Bridger of Worlds

The Power of Soul Retrieval: Healing Through Time and Space

• Ioannis Kokkinos

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In this episode of the Bridger of Worlds Podcast, host Ioannis Kokkinos concludes his multi-part series on the soul with a profound exploration of soul retrieval — an ancient shamanic healing practice for calling back the lost fragments of our essence.

Drawing from the wisdom of shamanic cosmology, Kokkinos guides us through the lower, middle, and upper worlds and explains how trauma can scatter our soul across timelines, places, and dimensions.

In this conversation, you will learn:

  • How soul loss happens and why it leaves lasting energetic imprints.
  • The map of the three shamanic worlds and how they relate to healing.
  • The process of retrieving lost soul pieces and bringing them back into the heart.
  • Why self-love, shadow integration, and nonlinear time are essential in reclaiming wholeness.

This episode is an invitation to remember the forgotten parts of yourself, to walk the invisible paths where your essence still waits, and to bring all of you back into the present moment.


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Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host Ioannis Kokkinos.. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcasts platforms, thank you for tuning in as well. So the last few episodes I've been talking about the soul, um, so I think today's basically a wrap up episode as to what it is I've been talking about as far as soul healing, soul growth, soul realization is concerned. So please touch base with the last three episodes to really get a lot of context as to what it is i'll also be talking about today, but today's the concluding episode, I guess, in the series.

Uh, I didn't really, um. I plan to do that. It's just, it felt like I needed to talk about what I talked about as far as the soul is concerned. 

Understanding Soul Retrieval

So today's like the concluding episode, and there is a specific, uh, topic I want to talk about, and that is soul retrieval. So soul retrieval is a modality of healing in the shamanic tradition.

Now, I'm no shaman, I've received soul retrieval from a shaman six years ago. It was one of the most powerful sessions and healing experiences that I've had thus far. But today I want to approach it from obviously a more theoretical standpoint to illustrate it, what it is, what it means.

And to also add bits and pieces of what it is I have been talking about because it is very relevant as far as the shadow's concerned, the soul, right? Soul retrieval and also touching base with traveling to certain places and even attuning to certain timelines of our lives. 'cause that is in fact how soul retrieval happens.

So a little bit of background information. What is soul retrieval? Maybe this is the first time you're hearing these two words together. 

The Shamanic Worlds

So in the shamanic tradition, uh, when you go see a shaman to receive soul retrieval, the shaman basically astral journeys into, there are three worlds as far as shamanic lore is concerned. And that is the lower world, the middle world, and the upper world. So the lower world does represent like the underworld, but it doesn't carry the same energy and vibration and meaning as most modern day religions have given it. In the lower world is where the ancestors reside according to shamanic tradition.

Uh, there can be lower entities, of course, right? It is the lower world, but it is not a world to avoid or negate. So the shaman, if the soul piece is in the lower world, the shaman will travel to the lower world to retrieve it. But let me talk a little bit more about the worlds before we get into that. Uh, the lower world is also representative of our subconscious, our past, our lineages.

So very much, it is very much focused around like ancestral traumas in the bloodlines and also our personal past. So the lower world also carries energy of the collective unconscious. So I did talk about this a few episodes back. This is Jungian, the collective unconscious, but as far as the east is concerned, this is the astral plane.

So on the astral plane is where basically all threads of consciousness exist. So this includes deities, saints, archetypes, gods, goddesses, ancestors, souls that have passed on, right? So this is how mediumship exists. This is how humans can contact the dead because their souls live on right.

They've left the body, but their energy. Uh, depending on where they are, remains somewhere, if they've not moved on. So all that is encompassed within the lower world. Now, the middle world is basically the bridge between the upper world and the lower world and the middle world, um, is basically like our present day to day. So it's a present day timeline. So the shaman can travel energetically, right? Astrally through the present timelines to retrieve the soul piece. And then the upper world is the realm of heaven, is the realm of angels and elevated ancestors, light beings.

Also future timelines. The soul piece can also go there, and the shaman can go to the upper world to retrieve the soul piece. Now, how does a soul piece leave? How does a piece of our soul leave? Right? 

