I’m lying on a beach, the sun is out and all I can hear is the waves lapping at the shore.
A tall figure in yellow looms over me. Not a beach waiter in a garishly coloured shirt but… a talking banana.
This is not the holiday of my dreams, nor a dodgy trip – it’s a trip of a whole other kind, into the world of my own past lives.
After celebrities started the trendy new craze of regression therapy to find themselves, I decided to try it for myself.
And what I found was like my own Hollywood movie.
Fearne Cotton had it done the other week and turned out to have been a trapeze artist in the 1900s.
When he regressed, Elton John was a soldier, while Katherine Jenkins was a farmer and Brian May had been married to Anita Dobson for all of eternity.
At £200 a session, it is meant to help “overcome fears and limiting beliefs” in order to help a person “reach their full potential”.
In a nutshell, the idea pivots around freeing yourself from past traumas so that you can move positively into the present.
“Think of it as feng shui for the soul,” therapist Lorraine Flaherty tells me.
Lorraine, a regression therapist for 20 years, then asks: “Have you done this before?”
What, been catapulted back through time to come face-to-face with my former selves? Can’t say I have.
“Well,” she says – before telling me I drowned aged eight – “you’re in for a treat.”
To begin the process she has me write down key moments from my life, but I overlook the word “key” and instead jot down the time my nephew squirted ketchup all over my dad’s shirt.
I also note the time I angered Belinda Carlisle by mistaking her for Belinda Carlisle’s assistant when she was, in fact, Belinda Carlisle. Trauma.
“Detail is good,” says Lorraine, calmly putting my notes to one side. “But why don’t you tell me what you want to get out of this?”
“I didn’t do so well with men in my twenties,” I tell her. “Lots of bad choices. I’d sort of like to know why that happened.
“And I’d like to know if there’s anyone that’s been looking out for me in my other lives.”
“Oooh, yes,” says Lorraine, her kind face lighting up.
“I love a good soul friend question. Take your shoes off and let’s get going.”
Lying back on a spacious sofa with my legs up and Lorraine by my side, I feel safe and cosy – and deliriously excited about meeting my old self.
She tells me to close my eyes and relax as she counts from one to 10 and guides me into hypnosis.
Trying to push away thoughts of what to have for tea later, I let her dulcet tones trickle over me.
And then she’s counting me down – three, two, one… And then I’m on a lovely beach and the sun is out and I feel fantastic.
“So in order to get access to this other lifetime,” she says, “I’m going to invite you to imagine, leading off from your safe place is a pathway or corridor.
“Depending on whether you’re inside or outside along the pathway or the corridor, you’re going to find there will be entrances of some sort, or they might be doorways.
"But they might equally be columns of light or mist, or a portal of any kind.
“And when you’ve found the right one, I’m going to invite you to step through it.
“Then, when you get through to the other side, you’re going to find yourself fully immersed into that experience – where you will see or hear or feel in whichever way is right for you.”
Beach life is great but when I get to my first room it all seems a bit… odd.
I’m wearing 60s bell-bottoms, until I realise I’m a walking, talking picture frame, like Mrs Potts in Beauty and the Beast. And everyone ignores me.
And then I’m laughing. A lot.
“There’s a talking banana,” I tell Lorraine. I daren’t open my eyes to see what she makes of that. But I’m laughing anyway.
“And how does the space make you feel?” she asks.
“Like I’m an outsider looking in at my own life.”
Lorraine doesn’t seem impressed by the banana – and will later explain how cartoons and symbols come up to protect against traumatic events.
“Now you are going to invite your higher mind to take you into an experience that is going to be a genuine other lifetime,” she tells me.
No more talking bananas. Things are about to get serious.
I find myself walking down a path, a bit like the Yellow Brick Road, and then I’m in a church – and a man who looks like Gandalf with a long beard but more glamorous golden robes is talking to me.
And I’m wearing the same robes as him.
Lorraine is asking lots of questions: “How old are you? What are you doing there?”
I tell her I’m about eight and doing my pious church duty. Whatever that means.
“What part of the world are you in?”
“Dubai.”
“Dubai?”
“Yes. In the 1700s.”
Lorraine quickly moves me on. In the next room, I meet a woman who looks like the evil queen from Snow White, who despite her scary appearance I really like.
Turns out, she is my mum – who is not even slightly evil.
We move on again. Now I’m still the same little girl, but I’m walking through the desert.
It seems to go on for a long time before I reach the sea, where I meet my watery end.
And there was me thinking I was on some delightful psychedelic trip.
Lorraine wants me to talk to Gandalf and the Wicked Witch, ask them if they have been with me through former lives and what their names are.
Turns out Gandalf is George, and that’s my dad’s name. “So your dad is your soul friend, who looks out for you,” she says.
And now it’s awkward and I’m crying. Big, blobby tears streaming down my face.
And it’s true, Dad is one of my all-time heroes, but so is Mum.
Then she tells me to thank these parents from another life, to tell them that I don’t need them anymore.
Instead, I’m going to write a new contract. Three things I want to move forward with in my life.
“Joy. Peace. And fun,” I tell her.
And then she counts me out of the hypnosis and, BAM, I’m opening my eyes.
And, boy, do I feel tired.
I tell Lorraine I wasn’t expecting to get so emotional and she says my body is moving on from those traumatic experiences.
I’m shaken for a little while after, exhilarated, but don’t really know how to make sense of it.
So I do what I’ve always done, in this life and all the others. I go and see Mum and Dad.
To read more about Lorraine’s regression therapy, see innerjourneys.co.uk or read her book, Healing With Past Life Therapy
