Spiritual Regression Hypnosis

Theosophical and New Age background

The practice draws on ideas about rebirth and a spiritual realm that were promoted in the West by esoteric movements. Britannica dates the contemporary Theosophical movement to the founding of the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Olcott and William Judge, and says the society was a major conduit for Eastern teachers and thought moving to the West. It also states that the international New Age movement of the 1970s and 1980s originated among independent Theosophical groups in the United Kingdom.

The sources reviewed do not document a direct line from Theosophy to hypnotic regression, so the connection is best read as shared cultural background rather than a documented lineage. Hypnotic regression schools themselves usually trace their methods to twentieth-century clinical work with individual clients, as described below.

Past-life work in the twentieth century

The Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT) organization gives its own account of its founder. It says Dolores Cannon and her husband were using hypnosis for habit change in the 1960s, that in 1968 a client unexpectedly described scenes from a past life, and that she returned to full-time practice in the late 1970s. The same page says she named her method QHHT, began teaching it in 2002, and died in October 2014, and that her daughter now leads its academy. This is an organizational biography and has not been checked against independent sources.

Newton and the life between lives method

The Michael Newton Institute describes Michael Newton as a hypnotherapist who began by regressing clients to former lives and then, practitioners say, found that clients could describe a period between lives. His book Journey of Souls, published in 1994, presents 29 client case studies. The Institute says the published cases are about 40 of roughly 7,000 in his files.

According to the Institute, Newton and colleagues founded the Society for Spiritual Regression on June 19, 2002. It became The Newton Institute in 2005, registered trademarks for Life Between Lives and its name in 2010, and was renamed the Michael Newton Institute in 2020. The Institute says Newton died in 2016.

Names in use

Spiritual regression is the name the Newton-based organization used for its founding society, and the Institute's own term for the session is Life Between Lives (LBL), which it describes as a registered trademark. A 2026 review of regression in clinical hypnosis uses the descriptive phrases past-life regression, between-lives regression and prenatal regression as separate categories. QHHT is a separately named technique with its own organization, and it also treats past lives and a between-lives state as part of its work. The terms are therefore not interchangeable, and a client may meet any of them for similar sessions.

How it differs from past-life regression

The Institute states that an ordinary past-life regression explores consciousness from within one earlier life, while a life between lives session is said to explore the eternal soul and an overview of its evolution. It gives typical lengths of 1.5 to 2 hours for past-life regression and 2.5 to 5 hours for a life between lives session, and it requires a separate earlier past-life session before booking. It also says each life between lives session begins with a brief past-life exploration. See the Past Life Regression page for the broader practice.

QHHT uses the word Subconscious for an all-knowing part of the person, and its organization states that this is not the conventional medical and psychological meaning of the term. Age regression, which asks a person to revisit earlier points in the present life, is a separate technique covered in clinical hypnosis literature and on the Regression Therapy page.

How schools describe a session

The Institute describes hypnosis as a relaxed, inwardly focused state reached through suggestion, comparable to guided visualization. Clients are asked to prepare questions in advance, and a session may last up to four or five hours. The facilitator guides the person first through a brief past-life exploration and then toward the claimed between-lives state. The Institute suggests that practices such as guided meditation can help a person prepare. See the Hypnotherapy, Clinical Hypnosis and Meditation pages for those related practices.

QHHT sessions

The QHHT organization describes a deep trance in which the practitioner asks questions of what Cannon called the Subconscious, including questions about past lives, the state between death and rebirth, and the causes of present problems. The organization teaches the method through levels of courses, including an online Level 1 class available since 2013. Practitioners describe these sessions as spiritual and healing in purpose. The page does not describe a standard clinical protocol, and its descriptions are the organization's own.

Relation to transpersonal and psychotherapeutic work

Both schools place the work alongside hypnotherapy, and the Institute says its facilitators are trained in clinical hypnosis. The Transpersonal Hypnosis page covers hypnosis used for spiritual aims more generally. The sources reviewed do not describe spiritual regression as a form of psychotherapy, and the Psychotherapy page should not be read as covering it.