Symptoms of Soul Loss

According to shamanic tradition, it leaves through trauma. If the trauma is big enough, a piece of our soul can leave from our soul as a whole. So when this happens, an array of symptoms occur throughout our systems, our bodies, our energies, right? So, um, depending on the magnitude and the, the piece, the, the size of the piece of the soul, it can array from, you know, migraines, headaches, all the way to like full lethargy, not being able to get out of bed, low energy, low vitality, uh, diseases, um, all sorts of physical symptoms can manifest if the soul piece stays away long enough. And a lot of people have pieces of their soul missing because of trauma and soul pieces can be in other countries. Soul pieces can be in other places. So pieces can be in other homes. Let's say somebody moves and it's a very painful move.

Somebody really does not wanna leave their home behind. A piece of their soul may stay, um, in that home, and the person leaves, right? The person leaves energetically, but a part of their soul leaves stays behind. Let's say a person has to leave their country. A person is forced to leave their country and they do not want to leave, but they have to.

That will most likely trigger a piece of their soul remaining behind, and people wonder why they don't feel the same or why they feel quote unquote broken or not whole. This is most likely an instance or, or an example of an occurrence of a soul piece that is missing. 

Personal Experiences and Reflections

So I won't get into specifics of my personal journey, of my soul retrieval journey with the shaman.

My piece was in the lower world and all sorts of guides showed up. Guides that, some guides I actually saw as well. So as the shaman is journeying to retrieve the soul piece, it doesn't necessarily mean that you'll see or feel anything. I just so happen to feel a lot and see a lot of as to what the shaman was also seeing.

So that was incredible confirmation. But I'm just mentioning this now because of like the difference between before having had this session and after having had this session, the difference of how I felt was, um, absolutely like basically night to day.

Uh, you don't, it doesn't necessarily mean you only need to do one soul retrieval session. Uh, there may be more, right? There may be many instances or few instances in our lives where enough trauma happens and more than one piece stays behind. So a really hard breakup, right? That might trigger a soul piece to, um, leave.

Being physically harmed or hurt by another human being that might also trigger the soul piece leaving. It's really like a part of the soul, what happens, basically what happens is the part of the soul that leaves no longer feels safe inside the body, right? Because our soul is inside our body. So when trauma happens, there's like a part of our energy that says, shit, it's not safe to live here anymore, quote unquote.

So I gotta get outta here. And that's how the soul piece leaves. 'cause remember, soul is energy and everything is energy. It's just, I love this. I fell in love with shamanic tradition and shamanic lore in general, uh, because it just all makes so much sense to me. As I said, I'm not a shaman, but reading about how they perform healing rituals and the way they journey to the astral to experience all sorts of connection and receive guidance from guides and archetypes and animals and deities is just absolutely incredible.

It does very much tie in very well with what I was saying around, you know, the shadow, perceiving everything as duality because that separation basically is caused by the soul piece leaving.

So when we need to move through soul retrieval, there's a piece of us that is missing. Right? So that basically depicts separation. So. I feel like this is such a beautiful way to end this Soul series because it is so important to sometimes connect to the places where we might have experienced trauma or somehow access a timeline where we have experienced trauma in order to call back our soul piece, and depending on how intuitive and energy sensitive you are, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to see a shaman to perform soul retrieval because it's your piece, right? The piece that is missing is yours, and nobody and nothing can ever take that away from you. So if you choose to call in that part of you that you probably know when and where it hurt and why it hurt so much. You can choose to call that piece back to you right here and right now.

So I talked about going to places, right? I talked about my move to Greece. You know, I'm in Crete, I've been to Corfu, I've been to Skiathos. I've lived, uh, in Rhodes. I also lived in Spain for a few months in Andalusia and somehow visiting these places spoke so much about retrieving some kind of energy. Now, I didn't have any specific experiences moving to this country and these small islands for a small while, right? It was my first time going there, but it was something generational.

It was something collective. It was something ancestral because like I said, the soul piece, um, will go somewhere in the astral, right? So lower world, middle world, upper world, past, present, future, um. So journeying to places, and especially if you've been to places before and something painful happened, you're probably going back, maybe consciously or unconsciously because you need to retrieve a part of your energy.

