Meeting Karen Joy is an eye-opening experience. As a former ten year columnist for the Courier Mail (Brisbane), and versatile hypnotherapist specializing in regression, her work and books on relationships invite us to recognize patterns. Our thoughts and behaviour compel us to go deeper so we grow aware of the bigger picture. This interview is packed with synchronicities, and confirms we are always in the right place, right time, to get what we need to transition into the next phase of our lives. Thanks for being open and willing to share these powerful insights.
You have had a variety of careers. What prompted your shift to hypnotherapy?
During the 1980’s, I felt the urge to start taking courses in hypnotherapy…
It is said we always receive what we need. Usually something unconscious triggers an urge. Which specific events led up to this?
Well, my husband at that stage of life was almost always late. I was emotionally reactive. I got upset and did not like allowing my emotions control me. I heard about ‘anchoring’ in neuro -linguistic programming (NLP). As it happened, I met Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP and decided to take some of his courses. His expertise in hypnotherapy amazed me. At one point, I accessed a key childhood memory of my dad. Due to his extreme drunkenness, our family missed out on attending an annual event that greatly disappointed me. I released a lot of repressed emotions. This course triggered more revelations. It was a turning point. Still, I was frightened about looking deeper inside myself. And yet, doing so helped me a lot.
The personal regression you share, illustrates that releasing troubling emotions linked to our past has a positive impact on our current life. It is a wake up call, an option to heal and eliminate repeated situations of high drama arising. Please continue...
Gaining insight into past lives helps people make sense of current dilemmas or blocks. Age regression is deliberately used to help clients heal unconscious childhood traumas. It brings the energy to the surface.
Sounds like its a means of accessing our blocked wisdom, guidance for the next phase of life.
Exactly!
Love that you echo Julius Caesar who said, Experience is the teacher of all things. The turning point you describe has universal relevance. We, as humans, are evolving from being controlled by fear-based beliefs and negative emotions to allowing intuition and courage to guide us. Its an inner shift to trust our feelings.
Yes.
Describe your work then. How did your NLP experience affect that?
At the time, I was working for the ATO as a tax investigator.
Were you unhappy in this institutional role?
No. I am always happy with my work, but I do like learning and change. While I was in the ATO, I studied Law and Corporate Management and moved into management and team development. During that time, technology was changing and the work environment was not keeping up with the changes. Over a decade or so, I outgrew the ATO and my role there. As I was already a registered psychologist, I decided to set up my own business in counselling psychology.
Wow! That’s a huge career shift; from ATO tax auditing to traditional psychology to past life hypnotherapy. Please share more about how this came about for you.
I spent 20 years as a private practising psychologist. Yet, as time progressed, I did not really fit into the professional paradigm. Clients often went into their past lives even without hypnotherapy. I was an effective therapist, and the business grew, but accessing past lives, even inadvertently, is not considered appropriate in conventional psychology.
It sounds like you felt restless in different environments at different life stages. Listening to yourself seems to have compelled re-evaluating your life. What did your feelings tell you?
I was not being completely transparent or true to myself.
So many people relate to this and yet, be unaware. Its like a journey to greater congruence with our true selves. We all need love. Being authentic is perhaps the ultimate example of loving ourselves. Your life choices remind us we access untapped power by being vulnerable, by doing what feels right. You echo even if it does not fit a paradigm, listening to ourselves is not something to fear. Why do you sense self- honesty is so important?
I know that I am fulfilling my purpose in life. As I look back, I can see that all my experiences have prepared me to do this work.
So if I get what you are saying here, the more honest we are with ourselves, the more confident and fearless we become, and the easier we ease into our destiny?
Yes. I also decided to train in past life therapy and life between lives hypnotherapy because of the dramatic positive changes I observed in my clients. I left psychology when I moved to Maleny (Queensland) a few years ago. It was a relief to release the restrictions of the psychology board that oversees the profession.
It is said everything we do here, every choice we make in other lives, every experience we have in this life, is preparing us for the unforeseen.
Indeed. Milton H. Erickson, M.D. says, Allow yourself to see what you do not allow yourself to see...
So many ways exist to shake us up, to shift and expand our perception. This is highlighted by investigations into human consciousness by Michael Newton and his work through The Newton Institute, Robert Monroe and his legacy at The Monroe Institute, as well as work of individuals like Bruce Lipton, Raymond Moody and Delores Cannon. I am reminded of The Tao Te Ching, where it says when a student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready...the teacher will Disappear.
Well said. we each grow from the wisdom of many teachers.
What unique insights do you gain into yourself through the regressions you have undergone as part of your training or therapy?
My first regression was in 2009. During this regression, I discovered I was a German soldier in both WWI and WWII. There were many challenges in that life that I had to come to terms with. I also connected to All That Is and felt so much love my circuits nearly exploded.
