SOUL RETRIEVAL: RECLAIMING THE PARTS OF YOURSELF YOU LOST

 

Have You Ever Felt Like Part of You Is Missing?

Not in a vague, philosophical way. In a real way.

Like something essential left — and never came back.

Maybe you can pinpoint exactly when it happened. The abuse. The accident. The betrayal. The loss. The moment when life broke you open and you were never quite the same.

Or maybe you can't pinpoint it at all. You just know that somewhere along the way, you lost access to parts of yourself. Your joy. Your creativity. Your trust. Your aliveness. Your sense of safety in your own body.

You've tried to get it back. Therapy. Medication. Self-help. Meditation. Journaling. Yoga. And some of it has helped — but there's still this... gap. This sense of incompleteness that nothing seems to fill.

Here's what I want you to know: You're not imagining it. And you're not broken.

Something DID leave. And it can come back.

This is what soul retrieval is about.

What Is Soul Retrieval?

Soul retrieval is one of the oldest and most powerful healing practices known to humanity. It's been practiced by shamans across every indigenous culture — from Siberia to the Amazon, from Africa to the Arctic — for tens of  thousands of years.

The core understanding is this: When we experience trauma, a part of our vital life essence — our soul — can split off and leave.

This isn't metaphor. It's not poetry. It's a spiritual reality that shamans have worked with since the beginning of human healing, and it maps remarkably well onto what modern psychology now calls dissociation.

Think of it this way: When something overwhelming happens — something your psyche cannot fully process in the moment — a part of you leaves to survive. It's actually a brilliant protective mechanism. The part that holds the unbearable pain, the shock, the terror... it goes somewhere else so that you can keep functioning.

The problem is, it doesn't automatically come back.

And when parts of your soul are missing, you're not operating with your full vital essence. You're running on  partial power. And no amount of talk therapy, positive thinking, or lifestyle optimization can restore what isn't there.

Soul retrieval brings those parts home.

What Causes Soul Loss?

Soul loss can happen through any experience that overwhelms your capacity to cope. This includes:

Trauma — obvious and subtle:

• Physical, emotional, or sexual abuse

• Accidents, injuries, surgeries

• Witnessing violence or death

• Natural disasters

• War or combat

• Medical trauma (especially in childhood)

Loss and grief:

• Death of a loved one

• End of a significant relationship

• Divorce

• Miscarriage or abortion

• Loss of a home, job, or identity

Relational wounds:

• Betrayal

• Abandonment (physical or emotional)

• Rejection

• Growing up with emotionally unavailable parents

• Bullying

• Being unseen or unheard as a child

Shock:

• Sudden bad news

• Unexpected life changes

• Anything that happened "too fast, too much, too soon"

Giving yourself away:

• Codependent relationships where you lost yourself

• Staying too long in situations that drained you

• Abandoning your own needs to please others

• "Selling your soul" for money, approval, or security

Ancestral and generational trauma:

• Soul loss can be inherited — passed down through your lineage

• Your great-grandmother's unprocessed grief can show up as your depression

Important: Trauma is not defined by the event. It's defined by your nervous system's response to it. What

traumatizes one person may not traumatize another. A child who experiences emotional neglect may have soul loss just as significant as someone who survived a car accident. We don't rank suffering here. If part of you left, part of you left.

Signs You May Be Experiencing Soul Loss

You feel incomplete or empty — A persistent sense that something is missing — but you can't name what. A void that nothing seems to fill.

You've "never been the same" since a particular event — You can clearly identify a before and after. Before the trauma, you were one way. After, something fundamental shifted — and didn't shift back.

Gaps in your memory — Especially from childhood. Whole years you can't remember. Blank spaces where memories should be.

Chronic depression or anxiety that doesn't respond to treatment — You've tried everything. Therapy helps a bit. Medication takes the edge off. But underneath, it persists.

Difficulty being fully present — You're physically here, but not really HERE. Dissociation. Spacing out. Feeling like you're watching your life from outside your body.

Addictions and compulsive behaviors — Addiction is often an attempt to fill the void left by soul loss — or to numb the pain of incompleteness.

Feeling disconnected from your body — Not feeling at home in your physical form. Numbness. Difficulty experiencing pleasure.

Recurring patterns you can't break — The same relationship dynamics. The same self-sabotage. The same situations, different faces.

