Soul Loss and Retrieval: Healing Stress, Anxiety, and Depression

Stress, anxiety, and depression are at epidemic levels—but what if their root cause lies deeper than we think?

Across many indigenous and shamanic cultures, soul loss is understood as a spiritual and energetic fragmentation—a result of trauma, emotional overwhelm, or profound disconnection from one’s inner truth. In our modern, hyper-rational, and disconnected world, these ancient understandings are resurfacing with renewed urgency.

In this powerful event with Dr. Bonnie Bright, depth psychologist and founder of Depth Psychology Alliance and the Institute for Soul-Centered Coaching and Psychology™, and Dr. Christophe Morin, neuroscientist, media psychologist, and consciousness researcher, as they come together to offer a uniquely integrative approach to healing. 

Drawing from soul-centered coaching psychology and the pioneering lens of the neurospiritual perspective, they discuss how we can understand emotional suffering not just through the mind, but through the soul.

This event explores:

• How soul loss manifests through stress, anxiety, and depression
• What neuroscience can tell us about disconnection from meaning, purpose, and embodiment
• How neurospiritual insights validate ancient shamanic practices
• Jungian, archetypal, and symbolic tools for soul retrieval
• Experiential techniques to begin your own healing and reintegration

Together, Dr. Bright and Dr. Morin offer a multilayered path to healing—bridging modern science and ancient wisdom, psyche and soma, symbol and spirit.

This event was produced by the Institute for Soul-Centered Psychology and Coaching™ in conjunction with Depth Psychology Alliance™

Soul, Cosmos, and Consciousness™ is an illuminating “soul feed” to feed your soul! ENGAGE WITH US in deep reflection and self-discovery at the crossroads of ancient wisdom, cosmic mysteries, evolving consciousness, and the essence of being—via podcast, articles, webinars, online courses, and in-person retreats on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Transcript

CM

Welcome. We're thrilled to host this webinar, and we have discussed a lot of the topics we wanted for this series and felt that this topic of soul loss was fortunately or unfortunately so important to bring into the conversation of how we can see, understand, decode what soul loss may be or may represent from two perspectives.

And as usual, if some of you are return visitors to this webinar, I will speak from a neuroscientific and neurospiritual perspective. And Bonnie will speak from a soul-centered perspective. Brief bio, in my case, I've been researching the brain's response to messages of all kinds for 20 years.

And right around COVID, I decided to pivot a lot of my investigation and writing on the topic of mental health, specifically how to understand the toxicity of stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, and trauma. Bonnie. 

BB

Thank you. And some of you are familiar, obviously, with my work and my background. But as Christophe mentioned, I am a depth psychologist. I did my PhD work at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

And before that, I had also done a master's degree in depth psychology. So this has been a passion of mine for almost two decades as well. And just the work of working with soul, which is really the foundation of depth psychology, Jungian psychology, transpersonal psychology. And all of these come together into what I have called soul-centered psychologies. And that's really my preferred term, because soul is so important, and most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.

02:00

So that's part of the reason behind our topic for today. We really want to immerse ourselves as much as we can into this concept of soul, but also to help us get a felt sense of what it feels like when our soul is present, when we are living as our soul self, as I like to call it, as opposed to our ego self. And when we lose touch with that, also, it becomes something very devastating in our lives. And often, we aren't even aware that that's what's going on.

So I've been just really passionate about this work. And I know that the people that I work with in my own soul-centered coaching practice have also seen so much benefit from just this simple act of being able to get into this space of understanding our relationship with soul. 

So having said that, I would like to just take a moment with all of you, if you're willing, just to get us grounded here a little bit and open ourselves to the sense of soul that we have here.

We're not going to go into a long exercise of any kind, but we will do an exercise toward the end where you will have the opportunity to have your own experience of soul retrieval, whether for yourself, probably for yourself. It could end up that it's for somebody else that you care about as well. 

So now, if you will, I just invite you to feel your sitting bones on the chair right now where you are. Maybe just let your attention turn inward for just a moment. And here we're just noticing.

03:32

And you might be your attention might be drawn to noises or sounds that are coming from outside in the room or outside your window. I hear a lot of birds outside of my window. And by the way, in some mythologies, birds are symbols of the soul because they can travel between heaven and earth. They can fly between dimensions.

So perhaps just noticing in yourself right now whatever feels like a sense of meaning to you, whatever feels like a sense of connection to you. And if you're not able to tune into that at this exact moment, that's not a problem, of course. The noticing is what's the most important here. 

So thank you for that. Really appreciate it.

04:23

I find that that often just really sets a tone for us. So we'd like to move into the content now. And for me, I think it really is important for us to start with a discussion of what is soul? There's a lot of different concepts out there, but soul is really an archetypal idea. If you're familiar with Jungian archetypes, archetypes are patterns that go across time and across eras, really.

And it is a pattern that we can all recognize. And Jung, and William James before him, who might be considered the true pioneer of psychology, he lived in the 1800s, died in the late 1800s. And he talked a lot about how humans have this innate sense of spirituality, that we have a need for spiritual connection. And of course, ancient peoples have known this for thousands and thousands of years.

And before the whole scientific revolution came along, of course, there were lots of ways that first peoples—and all peoples, I guess—could connect in to nature as a spiritual perspective. And nature really does seem to carry our soul for us. So if anybody is experiencing something that needs more soul, if you're ever going through a rough spot or a dark night of the soul, which we will also touch in on a little bit, nature is always such a beautiful way to reset yourself.

05:56

And it is definitely one of the ways that we will talk about that you can perform your own kind of soul retrieval or soul recovery if parts of your own soul get lost or taken off to the underworld. So what is soul? Well, actually, psyche means soul in Greek. And so when we talk about psychology, the word psychology actually is the study of soul.

