By Mateo Sol | Loner Wolf
Beneath most headaches is a heartache.
It’s a natural protective mechanism of ours to think our way around wounds instead of feeling our way through them. In this day and age, we just want an escape.
What can we do to stop feeling the pain we’re feeling? How can we change ourselves to be more acceptable? How can we numb ourselves to outside forces beyond our control?
No one wants to feel pain. But most of us carry around heavy clouds with us all day. We can’t quite pinpoint what the source of our suffering is – we just know that it hurts. This pain forms the vague backdrop of our lives and is so persistent, yet subtle, that it becomes the new “norm” for us.
Related Article: Balance Your Sacral Chakra For More Joy, Sensuality & Emotional Awareness
Whenever we suffer physical or emotional trauma, it is said that a part of our soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. With every cut and wound, our essence and vitality grow weaker. This process is called “Soul Loss” which I’ve previously written about.
Now, I want to explore with you how to recover these soul fragments. This process is known as “Soul Retrieval.”
What Is Soul Retrieval?
When I was a young boy my Abuela (grandmother), would do something very strange. Every time I fell or hurt myself, she would quickly grab me by the head and whisper into my ear a prayer. This prayer was to call my Soul back.
I was always puzzled by her sudden prayers until she explained to me why she did them. In shamanic cultures, Soul Loss is understood to be a spiritual illness. In other words, when a part of our soul fragments, all kinds of emotional, physical and mental diseases occur from the diminishment of our life force energy. It is therefore seen as vital for parts of the soul to return back to wholeness again.
To some extent, we all experience a level of Soul Loss in our lives. Many people don’t feel whole. Ask yourself this question, “When was the last time I felt absolutely whole and complete?” If you’re like most people, that time may have been back in childhood. Perhaps you can’t even remember a time when you ever felt whole.
Because of the mass phenomenon of Soul Loss, issues such as addiction, chronic sickness, diseases, abusive relationships, crime, shopaholism, and workaholism run rife in our society. All of these issues stem from Soul Loss.
9 Causes of Soul Loss
In shamanism Soul Loss describes the fragmentation of the soul. And interestingly, Soul Loss shares similarities with what contemporary psychology calls“dissociation”: the splitting of the psyche in response to traumatic, shocking or difficult experiences. This is often the cause of many Core Wounds that affect us later as adults.
So what causes Soul Loss? Here are some common examples:
1. Any form of abuse, e.g. sexual, emotional, physical or mental.
2. An event of prolonged grief, pain and fear that made you feel helpless or impotent.
3. Deep-seated addictions e.g. substance dependency.
4. A near-death or out-of-body experience.
5. Being forced to act against your morals.
6. An experience of intense rejection or abandonment.
7. Witnessing the unexpected death of someone.
8. A sudden and shocking accident.
9. Entering a relationship without strong boundaries of Self (resulting in an unhealthy relationship and losing your personal power).
Soul Loss and dissociation are devices that the brain uses to survive potentially destructive traumatic events. In other words, Soul Loss happens to protect you initially, rather than to hurt you. This is a natural protective mechanism. However, every wound must be healed, otherwise, it festers. When we neglect to heal these “blocked off” parts of ourselves and give them air, we are left with a chronic feeling of unwholeness. Eventually, we can suffer from chronic issues such as anxiety, depression, physical and mental illnesses as a result.
A simple example of Soul Loss can be found in cultures that frown upon expressing emotions like “anger.” A child, for instance, will quickly learn that expressing anger results in punishment or withdrawal of love by their parents. As a result, this child will eventually learn to “split off” this “unacceptable” part of themselves until they no longer accept this emotion as belonging to them. What happens to this anger? It is suppressed. For this reason, Soul Loss plays a huge role in creating our Shadow Selves.
Often psychotherapy is used to try and treat Soul Loss. But while the psychotherapeutic approach can sometimes work, often it reaches a stalemate. Why? Because psychotherapy perceives this “missing part” as being lost somewhere in the individual, rather than preserved in the realms of the collective unconscious. Here, the psychotherapist isn’t working with the whole person.
Related Article: What Exactly Is Your Soul? Brian Weiss: The Truth About Your Soul (Video)
The shaman, on the other hand, assumes that Soul Loss is a spiritual illness and that the dissociated parts can leave the body and wander into other realms (non-ordinary reality), as a result of shock or trauma. These realms are often inaccessible and are guarded by heavy defenses that make it difficult (or impossible) for the affected person to go through on their own, without the guidance of a Shaman.
Over time, the Soul Loss resulting from not integrating these traumatic experiences can become obstacles in our personal development. This Soul Loss can result in distressing, debilitating and incapacitating defense mechanisms that manifest as anxieties, depression, addictions, and compulsions as well as chronic fatigue.
