Grounded hypnotherapy and past life regression for insight, healing, and lasting change.
What Was I offers a calm, professional, and deeply human approach to inner work — supporting clients who want meaningful change, and practitioners who want serious training in past life regression.
Led by John Wakefield, with more than 20 years of experience combining contemplative depth, therapeutic skills, and grounded professional practice.
Founder – John Wakefield
A calm, spacious place to begin
Some people come looking for relief from anxiety, unhelpful habits, emotional patterns, or a persistent sense that something in life needs to shift. Others are drawn by a deeper question, a desire to understand recurring themes, relationships, fears, or inner experiences that do not seem fully explained on the surface.
What Was I meets both paths with care. Through hypnotherapy, past life regression, and practitioner training, the work is designed to be safe, spacious, and transformational without losing professional structure or ethical clarity.
Therapy or Training
Hypnotherapy
A practical, focused approach to change. Hypnotherapy can help with habits, stress, confidence, emotional patterns, and the deeper beliefs that often sit beneath them.
Past Life Regression (PLR)
A guided process for insight, healing, and meaning. For some clients, regression work opens a powerful way of understanding recurring themes, emotional responses, and soul-level questions.
PLR Therapist Certification
A structured training pathway for those who want to practise professionally. The certification route is designed to be credible, ethical, and grounded in genuine therapeutic skill rather than vague spiritual performance.
John as a forest dwelling monk
Photo note: use your best portrait of John here. Calm expression, warm light, grounded presence. Avoid stiff corporate headshots.
A practitioner shaped by depth and discipline
Before founding What Was I, John Wakefield spent 12 years living as a forest monk in South East Asian countries such as Burma, Thailand, Sri-Lanka and Australia. Immersed in meditation, discipline, solitude and the direct study of mind, John integrates this contemplative foundation in an informed therapeutic approach. His method is both deeply reflective and professionally grounded, one that respects the spiritual dimension of experience without abandoning structure, safety, or clarity.
This combination is central to the work. Clients and students are not asked to choose between beliefs and science, or between mysticism and professionalism. They are invited into a modality where a combination of beliefs and therapeutic practices can exist together.
This work may support people who are looking for
- Better connection with relatives and friends.
- Greater calm and emotional steadiness.
- Freedom from unhelpful habits or repetitive inner patterns.
- More confidence, clarity, and self-trust.
- Insight into recurring fears, relationships, or life themes.
- A deeper sense of meaning, integration, and inner alignment.
Practitioner training spotlight
A serious pathway into practitioner work
The What Was I PLR Certification pathway is designed for therapists, coaches, counsellors, and spiritually oriented practitioners who want to develop regression skills within a safe and professionally structured framework. Training begins with hypnotherapy foundations where needed, then develops the induction, deepening, regression, ethical, and supervised-practice skills required for serious work in this field.
This is not a casual workshop. It is a pathway intended to build real competence, confidence, and integrity in practitioners who want to do the work well.
Free guide
5 Signs You’re Ready to Become a Past Life Regression Therapist.
A grounded guide for people who feel called toward practitioner work and want a clear, thoughtful next step.
[KIT FORM EMBED OR GREENSHiFT FORM PLACEHOLDER]
The first step is a conversation
Whether you are seeking personal change or exploring a new professional direction, the first step is a conversation. Begin with a session, an enquiry, or a closer look at the training pathway and see what feels aligned.