Skeptics shocked at the neuroscience behind Past Life Regression

In this captivating episode of the Crackin Backs Podcast, we welcome renowned trauma therapist and mental health expert, Dr. Jennifer Williams. With over 27 years of clinical experience, Dr. Williams uniquely integrates neuroscience, mindfulness, clinical hypnosis, and past-life regression therapy to explore profound healing pathways for the mind, body, and spirit.

Listeners will journey through the fascinating intersections of modern neuroscience and ancient healing traditions. Dr. Williams tackles tough questions, guiding us through how these unconventional methods provide transformative insights into trauma recovery and emotional resilience.

Dive deep into the controversial yet compelling practice of past-life regression therapy, as popularized by Dr. Brian Weiss in "Many Lives, Many Masters." Dr. Williams addresses skepticism head-on, illuminating how these sessions can unlock hidden sources of trauma, promoting deep and lasting healing.

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Williams reveals powerful truths gleaned from decades of therapeutic practice, truths that textbooks alone cannot teach. Discover her most profound lessons on human resilience, the unyielding spirit, and the complex relationship between mental and emotional health.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Dr. Williams provides critical insights into why "it's okay not to be okay," offering practical wisdom and deeper truths essential for both healthcare professionals and individuals on their healing journeys.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to understand trauma, resilience, and holistic healing from an innovative and deeply human perspective.

To learn more about Dr. Jennifer Williams and her transformative approach to healing, Visit her Website

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:01

I've accomplished more in a couple months with her than in many years with my therapist. Confesses one of Dr Williams's clients that striking testimonial might sound unbelievable, but it is exactly the kind of transformation Dr Williams is known for. How does she do it. We're about to find out. In this episode, we introduce you to the trauma therapist and professor who blends cutting edge neuroscience with age old healing practices to free people from their burdens of the past. Get ready for a journey into the mind body connection and an exploration of healing that goes far beyond ordinary as we welcome Dr Jennifer Williams to the conversation. Welcome to the cracking backs podcast. Dr Jennifer Williams, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, therapist. Listen. I gotta tell you, this was such a crazy experience, but we were just having a conversation one day in the office, and all of a sudden you started talking about neuro linguistic programming, and then we got into past life regressions. And I'm going, how are you so clinical? And, know, all this ethereal stuff? Welcome to the

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 1:21

show. Thank you. Thank you. It's so, so exciting to be here. Well, I'm glad

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:26

to have you. One of one of your clients once said that they accomplished more in a few months with you than in years with previous therapy. And that's an incredible statement. You know? What? What? What do you think they felt saw or experienced differently under your care. It created that kind of a breakthrough. Wow,

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 1:44

what a great question I what I think is, is that I hold a different level of presence with clients that I, you know, I say a lot of this, I teach, I teach at the university level. I teach doctoral students and masters students how to be clinicians and psychotherapists, and one of the things that we teach is how to hold what's called therapeutic presence. And I don't think people really understand how incredibly important that is, to be completely tuned in to the very present moment that allows our nervous systems to connect with one another. And when a nervous system connects with another nervous system, and yours is mostly regulated, they start to feel safe, and when they start to feel safe they open up quicker, and when they open up quicker, then we can get the work done. And the other thing happens. So not only does it allow, like my nervous system, their nervous system to regulate. There's this concept of mirror neurons as well that goes on, but I think it's also the fact that once I'm locked in there, I don't know how to explain it other than just an intuitive sense and a guidance that allows me to ask the right questions, to go to the right place, and I'm sitting and listening for themes, for what people are saying, and taking those themes and taking it back. So it's like, I'm I utilize. I don't just teach mindfulness. I don't just, you know, use it before class. I practice it every single day, and it allows me to regulate my nervous system when things are going wonky, when I'm living the human experience, and able to just completely lock in and be with them, which then allows me to have a deeper connection, where they feel safe, and I can start to look at themes and make connections that, in some ways, other clinicians, I think, have a hard time getting there, or maybe never even allow themselves to kind of lean into a more intuitive or different way of of connection, while just sticking with traditional, modern modalities. That's, that's what I would suspect, you know,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 4:06

and sorry. Dr, Terry, I know you're about to say something, but let me, let me ask you, you know, we talk about, you know, connecting with somebody, or, you know, I know that. Dr, Terry and myself, that we will have those experiences where you feel like you're resonating with that person at such a high frequency, and they open up. But what does that feel or look like or sound like to you? Like you put like, like labels on that kind of a experience, like, what do you do that allows you? Because we have clinicians listening and we have regular patients listening, what can you describe what those little concepts

