How to Feed Your Spirit
Spirit is energy that goes beyond the confines of the physical body. Sometimes referred to as the soul, spirit needs the physical body to experience, develop and grow. Receptive to positive and negative energies, both body and spirit absorb and resonate with these energies.
One can be “feeling low” or “on a high” depending on the preponderance of one type of energy over the other. Our spirit, which is used to high levels of energy and vibrations, suffers from the constant erosion of the human experience.
In order to maintain a higher vibration, it is important to feed our spirit the higher vibrations that it needs.
This isn’t as easy to do living this human life in today’s world. It seems as if everywhere we turn we are confronted with and surrounded by problems, thus, lowering our spirit’s vibration.
The world today is fraught with these lower vibrations. Whether the problems are small or at crisis levels, they can, and usually do, lower our spirit’s equilibrium. Throw in negative news, natural disasters, extreme weather patterns, politics, unseen electromagnetic disturbances and the upcoming holidays, we are up against the “perfect storm,” draining those higher vibrations out of our spirit.
Each of our spirits appear to have a GPS which guides us towards attaining higher, positive energies through its own instant messaging system: transient thoughts, gut feelings, intuition and the voice of our conscience constantly asking, “do you really want to do this?”
Consider asking yourself, “Does this feed my spirit?” When you chose a movie to watch, order food or schedule dinner with friends, question the spiritual nutrition of your choices.
The spirit does its best but humans have free will and may choose not to be aware or listen to these messages. Living wrapped up in the constant feeding of the media’s negative news, gossipy reality shows, life’s worries, self-doubts and fears, one gravitates to and is more focused on heavier, lower, negative energies. Sinking into negative lower energy drains our spirit, which translates into feelings of negativity, sadness and dis-ease of the body.
A constant diet of higher, positive energy is needed to enrich our spirit and keep us happy and healthy in the process.
Six Ways To Feed Your Spirit
Breathe
Find the rhythm of your breath to feed your spirit the Life Force energy that air brings. Raise personal vibrations physically and energetically through deeper, regular, patterned breathing practices.
Raise Your Awareness
Being conscious of what we are doing and experiencing each moment brings about the full appreciation of the present moment. Try not to rush through things unaware of what you are doing. This includes being mindful of personal thoughts and actions.
Everything has the ability to be precious. Take advantage of each opportunity to see the beauty, wonderment and enjoyment in life. Let each one of the human senses participate in every experience. This opens the doors to joy and laughter.
“Living in the moment” may be a small phrase but it has huge impact increasing vibrational energy levels. When you enjoy each moment you increase the degree of your appreciation. Whether its nature, places, things, animals or people, continue appreciating it all. This increased state of appreciation naturally evolves into feelings of connectedness with all. Focus on the connections with family, community, animals, nature and all things on and of the Earth. Be receptive to the love and kindness from others and readily reciprocate.
The sensations of awe inspiring experiences are moments which we cannot fully comprehend through our five senses. Things that look and sound too beautiful literally take our breath away. Moments of awe force us to look at things and ourselves in a different context of being. Everything viewed from a perspective of awe raises feelings of gratitude. It forces us to look beyond the obvious realms and cultivates comprehension of the universal totality of interconnectedness.
Meditate Daily
Modern lifestyles of the human race don’t leave room for the art of “being in the moment”, which helps to switch off the things that may be bothersome. Presence extends the parts of the brain that control concentration, focus, and problem solving, which allows the higher energies in.
Self-Nurture, With Self-Compassion
Give yourself permission to put yourself first. You are a loving person and you want to spread that love around. Remember, you have to make yourself the primary target of unconditional love. When you are charged with love for yourself you can then share it with others. Think of yourself as being the parent and child simultaneously, showering yourself with love, patience, forgiveness, kindness and compassion.
Realize that you are a wondrous and powerful being with a loving nature that gives you the immense capability of creating more love.
We are the ones that hold the power of love. When we realize this consciously we are able to see that we are One, Whole, and Interconnected. The love we hold in ourselves is fluid and once we recognize the capability of loving ourselves, the flow of love permeates to everyone and everything around us.
