Can pure medical practice and alternative therapy marry? Yes, says this paediatric intensivist who uses regression therapy to get past life memories for a positive impact on the present health of patients
Dr Natwar Sharma who is an associate professor in paediatrics and paediatric critical care at Saveetha Medical College Hospital, Chennai, has been practising regression therapy, alongside his successful medical career, for the last 11 years
As a child, Dr Natwar Sharma had a fierce spirit of enquiry. Raised in a Hindu Brahmin household, he questioned the idea of God one time too many, especially after his prayers to help alleviate the plight of the poor children in the neighbourhood had gone unanswered. Later—in what would have been considered a sacrilegious move by his family—he sought the help of his class teacher to secretly get himself baptised at the Catholic school, where he was studying. He even read the Bible from front to back in the hope that he would find answers to “why people suffer” “And yet, I wasn’t convinced,” Dr Sharma recalls now, in a telephonic interview from Kuwait, where he is currently enjoying a short sabbatical from his day job as associate professor in paediatrics and paediatric critical care at Saveetha Medical College Hospital, Chennai.
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His initial days as resident doctor only made him probe deeper into the “whys and hows” of life. “I couldn’t bear to see the pain children were going through. I even considered quitting. But, then I realised that I could only help them if I was part of the system,” he says. Often, Dr Sharma would see “apparent anomalies” in his patients, which even science didn’t have an explanation for. He remembers this pair of identical twins, one of whom had been diagnosed with blood cancer. “Why did one catch the disease while the other was spared?” he asks, catching us off guard. “They had different souls,” he asserts, even before we can respond.
It’s this knowledge that Dr Sharma acquired from a spiritual guru, which led him to regression therapy, almost a year into his medical practice. For a man of science, who follows a fixed process of treatment—etiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis and prescription—therapy of this nature sounded absurd, even to him. “My guru advised me to keep an open mind if I wanted to get to the root of the problem. Medicine, he told me, only touched the surface.” But, Dr Sharma didn’t embrace it overnight. It would take him another five years before he’d start practising regression therapy, alongside his successful medical career.
His new book, Metaphors of Memory: Healing Through Past and Current Life Regression (Westland), offers a window into his 11-year journey.
Regression, he tells us, is “serious business,” even though its scope is beyond the scientific realm of understanding. One of his first cases, which convinced him that he was on the right path, was that of a woman—he identifies her as Akshara in his book—who suffered from a very rare disorder of the red blood cells. Without divulging too much, he says, during her therapy he received answers that were life-changing.
“Regression therapy delves into the subconscious mind to explore the link between your present life and your past. Releasing these memories and negative energies [associated with our past or this life], helps understand and articulate the root cause of a problem, be it physical, emotional or mental, and help with recovery,” he says. While Dr Sharma says he is equally invested in current life regression, this therapy also relies heavily on the concept of reincarnation, which hinges on the idea that the “soul—for the lack of any other familiar terminology—leaves the body at the time of death”, carrying an “energy domain, like a big invisible network, consisting of impressions of the past life”. “This subtle body of information influences the genetic makeup of the new physical body—its genes and chromosomes… I like to term it as ‘information packed in vibration’, or ‘energy in motion’—e-motion,” he writes in the book. When viewed through the glass of science, he describes it as
the “evolution of the individual soul”.
While karma and reincarnation are very much part of Hindu philosophy, there continues to be a lot of scepticism and distrust surrounding it, and Dr Sharma is conscious of this. “One doesn’t need to be a believer to undergo regression therapy,” he insists, recounting an incident, where a colleague, inquisitive about his line of work, agreed to a session. She is Catholic and a medical professional, which meant that she had never even given the concept of reincarnation a thought, let alone believe in it. “But, the very fact that she was willing to consider it shows that she wanted help.”
It’s a good starting point for sceptics, he feels.
Past life memories can be overwhelming, he says. “One mustn’t fear, question or judge what one is feeling during a therapy session.” Instead, observing the experiences, and looking for repetitive patterns, helps make sense of life in the present. In the book, while discussing his experience as a paediatrician and regression therapist, he shares how he found that “some children who were born with a hole in their heart, had, in fact, died in a previous life with a bullet in their heart”. A patient with phobia for closed spaces, through regression, learnt that he had died after being trapped in a mine in his past life. Not everything is connected to past life, though. A person, who developed a severe anaphylactic reaction when munching on bhakarwadi, leaving doctors perplexed, during regression shared that there was, in fact, a fruit fly on his snack, while he had been eating it. “This could have caused anaphylaxis. But, he had completely forgotten the detail until we did the regression,” he shares.
Does that mean that regression therapy can replace the regular line of treatment? “No,” he insists. It can supplement it, yes. As a doctor, he says, he is very particular about what kind of cases, he takes on. “If you have a patient with kidney failure, there is no way that alternative therapy can come to their rescue. I let my patients know that. Yes, if the disease is a progressive one, it can inhibit the speed at which it is progressing.” He shares how many cancer patients who have come to him, were usually at the fourth stage of the disease. What was common to all was the way the disease was disclosed to them. “The power of the mind comes into play, which sets the ball rolling for the disease to either progress or regress.”
His decision to start regression therapy was also to understand the reasons for manifestation of chronic conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and even cancer, all of which, he believes, are not just genetic or lifestyle-related, but also a result of “an overflow of negative charge in our body, which has been accumulating bit by bit over a period of time”. “Every little thought, word or deed in the direction of the fulfilment of the oath counts. The negative energy stored in our cells remodels the body tissues and manifests as chronic diseases,” he explains in the book. Understanding this plays an important role in healing.
How do his peers feel about his approach? Dr Sharma, who is a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (UK) and has served and trained at the Apollo Hospitals, Chennai, says that he has never tried to convince anyone to believe in alternative therapy. “For most part, I avoid sharing with them, because I understand they come from the same scepticism, I [once] had. But, having reaped the benefits of it myself, I somehow felt it’s time to share these experiences with everyone else.”
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