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 4:44

are? So when I'm in it now, because I've been doing it so long now, it just feels like a connection. Things can be falling in the background. People can be talking outside. Bells chiming, and I'm locked in, like it just turns into it just sort of fades into the background, and I'm just right there. That's what it feels like to me. Now, how did I build that? I started with routine. I started with making sure that I had when I started my clients in the morning, or whenever it is that I started, it took a few minutes of just centering myself, taking some nice deep breaths, and then I have a little prayer that I say, I always do this, that I allow you know that that whatever is supposed to come up for the client comes up and that I am, I am able to be guided in the best way that's going to help the client for their highest good and whatever they need to receive. And it's a very short, little, tiny little prayer. It's just a little centering. I'm sure we'll talk about energy work, because I do that as well. I just imagine a beautiful white bubble, a cocoon of light around me, protecting me. And I make the intention that nothing other than love will leave that bubble. Nothing leaves me, and nothing will enter in, because I'm a trauma therapist, and so people come to me with trauma, and I want them to bring it up, but I don't want to take it on. And so there I had to train myself to do that. And then in between clients, I still to this day, do that. I get up, I use the restroom, I wash my hands, and that is just sort of like, you know, it's a transition to go into that. So I've trained myself to do that, and now it just sort of happens in the matter of seconds. And the more often you do it, the easier it becomes. But when I'm in that zone, like there could be a jackhammer outside, I'd hear it, it would probably be annoying to everybody else, but I'm good. I can stick right, right with it. You

Dr. Spencer Baron: 7:04

gotta share the prayer, though. Yeah, yeah, share. No. You got you tell us. What is that prayer?

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 7:13

It is probably more about an intention of just allowing that whatever needs to come forward for the client, that it comes forward and a safe and loving way, and that I am guided in the best way possible to help the client for their highest good, for their healing today.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 7:35

Yeah, love that you mentioned, you mentioned the word zone. I think that's what the whole time I was thinking, like with athletes called when they're in the zone, they don't they're connected, whether it's baseball or golf, football, whatever, they can't make a mistake, and they're just connected. Is that what kind of what you're talking about from? Yeah, you know you you've dedicated your life to mental health and trauma, like you just mentioned. But what was that first aha moment that whether personal professional that you realize traditional therapy was enough to reach people's deepest wounds.

