How is Power-loss healed and what is Power retrieval?

What is Power retrieval? #

Reconnecting with the living world: “To reconnect with nature, the other Peoples and Mother Earth. Can take many forms, but in particular involves a ‘Power Animal retrieval’ – finding one’s Power Animal and developing a strong relationship with it.”¹ Power retrieval is not a single ritual but the whole work of becoming connected again.

How is Power-loss healed? #

By changing how we live, as well as through shamanic work. “Anything that helps us to reconnect helps in healing power-loss. First and foremost in this is doing a Power Animal retrieval, as they are your most important connection to the more-than-human.” Connecting with the real Lower-World and with a Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer help too, and “Healing power-loss is essentially about addressing how we live our lives. It is about living in a more inter-connected way. It is also an ongoing and life-long process.”² Healing Power-loss is not an event; it is a process.

Why is the Power Animal so important in healing Power-loss? #

Because it is our main link back to the web of life. “Life-force (‘power’) and health come from being connected to that web of life. Your Power Animal is your primary and most powerful means of connecting back to that web.”³ “They are your primary and most important link to the more-than-human world. Without them, you are suffering from Power Loss”.⁴ That is why the Power Animal should be with us always, not only in journeys. It “keeps you connected and plugged-in to shamanic reality.”⁵

Its love heals too. It “helps to begin to heal the deep Mother woundMother-Wound. The near-universal injury of inadequate mothering in Taker culture, scaling from the personal wound to a collective distortion of the Mother archetype itself. Largely pre-verbal, it is healed not by insight but by receiving healthy mothering: from the Lower-World, the Power Animal’s unconditional love, and Mother Earth. More about this – the disconnection from nature, the sense of not really fitting in or of being welcome in the world”.⁶ See How does Power Animal heal and support us?

What role do the Animal, Plant and Stone People play? #

Each offers its own healing and teaching. In one story, the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer held a great council, at which “every type of Plant, Animal and Stone agreed to take on a healing gift and teaching, and to give this freely to any human who asked for it.”⁷ Plant can teach a felt senseFelt sense. Eugene Gendlin’s term for the whole bodily ‘feel’ of an issue: deeper than emotion, deeper than words, reached through Focusing. Read the full answer of belonging, “a deep and certain knowing that you belong and are a part of the Earth”.⁸ And “The Stone People are the closest thing to Mother Earth herself.”⁹ See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People? Each People can help us reconnect in its own way.

Can psychotherapy heal Power-loss? #

It works on a different level. Psychotherapy does vital work on the middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer, but “What is almost always missing from these therapies, however, is nature: the other Peoples, the Lower-World, and Mother Earth herself”.¹⁰ Therapy can help people become healthy adults, but “The only major difference is that therapy doesn’t usually reconnect us with the other-than-human world.” So “Animism then heals our disconnection from the other-than-human too”.

Can someone live in a city and still heal Power-loss? #

Yes. Time in nature helps most, but realistically, “we cannot all go back to living in the countryside.” A modern shamanism must include “practices that help us maintain that connection in our largely urban, domesticated, day-to-day lives, and practices that help us find the wild in the tamed.”¹¹ One gratitude practice, for example, done “in an urban environment can be powerful too.”¹² And the Power Animal goes everywhere with us, in town as well as in the wild. Connection can be practised wherever we are.

How do we begin healing Power-loss? #

With the Power Animal. Finding your Power Animal and building a relationship with it is the first step, followed by Lower-World journeying and, later, finding a Human Lower-World Guide. “In doing these things, we begin the process of re-wilding ourselves and healing our power-loss.”¹³ See How do I find my Power Animal?

Does healing Power-loss mean becoming more powerful over others? #

No. Healthy power is not about dominance. The power here is life-force, not control. Healthy power is power-from-withinPower-from-within. Starhawk’s term for the healthy mode of power, as against power-over. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands held power this way; practising shamanism from power-over is ‘just more Fall’. More about this: “Characteristic of power-from-within is that, when someone has it, they have no wish to have power over others, nor are they willing to hand their power to others.”¹⁴ Even a shaman’s power is not their own: “The power of a true shamanic practitioner comes not from the practitioner, but from their ability to hollow-out and let greater, wiser spirits (their guides) work through them.”¹⁵ Healing Power-loss makes us more connected, not more dominant.

Can Power-loss make us vulnerable to intrusions or unhealthy entanglements? #

Yes. It weakens our defences. Without our Power Animal, we are “suffering from Power Loss, leaving you vulnerable to intrusionsIntrusion. Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this, unhealthy entanglementsEntanglement. An unhealthy energetic tie hooking us into another person, a role, an object or a family story; released by disentanglement. More about this, and entity possessions.”¹⁶ Soul-loss and power-loss “leave our energy-body weakened”, so that other things can get in.¹⁷ Healing Power-loss strengthens us against them. This is one more reason to keep our Power Animal close.

Is soul retrieval the same as Power retrieval? #

No. They heal different wounds. Power-loss is disconnection and is healed by reconnecting. Soul loss is the loss of a part of us, and “healing soul-loss that has already occurred tends to be marked by a series of events. These events are ‘soul-retrievals’.”¹⁸ Many people need both. See How are Power-loss, soul loss and loss of personal power different?

What is the purpose of healing Power-loss? #

To be well, and to take our place in the web of life. “From a shamanic perspective, a healthy human is an inter-connected human.”¹⁹ And healing ourselves is not selfish: “the more people there are who heal their inner wounds, the more this heals the collective wound.”²⁰