And so it's very interesting because when psychology, the field of psychology, began to be developed in the early, well, late 1800s and early 1900s. Both Freud and Jung were at the forefront of that. And of course, Freud really went into his own ideas about the personal unconscious, which is our own lives and everything that we have experienced in the past. And some of that has been repressed and lost to us, or at least to our awareness.

And of course, Jung, he also understood that idea of personal unconscious and talked a lot about that. But he also moved beyond simply the personal unconscious into more of these spiritual realms. He really had an inherent understanding of that need for spirituality that each one of us has. Now, spirituality is a word that is often connected with religion. And of course, religion is a topic that can be kind of controversial, I suppose.

07:18

It's often considered quite black and white because there are certain rules and regulations and restrictions and dogma that are associated with religion. So I just want to differentiate also between spirituality and religion. Because while religion is spiritual or can be spiritual, I guess, spirituality does not necessarily require a religion. However, it's quite interesting because if you know anything about shamanism, you may be aware that shamanism is kind of the world's oldest, organized, structured relationship with spirituality.

It's not really considered a religion, but we have evidence of shamanism that goes back as far as 60 or 80,000 years ago. And it's true that some experts debate whether or not these evidences are from shamanic ideas or societies. But we have, for example, some gravesites where there was someone buried in that gravesite with animals, with very special jewelry and stones and things that seem to indicate some kind of ritual practices.

And also a lot of artifacts and things that indicated that this person was of very high status in the community. And so the definition of shamanism that I like to use is that shamans are really the masters of ecstasy. And that is a quote that comes from Mircea Eliade who wrote a very seminal tome called Shamanism. So if you're interested in shamanism and you haven't done a lot of research into that, I really highly recommend that book is a really good one to start with.

08:59

He breaks down most of the concepts of shamanism and very compelling. Eliade was a Romanian scholar who has now long since passed, but more contemporary. So you can get a lot of the understanding about it from his work. And so shamans, they are said to travel to other worlds or other realms to be able to gain both insight and healing for the people that come to them with challenges, people that are struggling, people that are suffering from what we would call today depression or anxiety or stress.

And of course, Christophe's going to talk a lot more about that. But coming back to this idea of soul then, I don't know that shamans necessarily would have called it that, but what they are doing often in their work is going to look for some medicine or something that can help somebody who is struggling. And in many of these indigenous tribes, they talk about this concept of soul loss.

10:03

And that is the idea that the person who is coming to them has lost a sense of meaning in their lives, has lost a sense of wholeness, has lost a sense of being connected not only to things like nature and to other people in their lives, but also a loss of connection to themselves. That's what we might call a loss of soul. And many of you know Thomas Moore, who is a contemporary author, psychotherapist, and he wrote this very well-known book now called Care of the Soul.

And he says that soul is where depth, meaning, and imagination live. So I think that's a really important aspect of soul also to bring in, and that is the idea of imagination. How many of you, on a regular basis, think about imagination? Going throughout your day, do you often think about imagination? Do you engage in imagination in your day? And Jung always said that images are the language of the soul.

So hence, the word imagination focuses on this idea of images and brings them in in a way that we really need to pay attention to, because it is a very powerful language and also a powerful way of doing soul recovery that we can tap into. 

Now, James Hillman, who was also a Jungian, and was the father of Archetypal psychology, he said that soul gives meaning to our experiences and is revealed in images, dreams, and love.

11:28

So this is starting to give you an idea of a sense of meaning that we can bring into our lives through this idea of soul. And then for Jung, as I mentioned, he really based all of his psychology on this idea of soul. He said that psyche is soul. And he once wrote that the soul is the thing which makes meaning possible.

So you can imagine that if we are missing our soul or a part of our soul, as the case may be, that we lose a sense of meaning, that we lose a sense of being able to navigate our lives in a way that is meaningful, that is soulful, that makes us feel connected, that allows us to feel alive. So soul is also an animating force. It is our life force. It is the thing that we can engage with that actually makes our lives worthwhile.

And if we have lost that sense, then most of you know, probably many of you have gone through stages in your life of depression or feeling down or feeling disconnected. We also talk about soul loss as dissociation. And so sometimes that is if you're feeling flat or if you're just not feeling engaged with life, that might also be an indicator that you are experiencing a loss of soul. So I'll just say a couple more things about indigenous societies and their relationship with soul.

12:46

Soul loss is typically a fragmenting process, which means part of us has been split off or has faced some kind of trauma that doesn't really allow us to be able to understand or to engage or to integrate what is going on in our lives. And therefore, part of us has to just kind of freeze in a more of a defensive position.

And that part of us that freezes in the face of whatever that was that was overwhelming our nervous system at the time, whether we were young or whether we were adults at the time, that part of us that freezes is the part that is said to be a part of our soul. 

And so in indigenous societies, the shaman, as I mentioned, is the soul navigator, basically. And so what he or she is doing is going into the underworld, typically, to look for those parts of his patients or her patients' soul that have been lost or have been taken off to the underworld.

And in various different traditions, they talk about this idea of fragmentation. So I just did some research and come up with some ideas from a few different indigenous peoples to give you an idea of how they perceive it. Again, it's so interesting because there's a very similar arc, a very similar pattern to each one of these societies, even though they are spread around the world in very different places. 

14:08

And that's the thing about shamanism. It evolved with the same kind of pattern. It looks very similar in almost every culture on the planet. And yet, all of these cultures did not have internet access or technologies, presumably, that they were able to communicate with one another. So the question is, where did this idea come from at all? Very archetypal. And so these indigenous peoples often tapped into this idea. 

And so the Q’ero people in the Peruvian Andes, some of you might be familiar with the Inca traditions. And the Q’ero people believe that soul loss can happen when a person experiences intense fright, grief, or trauma, and especially in childhood. 

And so they talk about the loss of life essence, and they say or they claim that they can see it in a person's eyes, in their energy, and also in their behavior. And so when certain symptoms or signs show up, then everybody knows it's time to do a soul recovery process on this person who is suffering or struggling.

