Past Life Healing: Why His Pain Came Back After Surgery
In my experience a past life can keep physical pain in place. When guilt, fear or a belief such as "I deserve to be punished" is carried over from a past incarnation, the subconscious can hold pain in the body as that punishment. Releasing the past life emotion, often through self-forgiveness, can let the pain ease.
Every time I learn something new, I start seeing it everywhere.
Right now, it's past lives. They keep turning up in my sessions, and this week one of them showed up in a rather interesting place: a hernia.
Let me tell you what happened, why I think it happened, and what it means for you if you've done all the healing you can think of and something still won't let go.
How do you know when a problem comes from a past life?
A past life is the likely source when you've cleared everything you can find in this lifetime and the problem is still there.
I always say every issue starts somewhere. Every belief and every idea has an origin.
The small things in life (a rude comment, a bad day at work) don't really register. And lots of real hurts can usually be cleared without deep digging. In fact, in my practice I've never once been led to find and heal something small or inconsequential. The subconscious doesn't waste our time.
So when someone has excavated everything there is to find in their childhood, their family and their adult life... and the problem is still sitting there?
What's left?
Past lives. It's the only explanation that seems to fit.
(It might also explain why so many people are fascinated by past life regressions!)
What happened when a client's hernia pain came back after surgery?
A client's pain returned after a successful hernia repair, and the root turned out to be guilt from a past life.
This gentleman and I had worked on his hernia before his surgery, to see whether energy work could help. In the end, we both agreed that surgery was the most sensible choice, and he had it.
So far, so good.
Then, not long after, he told me the area was starting to feel painful again.
Now, the repair was done. The surgeon had done their job. So what was keeping the pain around?
We picked up the pendulum and asked his subconscious what was going on. This time, the answers didn't point to his childhood or his marriage or his job. They led us directly to a past incarnation of himself.
His subconscious gave us a few clues (an age and some details about the situation), and then, seemingly out of the blue, the story began to unfold in his mind.
In that lifetime, he'd been abused as a child. And when he grew up, he turned around and abused others.
(Not a comfortable thought, but we're not always the victims. Don't ask what I've discovered about me in my own past lives. I was NOT a nice person!)
Here's the cool part. That past version of him knew what he'd done was wrong. And past incarnations tend to leave their lives with a sense of unfinished business. At the end of his days, he believed he was a bad person, and he carried forward the belief "I deserve to be punished."
The punishment? Pain. Right in the spot that was supposed to be healing.
It made so much sense!
Why would a past life cause pain in this life?
The subconscious can hold pain in the body as a self-imposed punishment for guilt that was never resolved, even guilt from another lifetime.
In a nutshell, here's how I see it.
Your subconscious keeps a record of everything, including experiences from past incarnations. When an emotion like guilt or shame is never resolved, the belief attached to it keeps running in the background, like an old program nobody remembered to delete.
The subconscious is also wonderfully literal. If the belief is "I deserve to be punished," it will find a way to deliver. For this gentleman, that meant pain, right in the spot that was supposed to be healing.
It's the same pattern I see with this-lifetime roots, just older. A problem keeps showing up because the energy that created it is still there. Change the energy, and the problem has nothing left to hold on to.
So we didn't need to work on the pain itself. We had to work with that past self and help him do the thing he hadn't been able to do in his own lifetime: forgive himself.
Once that past version of him let go of the need to be punished, the pain was almost completely gone in moments. (At the end of the session, his subconscious told us he just needed to take it easy for a bit, and the remaining pain would completely subside.)
Isn't that wild?
Can you heal a past life without a past life regression?
Yes. With ART, a past life story can surface without hypnosis or a trance, and you can release what it left behind.
Past life regressions are popular for a reason. Wanting to know who you were is a very human thing!