In Conversations: Redemption & Lessons of Love, a conversation with Raymond Moody, MD. and Melvin Morse, MD, they speak of a deeper spiritual centre that is guiding us. How do your regressions relate here?
In later regressions, I discovered some of the places and dimension I’d experienced before I came to the Earth System. I also learned about the themes I embraced during my incarnations on Earth and how that has unfolded. I have been into the dark night of the soul in many lives and emerged with a deep understanding of what separation feels like.
How have your own regressions shifted your experience in your current life?
The regressions have enhanced my life in many ways. My perspective of the universe and the earth system has expanded. I have let go of self-criticism and increased my self-trust. I know now that everything happens for a purpose. Also, I am less judging, more accepting and more discerning.
I feel very comfortable on Earth now and I am confident I will pass gently when it is time to leave my body. As well, I know where I am going and what I will be doing after I leave.
How exciting to be open to receiving and accepting such insight. We can feel your peace of mind. This reminds me of Esther Hicks and the Teachings of Abraham. Years ago, I intuitively participated in one of their cruise seminars. That experience opened my perception enromously.
Dr. Brian Weiss was a traditional psychiatrist/ psychotherapist before an experience with past live regression prompted him to change focus. You may be aware he wrote the best-seller, Many Lives, Many Masters and makes efforts to bring the benefits of hypnotherapy into the mainstream in his way. What do you feel is necessary for more people to consider it a valid, legitimate form of healing?
If by valid you mean effective, hypnotherapy already is. But being outside mainstream is fine in my view. Mainstream professions are always restricted and regulated. Institutions are founded on formalized protocol. The result is that the role of intuition and innate wisdom of the healer is minimized or even obliterated.
It is often assumed that healing practices are viewed “mainstream” or legitimate when widely accepted and thus, fully rebated by government supported Medicare. Does this imply it is necessary to lose the power and influence of the intuitive self?
I have a strong belief that those people who will benefit by having a regression are guided to do so, and also guided to the appropriate healer. Asking your higher-self for guidance at such times is always worthwhile. Everything we need comes to us when ready. This requires being open to that.
Some well-known magicians are also often described as hypnotists. Consider Franz Mesmer, James Braid, Uri Geller, the Amazing Kreskin and others. How do such individuals or others inspire you?
My favourite comic strip as a child was Mandrake the Magician (1934) by Lee Falk. He was a super hero who used hypnosis. Richard Bandler, mentioned earlier, could put random people into trance in a few seconds. Richard had modelled Milton Erickson, the famous psychiatrist who was a powerful healer and helped to have hypnosis accepted as a therapy.
Love that you observe conventional and unconventional therapies are complimentary and also that even our popular culture symbols are giving us messages about our own untapped potential. What do your magician and other inspirations invite you to do?
I was inspired and intrigued by all these people and wondered, “how did they do it?” I guess I have dedicated my life to finding the answer and understanding human nature. And it has taken me all the way to the stars. I have many answers, which I am writing about. And I continue exploring.
What similarities are you aware of/ or do you see between breathwork and hypnotherapy?
I have to admit I know little about breathwork in a formal sense, but I think I have been inadvertently and intuitively using something like it for years.
Tell us how awareness of the power of breath and came to you directly.
Thirty years ago, I had a major breakdown that was so debilitating I couldn’t work for many months. I distrusted medication so I had to find a way to cope with the pain.
Its worth noting that pain is felt physically while suffering is mental. Sometimes we experience both at the same time and are consciously unaware. How did the breath help?
Through trial and error, I stumbled on the effectiveness of deep slow breathing while holding an attitude of acceptance. I really had nowhere else to go apart from suicide, and I knew that wasn’t a solution.
I am sure that is one of the reasons I have grew into an effective healer. When needed, I use a breathing technique with my clients. It always works. But I never learned that through psychology or hypnotherapy. The wisdom came naturally to me when I required it myself. I simply share it.
What is the breath come to symbolize for you?
To me, the breath is all about accepting and letting go. We cannot survive without the breath and we cannot move forward physically, emotionally or spiritually without accepting and letting go. The words inspire, aspire, expire all relate to the word “spirit.” The breath is fundamental to all life and fundamental to healing.
It also means that you do not have to put clients into a trance to do hypnotherapy. This is connected to the breath. The mind cooperates in a divine way. Call it the imagination, the higher self, inner being, whatever fits your paradigm or understanding of the world.
As you imply, we are always co-creating with energy or the flow, cooperating with forces beyond our physical selves to awaken to more of what we already know.
Share a few examples of clients whose lives have been changed by past life regression.
