***Special Note: Barbara Kauffman is Barbara Caramanico Munkel 

LIFESTYLE

www.readingeagle.com  READING EAGLE  SUNDAY November 17, 2002

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Common threads seem to run through many people's lives, according to regression therapist Barbara Kauffman, who led reporter Tracy Rasmussen to a battlefield in 16th century France.

Exploring bygone lives 

A warrior within suffers grief, guilt 

By Tracy Rasmussen

Reading Eagle

It's 1572. France. And there's a battle raging. A man, a dark man with long brown hair and a warrior's yell, falls from his horse.

His brother, a light man with hair so blond it shines like a halo even in the smog of pillage, runs to him, fending off the advance of other fighters, and falls to his knee beside him.

"Guillaume," he says.

"Francis," comes the response.

But that's all they have time for.

A man on foot, whose face is unclear in the smoke, appears above Francis' head, his sword ready to swoop, and Guillaume sees it.

But there is no time to yell, to scream, to react.

The sword comes down.

Blood bubbles from Francis' lips as he falls dying onto Guillaume's breast.

He says something, but Guillaume can't hear him. He hears only the pounding of his own blood in his head, his own rage boiling through the pain in his back, the ache in his head.

It is guilt that drives him to kill. Guilt that fuels his anger.

He leaps to the battle to avenge the death of his brother. He kills the attacker. He kills horses. He kills many men.

Finally, he walks back to the castle of his father and stands poised on the edge of the large, wooden bridge that will take him the rest of the way home. But there he stops.

The voice that tells this story is filled with the emotion of the battle.

It is the voice of a 16th-century 20-year-old, anguishing over the death of his 17-year-old brother, whom he had sworn to protect.

It is 430 years later my voice that tells this story.

***

I was open to past life regression, but I didn't think it would work. I didn't think I could be hypnotized, and I didn't think I would do anything more than make up stories if I were hypnotized.

But I was wrong.

My session with regression therapist Barbara Kauffman was interesting, fun, educational and very real.

The process is painless. You visit with her for a few minutes, and she asks you questions about why you are there, what you hope to learn.

My objective? Just to have the experience.

So I climbed onto a cot with a fluffy pillow under my head and another under my knees. A blanket covered me, and my sneakers were tucked under the cot.

We began.

First I had to imagine light shining down through my head.

"Healing light," Kauffman said.

So I did. I told myself there was lots of light, running around my brain, down to my cheeks, down my arms.

I felt nothing of it, but I visualized anyway.

Then she led me to a stairway (in my mind), and I had to go down slowly. I was already at the bottom step and Kauffman still was counting the third or fourth step.

I was upset that it wasn't working, but I persevered and tried to concentrate on my breathing: in and out ... in and out.

At the bottom of the stairs was a garden. I wandered around the garden for awhile ... lots of trees, a bench, a couple of flowers (I'm not much of a gardener, I guess).

And then, of course, came the door.

It was inevitable that I would have to step through something to get into the next dimension.

I had the urge to open my eyes and cut the session short. I felt my heart quicken as Kauffman instructed me to open the door and step through.

Was I hypnotized?

I have no idea.

But when I opened the door, it was dark, and I had the sensation of being alone.

My voice on tape describes it like this (italics are Kauffman's questions to me):

"My impressions are that it's dark and I'm waiting for something ... waiting for something to happen. ... "

How do you feel?

"I feel a little like there's some danger ... like something big is going to happen."

Do you hear any sounds around you?

And that's when it started to happen. Like stage lights coming up I heard ... something.

"I hear metal clanging ... And it's starting to get lighter now ... "

What kind of clothes are you wearing?

"I'm wearing a long dress, and now I do see ... I see a castle. I see a castle with lots of ... it looks light but it feels dark ... and I'm walking to the castle and I'm very, very, very heavy and sad, and what I thought was a dress isn't a dress, it's ... um ... it's more like ... hmmm ... how can I describe it? ... It has a red cross on it ... it feels like I'm some kind of a soldier coming home, and my friends are all gone and I'm alone. And feel a tremendous sense of guilt that I didn't do enough ... but I don't know what I didn't do enough of ... I'm walking with a horse. I'm not riding, I'm walking in front of my horse ... and I have long brown hair."

This came to me in my mind's eye, and I felt as if I were relating a story as I was watching it unfold. I was watching myself, but I didn't have any sense that it was myself.

But how the story unfolded. I was stuck in the knowledge that someone I cared for had died, and I was somehow responsible.

Kauffman sharpened her questions, and I responded with details:

"So, go back to an event before the battle ... to a conversation or some significant event."

"He's my brother. He's light and I'm dark, but we're brothers."

So he's light and you're dark, what do you mean by that.

"He's blond, and I've got dark hair. We look very different. His essence, his spirit is different from mine."

How?

"He's very happy. Funny. Loving."

And how about you? What are you?

"I'm a warrior. I'm dark."

Who is it that you fight for?

"I fight for God."

Do you know what year it is? Is there a calendar year you go by?

"1572."

What part of the world are you in?

"France."

What do they call you?

"Um ... I can't say it ... "

Can you spell it?

G-u-i-l-l-a-u-m-e

About how old were you when this happened?

"At the battle I was 20. My brother is Francis, and Francis was 17. And he didn't want to go. And I told him he'd be safe. That I was there to protect him."

Who are the people who came to take the land?

"I think they are Huguenots."

As it turns out, in this life, Guillaume (French for William) fell off his horse in battle and hurt his back. Francis tried to help him and was killed. The battle scene was vivid in my mind, dissolving my traditional journalistic resolve to tears.

