Shamans can help prevent
our life energy from leaking away
Shamanism: Shamanic Healing
through Soul Retrieval
by Ross Heaven
Soul retrieval - a
contemporary therapeutic practice rooted in the 50,000 year old
tradition of shamanism - is attracting significant attention in the
modern Western world as the holistic healthcare movement continues
to gather force.
Shamans believe that we are
all born with an amount of energy or power, which is enough to
sustain us through life. But we can become attached to events or
relationships with others (such as ex-lovers) and can give our
energy away. Once this energy leaves us, it creates a 'hole' in our
energy field which other energy can enter, which shamans call spirit
intrusion. Or our own energy can continue to 'leak away', a
situation known as soul loss.
In shamanic terms,
therefore, illness comes about in two ways:
1. The
loss of our power when we give away our energy, and 2. The entrance
into our bodies of other, useless energy (shamans believe there is
no such thing as 'bad' energy, just energy which is not helpful to
us or which is in an inappropriate place)
The trick to maintain health
or to recovering from illness is to recover the power (energy) we
have lost. Soul retrieval is an effective way of doing this.
WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT WORKS
The practice of soul retrieval, in the last few years, has become
seen by many people as a powerful alternative to psychotherapy,
although shamanic healers would rather see it as an adjunct to
therapy, since the approach itself is action-orientated rather than
discussion-based or led by analysis.
Despite its name, soul
retrieval is an intensely practical, 'down to earth', approach which
produces surprisingly immediate and powerful results. It is also a
very democratic procedure - everyone from high-pressured City
financiers to labourers with back ache are turning to shamanic
practitioners for help - this is not just a phenomenon for the
therapied few looking for the latest head trip.
Debbie's case is fairly
typical of the reasons for seeking soul retrieval, and also
illustrates the difference between retrieval and therapy, as well as
the speed with which progress can sometimes be made.
Debbie lost her son in a
tragic accident six years ago and has been in therapy ever since.
Her depression and feelings of loss had improved over the years, but
she still felt herself to be "incomplete", even after six years. On
her first guided shamanic journey, lasting just 20 minutes, she was
introduced to her empowered self in the form of a power animal, or
spirit ally, which represented her inner strength and courage.
"For the first time in a
long, long time, I felt that I could go on", she said. "I have never
got this from therapy. I feel like I have emerged from a long dark
tunnel into a bright, warm light which is embracing and supportive.
I have a future now".
Part of the reason for the
success of soul retrieval is its direct focus on the client in a
totally holistic way. Soul retrieval supports the whole person and
caters for their spiritual, mythic, and emotional needs, not just
those of the body - the focus for conventional medicine - or the
mind - the territory of the analyst.
The intense focus on the
client does not fully explain why soul retrieval works so
effectively, however. Whatever happens to the client during
retrieval, it seems plain that they enter some other realm of
understanding where their concerns are set in context against a
bigger, deeper picture of reality. Here, for the first time, they
see their true role and their unique place in the universe.
The shaman's explanation is
simple. Whenever we are traumatised, abused, hurt or neglected,
parts of our soul split off and take refuge or become lost or
trapped in what shamans call the 'otherworlds'. Physical accidents,
emotional trauma, abuse, childhood neglect, assault, and rape are a
few of the more common reasons for visiting a soul retrieval
practitioner. Love is also a culprit - sometimes an ex-partner will
not or cannot return our soul parts to us when a relationship ends
("Till death us do part") - and sometimes we give ourselves too
freely in the first place ("All that I am I give to you").
The soul part, faced with
this hurt, takes flight. In itself, this is an action of positive
healing and self-protection. It is only when the loss of this energy
begins to have detrimental effects that the soul part needs to be
returned.
Then, the task of the shaman
in all cultures has been to search the otherworlds to find these
fragments, or to guide the client so that she may enter this space
to find them for herself, and then to bring them back. It is the
return of these soul parts which explains the new feeling of
wholeness on the part of the client, say the practitioners. The
client is re-united with self and so, for the first time, actually
can see their true situation and place in nature.
There is another aspect of
healing here too. The shaman's journey is a mythic, archetypal, one,
the quest of the hero to find lost treasure, which, by its very
nature, places the client at the centre of this drama, in a position
of tremendous value. Just a few minutes into a typical soul
retrieval consultation, the client - perhaps for the first time ever
- has been listened to impartially, had their story believed and had
a difficult and dangerous journey taken on their behalf by someone
acting expressly in their interests. Perhaps they have also shared
in the journey, an action of personal empowerment which
automatically signals that they can change for the better and do
have the strength and resources to do so.
