Interview with regression specialist, Scott De Tamble explores hypnotic regression and the possibility of remembering our life between lives.

Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with regression specialist Scott De Tamble. During the interview De Tamble explains the regression process:

Scott De Tamble: Three things I will tell you about regression and how to work this regression that we’re going to do. Number one, the way this whole thing works is through your impressions. You’re going to receive impressions of some kind, whether you see it, hear it, have thoughts in your mind, have feelings – physical feelings like, ‘I feel cold,’ or emotional feelings like, ‘I feel scared, like someone is chasing me.’ Or you could just have intuitive knowings, like, ‘I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything, I just have a feeling that I am on a ship out in the ocean. I am getting thirsty because there is no water.’ So you’re going to receive impressions of some kind…

And so the last thing I will tell people about regression is really the most important thing to know. At some point in this experience you may have a feeling or wonder, ‘Am I just making this up because of that book I read? Am I just creating this with my subconscious mind?’ And my theory about that, Alex, is that the memories that we have in our current lifetime are encoded in our brains and our neurons in that electrochemical soup of memory, if that works. And they have a certain solidity, a certain concrete quality. So if I ask you, “Who was your third grade teacher?†you will say, “That was Mrs. Brown.†If I ask you, “What did you have for dinner last night?†you will say, “You know, it was lasagna, it was great.†And if I ask you, “Where were you 500 years ago?†your brain kind of goes, “Huh?†It does not compute. We have no memory, we have no record for this 500 years ago thing. This question does not apply.

But you know where you were 500 years ago. Your soul, your energy, your essence knows that you were on the plains of Mongolia riding a pony, collecting a harem of beautiful women or whatever you were doing. But when that kind of comes up from your soul, through your mind, and your brain, your mind and your brain has no record of that so it will sort of question it or doubt it or say, ‘What? Where is this even coming from?’ So there is always that little tug of war, that little push/pull thing where you may wonder if you are doubting it. So the memories from your soul feel a little different, a little more vague, a little more hazy, and a little more unsure than the memories that are in your brain in your current life and body.

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Scott’s Light Between Lives Website

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BTW — Dr. Eben Alexander, Live in San Diego April 27, 2014 (click here for more)

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Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Scott De Tamble to Skeptiko. Scott is a hypnotherapist and specifically he is trained in and specializes in past life and between lives hypnotic regressions. Scott, welcome to Skeptiko.

 Scott De Tamble: Thank you Alex, it’s really a pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Alex Tsakiris: Well it’s a pleasure for me and it’s exciting. I want to tell people what we’re doing and I think they will really find it interesting. You know, this topic in general is fascinating. It is something we have explored a couple of times on this show, including an interview with a colleague of yours, Jean-Charles Chabot in Montreal, who was also trained by Michael Newton and does past life, in between life regression. I don’t want to claim or suggest that there is any kind of association between you guys but I just want to let you know that folks who are listening to this show are familiar with the basic ideas but maybe not with you. So perhaps you could start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your background, your training, and that kind of stuff.

Scott De Tamble: Yeah sure, I would be happy to. I haven’t met him but we are members of the same organization, the Newton Institute. The Newton Institute trains qualified hypnotherapists in the life between lives process.  So we are colleagues, though I have never really crossed paths with him.  I might have seen some of his stuff on YouTube. He does some really great work.

Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, he has some kind of cool YouTube videos that draw you in.

Scott De Tamble: Yeah, so we are definitely colleagues and I wish him all the best.  Me, I’m not a real special guy or anything. I am just someone that was always interested in spirituality and metaphysics and the occult and the mind and this kind of thing, but also history, archaeology, and things like that from a very early age. I have done a lot of different things in my life and at a certain point I was really fascinated with past-life regression. I felt that I may have lived before. I am drawn to some epics, certain periods in history, and certain places in the world. So I decided I wanted to learn how to do this and I wanted to undergo it myself so I did hypnosis training. It was very cool and I learned a lot of other things you can do with it. I couple of years after that I learned about Michael Newton’s training in life between lives, the spiritual regression hypnotherapy. And I had read his book in the mid-90s Journey of Souls, was his first book. A very fascinating book, and it kind of goes beyond past life regression into the time between our lives, between our incarnations. So I was lucky, I was able to attend that training and I have been a member of the Newton Institute since 2004 and doing those life between lives sessions.  And boy, that has been a mind-opening, eye-opening, heart-opening journey as well.

