Past Life Therapy: a TAP Talk by Juanita Puddifoot

On Friday 13th June we were treated to a talk entitled Past Life Therapy by Juanita Puddifoot.  Juanita, who is a counsellor and Deep Memory Process therapist, spoke about the work of Roger Woolger, a Jungian Psychoanalyst who developed a system of working with deep memory trauma.  The work is described as being a practical and embodied therapy, a synthesis of Jungian active imagination, Reichian bodywork and Moreno’s psychodrama with shamanic/spirit journeying.  Clients using the therapy don’t need to have a belief in past lives in order to gain assistance from it.

The system involves listening to the clients’ descriptions of their emotional experiences with an ear for language of a physical nature, such as, “it feels like I am chained to my job” or “I am a slave to the company”, and so on.  The aspect of being ‘chained’ or ‘enslaved’ is then focussed on in a great deal of detail and consideration is made that in a past life, the client may well have been chained or enslaved.  There then begins a process of allowing the client to re-enact how they might ‘escape’ from that physical experience in such a way as to let their body realise that they are no longer living in that past life.  The premise being that the body holds memory as well as the mind.  The process contains similar aspects to psycho-drama, however, there is constant awareness of this being about a previous life.  Woolger, who, while working as a psychoanalyst, studied among other things, Comparative Religions at Oxford, Buddhism, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as well as elements from many other world religions while thinking about the symbolism brought by his clients as they told the stories from deep in their imagination.  These symbols are a very important feature on Jungian work and are often present in our dreams as well as waking thought processes.  Juanita was an exceptional speaker who gave us all a lot to think about.

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