…in a galaxy far, far away – California, to be precise – I was sitting in the woods with a group of people and they were discussing past life regression. This thrilled me immensely because it was my first time in California and I was pleased to see one of the stereotypes so blatantly played out. Ever since then I’ve vowed that if I ever had a chance to have my past lives read I was going to do it just to see what they said.

Fast forward to three days ago and a psychic fair with a person doing past life therapy. I had to try it.

I went into the room and the lady asked if I was in school. I said no but she said that she kept seeing school work. Did I take a class recently? I said yes. She laughed and said, “Wow, you really didn’t think that was going to go well, did you? Congratulations.”

Then she asked me my date of birth. I told her but when I got to the year she sort of glared at me. “You are only 10 years younger than me?”

Now I felt like I was going to be failing past life therapy right off the bat because I couldn’t answer that question. I didn’t know how old she was. I wasn’t the psychic. I just nodded. That seemed safe. Smile and nod.

“Really?” Smile and nod. She sighed. “You hide it well.” Uh, yea me?

So then she settled down to work. She asked me if I did energy work. This wasn’t a huge psychic leap since the fair was at the Reiki Center and the people on the mailing list have probably taken classes there. I said yes, some. Then she wrote down rainforest. She asked if I had seen the movie Medicine Man. I said yes. She asked if I left a connection with it when I saw it. Ok, that’s weird. When I saw it I came home and signed up to go to South America for the first time.

She said that I lived in the rainforest probably in South America and I did something with herbs. I wore feathers too. I should probably look into doing something with herbs in this life too. It would be very natural for me. (I’m taking an herbal course to follow up on the acupuncture next year.) She said that I was male but I was allowed to work as a healer which was traditionally women’s work because of the intervention of my grandmother. I got out of hunting. Good to know that I’ve always been a slacker.

Then she said that I had a connection with animals. I should work with them if I don’t already. They are my babies. She said that I cared about different aspects. There was the shelter care and then the animal rights and organic farming aspect but it was more than that. I cared about something over all like the big picture treatment of animals. I did my smile and nod.

Then she went back to the herbal thing. She said that she didn’t see an endpoint of that. I had told her by this point that I was taking an herbal class. She asked if I had a goal for that so I told her that I was a vet. She put her head on the table. “Wow, I talked all around that without stating the obvious, didn’t I?”

So she was doing pretty good but then she drifted off. She asked if I was close to my grandmother in this life. I was close to both of them. She said that my grandmother gave me something, a value or something, that I was using in my life. All I could think of was a deep and abiding love of Arnold Schwartzenegger from one grandmother and the tendency to threaten the lives of my relatives from the other. I don’t think either was something to aspire to.

Then she told me that since this was a long weekend I needed to take time for myself. I work too hard. I need to learn to lighten up. I laughed. I said that it was generally considered that I needed to take things more seriously. She disagreed. I need to learn to relax. I should get a massage or something. I didn’t bring up that I had had my regular monthly massage two days earlier and that while waiting for her to be free I had had a foot massage. If I got any more relaxed I wouldn’t get out of bed. She just kept saying that I seriously needed to value self-care. I am the queen of self-care. Both my mother and the SO laughed hard when I told them that part of the story. I told them that I would be lying down all weekend in an attempt to learn to relax.

So to review, I was a slacker grandma’s boy herbal healer in the rainforest but at least I was fabulous because I got to wear lots of feather.!