to sacrifice magic at the altar of the mind

an exploration of shamanic soul retrieval practices

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Soul Retrieval is the shamanic art of becoming whole. It is a spiritual practice that restores all of the parts that make you you. 

It’s beautiful…and it can be a little confusing.

Isn’t the soul eternal? Aren’t we all truly divine and whole in our essence, no matter what happens to us in life? Why would part of our own spiritual essence not be present with us? 

These are very good questions, and how we answer them depends a bit on which perspectives we approach this work from…

Because shamanism is a spiritual practice. We’re dealing with spiritual healing. 

And our modern minds are psychologically oriented. We put everything through the lens of mental filters.

Depending on which worldview you’re biased towards, just what exactly is happening during a soul retrieval session might shift significantly.

Which brings me to one of my personal questions: Can the two approaches co-exist when it comes to the tradition and practice of soul retrieval? 

Modern Mind, Timeless Spirit

Soul Retrieval as it is taught within Core Shamanism largely comes to us through the work of Sandra Ingerman and her seminal book of the same name, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self.

Yet the idea that illness and hardship could be the result of soul loss dates back thousands of years and is found throughout the world. 

Now, something happens in our modern minds when we hear this…

Mostly likely, you’re thinking — it’s not the soul that was lost…

• Perhaps part of the personality or an archetypal influence was lost.

• This is what we call dissociation. 

• It sounds like soul loss is actually PTSD. 

• This seems what IFS refers to as an Exile.

• It’s not soul loss — it’s an unhealthy attachment style.

• Maybe this is a metaphor for feeling depleted and out of touch with your personal power or life force energy. 

With the exception of the final statement, notice that all of these interpretations are psychological ones. 

I believe that there is great value in working with our modern-day minds. Humanity and consciousness are simply different than they were thousands of years ago. We have different needs when it comes to feeling whole, embodied, and empowered in our lives today. 

And…we are still the same animals we have always been. Our DNA remembers the power of ancestral healing techniques. Our spirits respond to ancient practices that our minds do not understand. 

As we explore the world of shamanic healing in general and soul retrieval in particular…

We must not sacrifice magic at the altar of mind. 

Spirit & Soul

The foundational idea behind soul retrieval can be found in a wee linguistic nuance: 

The Spirit is eternal. It is the part of you that is always whole, complete, and divine. It is always one with all of spirit and can never be lost. 

The Soul is that part of your spiritual nature that grows and evolves. The Soul experiences separation from the oneness of truth in order to play in the variety of life. 

Although I often use these words interchangeably, which I’m sure instigates much confusion in my readers and students (sorry), this distinction helps us understand the seeming contradiction inherent in soul retrieval…and spiritual healing in general.

You are always whole. You always, always, always have access to your true nature, which is one with all and completely divine. And the more you remember and consciously embody this nature, the more you bring this truth into our current reality. And this changes our current reality in miraculous ways. 

(Psst — this can be done through the art of transfiguration, which we’ll learn at the Soul Retrieval training in September.)

Even though you are whole, the universe is expansive and dynamic. In order to participate in this dynamism, part of your spirit experiences separation — not just in physical form, but in what we refer to as spiritual dimensions as well. This part of you is your Soul. 

Each time you incarnate, your Soul carries a blueprint for your life — your gifts, lessons, joys, loves, dreams, and role in the web of life. This is the spiritual part of you, a compliment to the energetic, mental, emotional, and physical parts of you. 

Since the Soul chooses to experience separation, it can experience illness.

(Confusingly, I call this spirit sickness, even though in this framework “Spirit” is eternal.)

Alas, the limitations of language…these definitions of Soul and Spirit come from Sandra, and they totally make sense to me. And I’ve spent a lifetime not using these exact distinctions, so…💁 I tend to use the term divine to refer to the oneness realms, spirit to refer to the spiritual dimensions of reality, and soul to refer to our individual experiences. Let me know your thoughts on all this in the comments!

So, within this model, while your divine Spirit can never be anything but whole, your Soul can have a wide range of experiences.

Note: You may have picked up that I also make a distinction between the Soul and the energy body. Your energy body — or subtle body/aura/meridian/chakra/all the things that aren’t physical body — exists in the energetic realms of reality that underlie our physical reality. Our Souls enliven both our energetic and physical bodies, so we can look at spirit sickness, energetic sickness, and physical sickness as both distinct and interconnected.

Being Ensouled

When you are fully ensouled, you more naturally live in a state of coherence: Your thoughts and actions are in harmony, and you feel more at home in your body. You have inspiring visions for your life and the world, and you feel capable of doing what you are here to do. Your entire self is aligned, and self-sabotaging patterns fade away. 

Yes, you encounter challenges, pain, loss, failure, grief, and all the parts of being human…but somehow you don’t take them so personally. You feel them fully as a natural part of life, and then you are more able to transmute difficulty into loving energy that carries you forward. 

You’re heart stays equally open in the face of pain and joy.

This is our natural state, and it is your birthright to be full of your own soul.

Unfortunately, just as our physical bodies can become injured and sick, our mental processes and beliefs can get wacky, our emotions can feel painful, and our energy bodies can have blockages and leaks…our spiritual souls can suffer, too.

Before moving on, I want to make one thing very, very clear: This is normal.

Do you have digestion issues and still live a full life? Get depressed sometimes but maintain healthy friendships? Show up to work even with a sprained ankle? 

Well, you can live a perfectly satisfying life with a bit of soul loss, too. 

But there are techniques and strategies that can help you fix your digestion, feel a little happier, and heal that ankle…just as there are ways to restore soul loss. And we feel better when we take care of ourselves. 