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 8:11

So all right, you ready? Yeah, this is, this is really the whole story. This is, this is really everything for me. So early in my career, I began to have some health issues, getting super dizzy, passing out, literally passing out, and went to every doctor, I had every test done, and they couldn't figure anything out, and they said, You know what, nothing is wrong with you. You're healthy, you're young. There's really nothing wrong with you. It's all in your head. So you really need to go in, you know, to therapy. I'm like, Well, I'm a therapist. What are you talking about? Of course, I did go into therapy, and it was very supportive, and it was fine. It was very traditional type of therapy, but it still didn't make everything go away. And at the time, I was working at another university that I'm at now, and a really kind of cool professor who just has always been sort of out of the box, came up to me one day because I shared with her, I'm like, I'm so frustrated. I don't I'm having actual physical symptoms, and people are saying, this is in my head. And I Okay, I'm trying, but nothing's happening. She goes, You know what? Why don't you go try some energy healing, and then you know what? Also, I think you'd find really cool. You should go to an astrologist, if you've ever been at a place in your physical healing where you know that you're having issues and problems and. You're trying all the best practice here. I am already in academia. I'm a psychotherapist. I do all of these things, and it's not getting to the root of it. If someone said, Come and shake some, you know, feathers and they do a dance around a chicken, I would have been open to it. I would have been completely fine if, you know, call it placebo. I don't care, whatever it is would work. So I was open to it. When I went and started doing that, it opened me up to an entire new world. The energy healing miraculously shifted and changed me. Now. This is 20 something years ago today. I have a different language. I could probably tell you a little bit about what that was, but let me just take you and tell you what that was like when I was going through it. I felt centered, I felt safe, I felt hopeful. I no longer was dizzy and passing out. And now I'm intrigued, right? And now I'm really wanting to know, how did this work? This is really kind of nutty. So I did what any good academic would do, is I immersed myself in learning that I read everything that I could. I went to trainings, I went to retreats, I experienced it with people, and I immersed myself because I needed to find out what was really going on. So I did that. I learned about energy healing. I became a Reiki Master. I I learned about hypnosis. There's a little connection to hypnosis that was not unfamiliar to me, because my dad actually was a Hypnotherapist. But I decided to take that into more of a clinical component I learned about NLP. I got trained in in mindfulness and a deeper level of meditation. I went to the astrologist. I still don't really quite understand it enough, but it sounded really interesting to me, the way people were describing these things about my birth chart, to me, was very fascinating, but it didn't really matter. I took an approach of just sort of curiosity and did as much as I could to delve into that, because it helped me. And so then I started to integrate that in the classroom. I would start every class. I still do that to this day, with a deep breathing exercise, a self regulation exercise. I then started to do hypnosis and NLP, with my clients that were open to it. But it is interesting because, see, I mean, we're talking 20 years ago. It's just now that it's people are really starting to open up and have a good dialog about this. But what ended up happening is that I had these two very separate lives. So I had academia and teaching, and then I had this other life of private practice, but every once in a while, and if there was somebody that was referred to me by, you know, a functional medicine doctor or chiropractor or someone, they usually were a little bit more open to things, and they would come to me, and it was almost like, you know, like you walk up the steps in the back of a warehouse, and you knock on the door, and they, like, open it up and say, what's the password? Like, oh, here, come on in. Like, that kind of thing, right? Like, that's sort of how I had it and and then I became known for this personally. And what was interesting is, even my colleagues at the University, they would personally come, Hey, Jen, come on, let's go have lunch together. I've got this issue, I've got this problem, I've got this thing. What do you think? Right? And and it would be very helpful to them, and I would sort of dabble in it and try it out, and then pop back in. But what I did notice is, publicly, my colleagues would put it down. They would publicly shame me for that, tell me that it wasn't evidence based, that it wasn't real work. I was dealing in something called pseudoscience, and some religious people said it was of the devil. And so it, yeah, yeah. And it was a very real, real thing. And I, you know, respected these, these people. And I'm young, and so I'm going into this career, and I want to go on. I didn't have my PhD yet. I wanted to get my PhD. I wanted to stay in academia and and it was made. Very clear to me that that wasn't the way, the way through it. So, so it started to have these two very separate lives that it was helping and helping a lot of other people. And then I'm here, I've got to, you know, make sure that I'm toting the line really well, making sure it's evidence based and all this efficacy. So this is important, because this is really the foundation for why I then later embraced neurobiology. And when I came across neurobiology, I felt like, like, Thank you, right? Like, Oh my gosh, you cannot be more evidence based grounded in hard science than in this soft science work that we do. Right? So there it's sort of separated. I remember that I was getting ready to transition from that university to another university, and a colleague of mine, very dear to me, at the other university had, I believe it was pancreatic cancer, and this was another example of, publicly, we don't talk about it, but privately, you're the only person that can help me. And I had just gotten trained in energy healing, and my husband and I had gone to Sedona, we were working with some shamans and had incredible experiences, and I was just ready to kind of play with it. What's it going to hurt? And so I I sat with her for hours and took her through energy healing. Had her do some visualizations. Had her imagining some really beautiful things coming up, and her healing her body and, you know, chomping away at the old, yucky stuff. We just did a lot of visualizations, a lot of things. Look she lived a lot longer than she should have do. I know if that's because we sat and we did that work, I don't know. Wow, do I do? I think that maybe I helped her in some way, to have a little bit of hope. And the hope in itself, might have been a placebo, placebo, or it helped to not have so much stress going through the body that it didn't, you know, quicken the deterioration of the cancer, maybe, maybe. But I will tell you, it was pretty remarkable, this experience that that we had and, and it felt good, because, if nothing more, I gave her some hope. I left that, and I went into another academic position, and, and just really started honing in on I was, became the director of undergraduate program and, and just sort of turned down the volume on all of that. My husband and I had decided to start a family, and and I got pregnant, and that was really, you know, that kind of went away. Now it's time to focus on on my family and in academia. And I loved it. I maintained my private practice, but really just doing very traditional psychotherapy because I just needed to focus in this other place, and then life happens. So our daughter was a year and a half old, and and I will never, ever forget this is it was traumatic. And as trauma memories do, they get very vivid, and you hold on to them. We were at swimming lessons, my husband started to have stomach pains, and he asked me to drive. He never does. And as we were driving home from the swimming lessons, he said, I'm really, really sick. I think we need to go to urgent care. So we pull into urgent care, they immediately tell us, go straight to the hospital. You're having an appendicitis. I knew I could drive there faster than wait for an ambulance, so I got them there, got them there, gets into the hospital. They immediately start doing tests. Of course, something funny my year and a half old daughter saw a big red button and thought it was pretty to push, so she pushes the button, and