And so then the shaman will come in, and they usually have some kind of a ritual or ceremony in which the shaman travels and begins this process of soul recovery. 

15:26

The Dagara people of Burkina Faso, this is in West Africa. This is, according to Malidoma Some, who I had the amazing opportunity to study with for several years and also to travel with him to Burkina Faso to study with some of the native shamans that were there. And there they recognized soul loss as an energetic fracture.

So they talk about it as an ailment of the spirit. And they say that it occurs when somebody experiences betrayal, neglect, or trauma, and especially when that trauma isn't witnessed or ritually processed. And so they believe that the soul is very deeply communal and that it cannot survive very long in isolation. And so trauma without a ritual leads to this psychic fragmentation that we are calling soul loss—that they called soul loss.

16:16

And I just want to maybe make a note here about trauma. There are different descriptions of it, but the way I like to define it is when we are faced with something that we simply cannot take in or integrate. It's when we're faced with something that overwhelms our nervous system in the moment that we just don't have the capacity to process. And so that means trauma is going to be different for everybody.

Of course, there are what we call acute traumas, which everybody can recognize, and that could be something like an accident, or a death, or an illness, or abuse, or something that is very overt, particularly in our childhood. But it can also be something that is much smaller, much more of a developmental trauma. Perhaps we really, really, really feel connected to our mom and we love her, but maybe she says no to us, or maybe she snaps at us one day when we're three years old.

And a little child who feels that connected to mom, who then suddenly faces this either anger or shortness, can end up feeling very neglected or very rejected. And that for a three-year-old might feel like a trauma. It might feel like something they simply cannot take in, that their nervous system is completely overwhelmed because they don't know what to do with that because it's the first time that they remember or recognize their mom snapping at them in a way.

17:40

So just to say that each one of these experiences is in the face of some trauma that we could not possibly integrate, whether small or big. So just to give you a couple more examples, and then I'll turn the time back to you, Christophe, to talk from a neurospiritual perspective. 

In the Inuit cultures, the Inuit understand soul loss, especially in children. And you'll note in many of these that they begin in childhood. They talk about it as the departure of the soul due to fright, environmental imbalance. Isn't that interesting? And it doesn't necessarily maybe mean nature. It might also mean in the home. 

But we will talk about collective soul loss later. And when we do, I'm sure that will come up as part of it, as the way that we are treating the planet and the really massive challenges that we face at this moment in time with the climate emergency and environmental issues. 

So the symptoms of these often are unexplained illness. So if somebody gets ill, often this is related to the idea of soul loss. If somebody's ill, then they're not in balance. That means part of them is missing. They're not whole any longer. So indigenous people assume that parts of an individual has been taken off to the underworld and that that part of them must be retrieved. 

So as I go through these, you might be recognizing some of these in yourself. We talked about betrayal just a few moments ago in the Dagara people.

19:01

If anybody has ever felt betrayed at some point in your life, probably that is an experience that you can look at and say, "Wow, I think a piece of my soul was lost in that process." The Shipibo people, which live in the upper Amazon in Peru—Christophe, I know you've spent time with the Shipibo people—they talk about psychological or emotional instability, or getting lost in the forest of the spirit world.

Now, again, we can bring this into our own experience and talk about times that we have been faced with difficulty. So whether we get into an altercation with somebody, any of us, when we get triggered, there's usually an indication that there is some kind of trauma there that is being repeated, that we need to look at because it probably is a form of soul loss on our end. 

The last one here is Australian Aboriginal peoples. And so among these Aboriginal groups, the soul or the shadow can be displaced or stolen, actually, during shock, grief, or violations of the sacred law. 

And for them, the connection between soul and place is very critical. Some of you might have heard of the songlines in Australia, the way that the Aboriginals look at it. And they talk about how when people are separated from their dreaming tracks or their ancestral lands, that the Spirit becomes disoriented in that moment and might wander off and get lost.

20:30

So soul loss can happen either by just simply getting lost, by this splitting that happens when a part of ourselves just has to kind of freeze in the face of that trauma and doesn't know what else to do. And it falls by the wayside. And then we don't have access to that part of ourselves anymore. And what has to happen is we have to go in search of that part of ourselves. Now, in psychology, we have many ways to do that, and we're going to talk about some of those ways to do that. 

But for the time being, I'd just like to invite you to just feel into your own life right now—you probably already have been doing that—and start to identify some of the things that you remember about your own life that have been difficult for you or that still hold a charge for you, even if they happened 30 years ago, or things that really don't feel good for you, where you feel like you're off-balance in your life. And to understand that sometimes a part of our soul also chooses to flee according to this work, because it simply cannot handle whatever the situation is in the moment.

So there's a lot more to talk about here, but I'd love to turn the time over to you, Christophe, to talk a little bit from the neurospiritual perspective. 

CM

Thank you. As a brain researcher—I have it here to prove it—of course, my fascination and obsession was more, at least initially, on the neurobiological manifestation of these conditions that we associate today with soul loss, such as excessive stress, anxiety, depression.

22:09

Bonnie mentioned trauma, but also addiction. And it's clear that all these conditions, in one way or another, are connected to soul loss. Joe Tafur, a very prominent researcher, medical doctor, pioneer in the use of plant medicine especially, considers that all these classical definitions that we have for mental disorders are really spiritual disease more than just purely neurobiological disease.

When we disconnect from meaning, embodiment, and purpose, it's very simple. Our brain shows it. This is what I would call the biology of spiritual fragmentation. So for me, not that it is a different definition than you have received from Bonnie, the opportunity that we have today with this tremendous knowledge that has been gained, really, mostly in the last couple of decades, neuroscientists like to say that 90-plus percent of what we know about the brain is, in fact, no more than five or six years old.

So we're still just scratching on the surface, but we do know that we cannot just discuss these conditions without considering the notion that there is more to it than dysfunctions of our nervous system. So my most recent book—I will show you here—called Open, is, in fact, a neurospiritual exploration of five specific conditions which I just cited as stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, and trauma.

