Many Doors to Memory: Therapies and Techniques to Recover Your Past Lives

Many Doors to Memory: Therapies and Techniques to Recover Your Past Lives

Oct 30, 2026 · @Janet Kira Lessin

Janet Kira Lessin | Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. | © 2026 Aquarian Media

Research: Claudia Lenore

Title image prompt: A woman of light standing at the center of a vast circular hall lined with glowing doors, each door opening onto a different era and practice: a hypnotist’s chair, a breathwork circle, a drum, a dreamer’s bed, a family tree, a painter’s easel and a starship. Deep blues, violet and gold, large, high-detail, cinematic.

Memory Lives Everywhere

Image prompt: A human silhouette filled with stars, faint scenes from other centuries glowing in the heart, the belly, the hands and the head.

Your memories live in more places than your mind. Your body stores them in muscle and breath, your dreams replay them at night, and your soul carries them from life to life. Every one of us can open those stores, and many doors lead in.

In my companion article, Doorways to Timelessness, I tell how I remember my own lives. Here, I outline the therapies and techniques Sasha and I have used and taught over decades, so you can choose the doors that call to you. Some will recover memories from this life, some from past lives, and some from the simultaneous lives your soul lives right now.

Before You Begin

Image prompt: A quiet room prepared for a session: a futon on the floor, pillows, towels, a glass of water with a lid, a phone on airplane mode and soft candlelight.

Safety and trust open the deepest doors. Set the stage before you step through:

• Setting. A quiet, private room; a futon or mat on the floor; pillows to pound; towels; water in a lidded cup; and phones switched off or on airplane mode.
• Agreements. Decide who gives and who receives, what touch the receiver welcomes, whether to record, and on whose device. Agree on confidentiality, and keep it.
• Safe words. Use green to keep going, yellow to slow down, and red to stop. Give witnesses a word of their own, such as “mirror,” that reminds them to set opinions aside.
• A fair witness. Whoever sits with you holds space without judging, fixing or interpreting.
• A follow-up. Put a check-in on the calendar one to two weeks later.

You can do this work with a trained therapist, a trusted friend, a lover, or alone, in person or over Zoom.

Guided Doors

Image prompt: A hypnotherapist’s soft voice shown as a ribbon of light guiding a reclining woman down a spiral staircase toward a glowing door marked with a past century.

A guide helps you relax past the busy mind and into memory.

• Hypnosis and past-life regression. A hypnotist leads you into deep relaxation, then back through this life and into earlier ones. Describe what you see in present tense, as if it happens now.
• Life-between-lives regression. In the style of Michael Newton, the guide carries you past death into the spirit world, where you meet your guides, your council and your soul group.
• Regress each other. Friends can learn to guide each other. My friend Megan and I took turns every week for two years.
• Therapy and counseling. A good therapist helps you trace a present-day pain to its roots, in this life or beyond.
• Voice Dialogue. Hal and Sidra Stone’s method lets each inner voice speak in turn. A past-life self can step forward and tell its story.
• Gestalt, psychodrama and role-play. Speak to someone absent as if they sit in the empty chair, or act out a scene from another life with a partner or group.

The Body Remembers

Image prompt: Two partners in candlelight, one lying face down while the other rests a hand on the upper back, a faint image of an old wound and a scene from another century glowing beneath the hand.

The body stores what the mind forgets, and touch can wake it.

Bodywork with a partner

1. Find the spot. As you massage each other, the receiver names places that feel sore, tight, numb, or tender.
2. Hold there. The giver rests on that spot and lets the receiver set the pressure.
3. Allow expression. Welcome sound, breath, tears, shaking or words.
4. Ask what it evokes. What feelings does this place stir? What images come?
5. Trace it in this life. When did you feel this before? If the wound belongs to this life, let the catharsis run and reprogram the old belief.
6. Follow it further back. When did this happen in another life? Describe the scene in present tense.

I once followed a pain in my back to a life where someone stabbed me there. When I relived and released it, the pain let go.

Other body doors

• Tantra. Breath, eye-gazing, and chakra work open energy that carries memory.
• Sacred spot and base chakra massage. These hold some of our deepest stores of trauma and pleasure, and gentle, consensual work there can release both.
• Holotropic breathwork. Stanislav and Christina Grof’s fast, deep breathing, set to evocative music, opens vivid inner journeys. I met Nell, a woman stabbed by her fire, in a breathwork session.
• Movement. Dance, yoga and kundalini practice shake memories loose.

