When a piece of your soul leaves you and flees to the Other world without returning, you have suffered a soul loss. This is usually due to some form of trauma, whether physical or emotional. Soul Loss is a protection mechanism which serves to protect us from unbearable suffering. In the normal course of events the soul piece should return automatically after a few hours or a day or two — but unfortunately often it does not. In those cases the soul piece has become permanently lost in the Other world and is either unable or unwilling to return. A skilled shaman can retrieve the lost soul piece and restore wholeness to the dis-spirited person. The shamanic healing technique of finding and restoring a lost soul piece is commonly called soul retrieval.
How Does Soul Loss Occur?
As a rule soul loss occurs due to trauma. Children are most susceptible to soul loss, as they are more vulnerable than adults and still more connected to the world of spirit or Other world than most adults are. When a child gets abused or suffers great distress or unhappiness he or she will often instinctively try to escape to the Other world to flee from the pain and to find peace or happiness.
But soul loss affects not only children but people of all ages. Typical triggers for soul loss are accident, injury, shock, trauma or prolonged unhappiness. An event that triggers soul loss in one person may not cause soul loss in others with a similar experience. It depends on how severe the shock or suffering was felt from a subjective point of view. For example, you may break your arm and think is not a big deal. But somebody else may have had a lot of pain, surgery, difficult recovery, inability to work and a whole load of problems around it so the experience was extremely traumatic for them. Generally the more severe the injuries, the higher the likelihood of suffering soul loss.
Physical injury is not a prerequisite for soul loss. It is not unusual for people who were involved in a car accident but suffered no physical injuries whatsoever to have soul loss. The loud sound and the impact cause shock. Your soul thinks you are dying and “ejects”. It may come back later when the shock wears off, or part of it may stay out. Any severe shock can cause soul loss.
Emotional suffering and grief can also trigger soul loss. Frequently the loss of a loved one causes soul loss both in children and adults. In some cases the soul wants to accompany the deceased into the spirit world and is drawn into the Realm of the Dead. This is a place in the Other world that can be dangerous even to experienced shamans. Only a shaman who has gone through a shamanic death initiation can go to these realms without risking injury or physical death! Fortunately it is rare for souls of the living to get stuck there, but I have retrieved the occasional soul piece from this realm.
Grief over separation such as divorce or the end of a relationship can cause a soul loss, as well as the loss of a beloved pet. A prolonged time of loneliness, feeling unappreciated or just being unhappy over a long time, such as working in a job you hate, or being in an unhappy relationship can cause soul loss also. Children who get ignored by their parents and who feel they are not being seen or heard, or aren’t given enough love frequently suffer soul loss.
Any form of sexual abuse, and in particular rape, causes soul loss. Another factor is unconsciousness. Whether the unconsciousness was caused by you knocking your head, or by having anesthesia, through ill health or drug abuse, isn’t really important. Any form of unconsciousness may trigger soul loss. Part of you is “out” during the unconscious phase anyway, and if you don’t return fully, if a part of you stays out, you may end up having permanent soul loss.
What Exactly Happens During Soul Loss?
Due to a trauma a part of your soul decides to leave and escapes into the Other world. The leaving part of your soul looks exactly like you at that time. It is an exact copy of you at that age and time. So if you lost a part of your soul at age 8 years, this part of you will still be an 8 year old, while you may now be in your 40’s! The lost piece of your soul also takes a piece of your energy body with it, leaving a permanent hole in your aura.
Note: This hole cannot be closed permanently until the lost soul piece has returned on its own or has been retrieved. You may go to a crystal healer or Reiki healer and they may temporarily close the hole in your aura, but it will soon reopen as long as a part of you is still missing.
Unfortunately this hole in your aura will also leave you susceptible to entities, demons and psychic attack, combining the suffering of soul loss with suffering from entities. An intact aura can ward these negatives off, but once you have suffered soul loss you don’t have an intact aura anymore. You are now easy game for any entity happening to be around.
Your lost soul piece, having left you, now seeks refuge in some region of the Other world. Quite often this will be the Underworld, as it is a beautiful natural place. But the soul piece could be in almost any other region of the Other world. For example, it may as mentioned above, have accompanied a deceased loved one to the Realm of the Dead. It may return to a place you loved, such as your grandma’s house, and be stuck in the Middle World. It may flee to some wonderful regions of light in the Upper World, or cross over to the Faerie Realm to enjoy magic and enchantment or Oneness with Nature, or it may go to any other realm you have a connection with.
