The lives I've lived

The scene I keep coming back to

In my first newsletter, "Chapter 1: Self-Awareness," I told you about the first time I said yes to a past life regression session, back when I was an overworked event producer with zero interest in anything spiritual, and a friend who happened to be a psychotherapist asked if she could guide me through one. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I said yes.

Here's an excerpt directly from my book that describes that experience:

The first time I saw her — me — I knew. Even I was surprised at the image as it unfolded in my mind. At first, it didn't quite make sense, but there was no doubt that her essence was mine. I started by examining my feet: dark, rugged, older, and bare, rooted into the dry earth so that the particles of dust speckled my toes with the contrast of the white on dark skin. In the distance, I could hear kids playing, their giggles echoing, causing me to grin at the joy of this pure form of expression.

"Where are you?" asks Dr. Park.

"Somewhere in Arabia, maybe?" My voice is soft and muffled, and the answer comes to me easily and effortlessly. Where is Arabia? my conscious mind interjects, quickly being overpowered by the calm lightness that is spreading all throughout my body. I can smell the ocean. The air feels dry.

"How do you feel?"

"I feel . . ." I say with a breath as I pause for what feels like hours, "peaceful, happy, calm." I feel my lips perk up with a knowing grin.

I start by examining the clothing I am wearing. I can see and feel me so clearly, decorated in all white, with loose, flowing fabric, perfectly tucked to create a toga-like dress. My dry, long gray hair is in a low bun at the nape of my neck. I feel petite, somewhat elderly. In front of me I can see the barren land. Behind me is a modest hut. My home. It is humble and easily blends into the cacophony of browns of the desert land. I enter to find a small table, a bed, and a cooking area with a small fire pit. The table is filled with tools, herbs, different-sized canisters, and oils. Everything is so familiar, so detailed, and so calming. It is like I have seen it a million times before.

There is nothing else to see. I just know that I landed at the end of this life. I am not scared. I am welcoming of this next transition. I feel my perspective start to zoom out as I float above this scene. I am instantaneously overtaken by an inner harmony as a bright white light starts overtaking my entire being.

"Who are you?" she asks.

"I am a medicine woman."

— Chapter 1: Self-Awareness, Pathways to Self

That session was the first. It was not the last.

What if I'm making it up?

When I opened my eyes, the room was exactly where I'd left it: same couch, same light through the blinds, my friend sitting across from me right where she'd been the whole time. My body came back first. My mind followed a few seconds later, already reaching for the exits. Was that even real, or did I just make it up? What if my subconscious is just a very creative screenwriter who thinks she's Spielberg?

I didn't have an answer then. I still don't, not really. But I kept going back anyway, on and off, for years, under different guides, in different rooms. Each time, an image of a new life would surface. A queen in a long stone corridor, alone in her grandeur. A soldier in 1500s France whose heart had gone cold. A logging boy in the 1850s who never expressed the truth of his heart.

Men and women, heartbreak and hardness, across centuries and continents. What I felt in each of them was real, and so was the release that came with it afterward: a loneliness I couldn't explain, a guilt I couldn't quite name, a fear of expressing my truth, all slowly dissipating from my internal workings. Once I could name them, they didn't feel like mine anymore. It didn't matter whether the visuals were real, or whether my mind had built the whole set from nothing. What mattered was what happened when I surfaced afterward. Each of those lives made it easier to read my own with the same compassion.

Understanding replaced judgment. Compassion replaced guilt. The more I could hold for myself, the more I could hold for other people. The more I forgave the queen, the soldier, the logger — the more I forgave myself.

The more I experienced past life regression, the more I wanted to understand it. For me that started with learning hypnosis.

What hypnosis actually is (and isn't)

People often imagine hypnosis as something done to you: a swinging pendulum, a stage show, a kind of involuntary surrender. It isn't any of those things.

Hypnosis is the process of accessing the subconscious mind through a deeply relaxed, expanded state of awareness. This is the Theta brain wave state, the same one we drift into just before sleep, deep in meditation, or lost in creative thought. We enter it every day without realizing it.

The subconscious is the ninety percent of our mind that operates beneath the surface. It governs most of our thinking, our behavior, and our beliefs. In that relaxed state, it becomes reachable.

Past life regression is its own practice, distinct from standard hypnosis: instead of using the subconscious to look back at this life, you let your mind go looking for another one entirely. It doesn't require a belief in past lives. It requires a willingness to be curious about what your inner world hands you, and to ask what it's trying to show you.

As a lifelong learner and searcher, I decided to get certified in hypnotherapy, mostly for fun. I didn't know that years later, when the pandemic hit, I'd be stranded in Costa Rica, putting this certification to use and guiding hundreds of people through their own subconscious, watching them access things they'd never consciously touched and heal in ways that surprised us both. What I witnessed changed everything I thought I knew about the mind, about memory, and about how long we carry the past.

What self-compassion actually means

I'd go on to see this shift to self-compassion in hundreds of hypnotherapy clients over the years to come. But I'd already witnessed it many times before I ever became a hypnotherapist.

Years prior, I used to run international impact retreats through my foundation, Artbound, taking small groups of people to a different part of the world and watching what happened when they stepped outside everything familiar to them.

This pattern was always the same. Someone would arrive from a completely different country, culture, life, financial background, and within days, they'd recognize themselves in someone they had nothing in common with on paper. That recognition is what let people soften. Compassion moved outward first, toward the stranger, long before anyone could turn it around and aim it at themselves.

The past lives worked the exact same way. A queen, a soldier, a young logger, lives that looked nothing like mine on the surface. But the moment I connected to the humanity underneath the identity, compassion was instant.

That's what self-compassion actually is. Not a new skill. The same compassion I already knew how to give a stranger on the other side of the world, finally pointed at the one person I'd never once considered giving it to. Me.

It's part of why the space we're building in Costa Rica matters to me beyond the sunrise yoga decks and the ocean views. The goal is the same recognition, just faster: seeing yourself in a stranger, and eventually, developing an even deeper compassion for yourself.

THIS WEEK'S PRACTICE

There is a story about two monks walking a pilgrimage. They arrive at a river where a woman is stranded. One monk picks her up and carries her to the other side. Hours later, the second monk is still fuming. "How could you? We are not allowed to touch women."

The first monk looks at him calmly. "I set her down at the river. Why are you still carrying her?"

That question is this week's practice. Not how do I forgive, but what am I still carrying.

Set it down

1. Ask yourself: what am I still carrying? Not the obvious things. The quieter ones. The self-criticism that runs on a loop. The old story about why you're too much, or not enough, or somehow at fault. Write it down if it helps.

2. Look at it the way you would look at a friend. If someone you loved told you they felt this way about themselves, what would you say back to them? Say that to yourself.

3. Practice the return. Self-compassion isn't a one-time moment. It's a daily returning to yourself when the judgment creeps back in. Notice when the inner critic shows up. Breathe. And begin again.

I'll see you next Friday for Chapter Six: Self-Expression.

— Dana

Pathways to Self: The Path to Purpose Through the Nine Steps of Self-Realization comes out August 18, 2026. Chapters One through Five are live at danashalit.com/blog.