Alex Tsakiris: I can only imagine. I mean, one, taking part and experiencing one yourself but then experiencing them through other people over and over again would have to be this journey each and every time, isn’t it?

Scott De Tamble: It is, just like every person is unique, all the journeys are unique and Michael has three or four books out and every session just about that I do, I thought we find stuff that isn’t written about in his book or any other book. So every person walking around right now has all this incredible soul history inside of them and I am lucky enough to be able to help them draw it out and to explore that. And most importantly, to see how that can affect their life today in some kind of positive way.

Alex Tsakiris: Well that’s fascinating and I think one of the things that’s new for me and will be new for Skeptiko listeners is that I have set up this interview as I guess you could say a prelude to a life between lives regression session that I planned to do with you in the near future. So what I’m really hoping to do in this interview is record this session, this dialogue that we’re having now, and then go ahead and record the session and then publish them together so that people can get a full sense for one, what’s somebody is thinking going in and have some questions to ask you, and some of them I’m going to push you a little bit but I have kind of been through this thing a couple of times and I know what the questions that I have and I think other people have, so we will see how those go. And then we will do the session and I think it will be really fascinating for people to see the whole process. Have you ever done anything like this? Do you have any reservations about this? You have agreed to do it, which I think is fantastic and says a lot about you. So do you have any thoughts on what we’re planning on doing?

Scott De Tamble: You know, I’m very excited about it. I think it’s going to be great. I think it’s a part of every member of the Newton Institute. It’s like a need or a thing to do, to help publicize books because all Michael’s books are out there and there are other books and things. We need to work to publicize this and bring this into the public eye and the public awareness and that’s why I am really grateful to you, Alex, for contacting me and Jean-Charles and whoever else you have contacted, and helping to bring this to the public eye because it’s amazing therapy. You know, maybe 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 50 years from now – if everyone could go through this process it would be a quite different world I think. So all in all I am really excited and I am happy to help publicize the life between lives process.

Alex Tsakiris: Great, I think I am too. I think part of my reservation is I tried this a few years ago actually with a hypnotherapist in LA named Bruce Goldberg, who I had heard on coast to coast, and he came out really strong, like there was really this guy who could get it done and all this. And he was just terrible in my session. He was really bad and really kind of sketchy in some of the things that he said in the regression and it just wasn’t happening. And he was kind of pushing it way too far and it was such a fail that I didn’t want to publicize it because I didn’t want to embarrass the field. I wasn’t worried about embarrassing him because I think he kind of deserved it a certain extent, but I didn’t want to put down the whole process and turn people away because I realized through just medium readings, which I investigated and did some research projects on, quasi-research demonstration projects, but they don’t always work. And that’s cool, that’s fine, because when they do work they are incredibly insightful. So I guess my first question, if I could roll that into a question, is how do we know if this is going to work? Does it ever not work? What percentage of the time does it work?  How many have you done where they worked versus not worked?

Scott De Tamble: This is a great question. Let me talk about Bruce Goldberg for a minute if I can. He has a lot of books out and he is a pretty decent writer and I have read some of his books and they are pretty cool. There is some good information in there.  I have never met him and he has not been trained by Michael Newton or the Newton Institute and the life between lives process. He kind of does his own thing. I have a client that I have done several LBL – life between lives, LBL – sessions with and she travels around to different hypnotherapists. She likes trying different things. She has been to the Monroe Institute for the out of body stuff and she went to a visit with Mr. Goldberg and had a session with him and she didn’t have a very good experience and she kind of reported it all to me. So I don’t know what to say about that, I have never really met him and I can’t really comment. I would love to do a session with him to see what would happen but he is a different animal in this life between lives stuff. The training that we have had and the framework that Michael Newton put up is – I want to say it is fail safe, but it is a pretty strong protocol.

