Soul Retrieval

By Maryphillis Horn, Shamanic Practitioner

Maryphyllis Horn, Med, CMHt, CTFT, Rev., is a Shamanic Practitioner in Pittsboro, NC. She has a private practice in soul retrieval, shamanic counselling and healing, spirit releasing, spiritual hypnotherapy, Thought Field Therapy and Feng Shui. She can be contacted by telephone at (919) 542-0260 or by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . www.soulshaman.com

Soul Retrieval is the shamanic term that refers to a psychological healing process that begins at the spiritual level. The Greek word for soul is "psyche," the root of our word "psychology." The Greeks say that soul is not the same as spirit; their word for spirit is "pneuma." Shamans describe the soul as the essential self that is unique and can't be replaced by anyone else's soul nor by spiritual energy.

We live in a tough world, with lessons that at times seem overwhelming. Spirit understands this, and gives us a way to avoid the full impact of the pain of trauma, abuse, grief over the loss of a loved one, or longstanding hardship. In Soul Retrieval, it is believed that Spirit allows part of our soul (psyche) to split off from the rest of us and flee to spiritual dimensions. When it does this, it disconnects from our physical, emotional and mental levels. That means we have no way of communicating with it or accessing the strengths it has. This split is called "soul loss." It often results in a dysfunctional way of life because we have to adapt to being less whole and having fewer strengths with which to work.

Symptoms of soul loss include missing soul qualities such as compassion, decisiveness, joy; difficulty concentrating; pervasive fears; feeling less whole, fragmented or empty; addictions; feeling alienated from life, less alive or sleepwalking through life; co-dependence; long-term grief or depression; noticeably different after trauma; dissociation; psychological work without improvement; and being less able to express one's self in areas that used to be easy.

When a soul part leaves, it can't come back on its own. And why would it want to come back into what it considers to be an intolerable situation? It has to wait until we have more say over our life, and someone with soul retrieving ability can intervene on our behalf.

Case Study: Paula

Paula, age 40, came to me hoping a soul retrieval would heal her depression. Her voice was listless and her movements stilted, reflecting the despair she had been feeling all her life. She said that nothing she had tried had worked: counselling, medication, prayer or meditation. I assisted her in retrieving two soul parts that left her at age five when her beloved Grandma died. One fled to be with her Grandma, the other left to try to retrieve the first one but couldn't find its way back.

When Paula returned several days later for her first integration session, her voice had a lilt to it and her step was much lighter and more energetic. Her depression had lifted for the first time in decades. As she inwardly conversed with her soul parts, she found out that her depression was actually grief – grief for her Grandma and grief for the loss of her soul parts. Now five years later, that depression has never returned.

Shamanic Journeying

Spiritual dimensions are every bit as real as this physical dimension is. They merely have different ways of maneuvering through them. Using Shamanic Journeying to venture inward into spiritual dimensions, I, as shamanic practitioner, am able to find and retrieve the soul parts that can best heal what you request. I assist in reconnecting them to your body, emotions and mind, and then help you integrate them into the totality of your life. This involves quickly and gently healing the pain or emptiness you want released, changing dysfunctional patterns into true (functional) ones, and fully accessing the new strengths the soul part brings you. Also involved is your paying attention to the soul part and consciously working with it and its strengths on a daily basis. The entire integration process may take as little as a few days, but usually no more than a month.

Results of soul retrievals are often magical, transforming and so innate that we wonder how we could ever have had problems! For example: One man bought a bicycle and immediately set up an exercise time with it. He later realized that he would never have done that without the help of his soul part; it was such a natural action. In another instance, a woman found herself spontaneously playing with her small child and enjoying it; before, she hadn't a clue of how to play. In my case, I found myself making decisions – major ones – easily and instinctively. Before the soul retrieval, my pattern was to agonize interminably, finally be forced into making the decision and then worry endlessly about its rightness.

The changes are so innate and instinctive that we often don't realize until after the fact that we are now doing what used to be difficult or impossible to do. This process may sound miraculous, but that's because our society has only recently considered working within spiritual dimensions in order to attain psychological healing. With Soul Retrieval, that inner improvement occurs more quickly and becomes permanent.