24:11

I use the acronym SADAT. I know it's not exactly easy to say, but it's helpful when you write a book of 400 pages to use an acronym instead of spelling out the disease. And in the Open model, which I introduce in the book, soul loss is basically a breakdown of communication between your primal, rational, and spiritual brain systems. So let's talk about that. Just looking at the brain, this is half of it.

What you see on the bottom of the brain is called the brainstem. And the brainstem is, in fact, the hub of what we call the primal brain, the survival brain. And in that hub of the primal brain, we have all the biological mechanisms, the software, if you will, to react in split seconds.

Whenever there is, in fact, a threat, the brain has decided or the divine to make sure that consciousness and awareness is not necessary. And so it's very, very difficult to control and even understand the extent to which these hijacking aspects of the brain are going to simply take over.

25:27

So it's really important to understand that right above the primal brain, in this area where you see the wrinkly, pinky part of the brain, the cortical layer, which is the newest part of our operating system, if you will, is where we do have the capacity to do some sort of cognitive reappraisal, to reassess the threat, the situations that may have been triggering you.

And I say may because a lot of those trigger points, as Bonnie just cited, have been buried deep inside your psyche, sometimes for decades—if not prior lives or certainly ancestral effect of people that have been surviving difficult situations.

So for me, the model doesn't stop, though, as what we can see and touch, both the primal and the rational brain, which has been a very fascinating part of the current research on consciousness, is to understand what is, in fact, emerging from both the primal and the rational. Maybe not any specific area that we can touch or measure, but that's what we call the spiritual manifestation, the connections that we have to something bigger than ourselves.

26:54

And so I look at those three layers, if you will, as opportunities, as a model of understanding the degree to which you are affected by these conditions because there is a lack of integration of the purpose of those three dimensions of our brain.

It's not just that you're tired of you know life or you're scared that will create these conditions, you may have lost access to presence and purpose. And these specific medical conditions are associated with these maladaptive states. And I'm going to throw at you some pretty disturbing number because approximately 125 million people in the United States are affected by at least one of those five conditions.

Yes, that's 48% of all adults. It is not possible, in my view, that 50% of people have biological disorders manifested by those five conditions. It is pretty clear that this is something much bigger than what the science of how we understand the brain or in fact, the relationship, of course, between the brain and the body is telling us one out of two adults.

28:24

So let's talk briefly about these conditions and how they affect the brain. Stress, we all know, is and can be helpful. And so I'm not, in fact, here to suggest that we need to erase the presence of stress and even anxiety in our lives. I'm here to just remind you of what happens and the extent to which it affects your capacity to seek this integration, make this a partnership between the primal, the rational, and the spiritual brain.

Cortisol is a hormone that will typically be released in our nervous system to calm down our nervous system. But as it takes its role, hijacking in a way the pharmacy of our brain, it's becoming very, very difficult to avoid the fight and flight response cycle. And so too much stress will be very toxic.

A little bit of stress might be just enough to get you going for the rest of your day. Now, anxiety affects the brain neurobiologically very differently. And a lot of it has to do with a tiny little brain area you must have been hearing about called the amygdala. The amygdala, in fact, the term comes from the French word. It happens to be French called amond. And so it's the size of an almond.

29:50

And it can have tremendous power to project enormous anxiety and stress at the same time because you need that reliance on these chemicals to restore, eventually, a sense of calm. But your soul can't live in the moment when your brain won't stop spinning. And the spinning is what is the byproduct of anxiety, but ultimately, it affects our capacity to live a soulful life.

Depression is an interesting one. Of course, it's highly complex. I don't mean to suggest that I have cracked the code of all these conditions. But in depression, both dopamine and serotonin, which I suspect many of you have heard of, serotonin is considered the mood regulator in our system. We produce serotonin, and sometimes depression can be purely biological to the extent that you may have deficits or dysfunctional neurotransmitters and docking stations, which I call receptors, right?

But depression is, in fact, a state where the inner world becomes gray. And as a result, if you don't get out of the gray, it can have its purpose. And I know Bonnie and I have had these important conversations with people who are affected from depression, that there is a usefulness to some extent of being internalizing—in an internalizing mode.

31:27

But for the most part, when you seek the soulful life, you seek to see color, not just gray. And so it's really, really important to look at it in that respect. 

Addiction, of course, is also a very complex condition. We talk much more about behavioral addiction today than substance addiction. But in all cases, it's pretty clear that addiction is, to some extent, a brain's attempt to fill the spiritual void, and to create and fill up that hole in our brain, and that longing for short-term pleasure, for short-term rewards. I won't talk too much about trauma because I think Bonnie already said it all.

And that is, this capacity for dissociating from the core self is certainly a brain strategy, to some extent, to protect from the absence of answers, from the absence of enough context or enough meaning. So these neurospiritual conditions are really at the core of how I feel. We can both deepen our understanding of what soul loss is.

32:40

It does have a physical manifestation. There's no question about that. But the manifestation of these conditions can also send us back this calling for a soul retrieval process. And so as we move into this webinar, what we want to do is bring more understanding and more awareness, both from a soul-centered perspective and from a neuroscientific perspective. But we're not going to leave you with just that.

I think we are really excited to share some techniques, modalities, approaches that can help the process of soul retrieval. Bonnie? 

BB

Thank you. Yeah. So, just coming now, we're going to move a little bit more into this idea of collective soul loss, and then we will talk about some of the ways that we can conduct our own recovery, soul recovery or retrieval. But Jung actually understood this idea of soul loss as such.

