Author’s Bio: Adele Ryan McDowell, Ph.D., is a psychologist, teacher, and channel, who likes looking at life with the big viewfinder.

This interview originally appeared in 2012 in: ReligionandSpirituality.com (no longer in operation)

Joan Pancoe is appearing in the new A&E/Biography channel documentary series, The UneXplained. Her episode “The Weight of My Past,” premiered on Saturday, September 15th, 2012.

In this show, you’ll get to watch Joan doing past-life regression therapy over the course of ten months with a 380-pound man with a chronic weight problem. He reconnects with his inner warrior and releases his karmic attachment to a larger body-type than what is needed for this life. You will see him dramatically transform himself with sparing and kick-boxing as he frees up his energies to expand and conquer the business world instead of struggling with extra poundage.

Joan Pancoe’s experience as a trance channel, karmic astrologer and spiritual teacher in private practice in New York City since 1976 gives her a unique perspective in reading the soul’s secrets and helping people remember and get on track with why they’re here. She is the creator of psychic therapy, a ten-session intensive that utilizes altered states to help release karmic blocks and experiences and integrate the soul level of consciousness and beyond. Joan is the author of Openings: A Guide to Psychic Living in the Real World and Cosmic Sugar: The Amorous Adventures of a Modern Mystic, under the pen name, Leela Jones.

In a follow-up to our July, 2009 interview, I caught up with Joan as she prepares to debut on television.

Adele: How did an East Village Psychic end up on the Biography channel?

Joan: I hung up on them when they initially called me in July 2011. I thought I said, “No, thank you” and hung up. But the producer, Johanna Baldwin, informed me later, with much laughter that I just hung up on her! (I guess my reflexes were a bit off─and had mumbled, “No, thank you,” after I’d walked away from the phone.)

But then, after two clients volunteered to be regressed on camera and encouraged me to call the producers back, we had a sit down to discuss filming past-life regression for their documentary series. The vibration felt right and in the Flow─and, most importantly, aligned with my soul assignment of coming out of my psychic shell. So, I green-lighted myself!

I’d never envisioned that I would need to appear on TV as part of my journey of karmic healing and soul growth. It has been and I’m sure will continue to be terrifying and exhilarating simultaneously. There’s nothing like confronting your absolute worst karmic fears of all time to make you feel more alive and in the Flow than ever before.

The only reason I was even able to do the show was by using my own past-life regression techniques to deal with these fears. The PLRT sessions allowed me to understand that the terror I felt about going public with my psychic power was quite legitimate when viewed from a soul-level karmic perspective. The awareness of where the fear came from allowed me to feel the fear and take the action to move through it simultaneously. My daily mantra to help with this is: “That was then───and this is now!”

Adele: What do you want your viewers to come away with and what would be their take-away from watching your episode?

Joan: After a year of filming hundreds of hours that have been edited down to 22 minutes for a half-hour show, I have absolutely no idea what the final result will look like and have had to sign away any control of how my work is going to be presented. However, the executive producers, Russ Stratton and Doug Liman (The Bourne Trilogy and Mr. and Mrs. Smith) maintained complete integrity and respect of my therapy process throughout the shooting, and from the episodes I’ve seen that have aired to date, I’ve been very impressed with the production quality and editing to get the main story across in an impactful way.

I can only hold the faith that those who are meant to find me through the medium (haha) of TV will have an easier time of it once this show airs. As, before I had a website, you had to know someone who had been to see me and use their name as a referral─otherwise I tended to not be so available. I jokingly called my psychic work a very private practice.

But, joking aside, what I hope for most is that people who watch my─especially those who are feeling stuck and powerless over some inner or outer condition in their lives and have done everything they could to deal with it─experience at least a glimmer of hope of turning their situations around.

I am continually amazed by the shift I see in clients once they have been through past life regression therapy, a soul reading or psychic consult. They get this lightning-bolt moment of awakening as they remember other chapters in their soul’s story that legitimately explain why they have the stuck condition─which I call a karmic rut─and what they need to do to heal it.

Knowing that there is a justifiable reason for their condition from past lives─and that it is not from anything specifically they’ve done in this incarnation to cause it─creates a major shift that turns around their whole relationship with themselves and with life to one that is much more empowering.
From a soul perspective, all circumstances from one’s birth on are just the tip of the karmic iceberg. The way it works is that it’s usually only after a karmic condition has been activated, played out and bottomed out on that there is a willingness to seek understanding from a higher perspective of what soul qualities are needed to be developed to get the lessons inherent in the karmic challenges. Only then can there be a conscious free will choice to release karmic attachments for identity to specific conditions or body karma.

The great thing is how well PLRT works on all types of stuck situations or circumstances─from body karma to krazy-glue karmic bondages. I’ve seen incredibly dramatic results in the before and after places clients get to within themselves. Not only is it very empowering to gain the karmic perspective, it’s also a very forgiving process that releases any residual anger at self or Life for what has seemed unfair or insurmountable.

My final hope is that once viewers get the pertinent past life information for themselves and have that “AH HA!” moment─either from someone like me who can act as a middleman between them and their Higher Selves or through their own inner journey of discovery─they can consciously own and integrate this higher perspective and move to the next level of their karmic healing and soul evolution.

Adele: Thanks, Joan. This is very exciting. You know I am a huge fan of soul work and this takes healing to a whole new and much needed dimension. Just think of the applications and possibilities!