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”, “I don’t know who I am,”  “I constantly feel like I am missing something,” “I never feel right”, “I always feel detached” – 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 of it leaves, 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. On occasion I have even had clients state “Oh yes, I told my soul to leave me because I knew I couldn’t keep it safe!”

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. During a soul retrieval session, I journey to the Lower World. I can do this mentally without any aids, but I normally use a rattle – many shaman use the beat of a drum. The rhythmic sound of the drum or rattle informs the brain that it is about to “journey” – to travel mentally to another dimension. Once in the Lower World we meet a guide and we are taken to the four chambers of the soul.

The Four chambers

The first chamber shows me where the site of the original soul loss took place, the second shows me any unhelpful soul contracts that have been made – “I will ALWAYS love you” is a common one, (not particularly helpful in subsequent lifetimes though!!) The next chamber is where I find the lost soul part. Most commonly, these show up as children. I see the children very clearly, how their hair is, what they are wearing, sometimes they are holding some treasured item (clients often state afterwards “Oh, that was my favourite dress!” or “yes, that is how my mother used to do my hair”). Occasionally, the children have to be coaxed in order to come back up to the middle world with me. Normally, the minute I open the “door” to the chamber I see them dancing with joy, or most commonly,  they leap upon me, so happy to be reunited with ”themselves” again. The final chamber often contains a gift, something that is intended to help the my client and the newly returned soul part to move forward in their lives. In addition, often 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 how to be light, how to taste the sweetness of life, to bring colour etc.

There have been many instances when I have been in the Lower World and I have thought “you want me to take back THIS???” – to me the item seems completely illogical, but what I have learnt is that whatever I bring back ALWAYS has some relevance to the client, so I never question it. There have been embarrassing times though, such as the time I was doing a soul retrieval for a good friend of mine – a gay male, and the gift I was given for him was a green fairy! But it turned out that the fairy was required to connect him back to his homeland, Ireland!

Second part of Soul Retrieval session

Many traditions just bring back the soul parts, blow them into the persons energy body and leave it at that, but my tradition goes a step further, the second stage of the session involves the client themselves obtaining important information about the soul part and the items bought back to them, such as what qualities the soul part brings back to them, why it left in the first place, why a particular gift has been given to them and how they can use it, for example. It also gives them an opportunity to write new contracts and destroy any unhelpful ones.

The second part of the session is immensely healing for the client 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 all 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.

Listen to Podcast interview with Dawn Paul:

http://libsyn.com/media/psychic/DawnPaul1.mp3 - or download from iTunes [PsychicPodcasts.com]. If you already have iTunes, all you have to do is to click this link for psychic podcasts, and download podcasts directly. Enjoy!

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