33:38

And he had studied a lot of indigenous peoples. And so he understood this whole concept, recognized it as archetypal, and really adopted it into his own work. And often, what he talked about was this connection between ego and soul. Now, of course, our ego is what helps us get around in our lives, makes decisions, tries to help us feel safe and be seen. We've talked about that in several past events. But Jung said that—I want to give you a direct quote from him—he said, "There are two reasons why man loses contact with the regulating center of his soul. One of them is that some single instinctive drive or emotional image can carry him into a one-sidedness that makes him lose his balance. His one-sidedness and consequent loss of balance are much dreaded by primitives— Now, that's Jung's word. It was a long time ago, so we might substitute that word in current day.

But he said, "Much dreaded because they call it the loss of soul." So he knew this term. He used it. And he talked about it as the idea that our ego has basically taken charge and has not gone to the extra effort of being in touch with whatever this is that's meaningful. So his idea was that we need to go through a process of recovering our soul by moving into the shadow, by moving into what is unconscious within us.

35:08

All of the things that have happened to us in our own lives as well as in the collective that are going on or have ever gone on, we carry all of that within us. And if we don't have the capacity to be able to hold that, to look at what has happened in our own lives or in our own culture or in a history on this planet. If we don't have the emotional capacity to carry that, then, of course, we are going to dissociate from that. And so his idea is that we really need to do the work of looking.

And that begins by doing our own inner work. Often, it's helpful to work with somebody else because we can't see our own shadow. Everybody else can see it, but we can't see it because it's unconscious within us. And so it's really important that we begin by doing our own inner work. And that includes even when we are talking about collective soul loss. Now, you might look around in the world today and be able to identify some of the consequences of soul loss in our culture.

36:09

And some of these that you might see are, first of all, over rationality. And that means that we don't have access to imagination in daily life nearly as much as we need to. Definitely, as a culture, we are driven by this rationality, by literalism, by going after goals and not really paying attention to the consequences of who gets hurt in the long term. We see the environmental devastation that's all around us all the time and the disconnection from nature.

And this allows us to abuse nature or to neglect it or to treat it as an object, to objectify it. Of course, that's not helping, and it's definitely not soulful. We see the rampant consumerism that is so blatant in our culture and how people, all of us, tend to value material things more than those spiritual concepts that we are talking about, the spiritual connection. And we also see, as Christophe mentioned, this really collective malaise.

It's the rampant onset of depression and hopelessness that we can see everywhere. Of course, it's way more apparent to us now because we have social media, and media in general, and all of these ways to be able to see it at work. But again, I will just say the first place we can always start to look at it is within ourselves. 

Jung also talked about modern technology, which in his day, that was back in the mid-1900s. Of course, I think he would be horrified to see what's going on today.

37:39

I'm not saying technology is bad. I'm usually an early adopter of technology. I really appreciate it for what it can do. It's a tool like anything else. But part of what the problem is with technology, and also the speed at which we live our lives, particularly today, is that we are lacking the soul to bring it into some kind of balance. So I don't know what that means to you, but perhaps if you are having if you feel challenged by technology, you feel that it is a way of stealing our soul.

And some indigenous peoples felt like that. When white Westerners showed up in some Indigenous peoples bringing cameras to take pictures of them, a lot of times indigenous people felt like their soul was being stolen when they saw this still image of themselves. It freaked them out, to say the least, because this was not something that they were familiar with, and they did not like to see this image because it felt like somebody else had captured them.

So there's a great story from Jung, actually, when he talked about sort of the pace at which we're living our lives and this lack of soulful connection to be able to sustain that or to make meaning out of that. He recounts when he visited Africa, he was riding between villages in a motor car, which at the time was very novel. There were hardly any in Africa at that time.

38:57

And when he went into one of the villages with some of the people he was traveling with, one of the men, it turned out, needed to go to the next village and did not have a way to get there except by walking. And so they invited this native man to get in the car with them and to ride to the next village. So this man agreed, and he got in the car, and they started to go. And after just a few seconds, the native man started saying, "Stop, stop, stop the car." And so they stopped the car, and this man jumped out immediately and went over and laid down on the ground.

And nobody could understand what was happening. But when they inquired about what was happening to this man, he said the problem was that the car was going so fast that he didn't know if his soul could keep up with him. So there's a really good way into how we can start to conduct our own soul retrieval. And that is to slow down and take stock of where we are in our lives and what is bringing us meaning.

40:00

And we can start to engage in ritual that will bring us home to ourselves or to connect us or reconnect us with that soul on a regular basis. Every single one of us, I would argue, goes through some kind of soul loss every single day just in our daily interactions or remembering things or experiencing things. It may not be huge, but imagine if we just lose a little percentage here and a little percentage there, if we don't do anything to change that or to recover that part of ourselves that's been lost, then, of course, it's just going to become cumulative and get worse and worse.

So it's really, really important, first of all, when we look at soul retrieval, to be able to come home to ourselves on a regular basis. That might look like meditation for you. It might look like reading something meaningful. It might look like making music. It might look like making art. It might look like listening to evocative music. There's a thousand ways that you can probably think of that are soulful for you to be able to really offer this.

Now, native people often will use ritual because ritual is a bridge between ourselves and the divine. And that ritual engages help from the invisible world or whatever you want to call that—the Universe, God, whatever—to help us to come back home to ourselves and to find that meaning in our lives again. So again, just a couple of examples.

41:32

Coming back to some of those native tribes that I was talking about earlier, the way that they heal each one of them is through ritual. And so the Q’ero people in Peru, they talk about a soul calling ceremony. And so they use coca leaves and sacred stones, and they invoke the mountain spirits. And then the soul fragment that has been lost is lured back, literally, brought back through love, through story, through offerings. And these offerings are often made on behalf of the soul that is lost. 

The Dagara people, they talk about healing of the Spirit, and they use drumming and dance and elemental altars. I had an opportunity to participate in a lot of that work—so altars to fire, water, earth, air, and in this case, mineral as well. They also conduct grief rituals that allow the whole community to express and then to release the stored pain that any of them has been experiencing—or that all of them have been experiencing in a collective way—and to call those lost parts home.

