As a little girl, Patricia Watson was uncannily perceptive. Growing up in South Wales, her parents could keep no secrets: "They could not hide anything from me," admits Patricia, with a laugh.
"I always knew what was going on. I found it really easy to read body language and tone of voice, that sort of thing."
By her 20s, Patricia was living and working in Poland as an English teacher. She often chatted with her students to help improve their language skills and one night, while talking to a young man, Patricia had a moment of epiphany: she realised she was psychic.
"I suddenly started talking about his family: his sister, who was getting in the way, and his older brother, who was jealous," she explains. "And he understood everything. He thought I was making it up, that I must have chatted to his friends - but I didn't know anything about them.
"And then I told him something nobody else knew: his father had been hitting his mother. His jaw just went wide open and he said 'There's no way you could know that.' I talked to him about some of the difficulties he was facing.
"He was so thankful for the information I gave him, it made me think 'I've got to do something with this.' My career just grew from there. Friends told their friends and it got to the point where I was doing so many readings in my own time I had almost no social life left.
"I realised something had to give. So I chose to give up teaching and go with my psychic work - it was the best decision I've ever made."
More than a decade on, and Patricia is an esteemed psychic who does regular readings for clients at Esse, the Melbourn-based boutique and spa. As soon as she walked into the building, a year or so ago, she and owner Sally Saunders clicked. And, putting Patricia's psychic abilities to the test, Sally was immediately impressed: "She knew my children's names - everything," she enthuses. "It was unbelievable."
Patricia is passionate about her work. Being able to tell people things about themselves and their lives (which, otherwise, they may never know) is a satisfying business, she explains.
"I told one girl, who actually works at Esse, that she would have a baby this summer," Patricia recounts. "She wasn't even thinking about having a baby - but she's due in June!"
Keen for her clients to gain their own insights into the past, present and future, Patricia started to explore regression, a therapy which aims to switch off an individual's conscious mind and allow messages about past lives to come through from the sub-conscious, via a series of deep relaxation techniques.
Undergoing regression herself, Patricia was surprised to find ancient memories drifting to the forefront of her mind. "It was BC," she remembers.
"I was part human, part animal - I didn't expect that!"
Regression is, undeniably, fun for those who are merely curious. But it can, Patricia points out, be a far more serious business, helping people gain lifechanging perspective on their current situation.
"Our lifetimes contain forgotten information which can be well worth remembering," she says.
"Sometimes our current feelings, behaviours and even phobias can be explained by events which took place in another life."
Sally, former wife of celebrity chef Steven Saunders, is quick to agree.
For her, having a regression was a great release.
"I've never really opened my heart out fully," she admits.
"But since having the session with Patricia I've felt a lot more love coming from me; a real sense of warmth."
Sally's regression was illuminating.
"Eva, our reflexologist, is my daughter," she exclaims, with a laugh. "Steven, my now exhusband, I've been married to before. Ollie, my boyfriend, was my father! And I lived in a town called Jackstop, approximately 200 years ago."
Reclined in Patricia's aromatic treatment room, Sally was led through a series of relaxation techniques - including deep breathing - and then asked to walk back through time. Images and words started popping into her head. She saw herself standing on a dusty road in a small American town, "just like in a Western movie", called Jackstop.
And a little girl, her daughter, was holding her hand.
Wearing red shoes, she identified her child - named Matilda in the past
* as Eva in the present. And she went on to visualise her husband and father in the past, recognising them as Steven and Ollie. "Some will say it's all in my imagination," admits Sally. "And I would have said the same, except for a few things.
"Jackstop does exist: it's in a place called Bemidgi in Minneapolis, and 200-years-ago it would have looked just as I described. The tears I cried on and off were real, and I was totally conscious - not hypnotised.
And Eva has always had a passion for red shoes!"
Patricia, who studied for a diploma in regression, is a registered member of the Past Life Therapists' Association UK. And she's a firm believer in the benefits of the experience.
"It can be very rewarding for people," she adds. "It's wonderful for them to find out so much about their past - and see it for themselves."
■ A 90-minute past life regression with Patricia, including a recording, costs ?65.
For more information visit www.patriciawatson.net or call Esse on (01763) 261000.
What is past life regression?
PAST life regression is based on the belief souls exist and come back many times, living in different eras and places. While a relatively new concept in the west, this is consistent with the Hindu belief in reincarnation. Regression, which aims to reveal those past lives in the present, was popularised by Edgar Cayce, an American dubbed the "sleeping prophet". Working in the early 1900s, Cayce claimed to be able to diagnose people's ailments without medical training, by guiding them into a deeply relaxed state (and thus quieting their conscious mind, and allowing the subconscious to speak). A devout Christian, he was deeply unsettled when his patients spontaneously started speaking about past lives - since then, the practice of regression has become increasingly popular.
Finding my other life - in Brum . .
CURIOUS to find out what shenanigans my spirit might have got up to, I decided to give regression a go.
Fearful my past lives may have been horrid (featuring sticky endings; I have a very active imagination), Patricia reassured me that regression isn't scary - not least because you're conscious throughout the whole thing, so can stop the process if you want to.
Before starting the therapy, Patricia invited me to lie down on a bed, eyes closed, in her treatment room - an oasis of calm, with soft music playing.
She took me through some relaxation exercises, asking me to take deep breaths and begin to visualise myself standing in a beautiful garden full of flowers.
I was surprised how easily I could picture the scene; Patricia asked me to indicate, by moving my right hand, when I could see myself in the garden. Next she asked me to look for some steps, which she led me down. And then she guided me along a grassy pathway, lined with trees on one side, a wall on the other.
Asked to look out for a series of doorways in the wall, Patricia told me to stop at whichever door I liked.
When, in my mind's eye, I came to a halt, it was in front of an age-old wooden door covered in peeling green paint; again, I was struck by how vivid the image was. Opening it and walking through, Patricia asked me to say what came into my mind as she asked me a series of questions: What are you wearing? Where are you? Have you been there before?
As she asked me each question, I was surprised to find answers popping up in my head - and coming out of my mouth, before I had chance to think. To cut a long story short, I visualised myself living near Birmingham (a real surprise, as I've only ever been there to shop at the Bullring
* in this lifetime, at least), and working as a hairdresser.
It was the late 1950s or early 1960s, which I could tell from my clothes: I pictured myself clad in a sugar pink ensemble, reminiscent of Doris Day in her Pillow Talkdays. I was married to a cheating scoundrel called Frank (where the name came from, I really can't tell you, but he bore a spooky resemblance to an ex-boyfriend), who ran off with one of my work colleagues.
And then I was killed in a car crash - an indisputably sticky ending.
As I said, I do have a very active imagination. But, were it just my imagination at work, I'd like to think I would have come up with something more glamorous than a past life as a cuckolded hairdresser from Brum. I could have been Cleopatra. Or Florence Nightingale. Or Marilyn Monroe, for goodness' sake .
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