Now to answer your questions of if these sessions ever fail, if there are failed sessions and voided sessions, yes there are. Michael himself reports, and he is very honest, but he has reported that he had to abort sessions because they just weren’t happening for whatever reason. With all hypnosis sessions the main problem or the main thing that can prevent a person from doing hypnosis is fear, that they have some sort of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of losing control or being controlled, fear of what they might find out, maybe I will find out I was Jack the Ripper and I don’t want to know that. So everyone has a little bit of anxiety about doing something for the first time and that’s normal and that’s okay. But if someone has some real fear or some issues, for another example I had a guy who was having marital problems. And he was really afraid of finding out that his now-wife with whom he is having problems is not his soul mate. He really wanted her to be his soul mate. And he was afraid of finding out maybe he is not. So our session just didn’t go very well because he didn’t want to go there, he didn’t want to know the truth.

So to wrap that up and to summarize, the only thing that can really prevent a person from doing this kind of thing is fear. There are other things, sometimes a person can be fatigued or maybe I didn’t have a great day or whatever, maybe someone ate something weird or something. But for the most part these sessions go pretty well. There is a spectrum of depth of hypnosis that people will attain for the first time. For example, myself, the first few times I have done it just as a client, I just don’t go very deep. But I go and I am able to access information. But the more that I have done it, and I have done it a lot now, I go pretty darn deep and my sessions have just, wow, stacked more information and they get deeper and wider and crazier. So for the first time it may not be as deep as people expect from watching television or hypnosis shows or something like that, but you can still access the information.

Not to keep monologuing on, but let me just say one more thing Alex. We really do recommend, and I would recommend to you if possible that you do perhaps like a past life regression session before you do a life between lives session because it helps acquaint a person with the hypnotic regression process. Then when we do the life between lives session you will sort of have been there and done that and it will just be a lot smoother experience, So that is something to think about. Now, I have plenty of clients who are traveling or they only have one shot at this and I am usually able to pull them into the life between lives the first time so it is kind of a gamble and we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but I have faith and confidence in my experience and skills. I am usually able to pull someone in so I am not too worried about it.

Alex Tsakiris: Well, two questions I guess from a practical standpoint.  Is that something that I or anyone else would have to decide going in, whether you’re going to kind of go for it or not?

Scott De Tamble: Yes, and there is also a middle ground.  But I kind of have a policy, Alex, that if someone comes to me and they just aren’t able to do anything, I don’t charge them a cent. I mean, they have wasted gas and time and I have used some of my time but I feel like the universe will pay me for that in some way so I am not too worried about it. So I just have them come back in a couple of weeks or whenever they are ready and we do it and it usually works out great. Or maybe we will work on some issue that is preventing them from letting go or getting where they need to get. And maybe we can work on that, that’s a possibility too. So I am all about wanting people to have this experience.

Alex Tsakiris: If you did have to try and stick a number on it, Scott, what percentage of people do you think aren’t really able to successfully get into the experience? What percentage do you think are able to get in at a modest level? What percent are able to go pretty deep from maybe a first session, just rough ballpark numbers?

Scott De Tamble: For a first session doing an LBL session I would say in my experience I am able to pull about I would say 60% to 75% of people into it and I would say another 15%, maybe 15% or 20% if they come back and work with me again we are able to do it now problem. And there is that few percent, that 3% to 5% that might need more times, more practice, or more work together. Or maybe they have some issues that we can work together. So what is that, 2 out of 3 or maybe 3 out of 4 I can usually pull into the LBL the first time.

Alex Tsakiris: Great. You kind of touched on this a little bit but not directly – do you have to believe or does the client have to believe in this? I understand that they can’t have these really deep-seated fears about what might come out of it but do they have to have a belief that any of this stuff is true?

