Soul Retrieval
Healing the Fragmented Self
In our society, there is a mysterious phenomenon occurring known as Soul Loss arising in all people of all ages, genders, races, and backgrounds.
Indigenous people have known about the occurrence of the loss of vital essence (prana, chi, qi) for millennia, and understand it as the result of an inner fragmentation caused by unawareness, a traumatic experience, or an intense shock to the mind and body.
According to the shamans, a part of the soul exits the body due to a traumatic experience – a part of you splits off to survive. It takes fight or flight to a new level. It's the body's way of protecting itself from suffering and pain; it’s our survival mechanism. Soul Loss (susto) can happen due to a car accident, surgery, near death experience, a loved one's death, psychological factors or a frightening childhood experience. Feeling the body is not a safe place to be in, it exits and hovers above the head or 8th chakra, your soul star.
The yogic theory of samskaras, or subliminal impressions of past painful experiences, is laid down in our psyche. When we are unable to fully “digest” a given experience, part of the energy of that experience is deposited in the subtle body, the Luminescent Energy Field (LEF). Everyone carries around a host of samskaras from this lifetime and previous lives (since the subtle body does not die with the physical one). And those impressions, “scars”, function as a filter to reality.
Your soul is the part of you that is in constant contact with Divine energies. It is the most vital part of you; it sustains your life, and all you do in it, it is the truth of who you are. Shamans understood that the human spirit is immortal and finding the fragments that are lost and restoring them is to return to your innate wholeness, to restore the essential vitality that is your soul.
Soul Loss
Are you feeling exhausted, lethargic, or disconnected from life? These are common symptoms of soul loss.
Soul Loss happens when you experience trauma. At the moment of a painful experience, a part of yourself may split off or fragment and leaves the body to survive the full blow of the trauma. Traumatized people often suffer from the effects of abuse, alcoholism, neglect, rape, mass shootings, gang violence, war, homelessness, bombings, and hidden violence in families. This loss creates damage to your energy body and your spirit. The effects of soul loss can last a lifetime, and beyond. Generations pass on trauma at the cellular level, samskaric baggage – you can literally inherit genetically stored trauma.
This loss of soul essence, power and gifts is at the root of many illnesses. Wounds and disassociations from trauma not resolved in a person’s past life can be held in the body and energetic body through cellular memory. Past-life samskaras are said to explain phobias that don’t stem from any this-life experience. Samskaras/Soul Loss don’t go away by themselves. We need to delve deeply in order to learn how to help heal and integrate these experiences, both traumas and joys, into a healthier whole self. This is a golden opportunity that allows clients to move forward in a positive way.
Most people have experienced a shock or a trauma in life. However, most people are not conscious of it because it’s been forgotten. For most of us, soul loss occurs during childhood, when we are more vulnerable. If you feel like something in your life is missing and you no longer experience the joy of childhood, then you’ve probably lost a fragment or piece of your soul. This often happens during difficult life situations. This is a healthy mechanism of protection and a normal part of survival.
There are many symptoms of soul loss. A common one would be dissociation where a person does not feel fully in their body and fully engaged in life. Dissociation is the root of many mental maladies.
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Are you feeling detached, as if life is passing you by?
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Do you suffer chronic illness or grief?
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Have you “lost” your memories of events or entire periods of your life?
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Do you feel empty or that something is missing?
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Symptoms of potential soul loss can also include depression, despair, feeling lost or stuck, lack of physical or emotional energy or having troubled relationships.
Our entire culture suffers from soul loss, a loss of meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection; a deep unhappiness. Soul loss is rarely acknowledged in western culture. Western medicine has no framework for this kind of diagnosis. Yet we see the effects of such loss all around us in the traumatized people who suffer from the effects of abuse, addiction, neglect, rape, mass shootings, gang violence, war, homelessness, bombing, and hidden violence in families. This psychological disassociation can be found in different degrees in most people and is often labelled as mental illness. Addictions, eating disorders, identity disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression, suicidal tendencies, co-dependency, immune deficiency problems, narcissism, low self-esteem, and adjustment disorders are all common causes for soul loss in our superficial, fast-paced, materialistic modern societies that are mostly devoid of all sense of sacredness. The effects of soul loss can last a lifetime, and beyond.
