What is Soul Work? (The Four Alchemical Pillars)

Isolation, stuckness, emptiness, and trauma – these are only a few words that define the landscape of our lives in this day and age.

All of these painful issues, as well as the profound suffering in our society and the world at large, trace back to a loss of Soul.

When we experience Soul Loss, we are cut off from an inner sense of joy, vitality, meaning, and purpose. The connection to ourselves, others, and life itself that is our birthright is severed, maimed, or destroyed.

Have you ever felt a sense of being lost, alone in this world, hollow inside, aimless and without direction, physically numb, or emotionally deadened? That’s Soul Loss.

You may be wondering, “How can I get back this sense of connection, meaning, purpose, and vitality?” 

The path to healing and reclaiming inner wholeness again is known as Soul Work – and in this article, I’ll show you how to get started.

First, let’s start with a basic definition:

What is Soul Work?

Soul Work is the psychological and spiritual path of rediscovering and reclaiming your Soul’s essence.

It’s about learning how to live a more ensouled life where you are connected with your deeper essence, purpose, and potential in this life.

In Mystic Journey: Getting to the Heart of Your Soul’s Story, author and psychologist Marion Woodman writes,

Psychological work is soul work … By soul, I mean the eternal part of us that lives in this body for a few years, the timeless part of ourselves that wants to create timeless objects like art, painting, and architecture…

Psyche comes from the Ancient Greek word psukhē, which means breath or soul.

Soul Work, therefore, means working intimately with our psyches (our Souls) to find a sense of healing, wholeness, and life purpose.

The Sacred Paradox of the Soul

Let’s briefly examine the nature of the Soul. Here’s what a few different teachers, authors, and psychotherapists have written on the subject:

”Soul” is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance. — Thomas Moore, Psychotherapist & Spiritual Writer

Soul is the human element in us, an intermediate element between the absolute or divine, which is our ultimate nature, and our conditioned ego, which spiritual traditions regard as the source of delusion. It is our individual consciousness, in contrast to our divine nature, which is universal, the same in everyone. Soul is true nature as it unfolds and develops in time and space, during the course of a lifetime. — John Welwood, Clinical Psychologist

… the soul is always a creature of both worlds—divine and human, time-bound and eternal, mortal and immortal. Straddling these two worlds, the soul is the seat of our dual destiny … – Donald Kalsched, Jungian Psychoanalyst

As we can see, the soul is both wholly human and wholly divine. I see it represented by the symbol of the Vesica Piscis: two overlapping circles that show our mortal and immortal nature. There is always a transcendent and immanent quality to the Soul.

Soul Work, Soul Loss, and Ensoulment

Soul Loss is the main issue the majority of humans are dealing with on a daily basis – it’s the core problem, the primary ‘demon’ our species is struggling with.

In the words of Marie-Louise von Franz, a Jungian analyst and scholar,

Soul loss can be observed today as a psychological phenomenon in the everyday lives of human beings around us. Loss of soul appears in the form of a sudden onset of apathy and listlessness; the joy has gone out of life, initiative is crippled, one feels empty, everything seems pointless.

But there’s a path forward. Soul Work is what helps us to recover our Souls (what shamanic cultures refer to as Soul Retrieval), which helps us to live more ensouled lives

Ensoulment is a powerful term we’ve chosen to use to describe the experience of living in alignment with the Soul. 

Ultimately, Ensoulment is the goal of our Soul Work: to find a sense of home in yourself and the world, a place and purpose in existence, a feeling of being whole and connected to your deeper Self. 

Soul Work Vs. Inner Work

Inner Work is typically very focused on the mind and its traumas, complexes, and issues. It often lacks a spiritual dimension – a transcendent and soulful depth. 

(With that said, in our work, we sometimes use Inner Work and Soul Work interchangeably.)

Soul Work, the way we define it, is psycho-spiritual in nature. In other words, it is both a psychological and spiritual process of healing. 

It also focuses on helping you reconnect with your Soul as its ultimate goal, rather than focusing purely on healing the mind (which is often what psychological inner work emphasizes).

In this way, Soul Work is often a deeper path of healing because it uses psychological techniques in service of Soul-centered reclamation and integration. 

Four Basic Alchemical Pillars of Soul Work (How to Get Started)

There are many ways to approach Soul Work. Being a male and female (yin/yang, luna/sol), we favor the alchemical method, which we’ve explored more in depth in our Alchemical Soul Work Workbook.

Here are the four basic alchemical pillars of Soul Work that we’ve defined based on the four alchemical elements, and how to get started. Each pillar builds on the others:

Pillar 1: Grounding (Earth)

Getting grounded before doing any form of Soul Work (or healing work in general) is crucial.

Without becoming rooted in the earth and connected with our bodies, we risk dissociation, retraumatizing ourselves, or falling into traps like spiritual bypassing or ego inflation. 