The lost soul might originally have intended to return to you but may linger in the Other world because it enjoys itself there. Eventually it will forget that it should return and lose memory of how it came to be there. Sometimes the lost soul piece will be stuck in a time loop of the original trauma or a symbolic representation of the traumatic situation or the emotion that caused it to leave. Sometimes the soul piece wishes to return but doesn’t find the way back. It has become permanently lost. At other times, the soul piece may be preyed upon by entities or demonic forces that capture it and keep it trapped and feed off it energetically in the Other world. In those cases a warrior shaman is needed who can fight and defeat the negative beings and free the lost soul piece.
Can One Lose Multiple Soul Pieces?
Unfortunately yes. It is in fact common to have lost several soul pieces. But in most cases there is one major soul piece lost, often the primary one, the loss of which has caused the greatest damage. Returning that soul piece to its rightful owner can make a major change in their lives. Minor soul pieces can be retrieved one by one later.
It has been my experience that most people have lost several pieces of their soul, even if their lives weren’t particularly traumatic or unhappy. The loss of your beloved grandma when you were small could have caused a soul loss, or the death of your pet rabbit, even though now as an adult you are long over it. Most of us have experienced relationship break ups and deaths of loved ones.
Collective Soul Loss
Society doesn’t really give proper support for natural life situations, such as death and bereavement. We are not taught to embrace our emotions but rather suppress them. For example, grieving is not socially accepted and people are expected to keep a stiff upper lip and get on with work no matter what — or pop in a few pills to get over the depression. But that isn’t healing, it is suppression of natural emotion. When we are not allowed to grieve we are in fact doing grievous damage to ourselves!
And look what it has done to us: modern society is made up of so many emotional cripples and people on tranquillizers and mood altering drugs. Our unwillingness to embrace our emotions has caused an epidemic of soul loss. One could say that mankind is suffering of serious collective soul loss as well. The collective numbing out that is so apparent in acts of cruelty and lack of compassion in my opinion is largely due to soul loss, both on an individual and collective level.
Could I Lose My Entire Soul?
It is possible, but fortunately this is rare. Only very severe and / or repeated trauma can cause total soul loss. The result of total soul loss would eventually be death, or at the very least coma. In coma there usually is total soul loss. Not just a piece of the soul is missing, but all of it or most of it. A skilled and experienced shaman may be able to bring the soul of the comatose person back if physical damage is not too severe and the soul can be persuaded to return.
Sometimes people think soul loss means that they will become evil or that their soul is lost, i.e. they can’t go to heaven anymore. Soul loss from a shamanic point has nothing to do with being evil, but rather with being damaged. This damage can be healed through shamanic soul retrieval. Your soul is eternal and cannot ordinarily be destroyed. There are two exceptions to this that I know of: one is if you commit spiritual suicide (not physical suicide). You would have to have a total hatred of all life for this. And secondly, the Creator can unmake a soul if it has become so corrupted that there is no redemption possible. Again this is very very rare, it won’t just happen because you were bad, non-religious or have committed murder. God/Goddess/All-That-Is doesn’t judge, but may destroy a part of their creation that doesn’t work out. As simple as that.
If you had total soul loss from a shamanic point of view your physical body would die within a short time as your energy body is severely damaged. Your eternal soul however would go on. You may enter your next incarnation with severe trauma. In some cases I had to retrieve soul pieces that were lost in past lives. This too can happen. It is less frequent than soul loss in the present incarnation, which represents the lessons we have chosen for this turn of the wheel. Do not have any fear of losing your soul. Nobody can take it from you, and as long as you live from the heart, in an emotion of love, you will never damage your soul.
When a Soul Piece Dies
Sometimes due to extreme trauma or prolonged soul loss, a piece of one’s soul can actually die. Though rare, this is a very serious matter. When a part of your soul has died you will be left feeling like the walking dead, virtually as if a part of you has died, which in essence is true. You may be experiencing extreme grief, a feeling of emptiness and hopelessness, often accompanied by severe depression and a sense of futility and apathy. Fortunately even a dead soul piece can be resurrected by a very advanced shaman. I came across a few cases of this type, where I had to resurrect dead soul pieces. This is uncommon but is a problem that needs to be addressed for balance and peace to be restored to the afflicted.
