In Memoriam

DIANA BEAUFORT CHERRY

October 31, 1929 - January 14, 2014

Di was born in Halifax in 1929, but grew up on Vancouver Island. Perhaps because she was born with clear memories of her immediate past-life, she has always been interested in past lives. From age six, her family's annual month-long holiday was spent at an adult meditation resort. Meditation is, of course, one of the many states of trance, and if we follow this segue, the most accurate definition of a hypnotic trance is focus.

Focus served her well, for by the time she was 13, her many piano students were bringing home honours from the music college. Di taught piano for 43 years.

Another major career was as an animal behaviourist for 26 years, where hypnosis and body English are important components. Her other degree is in elocution.

Di holds all the degrees possible with the Canadian Hypnotherapy Association. She is a graduate of the training offered by the Association of Past-Life Research and Therapies.

During the nearly 15 years of being on the Board of the Canadian Hypnotherapy Association, Di served as an examiner for several years, after which she wrote a 200-hour course of study for becoming a hypnotherapist. Many therapists from England to Korea are her graduates.

Her unusual logo to non-historians, the portcullis (a castle’s inner gate by the drawbridge) is better known in Vancouver than her face. It is her family crest. For Di, it stands for ‘Your Gateway to the Past’.

portcullis

Di passed into Spirit on January 14, 2014, and was teaching students right up to one hour before her sudden death.

WINAFRED BLAKE LUCAS

1911 - 2006

Winafred was an inward thinker from a young age. She grew up in Puget Sound, and received her B.A. from the University of Washington. In the 1930s, she travelled to Europe, where she embarked upon doctorate work in Sanskrit, and entered Jungian analysis. When World War II broke out, Winafred returned to the United States, where she transitioned to studying psychoanalysis. At the time, psychotherapy was limited to Freudian and behaviourist approaches. Not surprisingly, Winafred's introspective character led her to Freudian psychoanalysis.

She obtained her doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1949 (only the 8th year in which UCLA awarded Ph.D.s to women).

Initially, Winafred specialized in work with children and Rorschach tests. In time, Winafred’s interests led her away from psychoanalysis to Rogerian therapy, transpersonal psychology, Transcendental meditation, Progaff Journal Therapy, encounter and adolescent groups, and Roberto Assigoli’s Psychosynthesis, which introduced a spiritual dimension into psychotherapy. She developed a reputation for understanding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender psychology, at time when most clinicians treated homosexuality as pathological.

In the late 1970s, when analytic therapists around the world asked clients to go back to childhood, they discovered that they were going to other times and places. Past Life Regression Therapy and Prenatal & Perinatal psychology emerged during this time.

Winafred was a pioneer in the new field of Past Life Regression Therapy. Her book, Regression Therapy: A Handbook for Professionals, remains the definitive textbook. She was one of the founding members of the International Association for Regression Research & Therapies (formerly APRT), with Hazel Denning and Ron Jue.

Editor of APRT’s journal for over a decade, she also founded and ran the Institute of Regression Therapy Training program in Sedona, AZ, and served on the core faculty of the California School of Professional Psychology (now Alliant University).