There are many ways to practice grounding. Here are some ideas:

• “Forest bathing” or ecotherapy (spending time in nature)
• Body-based mindfulness practices
• Yoga, qigong, or tai chi
• Exercise, strength training, working out
• Nervous system regulating practices
• Dance or movement therapies 

By getting back in touch with your body (which, especially in the West, is something we’re often dissociated from), you build a solid foundation for the rest of your Soul Work.

Pillar 2: Self-Love (Fire)

Learning how to get back in touch with your heart is vital for any form of Soul Work to be truly effective and transformational.

Without learning how to be kind and caring towards yourself, your Soul Work will be weak and ineffective at minimum, and potentially harmful at worst, especially when working with wounded or traumatized parts of yourself.

Here are a few different ways to practice Self-Love:

• Practicing basic self-care (healthy food, good sleep, regular exercise, etc.)
• Exploring your core values
• Learning how to set personal boundaries
• Committing to practicing self-compassion 
• Metta and other heart-based meditations
• Positive affirmations 
• Correcting and reframing self-talk
• Regularly journaling
• Breaking self-sabotaging patterns
• Learning to enjoy solitude
• Learning to ask for help
• Lifestyle design: crafting a life you love

Self-Love means becoming your own best friend. You are with yourself 24/7 – more than any other person – so why wouldn’t you start treating yourself with more kindness?

Pillar 3: Inner Child Work (Water)

Your inner child carries so much of your light, but also a great degree of your darkness. Most people find, when starting therapy or any form of healing work, that it is their inner child who bears the weight of trauma. 

When we were children, we didn’t have the strength or the means to protect ourselves from abusive or traumatising situations.

So many issues, from addictions and anxiety to existential depression and chronic illness, stem from the wounded inner child.

To do this form of Soul Work, we often need the help of a caring and skilled professional, such as a therapist or bodyworker.

Other forms of Inner Child Work you can practice include the following ideas:

• Doing meditations to meet, befriend, and heal your inner child
• Keeping an inner child journal
• Reading books about healing your inner child
• Committing to protecting your inner child from abuse
• Setting boundaries with toxic people
• Engaging in conscious play
• Being creative and doing art therapy
• Connecting with the Divine Parent archetype 
• Reparenting work
• Grief work 

Healing the inner child liberates a tremendous amount of creative Soul energy, infusing your life with more play, vivacity, and joy.

Pillar 4: Shadow Work (Air)

Soul work is not a high road. It is a deep fall into an unforgiving darkness that won’t let you go until you find the song that sings you home. – McCall Erickson

Most people are immediately drawn to Shadow Work as it can stir up feelings of morbid curiosity. “I wonder what my dark side is like?” “What demons lurk within my unconscious?” 

The truth is that most people aren’t prepared for Shadow Work in a truly deep, transformational, and effective way. They are either too dissociated from their bodies or are overtaken by the voice of the Inner Critic. 

Both situations create danger, especially when deeply shadowy material comes up, as it’s either too much for the mind to handle, and gets repressed or intellectualized and justified further, or throws one into a state of self-loathing or existential crisis.

For Shadow Work to be effective (not ‘safe,’ for Shadow Work always requires some level of threat to the ego), one must be grounded in the body, aligned with the heart, and lovingly connected to the inner child.

Getting professional support, while not always accessible to everyone, is also something I highly recommend, as there are some parts of this work we can’t do alone. The ego won’t allow for the depth of illumination that another objective outsider can offer – it’s kind of like trying to pull yourself up by your own boots.

With that said, there is a certain amount of Shadow Work that can be done by yourself. Here are some ideas:

• Keep a Shadow Work Journal 
• Read Shadow Work books
• Do Shadow meditation journeys or visualizations 
• Practice catharsis: scream, cry, shout
• Do Rage and Grief Work
• Commit to a daily Mirror Work practice
• Notice what triggers you
• Explore your projections
• Explore your inner parts (Parts Work)
• Create therapeutic Shadow art

I explore various Shadow Work techniques perfect for beginners in my Mindful Shadow Work book.

Begin Your Soul Work

Other than the four alchemical pillars of Soul Work, there are seven distinct stages of this process: calcinatio, solutio, coagulatio, sublimatio, mortificatio, separatio, and coniunctio. 

These seven alchemical Soul Work stages help you to move through a process of inner transformation – of transforming your inner ‘lead’ into ‘gold.’

If you’d like to begin this transformative process of turning your pain into a source of power and your shadows into light, see our Alchemical Soul Work Workbook. 

Through 50+ guided structured prompts, we help you to get to the root of your issues, find more clarity, and reconnect with your Soul’s wisdom.

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Tell me, where are you on your Soul Work journey? What obstacles are you facing right now? Please share below. You never know who may resonate with your experience and who you may help by doing so.