Warning this post contains information about Shamanism and Soul Parts Retrieval, and might peak your curiosity.
Tomorrow is my session with my Shaman. For those who aren’t familiar, a Shaman is someone who is trained and gifted with the ability to walk in both worlds, the spirit world and the earthly world that we all know and experience. Shamanism is an ancient healing tradition, a way to connect with nature and all of creation.
I believe that as a good therapist is it monumentally important to always do my own personal deep work so that, in serving myself, I can serve others better. So, as I was interviewing the last of many therapists , and decided it wasn’t a good fit, I knew it was time to “try a Shaman”.
Anyway, I see her tomorrow and I haven’t finished my homework. I know I feel like many of my clients when I assign homework to deepen or anchor their work. A part of me feels a bit of a panic and wants to rush and finish it now, for a moment I think what will she think, what will I say. Then I breathe and compassionately come back down from wherever I was and remember I have already done the homework.
The homework was really important as during our last session she performed a process known as a “Soul Parts Retrieval” for me. Soul Parts Retrieval is an experience that involves retrieving a lost piece of ourselves; a piece that, due to a trauma, was left out in the world, stuck back in time when the event occurred. It is part of the reason why someone might not feel complete or whole in their life. Or, it could be part of the reason why we may repeat patterns of behavior that no longer serve us. Or, it could be why we do lots of personal work around the same issue without feeling truly different. For me, my four-year-old self sustained the trauma of witnessing my parents’s divorce. I was four when my dad moved out and it was an incredible difficult experience for all of us. That event was a benchmark moment in my life that impacted so much of my life’s trajectory.
My homework was to write a “welcome home letter” to the parts of my soul that returned. I felt the shifts deep inside and I knew she was already at home inside my heart.
The Soul Retrieval parts process was amazing, full, and loving. When my shaman described what was revealed to her while she was working on me, the recounting brought both of us to tears. The retrieval is also about collecting and integrating pieces of ourselves that we have discarded, kept hidden, or the parts of us that have gone deep underground in our unconscious, due to trauma. There is a strong synergy between this work and the psychological concepts concerning the unconscious self that famed psychiatrist Carl Jung gave birth to.
We can use our radical courage to go deep inside and reclaim our own gifts again. I can already feel a deeper confidence, a reassurance that my life’s path is full-bodied and amazing, that my life’s course is the way it is supposed to be. I feel more patience for trusting the process, especially the parts of my journey that are messy and dark and nothing like I would have imagined or planned for myself. I feel my hope and ability to love have grown exponentially. I feel so loved and I am so grateful for following my intuition by knowing when it was time to deepen my work and “ try a Shaman”.
If you are curious about these retrievals, or if you know it is time to deepen your work in other ways, please contact me. Your heart is waiting to feel whole again.