Uses described by the schools

The Institute states that sessions bring understanding of a soul's purpose, a renewed sense of direction, a sense of belonging in the universe and reduced fear of death, and describes them as bringing healing and personal growth. It says most people come hoping to learn about life purpose or about particular life experiences and relationships. These are the organization's claims and carry no outcome data.

The QHHT organization states that its sessions can identify and address the causes of mental and physical conditions, and its page lists specific serious illnesses as examples of reported results. The page gives no studies, case counts or follow-up, so these statements cannot be evaluated from the source.

What the sources do not show

No source reviewed reports a controlled comparison of spiritual regression sessions with another intervention, a waiting list or no treatment. Benefits are described only as client experience as reported by the schools. This page therefore treats claimed benefits as self-reported and unmeasured, and it does not assume that a reported sense of meaning is evidence that the content of the session was a literal memory.

Experiments on hypnotic past-life memories

In a 2009 Korean study, 64 men aged 21 to 23 were given a hypnotic past-life regression three times. The share who produced past-life memories rose with hypnotizability, while a simple measure of belief in past lives had no significant influence. Content analysis found that cultural background and religious concepts shaped the memories; animals appeared as past-life identities, whereas all identities were human in an earlier Canadian study. Only the abstract was read for this source.

A 2015 report by the same author gave six participants a past-life regression suggestion with a named identity, either a real historical person or a fictional character, repeated during counting. Five of six produced the suggested identity with detailed content. The author concluded that suggestion has a crucial role in forming past-life memories during hypnosis. The sample was very small and the experiments were done for television companies, so the report is a demonstration and not a trial.

Suggestion, memory and individual differences

A 1994 review by Spanos and colleagues argued that people sometimes imagine complex scenarios and later define them as memories of real events. For past-life experiences, it described hypnotic procedures and structured interviews that make repeated demands for the expected experiences and then treat the results as real memories. The review concluded that research on these phenomena supports the view that recall is reconstructive and shaped by current expectations and beliefs.

A 2021 systematic review of 59 laboratory studies found that guided imagery and suggestive statements induced false beliefs or false memories in about 20 to 50 percent of participants, and that false belief induction after hypnosis or dream interpretation could exceed 50 percent. A 1994 review reported that dissociative tendencies are modestly related to hypnotizability, absorption and fantasy proneness. None of these sources tested life between lives sessions, and their findings concern how memories form, not whether a metaphysical claim is true.

Evidence on between-lives claims

A 2026 integrative review of hypnotic age regression screened 241 studies from 2015 to 2025 and excluded past-life, between-lives and prenatal regression because of insufficient empirical support and methodological concerns. PubMed searches run for this page for past-life regression and hypnosis returned only three records, two of them the Korean experiments above. No randomized trial or controlled study of between-lives regression was found, and trial registries were not searched.

The case collections published by the schools are uncontrolled accounts selected by the practitioners. The Institute itself notes that clients may ask whether they experienced something because they expected it. Together the sources reviewed describe no controlled evidence supporting literal memories of an afterlife, and they equally cannot test the metaphysical claims. Whether the experiences are meaningful to the person is a separate question from whether they are memories.

Distress and false belief

The systematic review of laboratory studies notes that false memories of earlier events can be harmful and result in real suffering, similar to actual traumatic memories. The 2026 review of age regression asks clinicians to attend to informed consent, memory accuracy and ethical considerations. Sessions of up to several hours in a deep hypnotic state may bring strong emotion, and the sources reviewed give no data on how often distress or lasting false belief follows spiritual regression specifically.

Vulnerability, cost and claims about illness

No source reviewed studies people seeking contact with the dead or reassurance after a bereavement, so this page makes no estimate of risk for that group. The Institute says session prices vary by facilitator and describes a separate earlier past-life session as a prerequisite, so more than one paid session may be involved. The QHHT page lists serious conditions among reported results without evidence. A person with a medical or mental health condition should not delay or replace assessment and treatment because of such claims.

Training and standards

The Institute states that its listed facilitators completed prerequisites, its life between lives training and a certification process, and that they follow its code of ethics and are trained in clinical hypnosis. The QHHT organization offers certification through its academy. These are the schools' own standards, and the sources reviewed do not describe an independent register or accreditation body. Other hypnotists may use the same terms without this training, so the title alone says little about qualifications.