So each one of these tribes has their own way of doing this. And this might actually be helpful for you to start to think about what kind of ritual could you do to be able to bring your own soul home to yourself? 

For example, in the Australian Aboriginal, they use these ancestral maps to find out where the soul has wandered. So we are going to do our next Final Friday Free Webinar on karma and ancestral connections.

43:04

We've come up with a name for it. I forget what it is off the top of my head. But this is the idea of looking into our own lineage as well to try to understand as best we can what traumas our ancestors went through, even all the way to our parents. What traumas did our parents go through that we picked up on because they were never treated properly. They were never helped to retrieve their own lost parts of their own souls. They didn't have the opportunity, perhaps, to do their own inner work in the same way that we do today.

Each one of you that are here right now or listening to this is doing your own inner work simply by being here and being present to these ideas and then being able to take them back and integrate them. So integration is huge. We do have the opportunity to integrate each one of these traumas simply by working in three ways. And I'll just mention those briefly. And then, Christophe, I'll come back to you. 

The ways that I like to work in my soul-centered coaching practice primarily is through Somatic work, Symbolic work, and Shamanic work.

And so this means that we can work with the body. Christophe mentioned not having embodiment is a form of soul loss. It's very important that we feel ourselves in our bodies, that we are present in our bodies instead of dissociated around here. 

It's really important that we work with symbols, especially according to Jung. So anything can be a symbol, or dreams can bring us symbols or something that we notice in our daily lives. And to be able to interpret those symbols and what they mean to us: What is the message that is there for us coming from—oh! our soul, because image is the language of soul, right?

44:42

And then the last one is Shamanic. And of course, that is seeking out these what we call non-ordinary states of consciousness. That term comes primarily from Stan Grof, who is the father of—one of the pioneers of—transpersonal psychology. Both Christophe and I have had a chance to work with him directly. And he's kind of written the book on non-ordinary states of consciousness. So if you don't know his work and you are interested, please go look for some of that. He has tons of books and videos and things out there.

And so it's really important that we find our own way into this, but there are lots of ways to do that. And Christophe, I know you are going to talk about some of those as well. So please, back to you. 

CM

Thank you, Bonnie. I have to say, for most of my adult life, I was extremely skeptical, if not non-believer of many of the so-called soul-centered approaches to those conditions.

45:40

And so my first step, without being totally rejecting all of it, was to investigate, in fact, the evidence that I could find and the way our brain could process these rituals, for instance, revealed to me an incredible map of both the brain but also the soul.

And so the book Open is really this exploration of how can we—instead of separate this materialistic view, which Bonnie suggests is still very much the rational view of how our society tends to see, especially mental disorders—how can we embrace that rational view—that scientific, materialistic view—with a non-materialistic view.

And that's really the goal of that neurospiritual exploration. And so three steps became clear to me based on my research, but also my own personal experience, having confronted many of those conditions. And of course, the math is clear. If one out of two of us will experience this, there's a pretty big chance many of you are part of that group as well. The first step, which I investigate in is a very big area of research, is: What can we do to raise our consciousness?

47:08

What can we do to step out of what drives anxiety and stress? And that process can be a little bit painful. At the same time, having that capacity to get perspective is essential. Number two, and this is an area of science that I'm very interested in, we have to actually tap into this inner healing mechanisms that is in all of us called neuroplasticity.

And neuroplasticity is not just about repairing a broken bone, or seeing your cut just come back to normal. The skin has this incredible ability to repair itself. But I'm talking about repairing those disconnections in the brain. Those soul-related disconnections can be repaired.

And this is the process that I unpacked in the book by sharing, especially what we now understand is the effect of certain modalities, whether it's meditation or psychedelics, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that we can enter in certain states, which typically are high consciousness states or altered states of consciousness, where we can see the process of neuroplasticity accelerate.

48:35

And this is not pseudoscience. This is documented by some of the best universities in the world. I happen to be part of Johns Hopkins. So Johns Hopkins is at the forefront of psychedelic research and all the research also on meditation that demonstrate that we have this inner, inner gift of self-healing. But to nurture both consciousness and neuroplasticity, as Bonnie reminded all of us, rituals can have a huge impact on our brains.

So I became, again, very interested in the neuroscience behind rituals. And I realized that many of these rituals have the common aspect of following and repeating specific steps which often are exactly the same every time you do your ritual. Well, it turns out that the brain—and particularly the primal brain— loves rituals to the extent that there is no reason to stress or to be anxious when you perform your ritual.

So it is giving your survival brain that is constantly scanning for the possibility that threat can happen, it gives that brain a huge break. And during that break, you can recenter, you can reground, you can re-elevate your level of consciousness. And as you do it, you manifest the state of higher neuroplasticity. What does that mean?

50:09

You can rewrite your story, and you can clear your story, particularly if it's full of traumas and aspects of your life that you find yourself ruminating about, it can do this work completely naturally. Now, it's not going to happen overnight, but through repetition, I can assure you, and I have been very, very lucky to witness literally thousands of people going through these processes and coming out in ways that let's be clear, medication alone will not do.

And I'm not against medication. I'm not a clinical doctor. I recognize the need and the importance of accessing medication. But why not, on top of that, add natural ways through which we can move out of the toxicity of these conditions. So yes, you did mention body rituals. Breathwork is a huge one to calm down the primal brain.

An overactive primal brain needs to typically look at the basic regulation of our nervous system. The rational brain is a little more tricky, because that's where you get into rumination. That's where you get into addictions and the need to create reward systems that are going to immediately make you feel better. So rational rituals, as I see them, can be an opportunity maybe to listen to evocative music because we know evocative music has the capacity to calm down the rumination.

51:47

We know also that activities like gardening and cooking or dancing all include so many aspects of what the brain ultimately needs to do to regulate our body, which goes far beyond the primal brain alone. And of course, the spiritual rituals, as I call them, we're getting now into prayer. We're getting into, of course, meditation, plant medicine work, what have you. There's so much documentation on the benefit of those rituals but having this framework can be really helpful. Bonnie?

