other realm of understanding where their concerns are set in context against a bigger, deeper picture of reality. Here, for the first time, they see their true role and their unique place in the universe.
The shaman’s explanation is simple. Whenever we are traumatised, abused, hurt or neglected, parts of our soul split off and take refuge or become lost or trapped in what shamans call the ‘otherworlds’. Physical accidents, emotional trauma, abuse, childhood neglect, assault, and rape are a few of the more common reasons for visiting a soul retrieval practitioner. Love is also a culprit – sometimes an ex-partner will not or cannot return our soul parts to us when a relationship ends (“Till death us do part”) – and sometimes we give ourselves too freely in the first place (“All that I am I give to you”).
The soul part, faced with this hurt, takes flight. In itself, this is an action of positive healing and self-protection. It is only when the loss of this energy begins to have detrimental effects that the soul part needs to be returned.
Then, the task of the shaman in all cultures has been to search the otherworlds to find these fragments, or to guide the client so that she may enter this space to find them for herself, and then to bring them back. It is the return of these soul parts which explains the new feeling of wholeness on the part of the client, say the practitioners. The client is re-united with self and so, for the first time, actually can see their true situation and place in nature.
There is another aspect of healing here too. The shaman’s journey is a mythic, archetypal, one, the quest of the hero to find lost treasure, which, by its very