Soul Retrieval
The Journey back to wholeness
by Dawn Paul
As a Shamanic healer of the Inca tradition, a significant part of my work involves journeying into the Lower World in order to bring back to my clients their lost soul parts – a healing method called Soul Retrieval. 
Soul loss sounds terrifying, but it is extremely common and all of us have suffered soul loss in some form or another, either in this or a former lifetime.
In my view, true healing cannot take place until soul loss is rectified. Soul loss usually occurs during situations of high trauma, a life - threatening accident or illness for example, losing a loved one unexpectedly, seeing a parent leave home, or most commonly, sexual abuse. However, soul loss can also occur for “lesser” and less dramatic incidents, such as hearing some bad news, feeling unloved by a parent, or going through a nasty divorce.
So, how does soul loss manifest itself? How does someone know that they are affected by this? In my experience, clients tend to make statements such as, “ I don’t feel all here” “ I feel lost” “I feel part of me is missing” “ A part of me died when she died” “I feel like I am constantly searching for something, but I don’t know what it is”– all these statements indicate soul loss to me. Sometimes, clients tend to go down what I call “rabbit holes” – they have suffered soul loss to some extent, but they do not associate the feeling with themselves, so I hear such things as “ I just can’t find the right spiritual path,” “ I am desperate to find my natural parents so I know who I am,” or “ I can never seem to find the right job/man/woman” – so subconsciously, these people know that something isn’t right, but mistakenly are looking outside of themselves. What they are really looking for is their whole self.
What I have come to understand with this work is that soul loss actually seems to occur as a form of protection mechanism. Sadly, many of us have read magazines articles written by women who have been seriously sexually assaulted. Most of the time the event is described like this “…. the strangest thing happened while the abuse was taking place, ….it was as if I was looking down upon myself, I could see it all taking place below me, but I was curiously detached from it.” This is actually describing the process of the soul leaving the physical body, because it did not want to experience what was happening to the physical body at that time. What then appears to happen is that part of the soul returns to the body, but part goes to a place of safety. My own philosophy on this is that firstly it may perhaps be too difficult for the person to cope if all the soul returned to the body, with all the memory of what happened, and secondly, the soul has realised, maybe for the first time, that it is not entirely safe within the physical body, so part of it leaves for the safety of the Lower World.
Now, I tend to be very careful mentioning the words “Lower World” to my clients. It almost always causes consternation – “What?!! You mean part of my soul is in HELL??” they cry. But this is not the case at all, in fact, it is quite the opposite. Shamanic traditions differ, but most work on the basis of three worlds. The Lower World (the earthly domain) the Middle World (“this” world) and the Upper World (the spirit and heavenly domains), which are different dimensions. So what seems to happen is that the soul parts tend to flee to the safety of Pachamama, - Mother Earth.
I journey to the Lower World on behalf of my client and visit the four chambers of the soul. I retrieve the lost soul part and a gift and sometimes an animal, bird, or insect will want to come back with me in order to be of assistance in some way. For example a butterfly may come back, to teach the person how to fly through life more lightly, how to taste the sweet nectar of life, to bring colour into the person life.
The second part of the session –“Mesa Proxy” is immensely healing for the client – we find out more on such a deep level and I never fail to marvel how connected everything turns out to be. Clients often realise such great truths about themselves and seem to be given the tools they need in order to move forward with their lives. I always feel truly blessed to be able to assist my clients in this way.
Dawn Paul - shaman of the Inca Lineage of Peru.
www.liberate-online.co.uk
Partner Earth: A Spiritual Ecology
by Pam Montgomery
Partner Earth provides a wide range of practical exercises, based on traditional wisdom, visualizations, and the author's experience as an herbalist, that enable one to create sacred space, find plant and animal allies, and embrace the spirit in all life that can help heal the rift between individuals and their environment.
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