For more than a decade, Sandra Ingerman has explored the use of shamanic journeying from a psychological perspective. During a journey on behalf of one of her clients, Ingerman’s animal allies introduced her to a healing method she calls soul retrieval after the classical shamanic practice.
excerpts from an interview by Roberta Louis
I was first introduced to core shamanism at a weekend workshop led
by Michael Harner while I was working on my Masters in counseling psychology at the
California Institute of Integral Studies. At that workshop, I learned how to journey
and contact my own spirit helpers in a safe way. I had a profound experience of meeting up
with a power animal who was able to answer a lot of questions that had been troubling
me. It was such an incredible experience for me that I continued to journey a few times a
week.
At that same workshop, I met a woman with whom I started drumming once a week. I kept on
taking workshops with Michael, and at one of his workshops, I asked if anybody wanted
to join us for drumming – and forty people responded. Before long, I was organizing
drumming groups in San Francisco and Berkeley.
I soon began to incorporate core shamanism into my private counseling practice.
I’ve found that journeying is very effective in counseling, because it helps empower
clients to get their own answers. After a few years, I started to teach workshops in San
Francisco, and then Michael invited me to join the faculty of the Foundation for Shamanic
Studies. I have not studied within any traditional shamanic cultures because
I’m more interested in shamanism from a psychological perspective than from an
anthropological point of view. My main interest is in working with people in our culture.
A lot of what I’ve learned about shamanism in the last eleven years comes directly
from my own journeys, and my soul retrieval work is largely based on my own experiential
process. My power animal taught me the technique in a journey
while I was working with a client who was an incest survivor. Years later, I began reading
literature on traditional soul retrieval and I was amazed – I felt as if those
writers in the early 1900s were plagiarizing my work. The fact that I could get the
information I needed on my own, without having to go to an
external source, validated the experiential method of learning.
I consider the soul to be the essence or vital nature of a person. Dictionaries,
philosophers, and even the Catholic Church define soul as the essence of a person, the
vital part that keeps a person alive – so my definition is quite traditional. Soul
loss is when we lose a part of our vital essence. In classical shamanism, soul loss often
manifested as illnesses, comas, or near-death states and meant that the life force had
left the body. Soul loss, as in modern times, occurs when a person suffers a trauma. For
example, incest survivors often remember the experience of being raped or abused from the
perspective of looking down at their bodies. Similarly, people who have had serious
accidents frequently recall out-of-body experiences.
Soul loss is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a way for the body and psyche to
survive severe trauma. However, problems develop when the soul part that split off
doesn’t come back on its own. The soul may have gone out so far and so fast that it
can’t find its way back. If it left because of child abuse, it might not want to come
back. Soul loss in today’s society usually manifests as a symptom called
dissociation – when people feel that they’re watching life as if it’s a
movie and they’re in an observer role. In clinical terms, dissociation is the
separation of whole segments of the personality from the mainstream of consciousness,
which can result in feelings of estrangement and depersonalization.
Other common symptoms are when people feel as if they’re spaced out all the time or
when they can’t remember certain traumatic events, or entire ages of their lives. I
can understand not remembering things that happened before the age of five years old, but
when a person can’t remember even one day of being nine, that’s a signal
something is wrong. Another symptom of probable soul loss is when people have themes, such
as not being able to trust, that go on throughout their lives.
Addiction could also indicate possible soul loss. I’ve found that when people have
lost soul parts, they may try to numb themselves so as to not feel the emptiness within,
or they may attempt to fill themselves up with something external.
Chronic illness may also be an indication of soul loss. If people are not fully in their
bodies, they may not be vital enough to protect themselves from different illnesses, or
they may be unable to keep spiritual intrusions from entering them. Chronic depression
could be another symptom of soul loss, although it could also be caused by power loss.
There is a difference between soul loss and power loss. I define power loss from the point
of view of core shamanism, which teaches that we all have power animals around us who
protect us and keep us healthy. If a power animal goes away and another one doesn’t
come in to take its place, we experience a loss of power which could lead to chronic
problems such as depression, illness, or misfortune.
If a person came to see me with chronic depression, I would journey to determine whether
the problem was soul loss and/or power loss. I would ask the power animal who helps me in
healing clients what the person needed at this time. It’s often more than one thing
– not just a soul retrieval. There are three main forms of shamanic work that I
do with people: power animal retrieval, soul retrieval, and extraction of spiritual
intrusions.
Sometimes, if a person is too fragile at the moment for me to do a
soul retrieval, I just do a power animal retrieval. I journey into nonordinary to search
for a power animal if it is willing to come back and help the person at this point in
time. I am astounded how often clients confirm that the retrieved power animals have been
important motifs early in their lives.
Every soul retrieval is different. I’ve done hundreds of soul retrievals, perhaps a
thousand, and no two have ever been the same. Although there are guidelines, I always
treat each person and each situation as unique. The key, for me, in doing soul retrievals
is working with Spirit. The challenge is always how to move myself out of the way so that
the universe can heal. I have a song that helps me raise my own power, move myself out of
the way, and call my helping spirits to me. Then I use drumming – either live
drumming or a tape – to help me reach a deeper state of consciousness where I can
track the lost soul in nonordinary reality.
