posted January 01, 2010 09:26 AM         

For those of us who have ever suffered a serious accident, emotional trauma or loss in our lives there is often a sense of having “lost a part of ourselves.” Many indigenous cultures have gathered around the suffering member of their tribe to conduct a healing called Soul Retrieval, which is generally facilitated by a wise elder member of the tribe called a Shaman. Recently, the western world has embraced this valuable practice, and one of its pre-imminent Western practitioners is Jill Juykendall.

Jill Kuykendall, RPT, is a registered physical therapist and transpersonal medical practitioner, who has worked within the standard Western medical paradigm for over 20 years. In addition to her work in many different healthcare settings, she has functioned as co-facilitator for the Mercy Healing Circle, participated in the Mercy Healthcare Healing Environment Task Force as a community member consultant, and has served as a member of the Sutter Healthcare Wellness and Healing Network. Jill is currently in private practice with the Center For Optimum Health in Roseville, California, northeast of Sacramento, specializing in Soul Retrieval.

Among the indigenous peoples of the world, it is generally understood that traumatic life experiences can result in the fragmentation of our inner, vital essence or soul, and the subsequent loss or disassociation of parts of the self often results, a phenomenon generally known as 'soul loss'. Among the traditionals, soul loss is regarded as the primary cause of serious illness and premature death, yet curiously, it is not even mentioned in our Western medical textbooks, and our contemporary physicians are often at a complete loss at recognizing it as well as knowing how to reverse its effects.

Soul loss often occurs in response to severe life traumas such as physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, a molestation experience during childhood or being ruthlessly teased, a bitter divorce, a shocking betrayal, a sexual assault, a surgery, or a terrible car accident, to name just a few. The post-traumatic stress syndrome that was experienced by military veterans from Viet Nam and Operation Desert Storm is a classic example of soul loss. Yet soul loss can also be the result of a very subtle troubling experience, so personal to an individual at their perceptual level that no one else would know that a "trauma" had occurred. This is often the case with early childhood soul loss in which there has not been an overt trauma, yet the person feels fragmented in their emotional and psychological realities.

Soul loss is a life-coping mechanism in which the dissociated soul parts leave, carrying the burden of the pain, shock, or extreme emotion, or the memory of the trauma which may be simply unbearable to the sufferer at the time it occurs. Symptoms of soul loss frequently manifest as feelings of being fragmented, of not being all there; blocked memory or not being able to remember parts of one's life; a sudden onset of apathy or listlessness, or a lack of joy in life; the inability to feel love for others or receive love from another, often resulting in the sense of being emotionally flat-lined. The loss of these parts of the self manifests frequently as despair, as suicidal tendencies and/or addictions, or most often--depression.

Among the traditional peoples, those medicinemakers who specialize in soul retrieval work are aided and assisted by their spiritual allies, tracking the lost soul parts, finding them, and returning them to the person who has lost them, restoring the individual's soul to its original, undistorted state. And in the process, the person's vital essence returns as well, an experience that they frequently experience as life-changing. This is ultimately accomplished with the willing participation of the client in creating a sincere call for this work, as well as integrating their soul parts back into their overall vital essence.