I have been referring to running as the practice of exploring past lives for so long that it feels uncomfortable to use any other term, so I am continuing the Swygard’s use of this “moving pictures” metaphor.

From Awareness Techniques Book 1:

“Motion, the basis of running: ‘Running’ is the term given to the use and manifestation of results gained from the Awareness Techniques.”

From “Waldara Answers - Book 1”:

“R-U-N, run. This is sort of a nickname for or description of the process. As we go back in time by reading the planetary records, a few people could, by great concentration heavily laced by desire, see occasional flashbacks of black and white still pictures of previous life experiences. Everything regarding planetary life is recorded there…There was no sound, ordor, taste, color or motion. It was virtually impossible to realize the relationships of individuals seen in this still picture that faded into darkness in a moment's time…(W)ith this new method, you can integrate your total consciousness and ask…(and)…into your consciousness comes moving, full awareness pictures…So it has been dubbed "running" as you can run up and down the time sequences and you do actually see moving pictures.”

I had been using the film strip metaphor of running a piece of film through a projector, with the ability to freeze and examine an individual frame, rewind or fast forward within the film. Discovering that William Swygard was in the film distribution business in Florida backed this up plus OI noted that he is using a reference to “moving pictures” in the quotation above.

One of the early students of the Awareness Techniques was Helen Hoag who wrote her own series of pamphlets, where I found this:

"You can "run" your past lives, as the process is called  because it is like a motion picture ‘running’ through a projection machine..."

Helen Hoag, in “Technique of Past Lives Recall”, 1969*

*The publication date of 1969 is interesting. The Preface to Awareness Techniques Book 1 is dated “December 1968” although it wasn’t published until 1970, so Hoag as an early participant could have been aware of the Swygards’ writing even as she beat them to publication.