To go with the flow of experiences and changes that life continually offers requires a flexibility of spirit to adapt to change, to loss and trauma, and to evolution itself. In practice, we ideally flow with life by fully experiencing all the emotional ups and downs that arise during the course of living. Emotions are just energy – everything is energy – and the energy of emotions are meant to move through us. When we feel emotions fully, they process and pass.
Sometimes, however, an experience can be so traumatic that we can’t bear to be fully present to the emotions that arise. A part of us may energetically disconnect to survive the experience, leaving us feeling numb and not quite the same. Psychologists call this “dissociation.” This detachment can also express as a sense of feeling “stuck” or unable to move forward. Shamanic healing practices can be a potent tool for addressing the after-effects of trauma and accelerating personal growth.
Shamanism is an ancient world-view (not a religion), which has existed for over 100,000 years by indigenous peoples all over the globe. It’s based on the spiritual belief that there is one energetic source that imbues all things with life. In shamanism, it is thought that the disconnected, energetic parts of us that can “leave” during trauma are parts of the soul or spirit. The shamanic term for this disconnection is “soul loss,” and it occurs in both people and animals.
When a trauma ends, a soul part usually can’t return on its own volition. The soul part becomes stuck in what shamanism calls “non-ordinary reality.” As a shamanic practitioner, my work is to bring back the disconnected soul parts that needed to leave in order to survive a traumatic experience.
What constitutes “trauma”? Trauma can include events like abuse (verbal, physical and sexual), surgeries, car accidents, deaths, addiction, rape and molestation, alcoholism, illness, divorces and the many similar forms of loss of loved ones and pets. Unfortunately, most of us will have some soul loss over the course of a lifetime.
Ultimately, to thrive, we’d like to have accessible as much of the innate power of our soul as possible. We want energetic wholeness to keep evolving, to stay healthy, loving, vulnerable, connected, and responsive to life and its challenges. Disconnected soul parts create disempowerment, which can lead to disease. When a soul part leaves, what moves in can be what’s shamanically termed “intrusions.” Intrusions are misplaced energy that can be cleared along with the retrieval of soul parts, in order to restore harmony and empowerment.
Shamanic practitioners also work with the souls parts of deceased people as well as living ones. When a death is sudden or traumatic, or if a person doesn’t want to leave behind loved ones, a part of that soul can also get stuck in non-ordinary reality, unable to fully transition to its source, where it evolves. That might occur if the deceased person was not able to have a peaceful death in which relationship grievances were healed, inner conflicts were resolved, and death was accepted.
This type of shamanic work with the deceased is called psychopomp. It’s done for the deceased parents, children, friends, ancestors, or life partners of the shaman’s clients. Often, the symptom of a need for psychopomp is “stuckness” or unhappiness in the clients, themselves, seeking help. Because we are all energetically connected by love, when someone we’re close to dies in that way, we are energetically affected as well.
Shamanic soul retrieval and extraction work is an immensely helpful companion to psychotherapy and many other forms of healing practices, including help for people with chronic or acute illness. Shamanic healing sessions work on the root, energetic causes of imbalances, including karmic causes. People don’t need a lot of soul retrieval sessions in their lifetime, but that number depends on how much trauma they’ve experienced or how much they’d like to grow in health and in consciousness.
If you feel like you’ve never been quite the same since a certain time period or event occurred, or if you’re troubled by recurring patterns that seem immovable, you might want to explore shamanic healing. Centuries-old shamanic practices provide a powerful key to accelerating healing as well as expanding joy, love, purpose, and fulfillment.
Paula M. Rosenfeld
Drawing on an array of ancient and contemporary energy re-balancing, clearing, and reading modalities, I have been helping clients to move into greater happiness, health, and fulfillment since 1993. My shamanic training in the ancient art of soul retrieval and extraction came primarily from world renowned author, shaman, and psychotherapist Sandra Ingerman, whose book Soul Retrieval; Mending the Fragmented Self, has hugely impacted the use of shamanic methods in modern-day offices like Heartwood. This profound shamanic technique helps heal the wounds of trauma by restoring parts of us that energetically disconnected to survive pain and suffering. Restored to wholeness, we rejoin the natural flow of life. We regain capacity to creatively live our purpose. The soul is eternal and the work is multi-dimensional, restoring soul parts from past lives, current lifetime, and in-between lifetimes. Sessions enable clients to deepen self-awareness and return to a natural state of joy and connection.
Credentials: Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Certified Oneness Trainer, Certified Meditation Instructor, Certified Intrinsic Coach®