BB

Thank you. I just wanted to come back to this idea that not only is shamanism an archetypal idea, but so is soul loss. And I had this experience myself. I wanted to share a personal experience with you.

And I'd like to just share with you a personal story that is pretty symbolic of this whole idea that soul loss and retrieval is archetypal, that it is a pattern that we can tap into. And when I was in my 20s, I decided to start seeing a therapist for a while. I was experiencing what I know now to be, obviously, some soul loss of my own.

And in the session of therapy, the therapist was really leading me through a process, I think, of probably becoming more embodied. At the time, I didn't have a lot of knowledge or understanding about what was happening. But she was really trying to help me grasp a felt sense of something. And she had asked me a question that I just couldn't answer, and I couldn't really figure out how to get into that place where I could find the answer.

And we ended the session without me ever really feeling like I was able to access that, which was not necessarily a problem, but what it meant was the process continued after I left the session. And I remember that I went out and sat in my car in the parking lot, and I was still thinking about this question she had asked and still trying to just retrieve something that was there about it and try to get that felt sense. And suddenly, I found myself envisioning myself in this kind of vision that just unfolded for me pretty spontaneously.

And in the vision, I was standing on one side of a huge, enormous gap. And if you look down, it was probably hundreds of feet, if not 1,000 feet down. It was this huge chasm that just opened up in the ground. And as far as I could see on either direction, there was no way to get around it or go past it. And when I looked to the other side of that chasm, I could see myself with some other people talking or doing something on the other side.

And I just knew instinctively that I really needed to be able to rejoin myself or get myself over there. And so I started looking in this vision for a way to get over there, and I couldn't necessarily find one. I thought, "Is there a ladder or a tree or something that I could put over the top of it that I could cross it that way?" And then suddenly, as I was wondering in this vision what I should do, a large white bird flew over and landed right next to me and invited me to get on its back.

And this was a large goose, which at the time, I remember thinking, "Oh, maybe it's a swan. Maybe it's a swan." I think I wanted it to be a swan, but it was definitely a goose. So it invited me to get on its back, and I got on, and it actually flew me over to the other side. So that was an obvious way that I had not thought about necessarily to get over there. And when I got over there, then I invited myself that I could see over there to get on the goose with me. And of course, we flew back over to the other side of the chasm.

And then as we landed and were at a safe distance, the entire thing just crumbled. And I had this sense of kind of like leveling something or leveling a playing field or bringing myself back to some kind of neutral. It was a really, really powerful experience. And I wasn’t really….I  had never really had anything like that happen to me before. I didn't really know what to make of it, except that it felt like a tool or a process that was super helpful for me.

55:49

And a couple of days later, I was in the local library, and I was looking at some books from Joseph Campbell, who is the great mythologist. And some of his books have just these amazing pictures in them. And of course, stories and mythologies from all over the world. And I opened that book to a page where it was talking about Siberian shamanism. And it said that in Siberian tradition, the shaman would ride on the back of a goose to fly to the underworld to retrieve the lost souls.

 So I mean, I say this all the time to my students in my soul-centered coaching program. You just can't make this stuff up. This was something that revealed itself to me that unfolded for me in a way that was profound and meaningful. And of course, having that understanding meant a lot to me once I recognized what it was. And so I would just like to suggest that this is an archetypal pattern that is unfolding for all of us. Every single one of us has access to it.

 CM

Fascinating topic.

56:50

BB  

So… I see that we are nearing the end of the hour here. There's just so much to this—so much richness to this topic. I had envisioned that we would do a brief exercise. It might take about five minutes, but it is an opportunity for you to be able to do your own soul retrieval, at least to start the process. And this is through the process of what Jung called active imagination. 

And active imagination does two things. One, for sure, it engages our imagination. Again, anytime we can bring images into our lives, into our work, and work with them as symbols, that gives us the opportunity to learn something about ourselves, to gain insights, but also to integrate some of the experiences that we have had in our lives. That is, to identify them, to find our feelings about those, to live into our feelings about those, and then to let those feelings go so that that part of us can live on in a way that it needs to as part of the whole.

57:50

So I invite you to just come back, perhaps, into that space that you were in earlier when we first started, just to start to allow your eyes to gently close if that feels right for you, or to leave them lowered down toward the ground. And as you breathe, again, turning into that noticing, perhaps you'll find some parts of your body that do feel alive, that really feel like they are connected to soul, connected to meaning.

And perhaps you'll also notice some parts that feel numb or dissociated or very far away or closed off to you in some way. There's no right or wrong here. Just noticing, feeling. 

And now, in your mind's eye, I invite you to see yourself standing at the edge of a forest. It's dusk. The sky is shades of lavender, silver, and pink.

The earth beneath your feet is soft, maybe even warm still from the sunlight of the day. And a narrow path winds into the forest in front of you. This is the path of remembrance. And with each breath that you take, you feel yourself stepping onto the path, walking forward. And as you walk into this forest, you know that you're safe, but you're ready for an adventure.

You're looking for healing. You're seeking those lost parts of yourself. You're not alone. A guide appears to you as you're walking. This might be an animal, might be an ancestor. It might be a luminous being or a presence that you feel. Maybe you can't quite name it. And they're here to walk with you. And so as you walk, feeling their presence, noticing your own presence as you observe and feel.

1:00:21

And so you let this guide lead you now, even deeper into the woods. And soon, you come upon a clearing. And in this clearing, in the center, a fire is burning. It's gentle, but it's very alive. It's radiant. It's emanating warmth and light. And as you stand there taking it all in, across the fire, you see someone.

And this is a part of you. This is a soul fragment, a forgotten self. This part might be a child or a teenager. Could be an elder, a warrior, a shadowy figure, maybe it's a glowing presence. Let this part of you show itself to you.