Symptoms & Causes of Soul Loss

“We all spend a tremendous amount of psychic energy looking for lost parts of ourselves. We do this unconsciously, and we do this in many different ways—generating dreams and daydreams, experimenting with numerous spiritual paths, creating relationships that mirror back to us our missing parts. Many of us today don’t feel totally whole, don’t feel as if we are all here. Few of us live as fully as we could. When we become aware of this, we want to recover the intensity of life, and the intimacy, that we once enjoyed or of which we hold an image. We want to come home more fully to ourselves and to the people we love.” —Sandra Ingerman

Here, Sandra speaks to the low grade, chronic condition of soul loss. Of knowing that there is more vibrancy and meaning that you are meant to experience. Of searching for something outside of yourself to fill in what’s missing.

We all do this. 

Traditionally, soul loss was seen to occur in response to trauma: Part of the soul essence separates from the whole as a self-protective measure. This can happen in response to all kinds of ongoing or acute traumas — abuse, war, accidents, loss of loved ones, miscarriage, illness, divorce, surgery, addiction…

In my experience, modern society doesn’t support us being fully ensouled.

Children are reprimanded for being their authentic selves and taught to conform. Teenagers are initiated into adulthood with shame. We’re sold stories about what a good life consists of, and we sacrifice our truths in order to achieve this false vision. Loneliness, disconnection from the Earth, witnessing the traumas of others via media…the list goes on.

All of this leads to soul loss, too.

The effects of soul loss might be subtle and chronic — much like Sandra describes in the quote above. Or, they can have more noticeable consequences: addiction, fatigue, chronic illness, dissociative tendencies, lost memories, strings of bad luck, self-sabotaging patterns, ongoing depression, and even, in extreme cases, coma. 

Our language describes what soul loss feels like: something is missing, not feeling like yourself, sleepwalking through life, feeling dead inside, nobody’s home…

When the soul is restored, these effects may melt away on their own. More often, however, the other healing work we’re engaged in becomes more effective. Our bodies seem to have more energy to heal with, we feel more motivated to stick with the changes we want to implement, and the psychological inquiry we engage in yields faster and more impactful results. 

Where does the soul go?

“I think the reason the practice of shamanism still exists today after forty thousand years is due to the ability of the spirits to change the work to fit the evolution of consciousness of the people.” — Sandra Ingerman

The feeling that something is missing, or the idea that “you’ll be happy when…” are common human experiences. We keep searching for something outside ourselves to make us satisfied. 

While timeless spiritual wisdom tells us that everything we need is already within, shamanic perspectives actually acknowledge that yes, something is missing. You’re just not going to find it in the places you’re currently looking in.

But is the soul really missing? 

From shamanic perspectives, the part of the soul that leaves is somewhere in the otherworlds, non-ordinary reality, or the dreamtime depending on the language you use. It is the role of the shaman to traverse these realms, find that soul part, and bring it home. 

Yet, in Tibetan shamanism and even many Western Mystery traditions, we are microcosms of the macrocosm. The entire universe is within us, including the realms of non-ordinary reality. So, while we may feel disconnected from a soul part, it is still within us, hiding beyond our awareness. 

This has some similarities to modern psychotherapeutic theory — the idea that parts of ourselves dissociate and get buried in our subconscious. These parts aren’t gone, but they aren’t accessible either.

Which brings me back to our modern minds…

As consciousness has evolved, it’s become more important to integrate intellectual and psychological awareness into our healing work. 

And, we are still born from our ancestors. Both our DNA and our souls respond to the mythic and magic medicine rooted in thousands of years of shamanic practice. 

There’s a danger in putting all shamanic and spiritual healing through the lens of modern psychotherapy. The miraculous healings I’ve witnessed when a shaman or shamanic practitioner retrieves a soul on behalf of a client are just that — miraculous. The healing is a gift, and it didn’t require years of therapy or internal struggle to receive that blessing. A spiritual healing creates the conditions for psychological wellness to be cultivated.

But I’ve also seen how impactful it can be for someone to retrieve their own soul essence through guided journeys, unburdening exiles (in IFS language), and inner excavation. This work can create a psychological healing that welcomes the exiled spirit home.

I have a lot more to say on IFS, parts work, and soul retrieval…but that’s for another article. And for the upcoming Soul Retrieval workshop I’ll be sharing in September ;) 

Beyond the Individual Soul

There’s another benefit to celebrating the magical side of soul retrieval — we can heal beyond our individual lives. 

From animist perspectives, communities have souls. Homes have souls. Lands have souls.

The shamanic practice of soul retrieval can be used to heal the collective spaces and places we live within with far reaching impacts for all of us. 

(Yup — we’re definitely doing some soul retrieval for the land at the September workshop!)

Learning this practice empowers you to be a true Earth ally, to support humanity’s evolution, and foundational levels. 

Coming into Cosmic Balance

When we are fully ensouled, we are kind. I like the 8Cs that IFS theory uses to describe our true self: compassion, curiosity, clarity, creativity, calm, confidence, courage, and connectedness.

If everyone were connected to their full souls and spiritual nature, if everyone could embody these qualities more consistently, imagine how the world would change. 

The art and practice of Soul Retrieval is an essential skill for these times. I truly believe that the more people learn this, the more collective healing we’ll see.

If you are at all drawn to explore this powerful spiritual healing methodology, please consider joining me this September in Sisters, OR for a five-day training.

If you are a healer, therapist, coach, body worker, or spiritual practitioner of any kind, I highly encourage you to join us. 

Or, if you simply want to learn new ways to heal the Earth and our animal kin in the midst of such challenging ecological changes, then join us. 

Or, if you just love to learn about spirit stuff and consciousness, then definitely join us!

Psst: If you’re reading this and wish to receive a soul retrieval, you can sign up for a shamanic healing session with me here: