This is an updated and expanded blog post from a few years ago about why past lives matter so much. I’ve worked with thousands of clients on their past lives, and have seen again and again how past lifetimes influence everything we do. I hope this article sheds some insight into why this is so important.

I’ve been exploring past lives for quite a few years now, and I’ve come to believe there’s nothing that we humans do that doesn’t have a past-life component.

Traumas from our prior incarnations are the cause of irrational fears, exaggerated responses to crises, phobias, limiting beliefs and blocks. And past-life experiences lie behind more positive attributes such as talents and abilities. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that all talents are past-life related, and I cannot stress enough how much our past lives matter.

In my work, I’ve seen amazing shifts happen simply from uncovering what happened to a person’s soul, sometimes as far back as a thousand years ago. Reminding the soul that it no longer has any reason to hold onto its fears allows it to put the past behind it.

It still amazes me that something like dying in childbirth two hundred years ago can cause the soul to make sure it doesn’t happen again, by creating physical and emotional blocks to pregnancy. Or that low self-esteem, unexplained anxieties, hostile reactions to certain people, difficulty making decisions, and almost every fight-or-flight reaction are all past-life related.

Tackling past-life fears can be challenging, but the rewards are enormous. In fact, I believe that without taking your past lives into account, you can’t ever truly be the person you’re meant to be.

Here are a few of the surprising ways past lives show up in the present:

Constipation: Bleeding out at the end of a life can result in a fear of loss of control. One sign that constipation is a past-life issue is that it gets worse when you travel, and heals when you uncover the original past-life cause.

Water: Going down with a ship causes a fear of water. Not usually a problem in a pool, but the fear can be triggered by the sight of deep, dark water.

Writer’s Block: Usually the block is a fear of rejection (what if people don’t like me or my writing?), a fear of self-expression (what if it comes back and bites me?), a fear of judgment (what will people think of me?) and a fear of inferiority (who am I to consider myself a writer?). All of which stem from, you guessed it, a past lifetime.

Poverty: Going from a life of reasonable comfort to becoming destitute in a past life can show up as a fear of becoming a bag lady, a tendency to push money away, or the sense that everything you have, or have worked for, could be taken away from you.

Sleep Problems: Traumatic events during the hours of darkness hundreds of years ago can cause your soul to go on full alert when it should be sleeping.  Do you wake up every or most nights at a certain time? Your soul worries that history will repeat itself, so it wakes you up to check that everything is alright.

Indecision: If you were in charge when you made a decision that caused your death, or the death of others, then you might find it hard to choose between two trivial things, like whether to order the pasta or the fish on a menu. Your soul will hate having to take responsibility for even the smallest decisions.

I could go on. There are so many ways past-life trauma reveals itself!

I explore several past lives every day. Even now, I’m still blown away at the strange idiosyncrasies that no one would ever think stemmed from other incarnations.

Whether it’s an aversion to tight clothing (restraint in a dungeon), a dislike of camping (a prison of war camp), or cold extremities (death from hypothermia), my experience as a past-life psychic for nearly two decades tells me that the source always lies in the past.

On a more positive note, previous lifetimes as a baker will cause your dough to cooperate with you in this life. Many incarnations as a musician will help you get a tune out of most instruments. And multiple lives as a hunter will make you comfortable in the great outdoors.

It’s not just the trauma from past lives that stays with us, but the talents we’ve developed over many incarnations.

A great example are the child prodigies you see all over the internet, like the 5-year old playing as if she’d been studying for decades. (She has, of course. Just not in this lifetime.)

Past lives matter because knowing what happened to your soul before this particular incarnation allows you to heal the fears and other blocks, and build more effectively on the talents you’ve developed over centuries.

The more you understand your past lives, and take the steps you need to heal from their effects, the closer you’ll come to living the life your soul intended. And who doesn’t want to live a happier and more fulfilling life?