all of a sudden, all the doctors and nurses, I swear, in Memorial Hospital, came running in, and we were all freaking out. Of course, that's the button that. Says, you know your patient's dying is coded, right? So I was like, okay, all right, we're good. Time out. You're in good hands. You're having an appendicitis. I'm gonna go take our kid home. Have a nap, get her something to eat. That's my cue go. So I get her settled. I have some friends come over, and I go out looking for a little smoothie to bring back to the hospital, and I get a call from Adam, and my husband says, Jen, they tell me I have cancer. Yeah. And, you know, that moment, everything just sort of faded away. You know, I actually felt like something was burning in my eyes and my ears, like I literally could not believe the words. And I was like, no, no, that's that's absolutely impossible. They made a mistake. He's like, I know the doctor thought they did too. That's why they ran blood tests several times. But they say it's a it. They're not supposed to tell me, but they think it's blood cancer. So we get there, and long story short, it's on a Sunday. So they transferred us over to the blood cancer unit. We had to wait for answers for the next day, and the chief of oncology came in, very matter of factly, this is his job. This is what he does. And he says, Listen, you have a very rare aggressive form of leukemia, and you need to get all of your affairs in order. Your husband has less than a 30% chance of surviving 30 days. Now, there's only three studies that exist on this kind of leukemia. One says it's the worst leukemia to have. Another one says it's a good leukemia to have, whatever that means, and the other one says it's a wash. So what we're going to do is this consolidation treatment, and we're going to kill his immune system. It's going to be about five weeks, not going to be able he's not going to be able to see your daughter. He's going to live here on the unit and and if he does survive, then we'll talk in a little bit about what that will be. I remember saying to the doctor, remember looking up there and just saying to him, Okay, while we're doing this, are there any complimentary therapies that we could do to help this. It was very clear to me that he didn't really quite understand what that meant. I think he was Trump thinking I meant like, you know, like vitamins or some other kind of out there, modalities other than the medical piece. And he kind of yelled at me, actually, and he said, Absolutely not, you will do nothing. We are in charge here. This medicine and this chemotherapy is very serious, and you are not to do anything at all. I was just meaning like energy healing or hypnosis, thinking that maybe these people knew a little bit about it, right? They didn't. He made it very clear, step off. He was the expert, and he'd be taking care of that. So I did, and he survived, obviously, the consolidation, or whatever that was called. And then we got a second opinion, and he didn't need to have a bone marrow transplant, but he did have to go through five more rounds in the hospital of chemotherapy. Now stay with me here. I know this is a long way around this, but this is where this really ends up shifting for me, about four rounds in. So what they would do is they'd kill his immune system with the chemo, and then they would wait for the blood cells to regenerate and come back. So about the fourth one in, I was at work, and I get a call, and he says to me, Jen, you need to come now. My immune system is not building back up. It's just, it's it's not regenerating. And they told me they're only going to give me 24 more hours, because I can't live like this. So they're going to in the next 24 hours. We. Need to make a decision as to whether or not we want to do this experimental treatment, but there's a good chance I'll pass away from the experimental treatment. Yeah, so I rushed to the hospital those there was a nurse there, just such an angel who just sat and held space and we talked and and she left, and I looked at my husband, and I said, Do you want to die? Like, very seriously. He's like, No, and you want to fight. Said, Yeah, all right. Remember I told him. I said, remember when we went to this Energy Conference, and we over five days. At the beginning of the five days, we were given these seeds? Well, they showed us pictures of seeds that were out in Arizona. They came from the same soil. They were the same batch of seeds. One went into one building when it went into the other. And what we did every single day for like 10 minutes, is we prayed for one of the batches of seeds to grow. I go, do you remember when we did that? He said, Yeah. I said, Remember what happened after five days? They pulled up the pictures, they gave us the live feed of this and the batch of seeds that we prayed for were already sprouting and beautiful coming up, and that other batch of seeds was just doing what it needed to do. It was just normal. It hadn't done anything still in the soil. Do you remember that? He goes, Yeah, what if we do that? What's it going to hurt? He said, I'm game. Let's go. So we called everybody that we knew, and I found a picture of what a healthy blood cell would look like, what we needed to multiply, and I emailed that to everybody, and I said, Folks, we're going to get on the phone. This is before we had zoom or any of that we're going to get on the phone. And you can stay for a minute. You can stay for an hour. I just need all of us to come in with our energy together. I want you to look at the healthy blood cell, and I want you to see that and pray for Adam and have these multiply, multiply, multiply in Him, we did that. Most people dropped off after a couple of minutes. I think my parents only stayed on with me for like an hour, and we went to bed and went early to the hospital the next day, when they pulled the blood and the doctor came in, and the nurse came in with this smirk on their face, and they're like, We don't know what happened, but your numbers shot up like crazy. So experimental treatment is off the table, and let's plow forward with finishing this up. I mean, it was not even just a little bit. It shot up at that point. You know, when you when you look at that kind of evidence, nothing else worked. When people say, There's power in prayer, there's power of energy coming together and where our attention goes right, that's where the energy gets strong and just the intention of being able to put beautiful increase those, those red blood cells. Increase the white blood cells. I forget which one it was actually now, but increase those. It worked for him. It was that point that I said, and you know, I I need to learn more about this, and it's almost unethical for me to have this experience and this knowledge and this education, and have them in two silos. I can't do this anymore. It just doesn't feel authentic. I feel I feel like a terrible person, a terrible healer and helper that I've dedicated my career to. If I don't offer this information. You know, in academia, they say you're doing research, you're doing all this stuff. Don't keep it in the ivory tower. You've got to find a way to disseminate the information and get all that information out. I was feeling that same guidance, and feel that we had, I had to do that. And it was in that moment that I knew, from that point on, I knew my husband was going to be fine. He was cool story, December 7, 2011 was the last day that he had that was the day that he was considered cured and and done from the from the chemo and Memorial Hospital. I. At the time, was opening up a new cancer unit, a new blood cancer unit, and they were having their grand opening. So when we left, we walked over to the new cancer unit, and there was a huge party going on, like every doctor, every nurse, everybody that had ever come in over the seven months that he remained in the hospital, just happened to be there, and it was like we were walking down the aisles looking at everything, there was food, there was music, and people were happy, and, you know, we were like, it's because you're so, you know, we're celebrating him being cancer free. Of course, it was the grand opening, but it was just such a remarkable moment where, you know, we just knew, of course, they said, I don't know what this is, is about the 30 days, 30% everything was about 30 but they're like, all right, congratulations. There's a 30% chance you'll live the next year. There's a 30% chance you live. Yeah, I guess they had to say that. But we knew better. We knew better. He, he survived. After five years, he was fully cured and and cancer free, and, and that's what really put me on to a different, different path. I can keep talking, but I'll I'll take a breath.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 31:26