Altered States

Image prompt: A sleeper floating above her bed in moonlight, a shaman’s drum glowing beside her, and a doorway of stars opening in the dream sky.

When the everyday mind rests, other memories rise.

• Dreamwork. Keep a journal by your bed and write keywords before you go to sleep. Dialogue with the figures in your dreams, or ask a dream to show you a past life before you sleep.
• The edge of sleep. The twilight between waking and dreaming opens easy recall. Lucid dreaming lets you steer the dream toward a life you want to explore.
• Meditation. A daily practice at the same hour builds the muscle. After a year of fifteen minutes a day, I downloaded four lifetimes in one night.
• Shamanic journeys. Drumming, rattling, and guided journeys take you to the lower and upper worlds, where ancestors and helpers wait. Some traditions add sacred plant medicines, which belong only in legal settings with an experienced, trusted guide.
• Sound. Chanting, singing bowls, binaural beats, and the Monroe Institute’s Hemi-Sync shift the brain into receptive states.
• Float tanks and the Ganzfeld technique. Quieting the senses lets inner images come forward.

Beyond the Body

Image prompt: A glowing blue astral figure rises from a sleeping body and flies through a spiral of time, past castles, battlefields, and ancient temples.

Some doors open when consciousness travels.

• Astral projection. Leave the body and visit other places and times. My own time-traveling astral self appears as a woman in blue.
• Remote viewing. Train the mind to perceive distant places, including the places of your other lives.
• Time travel. Return to key moments in other lives on purpose, with intention as your vehicle.
• Channeling. Let a guide, an ancestor or a past-life self speak through you. My guide, whom I call the Narrator, often explains what I see.
• Automatic writing. Hold a pen, or open a blank page or an AI chat, and let the words flow without editing. Writing works for me like channeling and often surfaces whole lives.
• Akashic Records. Ask to read the soul’s record of every life it has lived.
• Imagination. Pretend, and let the story tell itself. Imagination often opens the door that memory walks through.
• Near-death experiences, fevers and illness. The soul often steps out during these passages and returns carrying information.

Clues in Daily Life

Image prompt: A woman pausing on a cobblestone street, struck by recognition, faint ghostly figures from another century walking beside the present-day crowd.

Pay attention. Your past lives tap you on the shoulder every day.

• Triggers. A song, a smell, a tone of voice or a kind of touch can open a memory in an instant. Follow it.
• Spontaneous recall. Flashes, downloads and sudden knowing often arrive while you shower, drive or drift. Welcome them and write them down.
• Attraction and repulsion. Notice what pulls you in and what pushes you away: people, eras, places, foods, clothes, languages and collections. My Native American figurines pointed me to Star Woman.
• Emotions evoked by people. Instant love, instant dislike or a sense of having always known someone often points to a shared past.
• Déjà vu. Explore it rather than brushing it off.
• Places that call you. Travel to them, or visit museums and sites from those eras.
• Clues in the body. Phobias, birthmarks, allergies and pains with no cause in this life.
• Recognition by others. Someone may remember you, as my dear friend remembered our life together as husband and wife twenty years after I first dreamed it.
• Children. Young children often speak of other lives before age seven. Listen without leading.

Research and Creation

Image prompt: A woman at a glowing desk surrounded by an enormous family tree, old parish records, a child’s crayon drawing and an easel with a half-finished painting of a Victorian picnic.

Your hands and your curiosity open doors too.

• Genealogy and DNA. Climb your family tree and notice which ancestors you identify with. Souls often return to their own lines.
• Research. Read the history of an era you remember. Records may confirm details you never could have known, as Julia Taft Bayne’s memoir confirmed my memories of Holly Taft playing with Tad Lincoln.
• Psychometry. Touch an old object, or hold your hand just above it, and let it show you its story. As a girl, I read the stones of a museum’s old building facades and a cemetery headstone this way.
• Art therapy. Draw, paint or sculpt what comes, then ask: why did I draw that? Watch children’s drawings too. When a child draws the family and adds an alien, ask what the child knows. That stranger in the picture may also point to a real person, such as a stalker, so stay alert and balanced.
• Write and record. Keep a journal, record your sessions, or tell your AI chat what came. Each telling brings more.