This work requires intention and trust – knowing what you need to do and trusting
that you’re going to get the necessary spiritual assistance to do
it. My intention as I go into the journey is to look for any lost parts of my client that
would be helpful for him or her to have back at this point in time. Usually I feel a tug
on my solar plexus, as if I’m being pulled in a particular direction, and I follow
the pull into nonordinary reality. My intention and my power animal help me track the soul
in nonordinary reality, just as one would track an animal or a lost object in this
reality.
The soul might be in the Upperworld or the Lowerworld, or it might still be stuck in the
Middleworld at the time and place of the trauma. For example, the soul might still be
stuck in the living room of the house where the child’s father hit him. It might be
stuck at the scene of an accident.
Usually when I find the missing soul part I experience it as a being about the same age
the client was when it was lost. If something happened to a client at the age of four,
I’ll see a four-year-old child in nonordinary reality.
Next, I approach that part and talk to it. I try to be aware of its emotions –
whether it’s scared or angry or happy to see me. I ask that part if it’s willing
to come back with me. If it says yes, I take it and continue my search, because often
other missing parts may also be ready to come back to help.
If a part doesn’t want to come back with me, I negotiate with it. For example, if it
is a child that was abused, I might point out to it that the situation has changed –
the client is an adult now and can protect it from the abuser. I don’t lie to the
part, however. If I know that my client is still in a bad situation, struggling with
alcohol or drugs or suffering from an illness, I won’t promise the missing part roses
when it comes back. I explain what’s happening and then ask if it’s willing to
return and help at this point in time. So far, in my experience, every part has eventually
agreed to help. Often the soul part will even tell me how it can help. For instance, it
might tell me it’s the strong part, the compassionate part, or the part that knows
how to love.
Next come my biggest challenge. It’s very easy for me to see the souls in nonordinary
reality, but I find that crossing the worlds with them is the hardest part of doing
soul retrieval. For me, it takes extreme concentration to pull the soul or soul parts
with my hands from nonordinary reality into ordinary reality. I bring the soul to my
heart, then I get up and physically blow it into my client’s heart center. Next I
help the client sit up, and I blow it into the top of his or her head. Again, I have to
maintain extreme concentration in order to actually see the soul fill the
client’s body.
In core shamanism, we talk about three worlds – the Lowerworld, the Middleworld, and
the Upperworld. There are many different levels in the Lowerworld and the Upperworld, so
it’s very difficult to describe them. For example, you might
see a desert or forest in one part of the Upperworld, and then you might find yourself
standing on clouds in another part. Incidentally, people learning how to take shamanic
journeys are often surprised to find that these worlds are not the same as heaven and
hell, and that neither world is better or worse than the other.
The Upperworld seems more ethereal to me. I might know that I’m standing on
something, but I might not be quite sure what I’m standing on. The colors are lighter
or brighter than in the Lowerworld. The Lowerworld is very kinesthetic for me. I can
really feel myself sticking my fingers in the earth and I can feel the air on my skin. I
can experience myself in nonordinary reality walking through a forest and hugging a tree
and feeling the bark. Although a lot of people have that sort of experience in the
Upperworld, I don’t.
We probably have all had missing soul parts, but I don’t think every person needs a
soul retrieval. Also, soul retrievals are not something that a person needs to do once a
week for the next five years. A lot of people ask, “How many soul retrievals will I
need to become whole again?” I generally find that unless a person has very serious
problems, one or maybe two soul retrievals should be sufficient. There’s usually one
significant soul part, or perhaps several significant pieces, that a person needs
retrieved in order to move toward wholeness.
Finally, I would like to suggest that soul retrieval could be used for planetary healing.
Obviously, if we as individuals are whole and are acting in a life-giving way, we’re
going to stop abusing and destroying the planet. The Earth is a living organism. I
sometimes wonder if it is possible to retrieve the planet’s soul. The only way I
have worked with this concept is to restore pieces of land that I felt had lost their
souls. Sometimes when I walk onto a piece of land. I’ll get an intuitive hit that it
has lost its soul, so I’ll journey for a ritual that I can do to help. I often feel
my own personal work is moving towards looking at how we can use shamanic journeying
to heal the environment.
I would also like to say something about community. I feel very strongly that the
isolation and lack of real community in our culture has contributed to the amount of soul
loss that we’re seeing today. During my research into how traditional shamanic
cultures used to do soul retrieval, I found that they usually considered it very important
to have community members present at the ceremony. I try to educate my clients about
the importance of having a support system of people around them who care that the souls
has come back. This need for community becomes even more crucial as we look at planetary
issues. One of the most important ways of supporting our own wholeness is to join
together with other people to work on healing the planet.
Roberta Louis is an associate editor of Shaman’s Drum Magazine in Ashland, OR.
This interview was printed with her permission, 541-552-0839.
Home | Archives | Contact
Us | Advertising Rates | Writers
Guidelines | Mission Statement
Index by Author | Index by Topic | Service Directory | Calendar of Events | Horoscopes
Email: Phone: 713.526.8822 or 1.800.640.5191
Mail: P. O. Box 540444, Houston, TX 77254