You need to retrieve a part of your soul. And as I said, you don't need to really, you don't need to see a shaman in order to perform a soul retrieval because that energy is yours and you can claim and reclaim anything back if you have enough will and you have enough, um, courage and strength to do so.

And then there are timelines, right? So we go back to these places and they activate certain timelines. So maybe a certain year, a certain summer, you go back to a certain village, and that village is very, very remindful of a certain summer or certain summers, and you experienced a lot of pain and suffering.

Throughout that summer, through those summers, you're going back to that village to reclaim the energy, to reclaim and tell your soul, that piece of your soul that probably remained there to come back into your energy field. And a lot of people are unconscious about this or don't even know about this.

Right. So as a, this is very, this is quite niche, right? 'cause it is shamanic. This is shamanic tradition and lore. Um, and because I've done a session with a shaman and because since then I've been moving through deep spiritual inner seeking and journeying, I can totally see and understand the truth and the reality behind a modality of healing and just overall human experience that this is. Because we can go to a place and basically the way we would call the soul energy we would call the soul piece in is to let it know that it's safe to come back because we're not in that state from where the soul piece originally left, right? We're in our present state and we can hold space, we can witness, we can hold it.

We can let ourselves feel what we could not feel back then because we didn't know how to hold those feelings and emotions. So in a way, it is like shadow work, right? Because when our shadow is coming up, our shadow material is coming up, it's because of separation, it's because of neglect, abandonment, rejection, some form of separation within us.

And as I said, the soul holds the shadow. So as we call back pieces of our soul, as we reintegrate pieces of our soul. Our soul become more powerful and it will override our shadow. It's not that the shadow's more powerful than the soul, it's just that the magnitude of separation that the shadow feels is very, very powerful.

So we basically need to override that magnitude of separation with soul Retrieval, with mending, with bridging the gap. And that is love. 

The Importance of Self-Love in Soul Retrieval

Like really the the, um, alpha and Omega of soul retrieval is self-love and offering a loving space for those parts of us that didn't feel that love and safety once upon a time.

That is really soul retrieval. So I want to bring this to the space because I guess in some way, shape, or form, I have been talking about this, but I haven't named it until today. Um, you know, going to a place and feeling things, calling things in, letting go, inviting things in, exchanging with the land, exchanging with the energies, exchanging with the ancestors.

And then of course, timelines, right? Like our younger selves, the younger versions of us, there's linear time. Right, as I talked about but then there's also bits and pieces of time. There's circular time, there's spiral time, so we can be, obviously we're, you know, it's the year 2025, whatever day it is.

That's, you know, linear time. Tomorrow's gonna come the day after tomorrow, and so on and so forth. Yesterday happened the day before yesterday happened. That's linear time, but then experiences happen that are very much remindful of something that happened 10 or 15 years ago or, you know, like something, or maybe even the future comes into the current timeline, right?

Like something that we envision, something we dream of, something that we hope for, and we get like a small appetizer of what that future may be. So that all comes in. It basically all converges into the present because the present moment is all there is. Like when we, when we say time, like that's something we started to measure, right?

Like human beings at some point invented a clock and started to measure time, but there's no time, like before clocks, life went on, life moved. So how did we measure time when there were no clocks around and no calendars? Right? So. It wasn't measurable.

There was no yesterday present tomorrow. Right. That's something that we invented and like use to organize and schedule our lives. It's a mind fuck. I know, but there's such thing as no time and even no space. Before we started to put labels and schedules and clocks on everything. So when we start to tune into that, the no time and no space, this is really where we can see how the past, present and future are actually always coming into a dance.

And of course this very much has to do with our energy, right? So if our energy, if our nervous system, if, um. You know, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions. We're constantly like thinking about the past. We're constantly like feeling the pains of the past. A lot of past material will manifest in our present moment, but if we're feeling joy, we're feeling hope, we're feeling faith, we're feeling excitement, we're, you know, we're dreaming and we're desiring and we're calling in new manifestations, and we're aligning our emotions and feelings with those new manifestations.