Well, you've

Dr. Terry Weyman: 31:28

just ruined Spencer for the rest of the show, so he's just gonna sit back in the corner. So I'm actually going to ask something when we heard, when I first heard about you. Spence goes, All right, before we get Jen on, you have to read this book called many lives, many masters, by Dr Brian Weiss. And so I listened to this book on the on my way to work, and he goes, the first chapter is gonna blow you away. And so I'm like listening to it else. And I have, I think I actually called him while I'm driving, and I went, Oh my God,

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 32:13

right, yeah.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 32:15

And so he goes, she knows this stuff all right, so now you've got now you've gotten your wire and you've gotten your breath back. We're gonna die right back in past life regressions and and I have to know more from a traditionalist academia, all that kind of stuff. I for a lot of people, past life regressions is a hard nut to swallow. How do you educate the skeptic? And please tell us this next story

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 32:48

that's a lot

Dr. Terry Weyman: 32:52

well, Spencer has to recover. They'll take some

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 32:57

but I've got lots of stories, so I don't know. Stay tuned. All right, what was the first question?

Dr. Terry Weyman: 33:05

So I got introduced, well, yeah, skeptics and your experiences. And I want to know, I mean, I read the book Brian Weiss past, many lives, many masters, blew me away, and I had a hard time arguing with it. And so