THE PROCESS OF SOUL
RETRIEVAL Soul retrieval usually has three parts:
1. The
shaman takes a journey for the client (or guides the client to take
their own) to find the soul part (energy) they have given away. This
is usually represented in human form as an image of the client at
the time the energy was lost - so the shaman may see the adult
client at the age of 6 for example in a situation of stress such as
a car accident. It is not unusual for the shaman to be able to
describe the child, the situation, what she is wearing, what she
looks like, what is happening to her, etc, in some detail, and this
is proved accurate on many occasions. The shaman will then recover
this energy by holding the child to him and bringing her back to our
reality. He then blows this energy into the client at the stomach
and at the head. This returns the energy to the Energy Body. It
sounds strange but it works, as the clients testify. This technique
has been used by shamans for maybe 50,000 years. 2. The
shaman guides the client to journey to find the soul parts of others
that they may be holding on to. The client then asks these soul
parts how they can be released and is often given a ritual or some
other action to perform. This releases these parts back to their
rightful owner. 3. The final stage is for the shaman
to guide the client in journeying to the soul parts returned to her
during the first meeting. She can ask questions of the soul parts,
see any recurring patterns in her life where she is liable to give
away her power (in relationships, for example) and help the soul
parts themselves to reintegrate.
It is usual to leave a gap
of at least 2 weeks between each of these stages, although most
clients feel a beneficial effect very quickly. Many comment that
they feel energy returning to them even as it is blown back into
their bodies and 99% of people feel better within 2-3 weeks of a
soul retrieval.
A TYPICAL SESSION A typical
soul retrieval session is as follows:
1. The
shaman will purify and cleanse the room where the soul retrieval is
to take place. This is done using smudge, a mixture of sacred herbs
with cleansing properties. He will also smudge himself and the
client. 2. The client and shaman discuss the
problem and any symptoms. 3. The shaman decides
whether he or the client should take this journey. If the latter,
the client lies on the floor in a precise trance position and is
given detailed instructions for the journey. The shaman maintains a
steady beat throughout on a special medicine drum and will give the
client other instructions as necessary. 4. When
the client brings the soul part back, the shaman takes it and blows
it into the Energy Body of the client, then uses a rattle to seal
the soul part in by rattling around the client's body four times. 5.
There will then be a discussion of the client's journey and the
shaman may make further recommendations and observations. 6. The
session ends again with smudging. 7. If the
shaman is taking the journey, the stages are the same but the shaman
himself returns the soul part and further explanation and discussion
will be needed.
TRAINING FOR RETRIEVAL WORK
In order to do this kind of work, a soul retrieval practitioner must
have developed considerable skills at journeying and have built a
good working relationship with his own power animals and spirit
allies. Contemporary shamanic practitioners can develop these skills
at workshops now taught in America and Europe, where they will
undertake many hours of supervised journeying into the otherworlds,
and seek objects or energies which have been deliberately hidden.
One person may journey, for
example, and then hide something, such as a personal symbol, in the
otherworlds. Their partner must then enter that world and find it.
Such 'spiritual hide and seek' is powerfully affirmative when
something or someone hidden in this way is found by another with no
prior knowledge of the person who is hiding, of their memories, the
landscape of their personal world, or their interests. Far from
being a land of imagination, a mental landscape, the otherworlds
prove to be something much more - a transpersonal world which exists
outside of us where our soul parts can find a home until it is safe
for them to return.
"Think of a child lost in a
deep wood, cold frightened and alone, who hears a warm voice singing
a song of comfort and love, which he can follow back home and into
the light", is the way one contemporary shamanic practitioner
explains soul retrieval.
Shamans have themselves been
called 'wounded healers', reflecting the fact that most
practitioners have been through a healing crisis of their own as
part of their initiation into shamanism. Their survival and
self-healing is testament to their ability to guide the client
through similar distress and to find an outcome which works.
In Western societies it
would probably be unique to find someone who had not suffered
trauma, injury, neglect or abuse, or to have given themselves away
to others in a dance of power and office politics. We all become
more fragmented every day. But while Western physicians treat the
body and psychoanalysts deal with the mind, the shamans are taking
care of the soul.
About the author: Ross
Heaven is a therapist, workshop leader, and director of The Four
Gates Foundation (www.thefourgates.com).
He is the author of books on shamanism, healing, love, and
relationships, including Plant Spirit Shamanism, Love's Simple
Truths, The Way of The Lover, and Darkness Visible. He also runs
trips overseas to work with shamans and healers, including those of
the Amazon
Ayahuasca
Shaman Retreats; Ayahuasca Vine & Leaves
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