What is Shamanism?

Shamanism is an ancient healing art, dating back at least 40,000 years and was used by most indigenous cultures in the world. This healing method emphasizes that all experiences affect your soul and that all healing comes through the soul. In shamanic cultures, the care of the soul is extremely important. In fact, it is the most important aspect of healing. The shamanic belief is that a human being is first and foremost a soul having a human experience, not the other way around. If the soul is cared for properly or is healed through the process of soul retrieval, other healings can then manifest in the mental, emotional, and physical bodies of an individual person.

Learning about shamanic healing practices and soul retrieval became imperative for me.  I strongly felt that I needed to have a soul retrieval and the information about journeying stimulated wisdom that already resided in my soul. I remembered lifetimes of being a healer and my knowledge from previous lifetimes became available to me again. I not only reevaluated my counseling practice, I reevaluated my understanding of the concepts of God, Spirits, possibilities, and other realities-the meaning of life!

We have doctors who specialize in everything imaginable except for the soul in our Western culture. To me, this care of the soul is the missing link in healing and must be cared for first. Fortunately, this is beginning to be understood in our Western culture and more people are seeking out individuals such as shamans for their healing.

Shamanically speaking, all things are energy. The movement or the transmutation of energy is part of the healing of the soul, which is itself energy. In a healing, the shaman moves out the energy that does not belong to a person and refills him/her with the divine energy that is the essence of that person’s true soul. The theory behind soul retrieval is that there is soul loss when an individual experiences powerful or traumatic situations.

Through individual experiences like some sort of trauma, a person loses part of himself as a survival mechanism to withstand the pain. In shamanic terms, this process is called “soul loss.” In psychology, it is called “disassociation.” Psychology does not ask where the lost part goes and how one gets it back.  In the practice of shamanism, when a piece of the soul or energy leaves, it actually goes into another reality and is lost from the person. A void then exists in that person’s soul. Think of the soul as a giant jigsaw puzzle. When you experience a trauma, a piece of the puzzle is lost, leaving an empty space in the puzzle. When this soul loss occurs, a soul retrieval is necessary to restore wholeness. In a process called journeying, a shaman is trained to enter an altered state of consciousness and travel into different realities to find and retrieve the lost soul parts. The shaman then literally blows these parts back into the client via the heart and the top of the head, restoring wholeness to the client.

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