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 33:21

take it away, one of the things that I love so remember, I tell you, I went on this whole journey of looking into what's called complementary and alternative methods, right? And one of that I had read Brian's book when I was like, actually in high school, I tried to pass life for Gretchen, just because I read the book, was blown away. I'm like, let me try this. When I was in college, it didn't work. I think the person was learning, yeah. I was like, Okay, well, maybe it's just not for me, but there's some really cool stuff here. I remember when I was on the plane going out to Sedona, I read, oh gosh, what is the one love only. Love is real, I believe, and it just blew me away. So anyway, I decided at that point I needed to learn more about past life regression, because that book blew me away. And it just so happened, you know, I live in my like, South Florida. That year he was going to be at the Miami Book Fair signing books. So I went there. I asked him to sign it. I told him how powerful the book was for me. And I said, I'm a psychotherapist. I would love to get trained. He's like, Ah, you got to come to my training in Austin. Boom, boom, boom. Done that year I went. I got trained in it, okay? And I started to do the work. I got trained by him and his wife, and I started to do this in that practice. Remember those two silos over here, academia, or is this over here one of the things that I but really, because there's a lot of lot of people out there that do past life regression, there's a lot of people that call themselves. Hypnotists, but they're not hypnotherapists. Now, stay with me here. There's a reason why I'm distinguishing between the two. One of the things that I love about Brian is He's a psychiatrist, and he's not just any psychiatrist, like you know, Yale. Top of his class, you know, came down to Mount Sinai was, I believe, sorry, Brian, I don't. I think he was like the chief of psychiatry at a very young age at Mount Sinai had already published a number of research articles, and you know, that was his modality, so he didn't believe in any of this extremely academic, extremely analytical. There's no new age, foo, foo, blah, blah, blah, right? And then how he came across it in his story with the first person that he started to experience this stuff with was someone that worked at the hospital and was referred to him, she couldn't swallow pills, she couldn't take medication, and she had a lot of trauma over the year that they worked together. She got a little bit better, but not significantly. And then he he's like, All right, well, let's try this new thing, like this hypnosis thing that I, like learned about. And he said something along the lines of, go back to the first time when this trauma first happened or something. And she went back, and he's like, sitting there going, what in that? What is this? And started bringing forward all of this information that this woman didn't know in this lifetime, that's what's shifted for him, putting him onto this whole other path. Now his story is his story, but I loved that because here was a role model for me of someone that can blend both of those, right? I'm here. I am having these two separate things in my life, academia, we don't talk about this stuff, but oh my gosh, like major cool experiences. So I was drawn to him, and I just really soaked up as much as I could from that, from his books, from his training, and decided to start trying that out, and had some really cool experiences. And then here's the here's here's my story. And by the way, this story is in his latest book with his daughter. Miracles happened. So this is my own, my own personal story. So before I had, before I was pregnant, before any of this stuff that happened with my husband, he had been in a car accident and was recommended to a physical therapist, a massage therapist that works specifically on these things like 45 minutes from our house, and he had a session. He calls me up afterwards. He's like, she's amazing. You need to come here. She does something called craniosacral, so for my jaw, for TMJ, okay, so I'm like, All right, cool. That's gonna help me. I'll go. I'm game. That's no problem. Sidebar, pause button, sidebar. At the same time, sorry, I love that. Sorry. So at the same time, I had had, in the bottom left quadrant of my stomach, I had had this, like little white rash, little bumpy thing pop up. It didn't hurt, it didn't itch. It was just ugly and growing. And he went to a dermatologist. I went to a couple of doctors, nobody could figure it out. They gave me creams, they gave me data, no one could figure it out. And about a week before I went to this person, the two weeks the doctor said, listen, here's this cream, if it doesn't work, and do a biopsy, because this is serious. Like, nothing's helping it like all right, okay, so that happened, so I'm going to this massage therapist for TMJ massage. I don't know what craniosacral is, but I'm game. Let's go. While I'm there, I begin to have a vision of Vikings, and I'm on a boat. And you know what kind of give me? Remember that old commercial, the Capital One commercials, remember those Vikings, right? That's what it sort of reminded me of. I'm on this ship and and, and I can see the Vikings, and I'm going, and now, all of a sudden, I'm pregnant. I've not been pregnant in this lifetime, but I'm going to tell you, I literally was laying on the table with my eyes closed, and I had my hands on my belly as if I was. Feeling a belly, and I started to get a download of information. Remember, I'm trained in past life regression therapy. I've tried it myself. It didn't happen for me, but I'm doing it on other people. So I believe all of this. I'm recognizing in the moment that this is coming up strangely. The massage therapist is having a vision of it at the same time, and she knows to ask me to go through it, and so we're kind of taking it through. She's doing it in a very unethical way, and she holds me there for a really long time and she doesn't know what to do. What I realize is I'm downloaded with actually despair. I realized that I was a very young child that had been impregnated by her father, and her father was the head Viking on the ship, and her mother knew about it and didn't protect her and didn't do anything. And what they were doing is their drunken selves, the Viking and his team or his, whatever they call them. It's just a horrific thing, drunk, disgusting. I'm downloaded with this. I remember the smells, I feel the despair and they abandoned me on an island, and then I'm getting this feeling of there was a sword, and I remember taking this sword and putting it into my belly. I couldn't know if it was to kill the baby or myself, or both, but it was definitely something grave, because this woman was not skilled, and she didn't know what to do, and she's laughing and joking about this as this is sort of happening, I emerge from that not having resolved anything, but seriously going that actually was really remarkable and incredible. Oh my gosh. Where I put that sword is where I've got that rash right now. So we just we talked about it a little bit. She's like, you've got to come back and have another session with me and figure this out. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. I called my husband. I said, you're not going to believe what this happened. This happened right down in that area. I drive home 45 minutes, and I sort of pull down my pants to show him like it's right in this area where I put the sword, and it was already looked like it was a little smaller, right? We went to sleep. I woke up the next morning. It was gone, and it has never come back. Now, that in itself, is a whole other story for another day of how I went through it. But what I will tell you is because of that and the seriousness of it, I will tell you, and if anybody is interested in having a past life regression, folks, please listen to me. There is real healing that happens in this and memories that you get downloaded with, whether I made those up or not. Who knows. I can tell you I had real evidence that it went away. Who knows, if I saw a movie, whatever. But I'm going to tell you the emotions that I had, that level of despair I had never in my life, ever, ever, ever, ever felt, ever, and it was downloaded and it was real. And what I want people to know is that if you're going to do this work, number one, if you're going to conduct past life regressions, you better know what you're doing, and you better know therapeutically how to help someone through trauma, because it is dangerous to let somebody leave with that. Now imagine, I've already been trained in it. I'm a psychotherapist. I believe in it, and I had a heck of a time walking through that and learning this information. So people who are out there that want to go and experience one please don't go to a hypnotist. Go to a hypnotherapist that is a skilled psychotherapist that has a master's degree or a doctorate in that realm who's also trained in that because this real healing can happen more than just physical, and it that. That's what I want everybody to know. Please do this ethically and responsibly. Obviously, I worked through it. Obviously, I took that even. And more and went into this, but it's also the reason why I'm so passionate about this work, because I see this healing happen, remarkable healing happen in a short period of time. So anyway,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 45:20