But knowing the story and releasing the energy are two different things. Here's how I explain the difference to clients:
| Past life regression | Past life healing with ART | |
|---|---|---|
| Main goal | Experience and remember a past life | Find and release the unfinished business still affecting you now |
| How it works | Usually guided recall of past life memories | We ask the subconscious questions, and the pendulum's swing shows the answers. Clues (an age, a few details) lead to a story that unfolds in the client's mind |
| Trance needed? | Usually, a hypnotic state | No |
| What you leave with | The story | The story, what it meant, and the unfinished business released |
With ART (the Accelerated Release Technique), my client doesn't need to be in a trance. We ask the subconscious questions, and the pendulum swings to show us the answers. (The pendulum isn't magic. It's a tool.) The subconscious offers a few clues, such as an age and some details of the situation, and then, seemingly out of the blue, the past life story unfolds in my client's mind.
From there, we work together to understand the significance of what they saw and the unfinished business they carried over. It always makes sense in context. Then we release it.
That matters, because you can heal the root of anything easily, without reliving the pain. That's true whether the root is from age four or from four hundred years ago.
Does energy healing replace surgery or medical care?
No. Energy healing works alongside medical care. It never replaces it.
I want to be crystal clear about this one, because this story could easily be misread.
This gentleman needed his surgery. We tried energy work first, and we both agreed surgery was the right call. My stance on this is simple: I don't believe in taking any chances with your health. I advise my clients to deal with the acute problem in whatever way is most expedient...and we can do the energy work to complement medical interventions.
ART doesn't diagnose, treat or cure anything. What it does is ask why. Why is the body holding on? Why does the pain linger after the repair is done? Sometimes the answer is physical. And sometimes the body has healed, but the energy hasn't caught up.
Why isn't one healing technique enough?
Different roots need different tools, so a single technique can't release every kind of problem.
Here's my not-so-secret opinion: a lot of pendulum healers are one-trick ponies. They learn one technique and use it for everything, from allergies to anxiety to back pain.
But a fear that started when you were four doesn't need the same approach as guilt carried from a past life. One needs a belief released and replaced. The other might need a past self to forgive himself, the way this gentleman's did.
That's why I built ART by gathering the most effective techniques I found over the years and fitting them into one method. (Full disclosure: it wasn't a Divine Download. It came together piece by piece, keeping the methods that work and leaving out the ones that don't.)
And after 10 years of doing this work, I'm still learning new stuff. I'd say it's my second-favourite part of the job. (My favourite part is sharing it!)
Frequently asked questions about past lives and physical pain
Can past life trauma show up as physical symptoms?
In my practice, yes. Unresolved emotions from a past life, such as guilt or fear, can show up as pain or symptoms that linger after the body should have healed.
How do I know if my pain is connected to a past life?
The biggest clue is pain that stays after you've cleared everything you can find in this life. You can ask your subconscious directly, and the swing of your pendulum shows you its answer.
Do I need to believe in past lives for this to work?
No. You only need to be open to asking your subconscious where the problem started and following what it tells you.
Can I release a past life issue with my pendulum?
Yes. Once you know how to ask the right questions and which tool fits the root you find, a pendulum can be used for far more than yes-or-no questions.
Is past life healing painful or scary?
Not with ART. You don't need to be in a trance: the story simply unfolds in your mind, and we work through what it means together. The hard part already happened; releasing it is the easy part.
The takeaway: look where you haven't looked yet
If there is a moral to the story, it is this: when you've cleared everything you can find and something still won't budge, you haven't hit a wall. The root just lives somewhere you haven't looked yet.
Sometimes that somewhere is a whole other lifetime.
And sometimes, healing it takes nothing more than letting an old version of you finally put down the punishment he never needed to carry.
Want to see how it works, live? On Wednesday, November 18, 2026, at 12 pm Eastern, I'm hosting a free 60-minute online training called Beyond Yes and No: More Than One Way to Shift Energy. I'll do a live ART release with a real volunteer, so you can watch me follow the trail from a problem to its root, and then shift it using whatever variety of tools and techniques are needed. Can't make it live? The replay is available for 48 hours.
If your pendulum has been stuck on yes and no, come see what else it can do.
I hope to see you there!
About the author: Renu Arora is a former registered dietitian turned award-winning energy healer and the creator of the Accelerated Release Technique (ART). She helps people heal at the root without reliving the trauma, and teaches others to do the same. She's the author of The NO NONSENSE Guide to Pendulums and The NO NONSENSE Guide to Pendulum Healing.
