Beneath most headaches is a heartache.
It’s a natural protective mechanism of ours to think our way around wounds instead of feeling our way through them. In this day and age, we just want an escape.
What can we do to stop feeling the pain we’re feeling? How can we change ourselves to be more acceptable? How can we numb ourselves to outside forces beyond our control?
No one wants to feel pain. But most of us carry around heavy clouds with us all day. We can’t quite pinpoint what the source of our suffering is – we just know that it hurts. This pain forms the vague backdrop of our lives and is so persistent, yet subtle, that it becomes the new “norm” for us.
Whenever we suffer a physical or emotional trauma, it is said that a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. With every cut and wound, our essence and vitality grows weaker. This process is called “Soul Loss” which I’ve previously written about.
Now, I want to explore with you how to recover these soul fragments. This process is known as “Soul Retrieval.”
What Is Soul Retrieval?
When I was a young boy my Abuela (grandmother), would do something very strange. Every time I fell or hurt myself, she would quickly grab me by the head and whisper into my ear a prayer. This prayer was to call my Soul back.
I was always puzzled by her sudden prayers until she explained to me why she did them. In shamanic cultures, Soul Loss is understood to be a spiritual illness. In other words, when a part of our soul fragments, all kinds of emotional, physical and mental diseases occur from the diminishment of our life force energy. It is therefore seen as vital for parts of the soul to return back to wholeness again.
To some extent, we all experience a level of Soul Loss in our lives. Many people don’t feel whole. Ask yourself this question, “When was the last time I felt absolutely whole and complete?” If you’re like most people, that time may have been back in childhood. Perhaps you can’t even remember a time when you ever felt whole.
Because of the mass phenomenon of Soul Loss, issues such as addiction, chronic sickness, diseases, abusive relationships, crime, shopaholism and workaholism run rife in our society. All of these issues stem from Soul Loss.
9 Causes of Soul Loss
In shamanism Soul Loss describes the fragmentation of the soul. And interestingly, Soul Loss shares similarities with what contemporary psychology calls “dissociation”: the splitting of the psyche in response to traumatic, shocking or difficult experiences. This is often the cause of many Core Wounds that affect us later as adults.
So what causes Soul Loss? Here are some common examples:
- Any form of abuse, e.g. sexual, emotional, physical or mental.
- An event of prolonged grief, pain and fear that made you feel helpless or impotent.
- Deep-seated addictions e.g. substance dependency.
- A near-death or out-of-body experience.
- Being forced to act against your morals.
- An experience of intense rejection or abandonment.
- Witnessing the unexpected death of someone.
- A sudden and shocking accident.
- Entering a relationship without strong boundaries of Self (resulting in an unhealthy relationship and losing your personal power).
Soul Loss and dissociation are devices that the brain uses to survive potentially destructive traumatic events. In other words, Soul Loss happens to protect you initially, rather than to hurt you. This is a natural protective mechanism. However, every wound must be healed, otherwise it festers. When we neglect to heal these “blocked off” parts of ourselves and give them air, we are left with a chronic feeling of unwholeness. Eventually, we can suffer from chronic issues such as anxiety, depression, physical and mental illnesses as a result.
A simple example of Soul Loss can be found in cultures that frown upon expressing emotions like “anger.” A child, for instance, will quickly learn that expressing anger results in punishment or withdrawal of love by their parents. As a result, this child will eventually learn to “split off” this “unacceptable” part of themselves until they no longer accept this emotion as belonging to them. What happens to this anger? It is suppressed. For this reason, Soul Loss plays a huge role in creating our Shadow Selves.
Often psychotherapy is used to try and treat Soul Loss. But while the psychotherapeutic approach can sometimes work, often it reaches a stalemate. Why? Because psychotherapy perceives this “missing part” as being lost somewhere in the individual, rather than preserved in the realms of the collective unconscious. Here, the psychotherapist isn’t working with the whole person.
The shaman, on the other hand, assumes that Soul Loss is a spiritual illness and that the dissociated parts can leave the body and wander into other realms (non-ordinary reality), as a result of shock or trauma. These realms are often inaccessible and are guarded by heavy defenses that make it difficult (or impossible) for the affected person to go through on their own, without the guidance of a Shaman.
Over time, the Soul Loss resulting from not integrating these traumatic experiences can become obstacles in our personal development. This Soul Loss can result in distressing, debilitating and incapacitating defense mechanisms that manifest as anxieties, depression, addictions and compulsions as well as chronic fatigue.
Why Does the Soul Fragment?