wow, thank you. Yeah, I'm I'm almost recovered from the first story. So let me you know, you've been doing this for years, and you know you study, I'm fascinated by trauma and resilience, and it was once taught to me by, actually the psychologist that one of the psychologists at Miami Dolphins when we were, when we went one win and 16 losses, and we saw who the leadership really was, you know, the leaders of the team. And he explained what, what resilience versus mental toughness was. And it was fascinating, because he felt there was guys that were mentally tough, but it was like a two by four, you know, you hammer, Hammer, hammer away at it, and it starts to chip and fracture off, and then it finally and they snap. But resilience, which is the preferred characteristic, is like a palm tree blowing in the Florida, you know, hurricane season, you know, it bends, bend, bend, and then bounces back. But is there still a big question about human nature for you and healing that you find yourself wrestling with, or, I mean, you just shared some fascinating stuff, but is there certain things that you still are challenged by? I'm

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 46:34

challenged by so much. Yeah, I'm challenged by so much. And, you know, I'm dipping my toe into quantum healing and quantum therapy theory. And, yeah, that's, that's about it, maybe just a little bit of my pinky toe. But, you know, I how is this working? How is it energetically that we can be so so impacted. How is it that just a memory of going back to a past life can heal something that shows up in the physical so, you know, as a trauma therapist, Bessel van der Kolk, he's wrote a great book called The Body Keeps the Score. And he says in here, the body gets keep the score, right? The Body Keeps the Score. We hold on to it. And if we aren't able to integrate, integrate in the brain and the body a traumatic memory or traumatic moment, then it's going to hang out in the body and it's going to show up at another time, my question is, okay, yeah, I totally got that, and now I'm seeing that even from a past life. But what do I struggle with? I want to know how I want to know more. I can help you, and we can go through it, and I know how to walk you through healing from that. But are there timelines? Are there, you know, is this really, like, how does this work? Is time linear? Is that those kinds of things are what keep me up at night, which is just keeping me kind of, you know, asking those questions over and over again. It's just another way of a different, new paradigm, which I'm just going to kind of put on the side for a little bit, but those are the things that I, that I I still struggle with and question

Dr. Spencer Baron: 48:29

we Okay, let's talk about human spirit for a moment. Because human the human spirit, can be absolutely fascinating. We've had even just on our podcast, we've had three remarkable guests, one that has been paralyzed twice, another that had lost six people to suicide in his family, and then another person who just lost his whole family except one baby that walked out of a car accident or crawled out of The car accident. I mean, these are riveting, riveting stories about people that have made comebacks. We've even had a guy who held a gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger and somebody had unloaded the gun before because they knew he was spiraling out of control. So, I mean, these are fascinating things. But what have your clients? What's something your stories are fantastic. What does a client taught you about resilience? Oh, wow.

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 49:33

First of all, my clients teach me everything every day. Yeah, I know, and I know you folks feel the same way. I just when I think that things can be bad or be really challenging and difficult, and then I see clients in front of me that have just. These incredible, difficult situations, and they're still getting up and breathing and walking through and wanting to get better. My my clients are constantly teaching me. I feel like I'm just a guide there. I'm just here, and I walk in like a little goof sometimes, like, okay, here we go. I'm going to hold the presence, and I've got some tools, but let's just see what shows up. And what they show me is that I kind of feel like there is some sort of divine connection something else out there that's guiding us, rather than just the brain and the body connection. What I see is that those experiences that someone takes the bullets out of the gun just before, or you see these miraculous things that people come in, I've got to think that there is something else out there that's guiding us, that's helping us walk through that, and I would love to learn how to connect with that more.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 51:13

You know, it's, uh, this show's going to come out in Mental Health Awareness Month, and we're going to hear a lot about it's okay, the phrase it's okay not to be okay and but based on your experiences, these stories you're telling me, what's a deeper truth about trauma and healing that you want people to truly understand?