A similar scenario is of a soul piece accompanying a beloved deceased relative to the Realm of the Dead. This is especially common for children who often suffer greatly when their beloved grandmother or grandfather dies, or worse, when a parent dies while they are young. Children are quite fearless and are prone to split a part of themselves to go into the Other world with their loved one. Unfortunately later in life they will never feel whole again and so soul retrieval from the Land of the Dead may be needed to heal them on all levels. The Realm of the Dead is located in the Other world and accessible to all who dare go there. However, there is a price to pay. As shamans venture in this realm their energy and vitality gets gradually sucked out of them. The longer the stay, the worse the damage done. If one were to stay too long, one could actually die, but that will rarely happen as the feeling of being drained is so unpleasant that most will beat a hasty retreat. However, once a shaman has actually embraced death he / she will be immune to the energy of death pervading the Realm of the Dead, and can with ease retrieve lost soul pieces from this region of the Otherworld.
Symptoms of Soul Loss
By now you will probably ask yourself: could I have soul loss, and how would I know? It is really quite easy to find out. In your mind go back to the time before any traumatic incident and try to recall how you used to feel before the trauma occurred. Then compare with your life now. If you feel somewhat diminished you have a soul loss. With soul loss always comes a loss of enthusiasm, which is our natural emotion. While you may eventually get over the actual trauma, such as the death of your grandma, the soul loss persists. After soul loss life never gets quite as joyful and beautiful as it was before.
The Joy of Life is Gone
You may find that your enthusiasm, your trust in life, your enjoyment of life, etc. are greatly diminished. Even when you think you have recovered and are completely over it, if you really look deep inside you will see you are no longer the same, no longer as happy and carefree as before. The birds don’t seem to sing quite as beautifully anymore and even a sunny day seems less bright than it used to be. It is almost as if your world has turned to shades of grey.
Dis-spirited and Depressed
Many sufferers of soul loss feel as if a part of them is missing, as if they are no longer whole. They feel incomplete, even amputated. This feeling is in fact very accurate because they have indeed lost a part of themselves and are no longer whole. The sufferers of soul loss may feel as if they are but a pale shadow of their former selves. Great sadness and depression are typical symptoms of soul loss. The depression can range from mild to extreme, depending on the severity of the soul loss. In severe depression due to soul loss there often is a death wish. The remaining part of the soul wants to join the lost soul piece in the Other world. Depression really is a spiritual disease and is a cry for help from the soul. It shows us that we have lost our way and ourselves and that we need to find ourselves and our predestined path again. The depression of soul loss stems from being dis-spirited, having lost part of your spirit.
Physical Problems
If the soul loss was quite substantial certain functions of the body may have gone at the same time. As I mentioned above, during soul loss you also lose a piece of your energy body. And as the roots of all our sensory organs and cognitive functions are in the energy body, you may lose certain functions of your body. I am aware that what I am stating here clashes with mainstream science, but it is so according to Yoga science and I have found it to be true. When you astral project for example, you see and feel with your astral body. A blind man can still see on the astral, while somebody whose astral body is severely damaged may end up being physically blind without a medical cause being found!
I had a client who had suffered a severe car accident. Though her body healed she was never the same again. She had suffered no head wounds during the accident, but had extreme memory problems ever since the accident which had happened several years before she came to see me. Her memory was so poor that she couldn’t drive her car on her own, as she wouldn’t find the way back home! No matter how often she drove a route, she couldn’t memorise it. After soul retrieval her memory improved drastically and she could drive and find her way on her own again!
This is just one example, which I have personally witnessed. From other healers I have heard stories of people who lost their eyesight, sense of taste or speech after extreme soul loss. These serious disabilities can disappear when the lost soul piece and the vital missing part of the energy body is restored.
Coma and Death
In case of very significant soul loss serious, possibly crippling illness will occur. With near total soul loss the person will usually fall in a coma from which death will result if the soul stays out too long. Total soul loss leads to death within a short time. It is not possible for a totally soulless body to exist for long when the inhabiting soul has departed.
Soul Retrieval
Now that we have had a long look at soul loss, let’s focus on the solution to the problem, which is soul retrieval. The first obstacle in soul retrieval is to actually find the lost soul piece. This is quite a momentous undertaking, considering the Other world is vast! The lost soul piece could be anywhere in the person’s Underworld, in the Middle World, or Upper World. And that’s not all. The lost soul could have slipped over to other dimensions such as the Faerie Realm, or escaped to lost civilizations like Atlantis or Lemuria if the person had strong links with that place or time. There is a vast universe out there and the lost soul could be anywhere in space and time. Finding a lost soul piece is infinitely more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack!