From Memory to Healing

Image prompt: A woman stepping out of a dark doorway into sunrise, broken chains dissolving into light behind her, a circle of supportive friends waiting with open arms.

Remembering opens the wound; healing closes it. Carry each memory through to the end:

1. Let the catharsis run. Tears, rage, screams and laughter all clear the charge.
2. Bring it home to today. How does this old wound hold you back now? What triggers it: a tone of voice, a touch, a place, a kind of person? Which choices does it still make for you?
3. Reprogram. Replace the old belief with one you choose, and practice the new response the next time the trigger fires.
4. Clear with others. Call the people from that life into the bardo, the realm between lives, speak your truth and hear theirs. The clearing works whether they live now or have died.
5. Integrate. Write, draw or talk it through, and keep your follow-up appointment.

Meet whatever comes with balance. Pay attention, and keep fear in proportion. Find a therapist, or a support group that welcomes true expression and lets every story be told. Hold yourself and others without judgment. Your subconscious has something to tell you, so give it room to speak.

As each of us heals, the world heals, because every one of us connects to every other.

Bells & Whistles

Pull quotes

• “Your memories live in more places than your mind.”
• “The body stores what the mind forgets, and touch can wake it.”
• “Pay attention. Your past lives tap you on the shoulder every day.”
• “Remembering opens the wound; healing closes it.”

SEO description: Hypnotherapist and lifelong experiencer Janet Kira Lessin shares the therapies and techniques that recover past-life memories, from hypnosis and breathwork to bodywork, dreams, genealogy and art therapy, and how to turn memory into healing.

Joint bio: Janet Kira Lessin and Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D., write and broadcast together from Maui through Aquarian Media. Janet, a certified hypnotherapist and Voice Dialogue facilitator, has guided thousands through past-life regression. Sasha, who earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at UCLA, trained in humanistic psychology and co-founded the School of Tantra with Janet.

Author images: Janet and Sasha face the camera, hands resting on a desk, framed by a collage of this article’s images.

Alt text: Minerva writes alt text for each image as she generates it.

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References

• Michael Newton, Journey of Souls
• Holotropic Breathwork, developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof
• Voice Dialogue, developed by Hal and Sidra Stone
• Ian Stevenson, research on children who remember past lives
• Psychometry
• The Monroe Institute

Tags: past lives, past life regression, hypnosis, life between lives, holotropic breathwork, bodywork, tantra, dreamwork, shamanic journey, astral projection, remote viewing, automatic writing, art therapy, genealogy, healing, Janet Kira Lessin

Hashtags: #PastLives, #PastLifeRegression, #Hypnosis, #HolotropicBreathwork, #Tantra, #Dreamwork, #AstralProjection, #ArtTherapy, #Healing, #AquarianMedia

YouTube title: Many Doors to Memory: How to Recover Your Past Lives

YouTube description: Janet Kira Lessin walks you through the therapies and techniques that open past-life memory: hypnosis, regression, bodywork, tantra, breathwork, dreams, shamanic journeys, astral travel, genealogy, art therapy and more, plus how to turn what you remember into healing. Subscribe on Substack to follow the series.

YouTube tags: past lives, past life regression, hypnosis, breathwork, bodywork, dreamwork, astral projection, healing, Janet Kira Lessin, Aquarian Media

LinkedIn: After decades as a hypnotherapist, I’ve gathered the therapies and techniques that open memory, from regression and breathwork to bodywork, dreams and art therapy. The most important step comes after remembering: turning memory into healing. New article now on Substack.

Facebook: Your body remembers what your mind forgets. In my new article I share the doors that open past-life memory, from hypnosis and breathwork to dreams, bodywork, genealogy and art therapy, and how to carry each memory through to healing. Subscribe on Substack and come remember with me.

X: Your body remembers what your mind forgets. Here are the many doors to past-life memory, and how to heal what you find. #PastLives #Healing

Instagram caption: Many doors, one soul. Hypnosis, breathwork, dreams, bodywork, art and more: here’s how to open yours. Link in bio. #PastLives #Healing #Reincarnation