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 51:39

We can hold both together, we can walk. There is no such thing as this positive poly that we have to learn folks how to be okay with not being okay. But also have in mindfulness. We call it equanimity. We're able to really sit and hold and go, Okay, over here, I'm working on this. This is tough, but over here at the same time, I'm alive. I've survived right now. I'm okay right now. I have food to eat right now. I'm able to be present. What I want people to know is that let's get realistic with something we call like the window of tolerance. Let's get realistic with what we can expect in our human experience. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but if you can stay committed to always just getting a little bit stronger, a little bit more flexible, and that means that flexibility, that flexibility means I've had A terrible day. I just lost my job. I How are things going to be but right now I'm okay, and I can shift my focus to the very present moment of where things are okay right now, I wish that people could see how important that is, that nothing is ever going to be perfect, that the goal should be let's be able to walk with equanimity, and let's learn to build our resilience. Let's learn to build all of those pieces our basal ganglia. Let's learn to build some of these pieces and grow our window of tolerance so that we can keep our prefrontal cortex online make wise decisions, and quite honestly, if there's anything that I have to say to people, especially during Mental Health Awareness Month, is listen to each other. Please just listen. So many of us just need to be heard, not in memes, not in bullet points, not in these little bits and pieces, but sit and hold space and presence for the person in front of you. Because if you do that, they're going to feel connected. They might get a little dopamine. They might get a little serotonin with that, and they might start to feel safe. And then what they'll start to do is be able to balance out and have that equanimity together and feel like, all right, maybe I can just do this day by day. Let's just be there for each other. Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 54:44

Well, Terry, if you don't have any other questions, we could go into rapid fire, man, because I gotta lighten this up for a moment. That was

Unknown: 54:55

awesome. Yeah, I know you're one big goosebump. I am.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 54:59

I. I am the one. Dr, Jennifer, this is where we enter the near the end of the program. We do this more fun? No, no, it was all fun. It was educational and it was riveting and emotional and all that. And I appreciate that. We're gonna lighten it up with some rapid fire questions for you. Okay, there's five. There's five of them, okay, and if you can answer quickly, great. But you know, have you not seen that? Okay? I mean,

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 55:35

okay, yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 55:38

good luck. Question number one, if you had to describe the living force in one word, what would it be? Energy, nice. I like it. Yeah.

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 55:56

Did you not see my background? One word does not happen. I said academia and psychotherapists, there's no such thing.

Unknown: 56:06

Oh, my face

Dr. Terry Weyman: 56:11

just got bright red.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 56:17

Question number two, what's the first image or feeling that comes to you when guiding someone through a past life regression,

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 56:28

curiosity, intrigue.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 56:32

Yeah, you're doing really well so far. All right, yeah, okay, ready? Question number three, okay, what's your most unexpected, excuse me, what is your most unexpected self care ritual? Something that is like, totally you

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 56:49

unexpected self care, okay? I like, seriously clean. Like, I will go in and rub the, like the baseboards. I like, get little, like toothbrushes and clean underneath. And I love it. I love pressure, cleaning my my front, like driveway, I it is meditation to me,

Dr. Terry Weyman: 57:22

I've never met another woman that said that, except my wife. My wife, oh, she's the same way, you know? She kicks us out of house. The music is blurred and hurt. She loves to clean. Yeah,

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 57:34

it's true. I don't know what happened. I can tell you, when I was doing my dissertation, my house was never cleaner, and I would be like, am I avoiding what is happening? I really not sure what it is, but I get stressed. And I'm like, let me clean. Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 57:49

it is hilarious. Yeah, all right, you're doing really well so far. Question number four, when science and spirituality align in a session for you, that's science and spirituality, two different areas of your study. Do you have a one word that captures that moment for you?

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 58:13

Reality, Wow, that's good, yeah. Reality,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:19

I'm sure. Yeah. I think it's, it's fascinating, because she is the epitome of, you know, academics, you know, linear, you know, education and, you know, the more ethereal stuff. And she blends the two. I think that is the coolest, really. And that's why I thought you'd be great for this. Oh, thanks. You're welcome. And question number five, last one is, what's one sentence that you repeat to clients who feel broken by trauma?

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 58:52

I am okay.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 58:54

Do you have them repeat that to themselves over

Dr. Jennifer Williams: 58:56

and over? I am at peace with my own feelings. I am safe where I am. I control my own reality. I love and approve in myself. I am okay. That's not one sentence. But,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 59:11

no, no, this is a perfect way to end a extraordinary program for, I mean, for any time of the year, but mental health is like, this is this was great. Dr, Terry, you got anything else you want to mention? No,

Dr. Terry Weyman: 59:26

that was way to end. And I Yeah, wow, thank you, Doc, Yeah, amazing, unbelievable.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 59:34

I'm not just saying that. I mean you really the stories that okay oh, now we recover from those stories. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being on Thank you. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking. Backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.