What is Soul Retrieval?

Shamanism is the oldest spiritual practice known to humankind. A shaman is as a practitioner who has developed the mastery of "accessing altered states of consciousness" and "mediating between the needs of the spirit world and those of the physical world in a way that can be understood by the community. Most shamanic cultures around the world believe that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical trauma a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. By soul I mean our spiritual essence, life force, the part of our vitality that keeps us alive and thriving. It has always been the role of the shaman to go into an altered state of consciousness and track down where the soul fled to in the alternate realities and restore it. In indigenous societies like those of the Pacific Northwest, soul retrieval specialists were often known as soul catchers.

The loss of life force is known as soul loss. It is important to understand that soul loss is a natural thing that happens to us. It is how we survive pain. Our psyche cannot endure the kind of pain associated with a severe emotional or physical trauma. So our psyches have this self protect mechanism where a part of our essence or soul leaves the body so that we do not feel the full impact of a painful experience. In psychology we call this disassociation. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality. It isn't hard to recognize that there is a lot of planetary soul loss today based on how we behave towards each other and the web of life. To learn more, look inside Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self  by Sandra Ingerman.