Scott De Tamble: Actually, no.  It’s actually funny that the ability to enter a deep state of hypnosis really has no correlation to a person’s belief in it. It’s like anything, riding a bike. Some kids just get on that bike and they go around the block the first time and they just have balance, and some kids are going wham, wham, wham and falling on the ground. But then three weeks later they are going around the block really good too. So belief in the whole thing, no, because I have a lot of people say, “I have read a little bit of Michael’s book,†or, “My friend told me about this thing, and I’m not really sure how I feel about it but I’m open-minded.†So I would say if a person has an open mind about it, if they haven’t quite made up their mind and they are a Skeptiko, you might say, if they are a little skeptical but sort of open that’s okay. As long as they have that open-mindedness, that’s all we really need. I mean, obviously if a person is very closed down and say religiously dogmatic or something like that, it might be a struggle, because they are afraid God is going to strike them down if they do this LBL thing, or something like that. But to answer your question, no, belief is not a prerequisite, but I would say open-mindedness is.

Alex Tsakiris: Great, so Scott since I am going to be doing this with you, why don’t you walk me through the stuff that you would typically tell someone and tell me I need to do to prepare for this first session. So one of the things you told me is I might want to consider past life regression before I got with a life between lives regression and I will think about that. What else do I need to prepare or be aware of?

Scott De Tamble: I will get to the preparation in a second. Let me just address what I had mentioned before about sort of a middle ground, a person doing a life between lives session for the first time. I can almost always pull them into a past life regression. The past life regression is sort of our springboard into spirit, we go through the death of that past life persona up into spirit, and that’s when the LBL proper really starts. Now, in some of these first-time sessions we will get into a past life but for whatever reason we are not able to spring into the spirit world. And so that is a caveat that first time LBL person wants to be aware. It is possible that we will get into a past life and not be able to attain the life between lives in this go round. And there will be a reason for that, Alex, is usually because that person needs to dwell on the information they encountered in their past life regression. It may be something their guides or their higher self wants them to think about and to process. They didn’t want them to rush off to the Disneyland of the spirit world yet because they want them to dwell on this past life stuff and that just came out. So that’s a possibility, if we’re going for the life between lives, there is also the possibility it will sort of shut down after the past life. Not that I am shutting it down, not that you are shutting it down, but that it does because you need some time to process the past life regression. So that’s something to be aware of as well.

So if somebody comes to do a life between lives and we only get to the past life, try not to be too disappointed. Try to process that past life information and if you still into the life between lives come back later and we are usually able to do that very smoothly and very beautifully. So to prepare for the life between lives sessions there are a few things that you need to do. Probably the most important thing is to think about your current life and the issues in your life, the burning issues, and to make a brief list of personal questions for this session. Things like am I on the right path, am I supposed to be doing what I’m doing or did I take a left turn somewhere? Probably the most important thing that people worry about is their path in life, are they on the right path? So ask questions about that. You might have relationship questions, what’s the deal with my wife? We met in this amazing way, we had this amazing relationship, what is our soul relationship? What is our relationship as souls and spirits? Did we plan this, to be together in this life? Those kinds of things. You can also ask kind of mundane things, should I move to Seattle? Should I take that job that was offered to me last week? Should I change my focus in life? Why did I get hit by that car when I was 11? What about that weird dream I had last week and it seemed like it was an angel talking to me? So you can ask about all these things, make a list of the most burning issues in your life. Because during this session you have a chance to meet with your spirit guides or your council of elders. They are wise beings of light on the other side that will encounter and they know you better than you know yourself, basically. They have watched you grow since you were spawned as a soul, however that works, and they have been with you and they know. They want to help you develop.

So we will meet with one or more of these beings of light, these wise and loving people. And we will get your questions addressed and through your own mouth, through your own voice, sometimes as if you are channeling that person. So that is a highlight of the session.