One of the prominent researchers of self-compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff, includes two more important practices: 1) recognizing your personal struggles as being part of shared human experiences; and 2) holding one’s painful thoughts and feelings in “mindful awareness”. Self-compassion emphasizes the way we respond to our personal thoughts and it matters greatly. Instead of being self-judgmental and beating ourselves up, we should observe (without the emotional attachment) that we are sharing these thoughts with the human community and we should treat ourselves kindly with no self-judgment and ridicule.
Eat High-Energy Foods
Each type of food contains its own level of energy. Intake of higher energy foods, like fresh fruits and vegetables, nourishes body and spirit. Intake of low energy foods, such as junk food, that are nutrient-poor and preservative-rich introduces a lower energy level and drags body and spirit energy levels lower. Consistent intake of high-energy foods positively feeds the body and the spirit.
Show Kindness
To express kindness is to show your gentle nature towards others, to help others through good deeds and by bringing happiness and joy to others (and yourself). Acts of kindness bring givers and recipients a sense of personal satisfaction, connectedness with others, calmness and often relaxation. Acts of kindness ease pain, increase energy levels and reduce high blood pressure.
In true expressions of kindness, the giver expects nothing tangible in return.
Expressions of kindness are shown in many different ways. Kindness can be expressed in words: speaking kindly to others, including and especially to those who don’t expect it (salespersons, wait staff, telemarketers, etc.). It can be expressed in your body language: a smile, a gentle touch on the arm or shoulder, or a hug. Expressions through an action of work: carrying someone’s package, doing a small repair job, shopping for someone, volunteering to build a home, working in a food pantry or preparing food for a homeless shelter. Kindness is also expressed in the giving of donations of food, clothing and money to charitable organizations. From the person offering a simple smile to the major philanthropist, all are expressing their kindness.
Avoid Energy Vampires
Ever notice how being with some people seem to leave you feeling sad, lonely, irritable and drained? They can make you dizzy and give you a headache. Spending an afternoon with them is similar to how you feel after running a three-day marathon. Your body feels drained and all you want to do is get some sleep.
You have just been in the presence of an energy vampire, bombarding you with negative feelings and thoughts, while at the same time draining off the higher energy you have been methodically working to increasingly raise in order to feed not only your body but your all-important spirit as well. Despite working diligently to keep your energy levels and maintain a positive outlook, you are now attracting an energy vampire.
Negative people often search for a jolt of high energy from people holding a higher energy.
Through this attraction, energy vampires lock on to your positive energy and begin to siphon off your energy stores. They pull you into a conversation of streaming troubles, complaints and gossip: then you are caught in a situation where your higher energy spirit is trying to “uplift” this person through sharing kindness, patience, compassion and support. However, your own energy is depleted.
Here are a few tips to counteract the effects or avoid energy vampires:
- Visualize an energy field shield or bubble. The shield repels negative energy but allows the flow of positive energy in and out
- Stay present in conversations with others in order to discern when the talk is turns to energy drainage
- Once identified as an energy-draining conversation, steer the conversations to happier, lighter topics that the energy drainers truly enjoy
- If this is unsuccessful extricate yourself from the situation (tactfully, of course)
- In the case of energy vampires, seek to cut them out of your life. If this isn’t possible, as in the case of a relative or coworker, keep contact to a bare minimum and use an energy shield.
How to Feed Your Spirit Over the Holidays
With the holidays quickly approaching here are a few tips to survive this energy draining time of year:
- Remember to spend quality time with those you love
- Set and stick to clear boundaries when choosing which celebrations to attend. Attend functions with positive people, in whose company you truly enjoy, and skillfully turn down those celebratory occasions you know will make you uncomfortable
- It’s okay to admit to yourself that you are tired and take some time to rest, self-nurture and rejuvenate. Keep up a daily meditation and exercise routine
- Enjoy your favorite holiday foods but remember to keep up your intake of fresh fruits and vegetables
- Acknowledge your inner child, seeing things through the eyes of wonder and awe
Try these practices daily in order to keep your energy levels high and nourish the often forgotten, all-important spirit.
About the Author
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: How to Recover Parts of Our Soul?
