Today, MysticMag has the pleasure of speaking to Lorraine Flaherty who shares her journey from an inquisitive youth exploring esoteric traditions to a profound career in hypnotherapy and past life therapy. Lorraine discusses the pivotal experiences and spiritual explorations that led her to help clients uncover the origins of life challenges and heal through hypnosis, with insights into the transformative power of past life and spirit release therapies.
What were your professional beginnings like and how did you get into the field of hypnotherapy?
My Catholic education was the catalyst for deep dives into the world of religion and esoterica. I was someone who questioned everything, and a lot of the things I was told to believe blindly didn’t make sense to me. By the age of twelve, I was studying Eastern religions, ancient traditions and the esoteric sides of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths – gnosticism, sufism, and caballa. I fell into a rabbit hole and explored other topics such as mystery schools, shamanism, paganism, and Wicca.
I became convinced that we were eternal beings, on the earth for a reason, to learn and evolve and the best way to learn who we were was via our inner world. I believed that psychic training or meditation was the key so I joined spiritual circles and attended trainings at the College of Psychic Studies.
However, my professional life saw me as a hair and make-up artist. Due to my creative and spiritual outlook, I was aware the corporate world was not for me. I was interested in people and ways to make them feel better, so it was an easy choice. Within my twenty years in the field, I enjoyed many creative endeavours, eventually becoming the art director of a chain of West End salons, with big links to L’Oreal. Training staff was a big part of the role.
My spiritual explorations never stopped though, and even though I’d always felt I had a calling; something else I was meant to do, it took a major back injury and a near-death experience to get me to actually make the shift into another field. I tried many things, including reiki, counselling and psychosynthesis (spiritual psychotherapy) but nothing fit. In desperation, I raged at the universe and asked for a sign. Suddenly, NLP was everywhere. I attended a course by Paul McKenna and co-creator Richard Bandler and felt I had landed on a planet where people spoke my language. Then they taught us hypnosis and I knew I’d found my calling. For about seven years or so, I was part of their assisting team.
I also began a three-year advanced hypnosis training. I was invited to train as a lecturer, which I did. I then found myself teaching hypnosis to medical students all over the country, something I was passionate about; having future doctors aware of the link between mind and body. Sadly, it is still only the select few who recognise the benefits of this approach, because hypnotherapy allows people to access the subconscious database stored in the mind, find the source of issues; physical, mental and emotional, and do something about them.
Once my clinical practice was established, I became aware of how powerful past life therapy was and clients started requesting it. Eventually, I wrote and published a book based on my clients’ extraordinary results and it became one of the main focuses of my work.
Can you walk me through a Past Life Therapy session?
My past life therapy sessions allow clients to explore the root, or origin, of an issue they are having, which could be anything from unresolved trauma, repeating patterns, feeling blocked, relationship issues, or phobic responses to things, such as water, that makes no sense from this life, or even unexplained phyical ailments. The issue may be due to events from the current life, or even handed down from ancestors – something the field of epigenetics provides evidence for, and which I work with in my Inner Child and Ancestral sessions – or from unfinished business from another lifetime.
In the past life session, I use hypnosis to guide my clients into a safe place, their higher mind directs them to the most significant memory of a lifetime connected to their issue. They imagine stepping through a doorway of some kind and relive the events of the memory as if they are there. The experience may be very detailed and or just snapshots of the life, but enough to paint a picture of what happened to them. At the deathpoint they begin the overview and the karmic healing work:
- The previous body is healed energetically
- Soul contracts (the tests the soul agrees to before incarnating and which determines the family they are born into) are completed and upgraded.
- The characters who appear in the life, and the karmic connections accrued with them, are dealt with. Helping them understand the reasons behind others’ behaviours, either from the life or due to soul contracts, leads to forgiveness. Generally, but not always, they are part of the same soul family. My clients often recognise the key characters as people in their current life and their behaviours can then make sense. The souls who challenge them will have volunteered to do so in order for them to evolve. This means no one is a victim but, chose their tests; this is so empowering for all my clients – for example, no one can learn about forgiveness without having someone to forgive.
- Unhelpful cords are cut and karma is healed in the current and all other lives.
- Any lost parts of the soul energy is retrieved.
- Finally, the past life is revisited, but with the upgraded contract in place. The positive energy generated is anchored for the client to tap into in future.
My clients often reach out after their sessions to marvel at the changes that happen, to their mindset, health, wellbeing and levels of success, but especially regarding the people in their lives. One client reported that after forgiving a group of people who had tested her in a previous life (all of whom she recognised as her current family), a longstanding family feud was suddenly resolved overnight. It could have been a coincidence, but we both agreed that was very unlikely.
This journey of life/lives is all about balance, whether it is dark and light, masculine and feminine, good and bad. As souls who are here to learn and grow, we have to experience all of these things. The braver the soul the bigger the challenges we agree to. In my work, even the explorations of my own soul’s journey, I see the parts I and others have played. Sometimes we get to be the good guys and sometimes, we are the perpetrators – so that others can learn to forgive. It is what it is. All part of a very rich and complicated tapestry; but it is all necessary. Therefore this reminds us to stay out of judgement and honour the roles that everyone is playing; even having gratitude for it all; including the not-so-nice stuff. I firmly believe that we are all one, ultimately, and so each soul on the challenge/healing journey is doing their part for the whole.
What is Spirit Release Therapy and how does it work?
As we go about our daily lives, we are surrounded by energy, for the most part, this energy is full of positive ions and has no real effect on us, but, lower vibration energies can be made up of the thought forms of self or others, it could be a residue of trauma linked to a place or person, or in some cases, it could be from souls/spirits who, for whatever reason, did not return to the light when their life came to an end. These left-behind souls/spirits, will often look for a safe, familiar, comfort zone to connect with or attach to, and that might be a place, an object or a person. Within a Spirit Release therapy session, the aim is to safely and lovingly clear away any such energies. This is a very simple clearing technique for the more basic energies, but with the spirits, they are acknowledged and forgiven for any challenges they may have caused to the person they are attached to and they are returned to their loved ones in the spirit realms. It is a gentle and uplifting process.
The therapy element is hugely important, as the spirits are only able to attach to a person if there is an inner ‘wound’ of some kind that generates a particular energy vibration if this is a familiar frequency of energy to that of the spirit they become a perfect match for them. For example, if they are sad and the spirit’s main emotion was sadness, the energy is almost like velcro and allows the spirit to ‘attach’. The therapy aspect is designed to get to the root cause and heal the ‘wound’, or negative emotions so there is no longer anything for the spirits to attach to. The client may not know what the emotion is or where it came from, but in hypnosis where they connect to their higher self, the answers can always be found, and the issues resolved.
What are your workshops and retreats like?
As well as my one-to-one sessions, which happen in person, or online, I also run workshops and retreats in various locations in the UK and around the world. The topics vary from Past and Future Lives, Inner Child and Ancestral Healing, Between Lives Regression, and one of my favourite newer additions which are the Mandala Meditation sessions – where we awaken the creative muse whilst in hypnosis and then create beautiful pieces of art. I also incorporate dance and movement into my workshops and retreats, when I can, because we have to remember to take care of the body, the mind and the soul. I am a big advocate of bringing lightness, joy and fun into the work I do as I recognise that the healing journey can be tough at times. The deep dives that are required to resolve and heal the bigger issues can be intense, so it is always important to balance that with some levity, playfulness and laughter. I feel deeply honoured to be able to share this healing journey with each and every one of my clients.
Website: www.innerjourneys.co.uk
Book: Healing with Past Life Therapy: Transformational Journeys through Time and Space, published by Inner Traditions.