Alex Tsakiris: Can I jump in there for a minute? I want to talk about spirit guides because it’s a fascinating topic and I’m definitely open to it. I already have my list, Scott. I’ve got that and I’m ready to go, and looking forward to it. At the same time I do have some questions about the experience, the spirit guide, the soul journey thing and in particular how it relates to other kinds of extended human consciousness experiences. Because from that work that I’ve done, the investigation that I’ve done, I don’t know. There is something there that I don’t want to say doesn’t ring true because that’s not accurate. I don’t want to say it doesn’t jive with those other experiences because it doesn’t. There is a lot of similarity and there is much more similarity to, for example, a near-death experience and what people report back to the kind of experience you’re talking about than there are differences. But there are some differences, and the one thing that strikes me and maybe you’re not saying this, maybe I’m just reading it wrong, but are all these experiences the same? Do all people experience elders, spirit guides, in the same form that come to meet them? Because that’s not what I hear from the near-death experience literature and science. There is a big variety in the kind of experiences people have, what they take away from them, and even in terms of how they experience it. And we know from doing research on that there is cultural influence. There is also personal influence. And we don’t even know what all the influences are because we’re kind of trapped down in this perspective that we have, looking up at what appears to be a much larger perspective. Do you want to speak to that for a minute? Are we rock solid about the spirit guide thing and that’s always the way that it happens? Or are we using that as a metaphor for some larger experience that we can’t really pin down but comes through as that sometimes?

Scott De Tamble: I think that’s a very good question and I would say that you know in the old Star Trek they had this logo, IDIC, which was Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. And that’s what I see in these sessions. No, everyone does not have the same sort of experience in these life between lives sessions. I believe everyone does have spirit guides but they may or may not encounter those spirit guides in a session. They may or may not encounter that council of elders or a place of healing or a soul library or these other things that Michael Newton talks about. They may go totally to something that I have never even heard of or never experienced, hey, we’re going on a spaceship to planet X and we’re going to talk to these people there. I mean, it’s amazing what comes out of people’s mouths during these sessions. So no, it’s not one-size-fits-all, it’s totally a wide variety of experiences. Just like near-death experiences. Some people encounter that religious figure which they say is Jesus, and in a near-death experience some people go through the tunnel or whatever and some people don’t. And yeah, it’s totally the same with this. It’s totally out-of-the-box.

Michael Newton did thousands of these sessions and he did tend to encounter similar experiences but that does not mean that everyone is going to have the same experience about it all. Like I said, I think I mentioned earlier, in almost every session that I do wacky, wild, beautiful things come up that I have never even heard of. And so I don’t know if that answers your question. I did a session last night, Alex, that was with a person that I worked with before. She has a really easy facility with all this hypnosis stuff. And we have met her guides and stuff like this. She has a guide who is a beautiful female figure. She was looking for information about a personal issue. We said let’s go to a past life as a springboard into spirit. So I took her into what I thought was a past life but she was like, ‘No, this is not a past life. This is the spirit world and I am waiting to go through a planning session for my next lifetime.’ And then I had a feeling, let’s go backwards. Let’s go back to the point where you made the decision that you wanted to incarnate again.

So we went backward in that process and there was a life review from the past life that she just came from and that was really intense for her. She had done some things in that life that she wasn’t very proud of. So she made a determination of I’m going to do another life that’s going to atone for this, and it had to do with the issue she is going through now and all this stuff. So we’re able to sort of stop the action and move back and forth along the track. It doesn’t have to follow A, B, C, D, E. We can go start at C and go back to A, and go forward to E. So during these sessions we can move along the tracks any way we need to to get the information that the client is looking for.

Alex Tsakiris: I tell you what, I kind of jumped in there and interrupted you. Why don’t you continue on Scott and tell me what other things would you advise me before this session? What other things do you typically share with clients?