A competent shaman therefore has to be a very good tracker! Everybody has specific frequency which is totally unique. When you know the frequency of somebody you can find them wherever they are and connect to them telepathically or astrally. To find a lost soul piece the shaman follows the energetic signature of the one seeking healing. Some people learn shamanic tracking very easily, others can never get the hang of it. Without tracking there can be no soul retrieval!
Obviously the shaman who attempts soul retrieval should be very skilled in journeying in various Otherworld realms, otherwise how can he / she follow the lost soul? It is not enough to just know how to access the Underworld. What if the soul piece happens to be in the Middle World? What if the soul piece is in a demonic region? Will you have the courage to go there? And courage alone is not enough either. The shaman needs integrity, of light and shadow, of love and power. Be careful in whose hands you give your soul. I would never have believed it, but vampire shamans can actually steal a piece of your soul to use your power and your spiritual gifts. So choose wisely whom you trust with soul retrieval.
Once the shaman has located the lost soul piece the next obstacle may present itself. In the best case scenario a short conversation with the lost soul will dispel its fears and it will return with the shaman who then “installs” the soul piece into the seeker of healing. From my experience such simple cases make up about 20% of all soul retrievals. Other possible scenarios are:
The lost soul doesn’t want to return
The reasons why the soul may not want to return are many. The most common one is probably fear of further suffering. Sometimes the soul enjoys the Other world environment so much it doesn’t want to return to the world of matter. Convincing an unwilling soul to return requires serious psychological skills and sometimes cunning. Occasionally the lost soul has a condition for returning. These are usually simple things and not outrageous demands. For example they want more fun time and not so much work, more spiritual practices. I remember a child soul that requested ice-cream once a week! I usually convey the message from the soul to the client so they can decide how to act on it. Failure to fulfill the soul’s need can lead to the soul piece leaving again.
The lost soul is damaged and needs healing
This is quite common. If the soul piece was lost due to sexual abuse I always heal and cleanse it first before I bring it back and install it in the client. This way the seeker of healing will be spared much pain and any resulting healing crisis will be much milder and shorter.
The soul has been captured by negative entities who are unwilling to release it
Here the shaman has to resort to trickery, negotiation or brute force to free the captive soul piece. Most of the time a fight is unavoidable. Inexperienced shamans and novices to soul retrieval are seldom capable of dealing with powerful negative entities. And no, they do not go away if you give them love! A shaman has to have some backbone and be feisty also. Whilst I usually try to resolve problems peacefully, there are times when one must stand and fight — both in shamanism and in life. Soul retrieval is very complex. Every case is different, you never know what will happen until it happens. A shaman has to be very flexible, courageous and quick-witted!
Once the lost soul piece is freed, healed or has been convinced to return, the shaman will bring it back from the Otherworld. The shaman then installs the soul piece in the seeker of healing by blowing it into their heart, sometimes in other places of the body, depending from where it left. A shaman of vision will know instinctively where it goes, though sometimes the soul piece may specify its proper place.
Integration
On return of the soul piece the seeker of healing usually feels an energy entering them. This can occasionally be accompanied by a vision. More frequently there is a strong emotion on reconnecting with the soul piece. Mostly this is a happy and familiar feeling, a sense of relief, but sometimes the old sadness or trauma will come up again and be experienced once more to then be permanently released during the healing crisis which often follows soul retrieval.
Once the healing crisis is over you will feel so much happier and more complete than you have for a long time. On our journey back to Oneness, of becoming whole again, and of finding our power we must retrieve all lost parts of ourselves and release all accumulated trauma. With every trauma and issue we release we come closer to the Oneness. And with each soul piece we retrieve we become more whole and more powerful. Healing is a beautiful journey. It may be a long journey but it certainly is one well worth taking. It is not only the destination at the end of your journey that matters, but the journey itself!
Enjoy it every step of the way!
Among the indigenous peoples of the world, it is generally understood that traumatic life experiences, when they are serious enough, can result in the fragmentation of our inner, vital essence or soul. Often, these traumatized soul aspects dissociate, resulting in a phenomenon generally known as ‘Soul Loss’.