Shamanism can offer trauma therapy a way of finding parts of a person that have left altogether, and bringing them home; allies in the Lower-World, where safety can feel deeper than anything in everyday life; ways of removing what got in when the person was most open; and a reminder, which some trauma therapists share, that healing has always also been a matter of community, ritual and our relationship with the living world.
Can a part of us really leave? #
Shamanism says it can, and some trauma therapists describe something with a similar shape. Soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer is what happens when a part of our psyche leaves us and does not fully come back. It is a survival response: a part of our psyche withdraws because staying fully present is too much. Soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer goes to find that part, with the help of the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this, and brings it home. See What is soul retrieval?
Arielle Schwartz, in a treatment manual for trauma clinicians, describes parts of a client that can feel “stuck as if they are living in the time of the trauma”, and healing work that “might also involve retrieving a part of the self that is stuck in the past and bringing it into the present.”1 In a study of trauma survivors who combined psychotherapy with soul retrieval, Karin Stewart describes the model they worked in, where dissociated parts “have fled the body and mind, into the alternate reality of the time and place when the traumatic event happened.”2 Shamanism adds that sometimes a part is not only repressed, but actually leaves altogether, and so it needs to be found. See What is soul loss?
What might a flashback be telling us? #
Shamanism offers a different way of hearing it. Stewart reports the shamanic reading: “Shamans would see flashbacks and triggers as the lost soul partsSoul-part. A small-s, middle-world part of the self that can be lost (sent away) and can be retrieved. Not the capital-S Soul. Read the full answer’ cries for help, to be remembered and retrieved.”3 In the model Stewart describes, a flashback is not only a symptom to be calmed. It is also a sign, which she calls the shaman’s tracking signal, pointing to a lost part that can be found and brought home. The forthcoming book Soul Roots, Spirit Branches sees it the same way. When a part of us leaves, very often it stays stuck back in the time and place where the trauma happened, and that is a pretty good description of a flashback.
What allies does shamanism offer? #
Ones who are not human. In the Lower-World, a person can meet their Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer and their Guides in a place of deep safety, and receive there what they may never have had. In journeys, someone whose earliest bond was damaged can “experience what it is like to feel a secure attachment to a Mother, to feel protected, cared for and loved.” Because the work is non-traumatic, somatic and sensory, doing it in journeys “can begin to gently release the primary wounding patterns locked in the right hemisphere and the body.”4 See How does Power Animal heal and support us? and How do embodiment, grounding and the nervous system support healing?
What else can trauma leave behind? #
Things that do not belong to the person. “When we suffer soul-loss or power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer it weakens us and leaves holes in us. In this weakened, vulnerable state other things (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) can then get into us, making us ill and potentially taking us over.”5 Trauma therapy does not usually think in these terms. Shamanism has ways of telling what belongs to a person from what does not, and of removing what does not belong without harming what does. See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?
What about community and ritual? #
Shamanism reminds us that healing was never meant to happen alone, and some trauma therapists agree. Peter Levine, who developed the body-based trauma therapy Somatic Experiencing, writes that “Shamanistic cultures view illness and trauma as a problem for the entire community, not just for the individual”, and that their healing works “by uniting lost soul and body in the presence of community.” He concludes: “My conclusion is that significant aspects of shamanic practice are valid.”6 Levine is also clear that his own method is not shamanic.
Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, writes: “Since time immemorial human beings have used communal rituals to cope with their most powerful and terrifying feelings”, and that “Collective movement and music create a larger context for our lives, a meaning beyond our individual fate.”7 See What do tribe and belonging mean, and what is the shaman’s role in a community?
What does nature have to do with healing trauma? #
Much, in the shamanic view. Shamanism holds that we get ill not only through soul loss but through Power-loss. “Power-loss occurs when we become disconnected from nature, from the interconnected web of life and our place in it. This disconnection weakens us.”8 Trauma therapy usually works with the person and their relationships with other people. Shamanism adds the relationship with the Animal, Plant and Stone People, and with Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this, as part of what heals. See What is Power-loss?
