DUDA, Viktória
HÜNDORF, Hanna
Title of contribution:
Are There Past Lives – and Why Does it Matter?
Where & when:
Are There Past Lives – and Why Does it Matter?
This is a conversation between two women sharing an interest in past and future lives. Hanna started learning meditation and studying the Buddhist scriptures and commentaries at a young age, applying what she learned in her daily life in a large Buddhist community, and later caring for both her parents until their death. She has also more than 20 years of experience teaching Buddhism and meditation to Westerners and knows the cultural differences and the problems that brings. Viktoria discovered in her hypnotherapy sessions that sometimes her clients remembered things which did not seem to stem from this life. Coming from a rather skeptical academic background, the issue of past lives gave her an intellectual challenge unlike any other. Yet, she found plenty of therapeutic and empiric evidence to show that past lives deserve serious study and she conducts academic research on her findings ever since. Hanna and Viktoria met at IEC 2018 and became good friends and soul sisters soon after. In this conversation they will compare notes and experiences, ask each other deep questions, hold paradoxical truths and try to find new perspectives about this topic that is clouded in mystery and rarely talked about seriously, let alone scientifically.
Names of co-contributors: Hanna Hündorf
Hanna Hündorf, born 1960 in Germany, has been part of the core team of IEC since its inception in 2014. She helps develop the content, coordinates the workshops and presentations before and during the event, and is part of the main stage management.
Hanna has been a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism since 1982, living for 15 years in Samye Ling, Scotland, where she completed two traditional three-year retreats.
In 1997, after her first retreat, she began translating Buddhist teachers from English to German and intensified her studies of Buddhist philosophy and meditation in Hamburg and Nepal. She also started teaching at that time and begun developing her own style of transmitting the traditional teachings and methods in a way that is appropriate to the Western culture, but retains the depth and power. At the same time she began reading Ken Wilber and adopted the Integral View.
After her second retreat in 2006, she returned to Germany to look after her mother. She worked in an old people’s home for 2 years and nursed her mother for 11 years, so that she could grow old peacefully and in dignity and die at home.
During that time, Hanna began giving courses and individual coaching sessions. She also became involved in the Integral Movement in Germany and Europe, with a special emphasis on organizing large gatherings.
She now lives with her husband in North Germany, has joined his gardening firm and gives coaching sessions.
About Viktória Duda:
Viktória is a spiritual anthropologist, hypnotherapist and writer. A series of spiritually transformative experiences prompted her to leave an academic career and pursue independent research about the nature of consciousness. Born in Budapest, she lived in seven different countries and conducts sessions internationally and online in English, German and Hungarian. She has a Ph. D. in social anthropology from the University of Vienna and is a member of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis.