Soul Retrieval has been a powerful healing tool for me personally, and it is at the core of the work I witness my guides doing in my shamanic practice.
My compassionate guides show me the human psyche as a family of different personal parts and expressions that are deeply impacted by beautiful events in our lives and also by stress, grief, and traumatic events in our lives. These events impact us on many different levels and at different pitches. My shamanic work has shown me how we can lose touch and lose contact with parts of our souls. I have also been shown how traumatized parts of our souls overwhelm and overpower us with their points of view which are often outdated and seeded in old coping mechanisms.
Understanding Soul Loss
When a soul part presents with a clear need for support and healing, I see the part as being energetically held in a past time of its life. And so this soul part does not have full access to the present and has no experience of current life and cannot know who it truly is in the present time. It is not aware that the triggers, the perceived dangers that provoke a response, are really from the past and are now outdated. Soul parts like these, those in need of healing, might be operating out of old traumatized energy, inviting us to repeat old patterns. You might picture this as a traumatic timespan or a specific event or events repeating back in time, looping over and over energetically. This energetic repetition generates a pressure on our nervous system, sometimes a constant pressure. This energetic pressure can directly impact how you experience the world and those around you. If a part of your soul is held in this looping energy, the pressure it exerts might be influencing the way you act and make decisions, all from outdated trauma responses.
Through my cosmology and clairs, soul parts are shown to me as unique versions of the individual I am working with. They may appear as different ages and different gender expressions regardless of how the person I’m working with currently identifies. Soul parts may be found hovering over an energetic time threshold where some of their energy and awareness is trapped in old times in our lives and some is with us in this current time. In addition to our own soul loss, others can send us parts of themselves out of protection, punishment, or curiosity, and this can happen consciously or unconsciously. I have been shown how we can experience soul exchange in romantic love relationships or with family and friends where soul parts are both given and received. When we evaluate soul loss, we are open to seeing who is truly active inside us, from what time in our lives they are operating, and if they are even really our own parts.
The Process of Soul Retrieval
The art of soul retrieval offers opportunities for healing and blessings to the time of soul loss, the healing of your soul part, and the returning of your healed and vibrant soul part to its home, with you. Witnessed through my lens, soul healing can take many different forms. You may experience soul retrieval as meeting an old friend or connecting with a part of you that has been missing. The overall theme of soul retrieval through my shamanic perspective is for the person I’m working with to feel held, witnessed, empowered, and come away with a clearer understanding that the energy they are holding in their bodies is their own and that the soul part or parts we worked with are fully in current time with full access to their gifts and are not reacting to the conditioning of the old burdens they carried.
My soul retrieval guides work to bring soul parts back into current time. As a team we witness soul parts. I speak out and feel out the soul parts’ experience, and in witnessing all the parts have endured, allow them to release their burdens and be healed. In this way, the person I am working with can start to communicate with their parts in a new way. After this witnessing ceremony and healing ritual, my guides bring this soul part back to current time with their gifts, not with the burdened energy. When we encounter the soul parts of others being held within or around the person we are working with, my guides offer them healing support and safe space until their owners call them home.
The Role of the Soul Part Recipient
This might sound like magic, and there are magical components to this healing experience. Yet it is not as simple as the wave of a wand. For soul retrieval work to land successfully, it takes conscious integration and a readiness to welcome your healed soul parts home. You play an important role in the healing process. You must make space for the gifts the soul parts bring back with them. You must be open to believe that there are new and empowering ways to experience living. This work may ask for new actions to be taken, and action may mean ending or coming to completion with something, someone, or someplace. My guides can do much of the heavy energetic lifting during healing sessions and offer suggestions about how to integrate healing work. Then it’s up to you to make space and choose to take the next steps.
In my own soul healing journey, I have found that some healed soul parts just click into place within my internal family. That there isn’t too much conscious work for them to integrate back into my overall life. In other instances more conscious effort, time, and nurturing is needed. I have had soul parts that I’ve had to actually introduce to my current life as my life now is far different from who they knew me/us to be when they were lost. I have experienced the sense of feeling quite full as soul parts integrate back into my energy body with their gifts. Sometimes this fullness feels amazing, and other times it can feel uncomfortable. Welcoming home healed soul parts and processing a shamanic healing session are dynamic processes of allowing, noticing, continuing to unwind, and finding your new footing.
The biggest part of this healing practice is making room within to embody the gifts that your soul part returns with. Our systems can be programmed to respond in very particular ways that then directly influence our thoughts and behaviors. Repatterning our responses requires us to unwind lines and even complex circuitry that have been in place for years. This unwinding takes time, tenderness, and embracing the idea of being gentle with yourself. During a healing session, my guides offer clients time to ask their soul part, “What can you do for me, and what can I do for you,” as a first step to get to know them and integrate their gifts. Different parts may have different needs. You might be shown an activity or a place to spend quality time with them. Remember that an action may be taken consciously and actively or subconsciously, such as the remapping and opening up of your internal system.
Integrating Healed Soul Parts
The integration of a healed soul part into your energy body and system of parts may be fairly simple or may be more nuanced. The process might be very clear or you might need time or assistance to support a clear pathway. I always approach my soul parts as I would a dear friend or loved one. I envision myself preparing space within me as if my favorite person was moving in with me. I ensure their favorite foods and things to do are right there on hand. It can be helpful to craft a personal ceremony or ritual to welcome home your healed soul part. You might write out their gifts and post them on your altar or in a special place in your space. Turning their gifts into an affirmation can be a powerful way that you can weave the energy of the healing into your daily practice and living. Greeting your newly returned soul part everyday and meeting with them in meditation or in shamanic journey time can be transformative ways of getting to know them on deeper levels and integrating their renewed energy.
Most importantly my guides emphasize making space to notice when you are aligned with the gifts your soul part has returned with and when you aren’t in alignment. We are human - living, learning, and unlearning. Making conscious decisions is a process. Conscious living is a process of noticing, and it is not binary. We all move in and out of present awareness. We will inevitably be triggered and old patterns that a soul part held might come to the surface. My guides show me that these moments where we realize we’ve fallen into old patterns are opportunities for deeper unwinding and are reminders of how it feels when we are not in alignment, which can be needed.
The Reward Is Your True Self
Soul retrieval is a profoundly impactful shamanic healing modality. It allows us to reclaim lost parts of ourselves and reintegrate them into our present lives. Alongside my compassionate spirit guides, I have witnessed the transformative power of this process in helping individuals reconnect with their true selves. Soul retrieval addresses the traumas that hold these soul parts in the past and provides a means to free and heal them, return them to their true place in present time, and make the embodiment of their gifts available to the recipient. This is an empowering experience. However, successful soul retrieval requires conscious choice, readiness for integration, and an openness to new ways of being. As we integrate our healed soul parts into our lives, old patterns unwind and a new way forward opens up.