And as you watch, listen, take in this part of you, just take a few breaths and look at them. What do they feel like? How do they look? Notice some details. And perhaps you want to ask them a question.

Some examples might be, "Why did you leave?" Or, "What did you come to protect me from?" Or, "What do you need to feel safe enough to return?" You can just let these answers arise. If it feels like it's coming from your own mind, that's not a problem because I believe that everything comes from the same place.

And that is the depths of our unconscious, the depths of our soul that is informing us all the time. So just taking another few seconds.

And there might be a moment now if you choose that you can ask this part of you, "Would you like to come home with me?" And if the answer is yes, then open your heart and feel them stepping inside, not to be controlled or judged, but simply to be held, to be welcomed, to be loved, to be accepted, to be seen.

1:02:35

And you might choose to place your hand over your heart, and you can feel them entering or gently settling into your body, and just letting your breath receive them also. And if they're not ready yet, if the answer is no, or you don't get an answer, then that's okay too. Sometimes, those parts are just not ready, but now you know where you can find them, perhaps again.

So you can simply offer that part of you your love, your acceptance. You can see them, acknowledge them, and you can promise to return and check again. Remember, timing is always sacred. We always honor the timing, so we're not trying to force anything here. As you take leave now in this moment, whether with or without this part of you, something has changed in you.

Something is beginning to be integrated that was not before. And now your guide comes back. It's ready to walk you back. So with the soul part accompanying you or the memory of the soul part, you make your way back down the forest path, back toward the light, toward waking consciousness.

And as you walk this path of remembrance, you feel yourself reweaving this part of you into yourself, integrating, returning, coming home to yourself. And when you arrive back at the edge of the forest, maybe just take a few moments to offer thanks to your guide; to the land; this temenos—this container that is allowing you to do this work; to the lost soul, whether with you or not with you in this moment; maybe some gratitude for what that part of yourself has been through that caused it to get lost in the first place.

And perhaps most of all, gratitude for your own courageous heart because it does take courage to do this work. 

1:04:48

So as you begin now to deepen your breath, start to feel your body once again, if you're not already feeling your feet, feeling your sitting bones. And then whenever you're ready, you can gently open your eyes, knowing that you can come back to this at any point.

If you have a few moments after we end here to journal or even just write down a few notes about your experience, that can be very helpful to come back to it, but also to help you integrate this. And remember, soul retrieval is not a one-time thing. It's an unfolding. And so what you have begun today is a part of your larger journey to wholeness. And this is one very shamanic way of working.

So you are tapping into your own shamanic archetypal pattern here to be able to do this work of soul retrieval. And it's very powerful. So with that, I believe we have covered most everything that we'd like to cover. Just a couple of announcements. We do offer retreats on the Big Island of Hawaii. And the next one is in September. So if you're interested in coming to spend a few days with us, you can find information about that on the website, the instituteforsoulcentered.com.

1:06:04

If you go to the “Soul Feed” link, you'll find all of the information about our webinars, about our events, about the retreats. The Big Island is very magical, very sacred. There is a lot of very spiritual energy here. Of course, we have a live active volcano that is currently going off right now. It has gone off several times this year. It is magnificent to be able to see that energy of the lava shooting up into the sky.

And one other thing that you can do on the Big Island is to dive or snorkel with manta rays. It's one of the few places on the entire world where you can do that. I had the opportunity to do that just last weekend. Again, I've done it several times, but it's magical and magnificent to be able to be in the water with these creatures. Some of their wingspans are 14 feet across, 20 feet across, and they will come as close to you as to be able to touch you.

There was a moment when—I'm a diver—so there was a moment when I was on the floor of the ocean and the manta rays swoop in to eat the plankton that are attracted to light that is there. And this one manta ray just came swooping right up toward me, right in front of me, and they turned just on a dime. And this one just scraped right across the top of my head. And I just felt this tremendous opening when she did that.

And I have to say, every single time that I have dived with those mantas, it just feels like an engagement with the Mother Goddess—with something that is just beyond sacred. They're very otherworldly. If you've ever seen one, just the shape and the wings. 

Anyway, I digress a bit, but I just have to say there are some very, very special opportunities to be here. If you ever have a chance to come—retreat, or otherwise—I really encourage you to do it. 

Our next webinar will be the final Friday of May. And again, we will be talking about ancestral lineages and karma and the ways that we can work with what has been passed down there. Christophe, do you have anything else to add? 

CM

No. I think we've exceeded our time here. But thank you for showing up. This is today a real gift to be in the presence of people who are willing and ready to hear these messages.

And we consider that deep work. And so thank you very much. And hopefully, we'll see you next time. 

# # #

About Dr. Bonnie Bright

Founder of the Institute for Soul-Centered Psychology and Coaching™, Bonnie is a certified transpersonal coach, archetypal pattern analyst, and scholar in depth psychology. Her approach integrates Somatic, Symbolic, and Shamanic methodologies to help people work with symbolic messages, decode dreams, transform old stories, and manifest a life that they love. With a Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Bonnie has trained extensively in Holotropic Breathwork, the Enneagram, and indigenous wisdom traditions. She also founded Depth Psychology Alliance™, a global online community. She has conducted over 100 interviews with thought leaders in Jungian and depth psychologies, and has worked with shamans and indigenous elders on four continents.

About Dr. Christophe Morin

A neurospirituality researcher, author, and expert in consciousness and neuroplasticity, Christophe explores how the brain, psyche, and soul shape human experience. His latest books, Open: A Neurospiritual Exploration of the Self-Healing Power of Your Brain (2025), and Open Up: The Neurospiritual Guide To Your Enneagram Type (2025), examine the science and spirituality of awakening, healing, and human potential. With a Ph.D. in Media Psychology, Christophe bridges neuroscience, psychology, and spiritual wisdom to foster deeper self-awareness and growth.

Learn more at www.InstituteForSoulCenteredPsychologyAndCoaching.com/soul-feed