The future will come into the, into the present moment. Right. So we don't have to count down into the future for the future to come. Like the future comes into the present moment and we know that the past comes into the present moment when we are stuck in our patterns. You know, when we're like trying to break through a pattern that keeps coming up, that is past energy coming into the present.

So how can we say that the past is actually gone? Just 'cause we say yesterday or the day before yesterday. Energy's still in the present. So yes, linear time, but also no time. Um, and I went off, I went on this tangent now around time. Yes, because I was talking about timelines and how we can go to a certain place in the present moment, but we can attune to a timeline in the past or we can attune to a timeline in the future.

And as far as the past is concerned, this is how we call in the soul piece, the soul retrieval. And then as far as the future's concerned, well, as I said, the soul piece can also go into the upper world, right? So like the soul, uh, says, I don't like it here. I want to go into a future timeline, that is also possible according to Shamanic tradition.

A lot of people are suffering because they've been hurt, right? A lot of people are suffering because they're not letting themselves feel at the level of the soul, because it is the soul that's hurting. Emotion, feeling is the language of the soul. So when we're not letting ourselves feel, when we're not letting ourselves emote, we are negating our soul.

So that can also be another incentive for the soul piece to leave. It's like, fuck, this person's like not feeling shit. Like, what am, what do I, what do I even need to be here for? So it bounces and then it's like, just like a domino effect of lower emotions and lower feelings.

But when we start to let ourselves feel, we start to promote safety within ourselves. But we need to get conscious of soul pieces that may be missing, right? So yes, we'll start to feel better because we're letting ourselves feel. But if very specific traumatic things have happened in our lives, most likely that soul piece is somewhere there. In that place, in that timeline, and we need to call it back.

Concluding Thoughts and Call to Action

So that is what I want to bring to the space today. Because a lot of people are suffering and maybe they're doing the work or you know, they've gotten as far as they have, as far as the work is concerned.

But there's still something, just something that's missing. Something that like extra, that extra oomph that just isn't there as far as healing is concerned. And it may be that a piece of the soul is stuck somewhere in the past, in the present, in the future, and you need to call that soul piece and you can do it through, you know, ritual, prayer, whatever, whatever feels right for you because as I mentioned before, that is your soul piece.

That is your energy and it's what you say and how you say it that goes as far as your energy is concerned.

I was also inspired for this episode. Yes, the previous episodes, but also just journeying through Greece for the last seven years. I talked a little bit about this in my Crete episode. The wound and the womb, uh, moving to Greece back in 2018 has just felt seven years of soul retrieval, but very much ancestral as well, like ancestral healing.

When we're talking about soul retrieval, our soul is a part of our lineages and where we've come from. So for me, it's just been like huge, huge, deep dive into ancestral healing and soul retrieving, the wild remembering. Um. The wild soul. Greece is incredibly wild. It's mountains, it's seas, it's forests, it's wilderness, it's sunlight, it's moonlight, it's olive groves, it's fields.

It's incredibly wild. So it's been the perfect mirror as to what was hurting and missing and needed to be retrieved within myself, and it is deeply interweaved and connected to my lineages.

It's not easy stuff and as I said, you do need a level of intuition and energy sensitivity to obviously be able to attune to these kinds of things, but I do believe every single human being has access in some way, shape, or form if they truly, truly want to access more than just beyond the physical.

They most definitely can, and our soul pieces are ours to claim. My soul pieces are mine to claim yours are yours to claim, and so on and so forth.

So I'll leave it here. I hope that's enough food for thought. Um, thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. If you're on YouTube watching, please hit that like subscribe button. I so greatly appreciate it. Share the episode as well. If you feel called, if you're on one of the podcast platforms, please share the episode as well in any way you feel called.

If you feel like somebody needs to hear this if you want to connect more with me, I am on social media, I'm on Threads, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, I'd love to see you over there as well. I will be back next week with a brand new episode, as always, every Thursday here on Bridger Worlds. And in closing, as always, please remember that you are the medicine and I am just the messenger.

Thank you very much.