get more out of them. So yeah, I think that for me, it's about the the interest, the fun and the fascination with past life regression that people can really get a lot out of well.

Todd McLaughlin: 48:56

Thank you so much, Steve. I really do appreciate it, and I do look forward to seeing you on Saturday and once again, thank you for sharing some time with us.

Unknown: 49:06

My pleasure. Thank you so much. Amy, Todd, I've enjoyed it been great chatting with you. Thank you.

Todd McLaughlin: 49:10

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me and Steve Burgess on today's episode of native yoga. Todd cast, I really hope this conversation opened a door to new ideas, self inquiry and a deeper appreciation for the mysteries held within the subconscious mind. If you felt inspired and want to experience his work firsthand, Steve will be leading his past life regression group workshop here at Native yoga center on Saturday, December 6, from one to 5pm spots are limited, and you have to register through the link in a description to join this workshop is an opportunity to relax, explore and gain insight into what may be shaping your present life patterns. So no beliefs are required, just curiosity. City and an open mind as always. Thank you for tuning in practicing with us and being a part of the native yoga community. Until next time, keep breathing deeply. Stay open to the journey, and I'll see you on the map or in the next episode. Native yoga Todd cast is produced by myself. The theme music is dreamed up by Bryce Allen. If you like this show, let me know if there's room for improvement. I want to hear that too. We are curious to know what you think and what you want more of what I can improve. And if you have ideas for future guests or topics, please send us your thoughts to info at Native yoga center. You can find us at Native yoga center.com, and hey, if you did like this episode, share it with your friends, rate it and review and join us next time you.