Past-life hypnosis ban in Israel
Authorised hypnotherapists whose work is recognised by Israel’s Health Ministry have been banned from exploring their patients’ past lives. The Advisory Committee on the Law on Hypnosis has made the ruling following complaints that some clients had suffered serious emotional damage through reincarnation hypnosis sessions.
The ban does not affect unauthorised hypnotists, in line with the Health Ministry’s decision to allow various alternative treatments that are not recognised as therapeutic by modern medicine.
Commenting on the restriction, which was announced in Israel’s oldest newspaper, Haaretz (24 July, 2009), Dr Alex Aviv of the Abarbanel Mental Health Centre in Bat Yam, who heads the advisory committee, argued that hypnosis and reincarnation had nothing to do with one another.
“This is a mystical practice for people who believe in reincarnation,” he explained. “We’ve seen a number of cases where practitioners tried to perform this on patients and things went bad.”
He did not say whether the committee examined any cases where patients had a positive outcome from hypnotic regression to an apparent past life.
The newspaper said discussion on past-life regression therapy began two years ago within the ministry and ended with “an explicit ban on offering the practice, or for hypnotists to present themselves as experts in the field.”
One of the cases cited involved a 23-year-old man who suffered depression after breaking up with his girlfriend. The psychologist treating him suggested that an event in a past life might now be making it difficult for him to let go of his partner and offered to hypnotise him.
The regression session went wrong when the man became emotionally stuck in an experience which made him feel he was enclosed in a coffin, leaving him suffering repeated panic attacks and respiratory problems after he returned to a normal conscious state.
Haaretz did, however, quote a supporter of regression therapy, Dr Lianna Sofer, who said that correcting problems which began in a previous life could be beneficial in this life. She had, for example, cured a woman from chronic neck pains after “discovering she had been decapitated in a previous life”.
Hypnosis, in inexperienced hands, can be dangerous and Israel was the first country to introduce legislation to control its use. Dr Aviv Alex, the advisory committee’s head, was one of four authors of a paper which appeared in The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in 2008: “Examining hypnosis legislation: a survey of the practice in Israel”.
Its findings were based on responses to a questionnaire sent to “470 licensed hypnotists and 1250 unlicensed professionals”. Practically all of the first group (94.4 per cent) reported using hypnosis in their clinical work, and 45 per cent of the second group did so. The authors suggested steps to increase the efficiency of the law as part of a regulatory system and the new ban is clearly a result of that recommendation.
Adrian Finkelstein, MD
The news will certainly come as a surprise to Adrian Finkelstein, MD, who was born in Romania but emigrated to Israel with his family in 1960. It was while studying at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School that he was first exposed to hypnosis.
He qualified as a doctor in 1968 and went on to study psychiatry. Now based in the United States, he has been performing past life regressions for almost 30 years and has written extensively about his work and the benefits it brings to his pupils.
His book Marilyn Monroe Returns: the Healing of a Soul tells the story of singer Sherrie Lea Laird and explores her memories, under hypnosis, of her previous life in which she believes she was the famous movie star.
I’m sceptical about the value of hypnotic regession in providing evidence for reincarnation, but in the right hands it does seem to be a powerful therapeutic tool.
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Past life experiences are becoming widely known these days. I wonder why the mainstream media doesn’t cover this study. It seems as though there is more to life that we don’t understand yet.
In this article they state, “This is a mystical practice for people who believe in reincarnation We’ve seen a number of cases … on patients and things went bad.” Is it that or are they afraid that there MAY be more to it and it will blow religion “out of the water?”
A Chicago southside raised Jewish man who trained with Rolling Thunder, Chief Cherokee Medicine Man, and is now a famous shaman in his own right assisted in healing me, including the use of past life regression from a terminal illness. Outskirts Press published my book about that time in my life: Vision of Eagle/Strength of Bear. Many of my readers have expressed how helpful my story is with assisting them in understanding past life experiences in their own lives.
Past life regression therapy is a wonderful technique and way more people have benefitted from it escpecially when they were never cured by mainstream medical professionals.
Would you ban medical practitioners if pharmaceuticals have drugs that kill patients ?