In this light, it’s easy to think of Soul loss as something bad that has happened to us. However, here it’s important to realize that Soul Loss is in fact, a gift.
In the same way that you become unconscious when you’re experiencing immense amounts of physical pain, your soul is wise and knows its limits. Your soul knows what it can and can’t handle, so it leaves your body as a survival mechanism to protect itself from feeling the fullness of pain.
This splitting of the soul only becomes an obstacle when the pieces aren’t actively retrieved. This is what leads to chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post traumatic stress syndrome, addictions, immune deficiency problems, and grief that refuses to heal.
However, the retrieval of these soul pieces is not the end of the work. We must then learn how to integrate them back into our lives in order to recover the vital power, potential and energy they possess.
Without these lost soul parts, we don’t feel whole. Instead, we feel weak, depressed, anxious, or empty. We feel as if something is missing, and we will fill that emptiness with anything we can.
However, once we’ve recovered these lost pieces, we can experience the following benefits:
- Feeling more grounded in our body and more “solid”
- Feeling energized, awake, and more alive
- Greater presence in the world
- More awareness of our choices, behaviors and decisions
- Lightness and joy
- Awareness of huge amounts of energy you didn’t know you had
- Mental clarity and a new sense of hope
- Physical wellbeing and less sickness
- A sense of purpose and renewed direction
- Deeper sleep
- Overcoming addictive dependencies (drugs, food, work)
- A new-found wholeness and sense of belonging
In order to to undergo Soul Retrieval, you must have an experienced guide. Shamans are not the only healers that can perform Soul Retrieval. Other healing practices such as hypnosis, witchcraft and psychoanalysis all have methods for integrating split-off or lost parts of the self.
The Soul Retrieval Journey
To retrieve a soul as a shaman, we typically enter trance states with the client. This altered state of consciousness helps us to journey into one of the three spirit worlds (typically the underworld) where we are accompanied by spirit helpers with the intent to retrieve a certain part of the soul. We narrate the whole journey to the client or visualize it through active imagination.
In these Soul Retrieval journeys, we encounter strong, often harsh energies that manifest themselves through the archetypal images of monsters, reptiles, dragons, and other dangerous beasts. These are the guardians of the Soul, or in psychotherapy they are known as defense mechanisms of the psyche. We must overcome these with the help of our spirit helpers, in order to persuade the soul part to come back.
Once we have retrieved the soul part, we reintegrate it together with the client. This is usually done energetically (by blowing the energy into the body), through ceremony, or through cognitive tools (such as inner child work or Gestalt therapy).
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Soul Retrieval is only successful if the person who is healed consciously decides to use this newfound energy to cultivate healthy choices that support their wholeness. This is a two-way dance!
If you’ve done a lot of inner work, Soul Retrieval might come right at the end of your journey. On the other hand, Soul Retrieval might be the first step you take in order to rediscover your wholeness.
I hope this article has helped you to better understand this powerful practice. If you would like to know anything else, comment below.
Feel as though i need a new start but I’m order to I need to work through the things that bug me
Mateo, I am a big fan of this website. Are there any articles in particular that can help me with my soul healing process? Or if you could just tell me here? Im not going to post my entire story here, but Ill just say I have gone through some rough times and I still do. But I do feel like I have lost myself in those times.
Hi, is it possible to send an email to you or something equally?
cheers / Sara
I’ve had many soul retrievals from a Reiki Master and they were very successful. There was nothing scary or going into the underworld. The events were from trauma, and my higher self and even my dream self was able to tell me and my Reiki Master exactly where to find my fragments. I felt SO MUCH more MYSELF afterwards. I also experienced a Soul Retrieval during a healing with Chinese energy healing. I saw and felt myself being revived from the earth and understood what had happened. I never saw anything scary; I was wondering why you used the example of dragons as some underworld type of creature. I love dragons, and they are healing guides, especially in the East. Western Christianity demonized them because the Eastern Cultures were Pagan. I kind of think the “Shadow Side” would be more personal like when Luke went into the Cave and saw himself in Darth Vadar’s Costume, Eh?
This is a great article and I would love to comment. However, I need to comment anonymously. I signed up for disqus but cannot figure out how to post anonymously using my disqus account. My name appears on my post no matter what I do. Could someone please help me?
Hello beth,
To comment using disqus, you don’t need to have an account with disqus or even with any of the social networks they provide to sign in.
If you’re signed out of disqus: Click “Join the discussion”, write your comment, select “Sign up with disqus”. At the bottom of that form there’s a box that says “I’d rather post as a guest” tick that. Then it will let you choose any display name you want, as well as your email to be notified of responses.