Shamanic Soul Retrieval: Sandra Ingerman on Recovering Parts of Our Soul
“Every book…has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.” ~ Carlos Ruis Zafon
It has been said, “The best things in life are free.” We can all agree it’s nice to be surprised with a gift, but not just any gift. The gift that arrives in your life precisely when you are ready to receive it. The gift is clearly a message to you and for you.
In this case, the gift is Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self by Sandra Ingerman.
With graceful delivery of rarely discussed phenomena, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self combines shamanism and psychology to explain the effects of trauma that cause parts of the soul to leave the body and the process by which the part(s) can be retrieved.
Follow along as renowned psychotherapist, shamanic teacher, and author Sandra Ingerman delves into soul loss and retrieval.
What is Soul Loss?
Sandra Ingerman’s Abstract on Shamanism states that “there are many common symptoms of soul loss. Some of the more common ones would be dissociation, where a person does not feel fully in his or her body and alive and fully engaged in life. Other symptoms include chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post-traumatic stress syndrome, immune deficiency problems, and grief that just does not heal. Addictions are also a sign of soul loss.”
For those who have lost parts of themselves, knowingly or unknowingly, “tremendous amounts of psychic energy” are unconsciously spent looking for the lost parts.
What Causes Soul Loss?
According to Ingerman, “The basic premise is whenever we experience trauma, a part of our vital essence separates from us in order to survive the experience by escaping the full impact of the pain.” This quiet occurrence, known as soul loss, takes the form of a perpetual feeling and experience of incompleteness and disconnection.
Ingerman says, “Anytime someone says, ‘I have never been the same’ since a certain traumatic event, and they don’t mean this in a good way, soul loss has probably occurred.”
Sandra Ingerman on Lost Soul Parts
Sandra Ingerman holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, professional mental health counselor, the author of more than ten books, and a board-certified expert on traumatic stress who was awarded the 2007 Peace Award from the Global Foundation for Integrative Medicine.
As a leading authority on soul loss and retrieval, Ingerman’s highly regarded career spans 35 years of conducting workshops and soul retrievals around the world.
For Ingerman, the leading practitioner of soul retrieval whose own spiritual journey to recapture her soul led her on various spiritual paths. The answer she found was in the ancient tradition of shamanism, which views soul loss as an important cause of illness and death.
The word shaman, originating from the Tungus Tribe of Siberia, means “one who sees in the dark.”
Soul Loss in Society
According to Ingerman, “A reflection of how much soul loss people are dealing with” is evident when “so many governments and businesses are valuing money over life.”
However, Western medicine has no framework for this kind of diagnosis because it only deals with imbalance when it appears on a physical and mental level.
Western medicine “treats chronic pain with pain medication, insomnia with sleeping pills, weight issues with diet and exercise, and most damagingly, may label soul loss as mental illness and cover up the symptoms with psychiatric medications that may make things worse by slapping a Band-Aid on a wound that’s not healing underneath the bandage.”
This “covering up” can lead to the deep unhappiness that many have come to consider as “simply ordinary.” Eventually, this prolonged dissociation produces a nameless void that shows itself through “a loss of meaning, direction, vitality, mission, purpose, identity, and genuine connection.”
This spiritual void, which is always present and always trying to get your attention, operates as the incessant yearning of your soul wanting to incorporate all of its highest qualities, all of God’s essence, all of you.
Simply put, the soul is always trying to reconnect with that from which it came.
Ingerman imparts, “If you are truly in your body (your whole soul present), you cannot place money over life. Planetary soul loss causes so much of the behavior we are currently seeing, behavior that no longer honors the beauty and importance of life.”
Signs of Soul Loss
The following checklist can help identify symptoms of soul loss:
- You have a difficult time staying “present” in your body
- You feel numb, apathetic, or deadened
- You suffer from chronic depression
- You have problems with your immune system and have trouble resisting illness
- You were chronically ill as a child
- Memory gaps of your life after age five where you sense that you may have blacked out significant traumatic experiences
- Struggle with addictions, for example, to alcohol, drugs, food, sex or gambling
- Find yourself looking to external things to fill up an internal void or emptiness
- Have difficulty moving on with your life after a divorce or the death of a loved one
- You suffer from multiple personality syndrome
Having read this book without prior knowledge of soul loss or retrieval, I found the concepts quite sobering.