Yvette was an engineer attracted to narcissists in this lifetime. She was aware of patterns but did not know why the pattern persisted. During hypnotherapy, she recalled she had been a male slave trader selling white people in an Arabian country. She sold a young girl to an awful old man and enjoyed knowing the young girl would suffer. The slave trader himself had a three- year-old daughter. He kept having nightmares of the slave girl’s eyes before she was sold, as if imploring, ‘how could you do this?’ The slave trader was killed in a marketplace fight and goes to the Other side (he did not pass over completely in previous lifetimes). While on the Other side, he experienced love and reconciliation and forgiveness with the while slave girl who had died at the hands of the awful old man the slave trader had sold her to. After 2000 years of perpetrator lives, it was possible to become joyful. The revelations that came as the result of hypnotherapy sessions led Yvette to shift her patterns in this lifetime. Among other things, she grew in compassion and changed her career to work with children.
That is a fascinating example of an inspiring life shift as the result of regressions.
Consider also aanother case. In his current life, Ayaan came to a regression feeling lost. He was stuttering at times and arguing with his wife. He was a migrant and felt he didn’t belong.
In the first scene of the regression, Ayaan is with his mother and he feels the power of her love which is totally unconditional.
Ayaan then goes to a past life in medieval times where he is a soldier who marries a high-class woman. He is loved by his wife and her noble family, and accepted by others, however he doesn’t feel comfortable. He feels like he doesn’t belong. He leaves his wife and home, wandering to a village where he teaches the peasants how to get out of poverty. He enjoys being admired and appreciated as a learned man.
During these years, he misses his wife. Eventually he returns with much trepidation. He never told her he was leaving, instead just suddenly disappearing. When he arrives, she embraces him and is completely forgiving. He weeps as he is lovingly welcomed back into the family.
In his life between lives, Ayaan learns he that he has been carrying shame. He has felt shameful in many lives and it is time to let it go. He recalls the unconditional love from his mother and sees the love between himself and his current wife. He realises he only stutters when he is speaking in public, a manifestation of his fear and shame. He is given advice on how to let it go.
Ayaan is told he will progress in his career and become well known. He will learn how to stop hiding and be able to express himself clearly in public. This is his purpose and his destiny. His relationship with his wife will improve and he will help her grow, just as she will help him become stronger.
After the regression, he feels much more settled. He now appreciates his new country, admitting that money comes to him easily here. He has a great job and family and knows now how fortunate he is.
As this example attests, we can all gain lessons from the regressions of others as well as our own, when we are brave enough to explore this path.
The examples you share also remind me of a book called The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. It is about lessons in guilt, love and forgiveness. There is also a movie. We are all reminded that it is so simple to forgive but we can only each do it or deny it from ourselves.
I must look into that!
Valentina was another case worth mentioning here. She had 40 hours of regressions. The initial trigger for her visit was her irrational emotion and stress that would arise when her child cried. Turned out, in one key past life, she was married to a chauvinistic partner. They lived in the same room with the baby and that baby cried repeatedly and severely irritated her violent partner. She wanted to keep the child quiet and accidentally suffocated it. In the current lifetime, she wanted more children but was afraid. After significant emotional release due to what she learned during her sessions, she allowed enough guilt to dissipate. The guides said she would have a girl and she did.
Gosh! That series of sessions clearly had quite an impact. Perpetrators seem to explore emotional numbness and repression and how to come to terms and heal with that. How does a client know when enough negative energy is shifted for a current life change to materialize?
It’s not up to us to control or define that.
Consider a third example: Kathy came to me with an illness (IBS-irritable bowel syndrome) During her sessions, we simply asked the guides to take us to past lives which are most relevant to her healing. In one scenario, she had a lot of kids and they all died in a car accident when she was driving and she was left alone. She progressively lost her home, material things and all else that was supposedly important to her. Homeless, destitute and exhausted, she finally fell asleep in a meadow. She died there and felt light-hearted. This experience opened this client to love, oneness, light-heartedness. In this lifetime, she had always been serious and tense which she came to sense contributed to her illness.
Love how you pinpoint that the way experiences flow in our lives, the order they come, the timing of each one, is all orchestrated, based on our evolving level of consciousness. So as we learn lessons, our health, life conditions, and the pace of our manifestations change. It reminds me of a quote by Einstein who echoes: “problems cannot be resolved at the same level of consciousness they are created”
Exactly! My role as a hypnotherapist is to orient clients during their regressions: “i.e. ‘where are you? What is happening now?’ The impulses that drove these people to seek regressions were active remnants of past lives that were no longer needed. The clients were guided to have the old programming deactivated, although they didn’t realise that at the time. It made a huge difference to their lives. They have all changed fundamentally.
I will be explaining how this process works in my next book, Twilight of Souls.
When is this to be released?
It will be available when completed.
Of course! Everything has perfect timing! You have helped so many people over the years. What prompted you to become an author?