The session continued, and I spoke of Francis, and how I, Guillaume, died later in life, after changing from being a warrior to being a nice guy, getting married and eventually succumbing to some sort of lung infection in my late 50s or early 60s.

The grief I experienced over Francis' death resonated in many parts of my current life in ways I couldn't explain. And after I got to "see" Francis in heaven (he met Guillaume as he passed to the other side) it was oddly comforting.

After the session, I remembered every detail of the story I was telling, and I had a tape of the session to help any memory lapses.

But I still couldn't convince myself that anything actually had happened, since I appeared to be describing a Crusader, but the Crusades were long over by 1572.

I had no idea what a Huguenot was, and I've never particularly liked French culture.

So it was odd to have an imagining about something I never had thought about.

When I got home I did a search on my computer to see if I could find myself.

I typed in the words: France 1572 Huguenot.

And what I got back were hits and hits and hits for the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. On Aug. 24, 1572, Catholics slaughtered Huguenots throughout France, all in the name of God.

 Was I there? 

Will I read one day in a history book about brothers Guillaume and Francis, how one fell in battle and the other grieved a lifetime?

Maybe. Maybe not. But I did learn a few things from Guillaume and Francis that make them important in my history.

So maybe I'll never know.

But, well, that's life.

 Or as we said in 1572, C'est la vie.

Regression Therapist Helps People Find Clues to Present Problems in Previous Incarnations 

By Tracy Rasmussen 

Reading Eagle 

 Maybe your fears aren't so irrational after all. 

 The spiders that send you screaming, the loneliness that stymies you in bad relationships, an obsessive need for order and control that seems to have no roots in this lifetime, may have been born hundreds of years ago when you were the same spirit in a different body.

 As bizarre as that might sound, past life regressionist Barbara Kauffman has seen clients make those connections with their other selves and lay those issues to rest.

 "I don't know how it works or why it works," she said. "But it does work when other things have not worked. Part of it is that when you're under hypnosis the ego is removed."

 Kauffman knows this because she is often the last stop for clients who have tried just about everything else to let go of their fears or neuroses.

 "Some people just come for the experience," she said. "Or just for the growth of their soul. But most people have something that they want to know."

 Lauren Fedorka, a sophomore at Millersville University, went for several regressions in an effort to help her get over a particularly bad breakup.

 "I was feeling depressed, and I just couldn't get out of it," she said. "My mother does energy work and she had met Barbara through that, and she had had some regression therapy so she thought it would be good for me to try."

 Fedorka, an economics major, said she was open to the experience but wasn't sure if it would help her.

 "But it's a very safe place, and you really feel OK the whole time you're doing it," she said.

 For Fedorka's regression, Kauffman led her through a series of relaxation exercises until she was in a light hypnotic trance. The sessions were taped so Fedorka could refer back to them.

 "The first time I remembered everything," she said. "But for the other ones I think I was in a deeper trance and didn't remember what I was saying, so I needed the tape."

 Once hypnotized, Fedorka said, she saw bright colors.

 "There were reds and oranges, and then I started to see fuzzy pictures," she said.

 Kauffman said people experience the regression differently.

 "Some people will actually see themselves, but others will just have a sense of knowing," she said. "Other people hear things or smell things. Ultimately you want to engage all of your senses, but that takes time for most people."

 During her first regression of four, Fedorka saw herself in a very old village wearing attire that reminded her of the Civil War era.

 "I just saw myself," she said. "I didn't see anyone else."

 She said she felt her loneliness in that life and saw how she spent so much of her time alone.

 She witnessed her death, a common occurrence during a past-life regression, and saw that as she passed, she could see all the spirits that were around her.

 For Fedorka the regression was validation that she really isn't alone.

 "We discussed it afterward," she said. "And it made me feel better to know that even when I feel alone, I'm really not, and there are people watching over me and protecting me."

 For Fedorka, that knowledge was enough to boost her from depression.

 She said she also learned it's important to ask for help when she needs it.

 In a subsequent regression, Fedorka believes she visited a future life, too.

 "There had been some sort of major war, and the entire world was one country," she said.

 Kauffman said it's not unusual for clients to visit a future life because the idea of time being linear (one thing following the next) is a Western belief that is challenged by some Eastern and New Age beliefs.

 Kauffman said while some people see a future life, most go into the past and see people whom they recognize from their current life.

 For instance, Fedorka saw her mother in a past life, where she was a loving and trusted friend.

 During regression Kauffman asks clients if they recognize anyone in the scene that is playing out for them because it's common for spirits to travel in lives together.

 Sometimes those relationships need healing, she said.

 And that's the therapy part of the regression.

 While it's fun to visit the past and see what's there, it's also therapeutic to put some of those issues to rest, or to see how they are still resonating in your life.

 Kauffman said people will go to the life that is most significant for them. Many people have three or four regressions and see a different life for each.

 "I don't know how they get there," she said. "It could be God or guides. But there will be some understanding of why you are seeing that life."

 Sometimes the themes are the same from regression to regression, and other times they are different. Always though, there is a sense of recognition in some aspect of the life.

 Kauffman said each regression takes about an hour, so there is time to go to more than one life or to get important details from one life.

 "Sometimes they can go as long as 90 minutes if we're really on a roll," she said. "But I don't want to keep people under for longer than that."

 After her regressions, Fedorka said, she felt very relaxed and exhilarated.

 "Some clients report that they feel a little blue for a day or two after the regression," Kauffman said.

 She also said it sometimes takes a couple of days to process the information.

 "But then most clients will say that they feel lighter and are glad that they have learned something," she said.

Contact reporter Tracy Rasmussen at 610-371-5066 or trasmussen@readingeagle.com