Within situations of physical and emotional abuse, negation, and trauma, many experiences in life can be too difficult to bear. Soul loss is an understandable response to spiritual woundedness and deep fragmentation of one’s soul essence that would lead to an internal dissociation from natural balance.
What is Soul Retrieval?
During the soul retrieval process, the shaman moves into an altered state of consciousness to travel to realities outside of normal perception (non-ordinary reality), also known as hidden spirit worlds, to retrieve the lost part of the soul.
In some cases, there is reluctance of the soul fragments to return, or the soul may not even know a separation has occurred. While in most cases, the soul does want to return and become whole. It is, however, important to note that when the “soul returns, it comes back with all the pain it experienced when leaving.”
Once the lost soul pieces are located, the shaman will “acknowledge the former pain and gently negotiate the soul’s return to the body.” The shaman then brings the soul back to normal reality and (literally) blows the missing soul part(s) back into the body through the head or heart.
If a person is trained in shamanic journeying, they can ask their spirit guides or power animals to perform a soul retrieval on their behalf. Or anyone can ask for a healing dream where one sets the intention to request a soul retrieval to be performed during the dream state.
If these two processes do not create change or healing, then working with a trained shamanic practitioner is recommended.
Although Ingerman is clear that you should not try to practice soul retrieval based solely on the reading of this book, in an exclusive interview, Ingerman and I discuss what can be done when someone suspects soul loss has occurred.
Shamanic Healing Practice Interview
BJB: What can someone do if they suspect soul loss has occurred but do not have immediate access for soul retrieval with a Shaman?
SI: If a person has soul loss, they can work with a shamanic practitioner long distance. Most shamanic practitioners perform long-distance healings these days.
I have been training Soul Retrieval practitioners since the late 1980’s. I have a website where I have an international list of shamanic practitioners who have sent me case studies. Of course, no shamanic practitioner can ever promise a cure, but I know their work, and I trust them.
BJB: Is there a healing exercise the person can do to begin to address and/or heal the root cause of the soul loss?
SI: Nature is our greatest healer. A person who feels they have lost their soul can walk or lie down on the ground and reflect on what is the root cause of their soul loss.
You can also do automatic writing. This includes listening to spiritual music while writing the following question on a piece of paper: “What is the root cause of my soul loss?”
You then close your eyes and allow your hand to write. This is a powerful way to let your soul and intuition give you the truth of the cause of your soul loss and other information that is important for you to know.
BJB: What has been the most surprising or unexpected part of your work as a Shaman?
SI: All of my Shamanic work is a surprise.
The helping spirits never give expected responses to the questions I ask them. This is true also when I perform the healing journey for a client. I am always given information I did not expect or would rationally think of on my own.
Also, in my 35 years of working with clients, I continue to be surprised by the miraculous effects of the work.
Power of Ancient Shamanic Practices
The shaman’s toolbox is a personal and intimate gathering of powers. Some shamans learned through direct experience, others gleaned knowledge from master teachers like Sandra, and some are gifted in journeying to the depths of spirit realms.
A few tools are so foundational that nearly every shaman utilizes them. Soul retrieval is one such tool. Not only is it universally effective, but it’s also the pervasive root cause of illness overlooked by many in the medical field.
Soul retrieval is not a modern New Age therapy but a profound healing tradition practiced for thousands of years. It involves the reintegration of lost soul parts, that’s akin to the surgical reattachment of a body part but for our spiritual essence instead. By recovering these lost soul parts, individuals can restore wholeness and harmony within themselves.
The Most Important Factor in Personal Healing
Soul retrieval is not a quick fix. Sandra Ingerman states, “If the person has done a lot of personal work, the soul retrieval might be the end of the work. If not, the soul retrieval would be the beginning of the work.”
No matter where you may find yourself, at the beginning or near the end of working through an issue, the most important factor in all healing work is you.
You have to be willing to do the work that is necessary to participate in your personal transformation. You will have to be willing to look at yourself with new eyes, from a new shamanic perspective, and as an embodiment of completion and wholeness while knowing that willingness is the impetus for great change, which always begins with the heart.
For more information on Sandra Ingerman’s work, log onto SandraIngerman.com.
You can also learn more by watching this interview on Gaia.com with Jill Kuykendall on soul retrieval.