Scott De Tamble: Oh boy, I have a whole pre-talk that I will do with you and I do with all of my clients. Part of it has to do with hypnosis, part of it has to do with the regression process. I will boil that down to a cliff notes version for you and your listeners right now. And if I’m too wordy just stop me and cut and tell me that’s enough. So about hypnosis, I want to talk to people about hypnosis and give them a definition of hypnosis. A textbook definition, or scientific definition, of hypnosis is just increased suggestibility. Whenever someone has increased suggestibility that is a state of trance and that is a state of hypnosis. So you will just be a little more suggestible. A modern definition of hypnosis, that I really love, and I forget who came up with this because I wish I could credit them, but I don’t remember who said this. But it is just that hypnosis is a shift from thinking mind to feeling mind. So we’re trying to get a little out of our head and a little more in our heart or in our gut, and kind of shooting from the hip and going with what comes up without tying yourself in a mental knot, because you know that’s what we do with our brains and our minds. We tie ourselves in knots. When we come from the heart that’s usually the right thing to do. So kind of shift your energy down from your head and to your heart, that’s an important thing, and kind of go with what comes up.

Another thing we will talk about is what does hypnosis feels like. Well, it feels different for everyone. Some people say, “I felt heavy,†and some people will say, “I felt light.†Some people will say, “I felt tingly,†and some people say, “I didn’t feel any different at all, I was just sitting here.†The first time I went to do hypnosis, when I learned about hypnosis, my teacher said, “Okay, Scott, we’re going to hypnotize you now.†And I thought okay. So we’re doing this thing and I wasn’t really feeling anything, Alex, I was just sitting there and thinking oh boy, I’ve got to find a real teacher because I don’t think this person knows what they’re doing. So we’re working on some personal issues, just like practice fodder for the hypnotherapy. And it’s funny because even though I didn’t feel any different this scene came into my mind. When one of my parents, I was a little kid, and they were belittling me about something. It wasn’t a big trauma or something I brooded about over the years, I don’t even remember it consciously. It was one of those 900 times your dad tells you that you’re an idiot, or something like that, and it wasn’t a big deal. We all have that, right?

But why did that come into my mind? And then I realized, like bing! That’s when the light went on for me, that’s what hypnosis is all about, and hypnotherapy. It opens the doors to your memories. It’s not that it makes you feel weird and different, you’re not going to go under unless you fall under the couch or something. You’re not going to go under anything, but it’s going to open the doors to your memories. That scene was connected to how I felt about myself when I was doing that hypnosis session. It had something to do with my self-esteem and I learned from that scene. So even though I didn’t feel any different, something popped into my mind which was very useful for me. So that’s the true magic of hypnosis and hypnotherapy. It somehow opens these doors to your inner self and your memories. And that’s important to know.

There are some myths about hypnosis and we will go through the myths. Hypnosis is like sleep, right? I’m going to go to sleep and you’re going to say this crazy stuff and then you’re going to tell me later? No, you’re not going to go to sleep, you’re not going to be unconscious. You’re not going to be anesthetized or unaware. You’re going to be awake and aware, just like you are now, Alex, but you’re going to open up this other part of you. Alex isn’t going away, we’re not going to put him in a box in the other room somewhere. He’s going to be right there on your shoulder, your conscious mind, ego, Alex, is going to be right there but we’re also going to open up this other window, this other portal or door to this other person that you were in a past life. And also the greater door to who you are as a soul, this soul who was Joe in the past life and he is Alex now and will be Mary 100 years from now. So we’re just opening doors and it’s important to realize that.

Another myth of hypnosis is you can control me and make me do crazy things, tear my clothes off and run down the street naked and screaming like a chicken. I could do that to you, Alex, if I wanted to but I probably won’t do that in our session. That’s a joke.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay.

Scott De Tamble: You know, I can’t do that. You can’t make anybody do anything they don’t want to do. At every point the client is in control of the session. They have the choice of whether to accept or not accept any suggestion that I give them, and it’s just a suggestion. I can’t make anybody do anything. I sort of, as a guide, for you – we have been there and done that. It’s like a team sport, like a buddy system. I have been up the mountain a few times and maybe you haven’t so I know we need to go around this boulder and I can help you across this stream. I can’t carry you the whole way, I need you to put a little effort in yourself too, but you’re part of the team too. I need you to communicate with me about your experience and let me know what’s going on. You might say, “Hey, there’s a rattlesnake on the path,†and I’ll say, “Whoa, good one. I’m glad you know this path. Let’s go around that.†So you’re part of the team too and it really is a team sport.