Israel in my opinion has become NWO/fascist state to tighten freedom of her people; I heard of police taking away children .. most likely for indoctrination !
This is very interesting. What I find even more interesting is that Israel’s Health Ministry didn’t come right out and say that past-life regression (or whatever term you would like to use) is nothing but hogwash.
I can see why they are banning it if there are some problems, but it might be better if they just set up some guidelines and not ban it at all.
The human brain is capable of all types, degrees and depths of imagination and fantasies. Just look around at the beautiful and creative buildings around the world.
Beautiful jewelry,fashion,vehicles,the space program, invention of all kinds of electronics, not to mention movies, literature and all of this is constantly being upgraded. So, I am very skeptical of past lives and especially of past life regression hypnosis.
Timeobserver, I will say it for the Israelis. Past life regression is pure hogwash!! In a hypnotic state, the mind is very open to suggestion, which then can become reality or will create an alternate reality for the patient. It has been termed False Memory Syndrome. This phenomenon is the same one as hypnotically recalling repressed memories. There have been many proven examples were, in hypnotic states, individuals “recalled” sexual abuses, sometimes involving satanic worship. Other common false memory recoveries have involved alien abductions. All of these are simply nuances of the same phenomenon. All of these do share this in common as well: they are all complete and utter hogwash!!
I thought that Kabbalists believed in reincarnation.
I was disappointed when I learned about this decision by the Israeli government. With deliberate care, patience, and commonsense past life regression can be a valuable therapeutic tool.
The above commenter Zeno obviously has a bug up the tushie, as Israel is not a NWO fascist state that kidnaps children. Zeno obviously is a typical Jew hater with unrestrainable rage, blame, hate and bias. Zeno obviously needs therapy of a counseling sort as well as past life therapy.
This ban contravenes believers in reincarnation, for instance, buddhists. As such, it does not respect human rights. People should be allowed to experiment.
Of course, it’s banned.
Imagine an Israeli discovering a past life as a Christian, a black man or woman, or a Palestinian?
That would really upset the apple cart, wouldn’t it?
I doubt it has anything to do with religion or “upsetting the apple cart”. The article gives reference to a man who suffered repeated panic attacks and respiratory problems during the “regression”.
Hypnosis can, if not performed correctly, be dangerous: how’d you like someone mucking about with your brain, implanting memories of things that didn’t really happen? As much as I’d like to believe in past-life regression, I DO think that sometimes, practitioners lead their clients into believing they are remembering things that they really aren’t. Also, it’s plausible that REAL, deeply buried memories, could be knocked loose from the subconscious, which if mistaken for a past-life memory, may mean the underlying memory and the issues it causes, might never get dealt with.
Bottom line? It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s to do with very real health issues. Enough with the conspiracies.
Estella is right.
How can anyone imagine there is no link between ‘religion’ and the State of Israel?
There, clerics hold enormous sway over the lawmakers.
THE TRUTH concerning reincarnation completely undermines and negates the racist nonsense about a so-called “chosen people” ~ just as reprehensible as an alleged “master race” which too melts away in the light of the knowledge that the Soul projects different parts of itself into different climes and times, to learn and grow in wisdom and understanding. Through such a process, ‘karma’ is discharged, and thus is the justice of God worked out.
Christ JESUS explained that John the Baptist was really Elijah. The disciples of The LORD, especially those who had been with John, until John said, “No, this is He” ~ they wanted Jesus to ’save’ John. But Jesus came to fulfil Torah (‘The Law’) ~ not to nullify it.
If the disciples thought deeply about it, they would have realised that the beheading of John was really the outworking of the accumulated karma, accrued when John ~ as Elijah ~ had cut the throats of the prophets of Baal. He had an excess of zeal and quite no right to do such a thing. Elijah had broken The Law: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
By the way, those exalted souls who are called ‘Ascended Masters’ are currently warning that the time for the discharging of the karma of that same State of Israel… is fast approaching.
There are NO chosen people; G-d is NOT a respecter of persons; and one patch of land is no more “holy” than another.
JHVH ~ “I have raised one up for the purposes of My justice”