05 January,2010 09:42 AM IST | | Alifiya Khan
Despite boom in business, healers are unhappy with reality show as they say it is unscientific and dramatises a serious mode of therapy
It would be hard to imagine this pretty 32-year-old banker as a man. But that's exactly what NIBM resident Natalia Shenoy claims she was in her previous life.
Born Russian and married to an Indian businessman, Natalia claims that she did her past life regression session just for fun, only to discover she had deeper issues. Unable to shake her fear of losing her loved ones, Shenoy finally understands her possessive behaviour.
"During the session it was revealed that I was a man who was abandoned by his family and died a lonely death.
Even in this life that's my biggest fear u2014 dying lonely. That's why I am constantly worriedu00a0 about losing people around me and I keep making compromises to please them," said Shenoy.
Emotional baggage
At 22, when Shenoy had decided to start an export business in Moscow she met an Indian, whom she is now married to. Though unwilling to marry early, she did so because of the fear of being lonely. "Had I not had the baggage of my past life I would have been a successful businesswoman and would have explained my feelings to my husband. But I have never been able to express myself," said Shenoy.
Like Shenoy, clients have flooded clinics of therapists who deal with past life regression after a recent television show on NDTV Imagine Raaz Pichle Janam Ka based on that subject showed how present life problems may have a root in the previous lives.
Past life
At Dr Sujata Vaidya's Institute of Integrative Healthcare, the phone hasn't stopped ringing after the show went on air.
"Everyday I get calls from people wanting to look into their past lives. They have certain issues and want to know what they did in their past lives to cause it. While this therapy is good for people who are going through severe trauma, this show has made the therapy into a joke. People are turning into escapists; they want to put all their baggage on their past lives."
A clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist Dr Kirti Bakshi from Mumbai also agreed that the show has brought a boom in business, but isn't sure if that's such a good idea.
"What people see on TV and what happens here is totally different. Regression is a very subtle science. First of all the therapist at no time leads the client to remember things. Secondly, we never make a connect between what happened in past life and the present one. For example, if a person was a rapist in their past life we never say that's why they were promiscuous now," she said.
No quick fix
Therapists also complained that the show portrayed the therapy as a one-session quick fix formula.
"In the first few sessions we try to see if something in the present life has caused the stress. Later, even if we evaluate it as a case of regression, several sessions are required to bring the person to that state. The show just takes people into their previous lives. The actual process of healing needs additional sessions which is why the process is flawed and incomplete," said Dr Irina Khanna, a hypnotherapist from Pune.
