Rabbi Efim Svirsky is a Jerusalem-based psychotherapist who utilizes a unique psycho-spiritual method he created to help people suffering from phobias and emotional blockages. He employs Deep Relaxation, an altered state of mind in which the patient’s free will is never suspended; the patient is completely aware throughout the process and remembers everything upon returning to day-to-day function.

A Rosh Yeshiva came to Rabbi Svirsky with a strange phobia. He was afraid of showers. He explained that he was not afraid of water; he swam in the sea and in swimming pools, and took baths without fear. But any time he went to take a shower, he was gripped with fear.

Rabbi Svirsky assumed that the Rosh Yeshiva had experienced a trauma involving a shower as a child. So, he led him into a state of Deep Relaxation and asked him to imagine himself in a shower and to feel the fear. “Let’s go back to where this fear started,” Rabbi Svirsky suggested. The Rosh Yeshiva immediately went into a past gilgul and saw himself in a gas chamber constructed like a shower. Rabbi Svirksy then took him through his death, gently coaxing, “As you die, go with the soul.” He saw himself going out of the body into the spiritual realm.

When the session was over, the fear was gone. Notably, this Litvish Rosh Yeshiva was surprised when he came back to the present, because he had never believed that the concept of gilgulei neshamot could have applied to him.

During twenty-five years of treating thousands of patients, Rabbi Svirsky has witnessed scores of patients unexpectedly discover the root of their problem in a Holocaust gilgul. “Because I’m not a researcher,” maintains Rabbi Svirsky, “it doesn’t matter to me where the patient goes under Deep Relaxation. I have no theories to prove. I have no investment in where the patient goes. But many times it has been back to a Holocaust experience.”

One young woman who came to Rabbi Svirsky for help had an extreme sensitivity around her throat. Even her husband could not touch her there. Under Deep Relaxation, she saw herself as a young girl, and relived an experience where a Nazi officer killed her by choking her to death with his bare hands. Rabbi Svirsky led her through her death to her soul entering the spiritual realm. Afterwards, her neck sensitivity disappeared.