Someone asked me about this recently, and I said I'd start a thread on the subject. It is a bit hard to talk about, largely because of the idiosyncratic use of the word "soul." In most spiritual contexts, the soul is invulnerable, eternal, immortal--it cannot be lost or found. In the shamanic context, "soul" equates to "life force energy" or maybe "chi"-- but neither "life force energy loss" or "chi loss" sounds right.
Numerous books have been written about the subject, but you can get a lot of info here, so if you are interested, please read it before you go further.
http://www.harusami.com/soul2soul/al.../retrieval.htm
The site mentions Sandra Ingerman--I never met her, but we did correspond for a while--she is a lovely person, down to earth, compassionate, none of the New Agey airy-fairy stuff in her.
Now down to business. Did you ever hear about someone being in an accident and reporting that it seemed as if it was happeneing to someone else--that they were observing what went on, as opposed to having it happen to them? People who have been raped often report this effect. This is classic soul loss, and in many cases, the soul returns spontaneously. When it satys away, the loss of energy manifests in many ways--physical weakness, apathy, depression, drug abuse, chronic anger, sex addiction--anything to fill up the vacancy that was caused by the soul loss.
Most of my own soul retrievals were done by mail. I journeyed to find the individuals lost soul, transferred the energy to a crystal, and sent it to the client along with a personalized ritual for him of her to use. Now someone is sure to be thinking "Phooey and so what --that is just the placebo effect." I say, there is nothing "so what" about the placebo effect--it demonstrates the immense power of one's mind. Just as we create our own illnesses, we can create our own healings. Thing is, doing the damage is the easy part--it is way harder to build a house than it is to burn one down.
However, when doing a sour retrieval face to face, I could literally see life and energy and returning to the eyes of the client. Often, the session would end with both of us being in tears of joy and renewal.
One thing I did notice all too often is that some clients were best described as being of the "I'm broken--fix me" sort, and would not, or could not, accept personal responsibility for their life. These are the same folks who drink the Kool-aid, or die in an essentially fraudulent sweat lodge. For them, a soul retrieval is a sort of psychic band-aid--they feel better for a while, but they continue the same behavior which caused soul loss in the first place.
The soul left in the first place as a sort of desperate survival attempt, went away to be in a safe place. If it does not feel safe when returned, it will sort of flute off into the ozone again.
soul loss and retrieval