Robert Moss identifies 5 types of soul loss.
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Loss of vital energy – chronic fatigue, weak immune system and/or addiction
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Loss of younger self – lack of energy and imagination
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Loss of animal spirits – lack of connection with nature
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Loss of ancestral soul – not understanding the relationships of our ancient ones
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Loss of connection with the Greater Self – forgetting the Divine aspect of our embodiment
You can see the language of soul loss in our phrases: she “lost a piece of herself” after a bad breakup, an x saying, “you stole my life from me”, “I lost something when I lost my job”, or “I never felt the same after my accident”. Anytime someone says “I have never been the same since…” soul loss has probably occurred.
Other indications of soul loss include patterns that manifest over and over in your life. Trauma has a way of repeating itself and you may have noticed that things repetitively happen to you.
All these feelings can indicate you may have lost your vital essence – or soul. And the ancient art of Soul Retrieval is a powerful, yet gentle, healing ceremony that restores the soul to its original power – which is your birthright!
In tribal societies, it is understood that this loss is only meant to be temporary, assisting the sufferer in dealing with the psychological aftermath of a truly fright-ening experience. Problems arise when the soul loss becomes ongoing, even permanent, and this is regarded as a primary cause of serious illness. Fortunately, we do NOT need to remember every painful experience in order to heal it.
Soul Retrieval
Many people have feelings of separation or alienation. When your loss is so great that you can’t seem to get yourself back on track, you may need help in recovering your lost essence and guidance back to your wholeness. Soul Retrieval is known and used in nearly every indigenous culture. It is a classic shamanic healing technique to find and bring back parts of the soul that were lost. We use the powerful Jaguar as our ally on this journey. Essences or aspects of your soul may have separated from you after a traumatic event such as physical, sexual or emotional abuse, surgery, accident(s), divorce, and loss of a loved one through death…to name a few. Life essences may also leave in cases where we give our personal power away. Soul Retrieval is a way to transform trauma and restore energetic balance and vital energy that’s been lost due to those painful events.
Soul Retrieval is one of the most beautiful shamanic healing techniques. It is the act of receiving and has been practiced for thousands of years around the world, yet it is still not well known. Reclaiming your energy and releasing old habits that are impeding you opens pathways to remembering who you were meant to be, returning to the wholeness you were born with. As soul parts return, they bring back with them our power, our gifts, always our essence. Soul healing changes your experience, and that of your family and ancestors.
We use the powerful Jaguar as our ally on this journey.
Soul Remembering
The healing work after your soul retrieval is to absorb and integrate your soul parts and their gifts back into your life. You will learn new skills and tools for continuing your integration and self-empowering through a dis-memberment initiation – a Doorway of Transformation. This journey is different than the one where you received a healing that removes something. This archetypal journey – or what is also called a death-rebirth or death without dying journey – allows for further expansion of the soul. The client asks to be healed and in doing so, surrenders to the wisdom of the helping spirits.
The client will go on a shamanic journey to your power animal or teachers, and they break you into pieces. Sometimes it is gentle, or you may be torn limb from limb, thrown from a cliff, burned in a fire or drowned in the sea. In the realms of the dead there may be vultures and other birds of prey, hounds & large cats that tear apart your flesh and bones, owls and bats, crocodiles, monsters, all terrifying, and contributing to the feeling that you are losing your identity. They are literally stripping away attachment with and identification to form – the physical body – as well as your identity, conditioned belief systems and inherited energies from ancestral and cultural thought-forms. This is a symbolic death that gives way to a profound rebirth. The subject is lovingly restored, reassembled, revived and brought back to life, whole and empowered, the fear or illusion vanquished. The way the spirit world does this is endlessly creative and unique to you. Dis-memberment is a very loving act that is performed for you by the spirit world to clear our way to fulfill the soul’s potential and ignite the light within. Even if it sounds strange or scary, spirit is helping your body dissolve those inner structures that are serving as a barrier to what you wish to bring into your life.
Karen will guide you in this process of re-membering your wholeness and shifting to a higher vibration. Then you will learn the rudiments of shamanic journeying