Because of its power, because it can be so life changing, soul retrievals with clients are one of my favourite pieces of work.
In the Soul Retrieval process we work with a limiting belief or repeating pattern that is keeping you, the client, stuck.
I do a shamanic journey for you into the Underworld, the Lower World, the world of the unconscious mind. I visit the cave of the original wound, then the cave of the contract made at the time of the wounding (in order to survive), the cave of the lost soul part (the part that was split off at the time of the wounding in order to be safe) and the cave of gifts with a gift whose qualities that might assist you in your life right now, then on the way out of the underworld I see a creature with qualities that might be of service.
This journey is quick. It’s simply to receive the words and the images, it’s not to get involved in understanding the story.
It is then up to you to interpret the information that I receive in the second part of the process. Unlike some other shamanic traditions I do not interpret. You are in charge of that process. The journey tends to produce archetypes, myths and fairy tales. Sometimes you may recognize the core wound immediately as being from this lifetime. But sometimes you may not recognize it at all because it comes from a past life – the karmic lineage. And sometimes you may recognize it as being from the genealogical lineage – survival patterns and splits that have been carried down the family line, consciously or unconsciously.
The first intention of the work is to rewrite the contract from this day forward. Not because the old contract was wrong in any way. We (or our ancestors) wrote it at a time when we had been wounded and it was necessary to protect us. But it may no longer serve us today. By holding onto it, it becomes a limiting belief which continues to manifest in our lives. To change the pattern, we need to re-write the contract.
The second intention is to reunite the lost soul part, which we (or our ancestors) split off for its protection, within the psyche.
The gift and the power animal have qualities that may help us as we move to a new way of being, living by the new contract and integrating the lost soul part.
On the encouraging side, my teacher Alberto Villoldo says, I’ve found that one soul-retrieval session can accomplish what may take many years to heal employing psychotherapy. This is because to recover our innocence and trust in life we must renegotiate obsolete soul contracts and discard limiting beliefs, which happens during the soul retrieval journey. Later he adds that More often than not, these pledges are made silently and honoured without discussion, or even consciousness, for many, many years. Although they may have worked well at the time of our wounding to create a sense of security in a world we deemed unsafe, they go on to become the source of our limiting beliefs about abundance, intimacy, love and success. In other words, a single soul contract will spawn dozens of limiting beliefs.