Hope that helps. :)
This is an interesting article.
What a wonderful article! I recently experienced the retrieval of parts of my soul through integrative EMDR psychotherapy. It came from a deep place within. Somehow, I just knew exactly what to do to get these lost aspects of self back. It was very powerful and left me feeling so whole. Since then it has been a new challenge to know what to do with these parts to inspire them to stick around.
They will stay! Don’t worry!
I took this next week off to do some cleansing but I hadn’t put a label or created a more specific intention until I read this article. Thank you so much! I love what my guides bring to me. I definitely feel that a soul retrieval is what I need to work on right now. But, I actually resonate more with the comments relating to harsh energies and guardians of the soul. In the last few years, I have been gifted with a few different names: Guardian of the Earth Star and Jynderyl. Guardian is obvious, but from the Silver Elves, Jynderyl means travels the dimensions. Even my current avatar’s name is Wendy, which can mean wanderer. I have taken my Reiki training and work with the Archangels. In a very odd way. the work I do with insurance claims fits entirely in with this topic. I work with very harsh energies but I am often mistaken as being the harsh energy because I won’t back down or I stand and fight for what is right.. I end up feeling guilty because somehow I don’t seem to be able to accept me for me. I help others get their life back together. IE they have lost their home so I help with ‘rebuilding’ so to speak.
Anyway, I recently purchased 12 Natural Green Ghost Phantom quartz points. I realize that these were meant for the week. Putting my intention to help with retrieving my Soul parts but also to assist in my work towards global healing with Gaia. The other is an orange quartz but I have yet to define her energy. The last crystal is my tangerine quartz cluster. They all fit in with the week coming up.
Thank you so much, Sol, for your articles that you post. The archtypes and the Shadow self articles has been fabulous. Blessings to you. Jynderyl
Thank you dear friend, your words are filled with warmth :)
I look forward to exploring further these topics, and especially the shadow self one’s in the future.
Hi Sol, this is a great article. The shamanic exploration into the underworld to me sounds like a thrilling adventure. I enjoy the idea that there are worlds within worlds that even if we can’t see with our own eyes are still definitely there. I experimented with hypnosis as a teenager on my friends and myself attempting past life regression. The results were all very interesting but in my own journey I encountered an older German man who said Nein to me, the strongest “no” which I felt at the very core of my being. I felt myself a small child on the stairway. I don’t know if this meant I wasn’t ready to see these other parts of myself or if he was one of these archetypal defenses I’d created to protect myself. I haven’t experimented with hypnosis since and am want to work on this soul retrieval.
To me it’s also a fascinating thing, I always knew there was worlds out there but I didn’t exactly have a way to explain why till I came across much archetypal psychotherapy that provided a way to verbalize it all.
In my experience, encounter figures like your German man is the reason I encourage guides to conduct the retrievals or inductions. The guide will have a less biased encounter with these figures and will be able to discern if it’s a defense mechanism or an actual ‘heralder’ warning the journeyer that they person isn’t psychologically mature enough yet.
I look forward to exploring further on these topics in our future work :)
Thanks Sol, I do as well!
Wow, very interesting article, Sol! Could you elaborate a bit more on what a person can do to retrieve parts of their soul if they don’t have access to a capable shaman to help? I mean, can an individual do this on their own as well?
If so, can you elaborate a bit more on this please?
I’ve had my spiritual awakening a few years ago and I’m progressing with it, but I live in the USA and in a culture where this kind of spiritual/metaphysical truth is not very common…
Could you mention a couple of resources for more info on this if nothing else please? Thanks!
mizzrym, I completely understand where you are coming from. Here in this country I feel like it’s almost taboo to embark in these types of journeys and paths. There’s not a lot of support unless you are active in certain groups that have similar thinking minds. I hope Sol can give us some suggestions, I know I am in need of Soul retrieval myself!
Thank you for your comment.
There is a problem with retrieval of our own Souls as that is the defense mechanism we put up in our unconscious minds. As we are the creators of the ‘guardians’ of these pieces, we’re in essence, fighting ourselves which is never a safe practice and which is why it’s important to have an experience guide through this.
It’s not exclusive to shamanism though, as I mention; hypnotherapist can perform this as can some psychologist especially those in the transpersonal schools.
If you do want a shaman to do it however, I know Michael from http://shamanism.org/ has many of his healers trained in retrievals and they are all located across North America.
I hope this helps,
Warmly,
Sol