Shamanic Healing For Trauma
How shamans See trauma
From the shamanic perspective, trauma, any event that is shocking, overwhelming, or frightening, can cause a part of your soul to flee to seek safety. This is an adaptive, protective mechanism.
Modern psychology refers to this as dissociation. Sometimes, those parts get stuck or don't feel safe enough to come back. Shamanic healers refer to this as soul loss.
Soul loss can happen during a violent event, including surgery. Childhood abuse, shock, or grief often causes soul loss. Emotional and psychological abuse can cause a slow loss of soul essence.
Symptoms of soul loss
Here are some of the most common symptoms of shamanic soul loss that shamans see in practice:
Feeling Incomplete: A profound sense of something missing in life, often without being able to pinpoint what it is.
Chronic Depression: Persistent feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or disconnection from life, which might not be linked to specific life events.
Emotional Numbness: A lack of ability to feel emotions, leading to feeling disconnected from oneself and others.
Memory Gaps: Experiencing significant periods of time that one cannot remember or having a general sense of forgetfulness.
Chronic Illness: Unexplained physical ailments that don't respond to conventional medical treatments might be interpreted as signs of soul loss in shamanic traditions.
Lack of Vitality: Persistent fatigue, low energy, or a feeling of being drained, even without physical exertion.
Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms: Symptoms similar to PTSD, such as flashbacks, anxiety, or hyper-vigilance, especially following a traumatic event.
Difficulty Moving On: An inability to recover from past events, leading to feeling stuck or unable to progress.
Identity Crisis: Feeling uncertain about who one is or feeling like a part of oneself is missing or has changed fundamentally.
Dissociation: Experiencing a disconnection from reality or feeling as though one is observing oneself from outside one’s body. Dissociation is probably the most common symptom of soul loss.
Soul Retrieval
Throughout the ages and across cultures, shamans have practiced variations of a ceremony called soul retrieval to help people and animals heal from the effects of trauma.
This is a simple but profoundly effective ceremony where the healer works with their helping spirits to return one or more soul essences to the client. Usually, the client will have some work to do after the session to fully integrate the newly returned soul essence.