The biggest concern most people have about hypnosis is can I do it? Am I too busy-minded, am I too this, or too that? But everyone can do it. Everyone does it all the time in their daily life. If you can focus enough to build an awesome website, if you can focus enough to read a book or make a work of art or something like that, you can do this. This is like way easier, way easier than doing that stuff. So everybody can do it and we do it all the time in our daily life. So that’s not really – hypnosis has a weird baggage because of Hollywood and stuff like that, but it’s really a simple way to just open up doors, so that’s the hypnosis side. Do you have any questions? I ask my client and I will ask you now. Do you have any questions about hypnosis itself?

Alex Tsakiris: No.

Scott De Tamble: Three things I will tell you about regression and how to work this regression that we’re going to do. Number one, the way this whole thing works is through your impressions. You’re going to receive impressions of some kind, whether you see it, hear it, have thoughts in your mind, have feelings – physical feelings like, ‘I feel cold,’ or emotional feelings like, ‘I feel scared, like someone is chasing me.’ Or you could just have intuitive knowings, like, ‘I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything, I just have a feeling that I am on a ship out in the ocean. I am getting thirsty because there is no water.’ So you’re going to receive impressions of some kind. And I will take people through a little exercise, a fun little exercise, kind of like a free association thing where I will just toss out a word and have them snap back with whatever word comes to mind. No thinking, just snapping back. It is practice in blurting, basically, because I will be asking questions and making statements and they will stimulate a response in you somehow. And so I just want you to practice in going with the first thing that comes up, your first impression. If you stop to overthink it and analyze it too much you’re going to stop the flow. So you’ve got to just go with the first thing that pops up, and the second thing and the third thing.

Now, it doesn’t mean that you have to snap back immediately, you don’t. If you remember the old Polaroid cameras, you would take a picture and the thing would come out. And it would be blank and then after maybe 60 seconds an image would start to sort of materialize. Sometimes these regression sessions are like that. It will be a little blank at first, but if we are just patient and wait something will materialize. Something will form, or something will develop, you might say. So I’m a patient guy and so I will be happy to wait. And if nothing is coming to you, just tell me, ‘Scott, I’ve got nothing. I’m totally blank.’ And we will move on to the next thing because there are about a million things we can cover. And if that was an important thing we will circle back around to get that.

So the second thing I would say about regression is that we do have these different sensory modes. Some people are very visual and their regressions are going to be very visual in their mind’s eye. Some people are not visual. Some people are maybe auditory where they are going to hear voices, like, ‘France, 1803. Oh man, I’m in Napoleon’s Army or something like that.’ They’re going to hear these thoughts or words or voices that are going to pop into their head. Some people are kinesthetic or emotional. They will feel the feelings or feel their way through the regression. I have had people who didn’t see a darn thing the whole session but they felt their way through it, through their feelings and through their inner knowing, their intuitive feelings. So whatever your style is, that’s okay. And the reason is tell you this is don’t expect it to be a purely visual experience like going to the movies and watching yourself on the screen, wow, eating your popcorn. It may not be like that and you may have to feel your way through it. But that’s okay, we can have a dynamite experience that way.

And so the last thing I will tell people about regression is really the most important thing to know. At some point in this experience you may have a feeling or wonder, ‘Am I just making this up because of that book I read? Am I just creating this with my subconscious mind?’ It’s very common to feel that we may be making it up or wishful thinking or creating this somehow, but it’s not a real, authentic past life or a between-life experience. And my theory about that, Alex, is that the memories that we have in our current lifetime are encoded in our brains and our neurons in that electrochemical soup of memory, if that works. And they have a certain solidity, a certain concrete quality. So if I ask you, “Who was your third grade teacher?†you will say, “That was Mrs. Brown.†If I ask you, “What did you have for dinner last night?†you will say, “You know, it was lasagna, it was great.†And if I ask you, “Where were you 500 years ago?†your brain kind of goes, “Huh?†It does not compute. We have no memory, we have no record for this 500 years ago thing. This question does not apply.

