During the soul retrieval process, the practitioner moves into an altered state of consciousness to travel to realities outside of normal perception (non-ordinary reality), also known as hidden spirit worlds, to retrieve the lost part of the soul.

Once the lost soul is located, the practitioner will “acknowledge the former pain and gently negotiate the soul’s return to the body.” She then brings the soul back to normal reality and (literally) blows the missing soul part back into body through the head or heart.

If you are trained in shamanic journeying you can ask your helping spirits to perform a soul retrieval on your behalf. Or you can ask for a healing dream, where you set the intention to request a soul retrieval to be performed while you are in the dream state.

If these two processes do not create change or healing, working with a trained shamanic practitioner is recommended.

The following checklist can help to determine if soul loss has occurred:

• You have a difficult time staying “present” in your body

• You feel numb, apathetic, or deadened

• Chronic depression

• You have problems with your immune system and have trouble resisting illness

• You were chronically ill as a child

• Memory gaps of your life after age five where you sense that you may have blacked out significant traumas in your life

• Struggle with addictions, e.g. alcohol, drugs, food, sex or gambling

• Find yourself looking to external things to fill up an internal void or emptiness

• Have difficulty moving on with your life after a divorce or the death of a loved one

• You suffer from multiple personality syndrome

Within situations of physical and emotional abuse, neglect, and trauma, there are many experiences in life that can be too difficult to bear. Soul loss is an understandable response to spiritual woundedness and the deep fragmentation of one’s soul essence, and ultimately leads to an internal dissociation from natural balance.

Soul retrieval is not a quick fix. If you have done a lot of personal work, the soul retrieval might be the end of the work. If not, the soul retrieval is just the beginning.

No matter where you may find yourself–at the beginning or near the end of working through an issue–the most important factor in all healing work is you.

You have to be willing to do the work that is necessary to participate in your own healing. You will have to be willing to look at yourself with new eyes, from a new perspective and as an embodiment of completion and wholeness, while knowing that willingness is the impetus for great change–which always begins with the heart.