Inability to move forward — Feeling stuck. Like part of you is frozen in the past.

You say things like:

• "I've never been the same since..."

• "Part of me died that day"

• "I feel like a shell of myself"

• "I left a piece of myself there"

• "I don't know who I am anymore"

• "Something is missing but I don't know what"

These aren't just figures of speech. They're your soul telling you what happened.

What Happens in a Soul Retrieval Session?

Before the Session: We'll talk. I want to understand what's bringing you to this work. We'll discuss your intentions and any specific events or time periods that feel significant.

Creating Sacred Space: I work ceremonially. I open sacred space by calling in the directions, the elements, and the helping spirits who support this work. You don't need to believe in anything specific — just be open.

The Journey: While you lie comfortably with your eyes closed, I enter an altered state of consciousness through  drumming and journey on your behalf into non-ordinary reality. I'm looking for your lost soul parts. They're usually in one of three places: stuck in the time and place where the trauma occurred, being held by someone you gave   your power to, or wandering in the spirit world, waiting to be found.

The Return: When I bring your soul parts back, I blow them into your heart chakra and the crown of your head,

reintegrating them into your energy body. Then I share with you what I found: which parts returned, how old they were when they left, what caused them to go, what gifts and qualities they bring back, and any messages they    have for you.

Sealing the Work: I close sacred space and guide you back to ordinary awareness. Most people feel different immediately — lighter, more present, more whole.

What Comes Back in Soul Retrieval?

When soul parts return, they don't come back empty-handed. They bring gifts — qualities and capacities that left when they did:

• Joy — the ability to feel genuine happiness

• Trust — in yourself, in others, in life

• Creativity — access to your creative life force

• Innocence — wonder, playfulness, openness

• Power — your life force, your will, your agency

• Boundaries — the ability to say no, to protect yourself

• Voice — speaking your truth, being heard

• Presence — the capacity to be fully here

• Self-love — feeling worthy, enough, lovable

• Sexuality — healthy relationship with pleasure and desire

• Connection — ability to bond, to trust intimacy

The return of these soul parts often explains why certain things have felt so hard. It's difficult to trust when the     part of you that knew how to trust isn't here. It's hard to feel joy when the joyful child in you left during the abuse. Soul retrieval restores these capacities — not through effort or practice, but through literal reintegration of the parts that hold them.

After Soul Retrieval: Integration

The session is not the end. It's the beginning. Soul retrieval initiates a process that unfolds over days, weeks, sometimes months.

Integration practices I recommend:

• Welcome your soul parts consciously. Talk to them. Journal with them. Let them know they're safe now.

• Notice what changes. Pay attention to shifts in how you feel, what you remember, what triggers you.

• Be gentle with yourself. You may feel emotional, tired, or stirred up. Old memories may surface.

• Honor the gifts. If your creativity returned, create something. If your voice returned, speak.

• Address what originally caused the soul loss. If you're still in the situation that caused the trauma, the healing will be limited.

• Follow up. Sometimes multiple sessions are needed, especially if there was extensive trauma.

 The Science Behind Soul Retrieval

I spent years as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. I respect science. I also know its limitations.

Modern psychology doesn't use the language of "soul" — but it has increasingly recognized the phenomenon that shamans have always worked with.

Dissociation is now a well-documented trauma response. When overwhelming events occur, parts of our psyche split off and become inaccessible to conscious awareness.

Parts work therapies — like Internal Family Systems (IFS) — work explicitly with the understanding that we have multiple "parts" that can become exiled, frozen, or fragmented through trauma.

Somatic therapies recognize that trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind — and that healing requires more than cognitive processing.

What's remarkable is that these modern approaches are converging on insights that shamans have held for tens of thousands of years. The language is different. The maps are different. But the territory is the same.

Soul retrieval works at a level that talk therapy often can't reach — because it addresses the spiritual dimension of trauma.

Ready to Reclaim What's Yours?

You've been living with pieces of yourself missing. Functioning — maybe even functioning well — but not whole. Not fully here. Not fully alive.

It doesn't have to stay that way.

The parts of you that left... they didn't disappear. They're waiting. Some of them have been waiting for decades. For you to be ready. For you to find your way back to them — or for someone to bring them back to you.

Soul retrieval is how we do that.

The parts of you that are missing aren't gone. They've been waiting for this moment — the moment you decided to call them home.

Munay ■