But you know where you were 500 years ago. Your soul, your energy, your essence knows that you were on the plains of Mongolia riding a pony, collecting a harem of beautiful women or whatever you were doing. But when that kind of comes up from your soul, through your mind, and your brain, your mind and your brain has no record of that so it will sort of question it or doubt it or say, ‘What? Where is this even coming from?’ So there is always that little tug of war, that little push/pull thing where you may wonder if you are doubting it. So the memories from your soul feel a little different, a little more vague, a little more hazy, and a little more unsure than the memories that are in your brain in your current life and body. So the memories we are accessing, you are going to feel a little ghostly or a little hazy or a little misty but once we connect with those memories and once we explore them, I will immerse you more and more intensely into that experience and it will become more and more real to you. But it is just something to look out for. At first you are probably going to wonder, ‘Am I making this up?’ but if I’m clever enough I will immerse you more and more into your experience and it will become more and more real for you. So that’s basically the pre-talk, thanks for being so patient with me. You are a very good listener.

Alex Tsakiris: That was excellent. I thought that was a very good laying out the whole thing and I love what you were saying at the end. Very good, very good. So I don’t want to say too much because I’m turning on becoming the client, as you talk. And I am just excited and really motivated to come on up there and do this thing. So what I think we should do is wrap up our little dialogue here. Again, for those of you who don’t remember, talking to Scott De Tamble who is a hypnotherapist and life between lives specialist in Southern California, right outside of L.A.  And Scott, I’m excited that after we end this little session we will talk about finding a time for me to come up there and do this thing. And then we will check back in with our Skeptiko listeners here and let them know how it went. So unless there is anything else we need to cover – is there anything else we need to cover?

Scott De Tamble: Can I mention my website?

Alex Tsakiris: Absolutely, and I will have links to this in the show notes of course. But for those of you who are listening, please go ahead – it’s light between lives. Is that the best place for folks to reach you?

Scott De Tamble: Yes sir, lightbetweenlives.com.

Alex Tsakiris: Which I think is a great domain. I don’t know how you got that, but it’s life between lives but it is really these light beings that Scott so often encounters, so it is light between lives. And I know if you just type that in his website will come right up. But please, tell me what other information people should know about you.

Scott De Tamble: Yeah, I was very inspired on that one I think and it is my great honor to be able to converse with your guides and your councils and those wise and loving beings around my clients who have a great interest in their development as souls. Let me thank those unseen beings for this ride, this journey that I have been on. I would also mention to your listeners that all over the country and in fact all over the globe we have therapists in this life between lives methodology created by Michael Newton. And people can go to I believe it’s NewtonInstitute.org and they can search for a therapist in their area, someone near them. We have therapists all over the world now, so over maybe 200, 250 people trained in this. So there is probably someone not too far away from you where you can go and have this experience and I definitely recommend you do that if you feel called. If you feel called and you’re ready you will have the time of your life.

Alex Tsakiris: Well, that is certainly exciting and I am looking forward to it. If it goes well I think there are a lot of people that have maybe been sitting on the fence or have been thinking about this and would want to take this next step.

Scott De Tamble: What do you mean, if it goes well?

Alex Tsakiris: Well, I have the best of intentions and we will just see how it goes.

Scott De Tamble: I am just teasing you. I have a really good feeling about it and I really look forward to it. I look forward to meeting you, Alex. It’s going to be really fun.

Alex Tsakiris: Well thanks again for joining me today and we will be back in touch. I am going to keep you on the line here but I will be back in touch with our listeners in just a little while with the actual session. So thanks again, Scott.

Scott De Tamble: My pleasure, and thank you to all of you listening out there. It’s lovely to be able to share with you this way. Thanks, Alex.

[End of interview... more in audio version]