The Difference Between Soul Rescue And Soul Retrieval

In shamanic and spiritual traditions, soul recovery practices are based on the understanding that a person’s soul essence or ‘life force’ can become fragmented or lost due to trauma.

While these two shamanic arts are closely related and often assumed to be the same practcie, they refer to different contexts of healing. There is a subtle, but key difference.

Soul retrieval is the most common term used in modern shamanism and it is based on the idea of soul loss.

When a person experiences a severe physical or emotional trauma, such as an accident, abuse, grief, or a difficult breakup, a part of their vital essence may abandon the body to survive the experience. This is essentially a spiritual survival mechanism, similar to dissociation in psychology.

This disassociation might be related to the trauma of a car accident or extreme injury, or perhaps a memory of a time in someone’s life when an attribute of their soul felt threatened or fearful.

Other typical examples include physical, sexual or emotional abuse as a child; a feeling of abandonment after the death of a relative; financial ruin; nearly dying; or loss of a job.

Someone suffering from this kind of soul loss might feel “spaced out,” numb, incomplete, or like they are watching their life from the sidelines. Chronic depression or a sense that “I haven’t been the same” since the traumatic event are common indicators.

 The process of recovery is to awaken self-compassion and reconnect with our natural aliveness and that lost, sacred sense of spirit ~ Tara Brach

These lost soul fragments are actually still associated with us and have a connection with us, but our conscious mind inhibits information from these parts that hold the experience. It typically results in the feeling of something missing in one’s life, a lack of memory of an experience or timeframe, since the fragment is still a part of our soul but the communication path is however inhibited.

These parts can be returned spontaneously as we evolve spiritually, or having done introspection and healing from parts of our life. The fragment not being completely connected also does not mean that there was a severe impact on the quality of life, or the ability to live a normal life.

It simply means that the fragment holds key information that we currently do not have access to, analogous to a document on a computer having been saved in the wrong folder. We need to find where it is filed, by performing a search, and open that file, before its information is once again part of our computer database, and no longer a hidden file.

To conduct a soul retrieval and recover the lost soul energy, a shamanic practitioner enters an altered state of consciousness to journey into the spirit realm. They locate the lost soul fragment and negotiate its return to the physical body.

Indigenous cultures and shamans have known about this process for centuries and have tools to change their state of consciousness such that they can journey out and find these parts, return them to you, and assist you in integrating them back into your etheric field, back into your essence.

To this day there are practitioners who study these techniques and are able to facilitate such an soul healing retrieval. Often when an someone is having a shamanic healing consultation, the practitioner will be balancing out the client’s energy system. During that process the client’s energy system or cell tissue will communicate aspects of importance for healing.

As we search for the parts of ourselves that we long to have returned we subconsciously repeat old patterns of behaviours, situations, and relationships in a hope that we can…retrieve our soul parts ~ Jayne Forster

The healing is typically in two parts. The first part is the transmuting of energies that no longer serve the client, and removing them from the body’s energy system. The second portion of the healing typically is to journey out to non-ordinary reality, asking the client’s higher self and Spirit if there is a part ready to return back for the highest and the best for the client.

The shamanic practitioner may bring that part, and perhaps even additional power animals, back to the client to integrate. It is imperative that the practitioner not be in a place of ego, but truly connected with Spirit and their heart during this process, as we are imbuing that piece back into the energy system of the client.

The client’s experience may seem uneventful, or possibly a little dramatic, as that part comes back in, however it is all in accordance with spirit and for the highest and best of the recipient. Clients do not typically relive the pain of the experience, rather that part simply returns and memories may come forth as that part returns and reconnects with the master database.

Shamanic healing through soul retrieval are a profound form of healing, which bypasses the conscious mind and gains access to the reptilian portion of the brain. Through the shamanic practitioner being connected with their power animal, they are able to get information direct from this part of the brain, while bypassing the analytical.

It is also important that the practitioner also stays available for the soul retrieval recipient and also have a network of support available for the client as they go through the process of reintegrating their fragmented soul energy.

Soul rescue, on the other hand refers specifically to assisting the spirits of the deceased or soul fragments that are stuck in-between worlds. In many traditions, soul rescue or “psychopomp” work involves helping the soul of someone who has passed away, but still remains “earthbound” or disoriented. These spirits are often not aware that they have physically died. The practitioner then guides the lost spirit to cross over into the light or the ancestral realms.

In some shamanic practices, a soul rescue can also be a more intense version of retrieval, where a soul fragment hasn’t just wandered off, but is actively being held captive or has been stolen by another spirit entity or energy cord or attachment. Or, it is stuck in the repetitive loop of a traumatic memory.

If life is too difficult, the part of the soul which is most affected will leave us…If we are lucky, it will quickly return. If not, we may never see it again. This is soul-loss ~ Jonathan Horwitz

The practitioner must actively intervene to free that soul energy. When soul rescue facilitators encounter such entities, they connect and negotiate with them, so that they become aware of the circumstances and then they are led to return to the ‘Light.’ In indigenous cultures the shaman leads the deceased soul to the lower realm, back to the ancestors, to ensure that the soul is returned back to the source of creation.

Once a soul has been rescued, they are then able to recognize that they no longer live in the physical and they then have the ability to visit from the unseen realm their loved ones who are still living. They are no longer in limbo, or a stuck soul. They are complete in the new expression of life as spirit.

Many shamanic practitioners and psychci mediums are called by spirit to be facilitators of soul rescue and it is a skill where the practitioner needs to be comfortable with the vibration of all kinds of energy. By this I mean, you must be equipped to deal with a soul who in this reality may have been an alcoholic, an abusive narcissist, a dangerous felon or even a serial killer who committed atrocious crimes.

You are required to be empathic and compassionate to help any lost soul in their spiritual evolution, despite their past life. As a soul rescue facilitator, clarity and confidence are essential, and a solid personal spiritual practice is non-negotiable.