I am so privileged to meet with high level spiritual beings every day through the regressions. They share so much wisdom. The stories of my clients’ journeys through their many lives in the earth system are exhilarating. I know why we are here and why we suffer. Even though I know how we can minimize suffering, I also know it is part of the journey, and more important for some than others.
From childhood, I always knew I was to write but for many years my writing just didn’t come together. I felt blocked and I struggled. But once I began doing regressions in 2012, I felt I had to write. I had to share what I was discovering. Finally, it flowed as I communicated the stories of my clients and the wisdom of the spirit guides.
What steps have you recently taken to focus more on your writing?
I left the Newton Research Institute Committee to be more balanced and focused on my new book. A key shift in mindset occurred in 2013 when I was sick for a year. When I came out of the illness, I saw it as a wake-up call to focus more on my writing but had to reduce my commitments and shift my priorities. I was a columnist for 10 years and my husband is also a writer. This contributes to the writer I am and continue to evolve into.
Who is the intended audience of your books, Other Lives, Other Realms and Llewellyn’s Little Book of Life Between Lives?
Both books are written for people who want to understand what it is like to have a regression and the benefits of doing so. The cases in the books are inspiring and illustrative and easily resonate with readers. That can be healing in itself. Anyone interested in better understanding the world as it is, including the darkness, from an individual and collective point of view, would benefit from my books.
I have made much effort to make the books easy to read, and many have told me I have succeeded.
It strikes me like your books invite readers make connections in body awareness and emotions as a gauge for what is going on inside.
What do you feel is the purpose of expanding awareness of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) or other mystical experiences? How, in your view, does this help or empower people?
The guides tell us that the purpose of all mystical experiences is help us discover who we really are. Earth and our bodies seem so real and concrete, we think that is all we are. Even though our physicists know all this “solidity” is really 99.999% space, it just doesn’t seem so.
If I understand your point, during regression, we are experiencing ourselves, just like in OBEs. Interview with William Buhlman offers further insights on OBEs. Growing more conscious of how and why we think and feel is the journey of soul growth.
Yes! Knowing who you really are, is tremendously empowering. You connect with your greater self, your fears dissolve and you become wise, humble, loving and compassionate. Of course, you are still human with human foibles but you begin laughing at these instead of taking them so seriously.
What do you feel is the purpose of recognizing the existence of and interacting with Soul walk-ins?
Sensing or knowing they are a walk-in can relieve a lot of confusion for an individual. One’s life purpose does not necessarily require being born and going through the early journey.
I have had a few clients who have been told they are walk ins. It seems it is always arranged with both souls, the one leaving and the one coming in. We have been told that it happens for various reasons. Some souls are of such a high vibration, their frequency is incompatible with being humanly birthed. Other souls have bitten off more than they can chew and want to leave. This is often anticipated before they are born. They agree to leave and make way for another soul. It is beneficial for both souls. The incoming soul can clean up some of the karma of the outgoing soul. This can be part of the soul-level agreement for the switch.
Share something about yourself few people know.
In my twenties, I spent 10 years in a relationship with a well-known criminal in the Sydney Underworld. I was a mess when I met him, having just left a violent marriage and my two young children. People were very scared of my live-in partner but I wasn’t. He was kind, tolerant and protective of me. I met many Underworld figures (characters in the TV series, Underbelly: Tale of Two Cities) and learned a lot about these people, some of whom were psychopaths.
Incredible! This invites us all to realize each of our lives contain potential motive script material. Whether or not we are familiar with the tv series you mention, we can each relate to themes of polarity in our lives. As we awaken, we grow aware of wider lessons we are invites to learn.
If you have a piece of advice to offer, some wisdom gained from your life, what would it be?
If you feel disturbed or distressed, look within yourself and expect the answers. If it feels right, seek external guidance, healers or therapy to assist you to grow more conscious and trusting of yourself.
I agree. Many people might find the courage to ask themselves questions but not be ready to accept or integrate the answers. Humans are often unconscious and, like Robert Monroe suggests, a technology that some are not always ready or willing to understand.
Share anything else you would like to add
Website: LifeBetweenLivesRegression.com.au (Sign up for my blogs)
Facebook Page: Life Between Lives
Oneness Maleny (OM) holds a talk in Maleny each Sunday at 4 pm (beginning again in January). Email me at Karen@LifeBetweenLivesRegression.com.au and I will arrange to put you on the OM mailing list.
For more Information on hypnotherapy go to my website or my books for my take on hypnotherapy. They are Other Lives, Other Realms and Llewellyn’s Little Book of Life Between Lives (co-author). Any books by Milton Erickson are interesting and informative. He really was the Master.
Thanks again Karen for the intimate reflections you choose to share here. May many people grow more open to the insight available to them and also find the courage to face whatever seems to hold them back. invite everyone to check our Karen's website and books. She is a gem.
Expect the unexpected and whenever possible, be the unexpected- Lynda Barry