(3) What Actually Happens During a Soul Retrieval Session
A Step-by-Step Look Inside the Process and How it Helps to Heal Soul-Based Trauma
Most people who find their way to soul retrieval have already done a lot of work.
Therapy. Medication. Breathwork. Meditation. They’ve read the books, done the journaling, sat with the discomfort for a long time. And somewhere underneath all of it, something has stayed untouched. A hollow place. A part of themselves that never quite came back, or never seemed to have developed comfortably in the first place.
If that sounds like you, you may have already come across the concept of Soul-Based Trauma: the kind of unresolved wounding that lives not in conscious memory or thought, but in the energetic and spiritual layers of the soul itself. You may already sense, somewhere deep down, that this is what you’re carrying.
What you might not yet know is what it actually looks like to address it.
This is what happens during a soul retrieval session. In plain, honest, step-by-step terms.
The First Thing We Do Together
We begin somewhere quiet and simple.
Before anything else, I guide you through a gentle grounding exercise. Something to settle you into your body, into your breath, into the familiar comfort of wherever you are. Your home. Your chair. The moment.
There is nothing here that will ask you to go back to the hard places. You won’t be asked to relive anything painful. You won’t be shown anything disturbing or frightening. You won’t have to face anyone or anything from your past.
This work does not require you to go back through the door you came in. It works at a different level entirely, one that is calmer, controlled and safe.
All you are asked to do is rest quietly and comfortably. Everything else unfolds from there.
What I Am Doing While You Rest
While you settle, I enter a focused state and ask my spirit guides to take me on a visual journey. Not into the pain of a past event, but into what still lingers there. The energetic residue. What got left behind when you kept moving forward.
What I am shown comes through like a movie playing in my mind’s eye. The imagery is always metaphorical. Symbolic rather than literal. I am shown what I need to see in a form that my years with this practice allow me to read and understand.
Something worth knowing: if five different shamanic practitioners were to journey on behalf of the same person and the same event, each one would very likely see something different. The journey speaks to the practitioner’s own experience and what they are equipped to translate. There is no single correct vision. There is only what is shown, and what meaning can be drawn from it in service of you.
The medicine is always in the story of the journey.
Finding the Soul Fragment
What I am looking for is known as a soul fragment: a piece of your essential self that split away during an overwhelming experience and has been suspended in the energy of that moment ever since.
We can approach this in one of two ways. If there is a particular event you feel drawn toward, we can focus the journey there. Or I can simply ask to be shown whatever fragment most needs attention right now, and let the journey find its own way.
When a soul fragment is found, it is not aware of what has happened to it. It doesn’t know it is a fragment. It doesn’t know that time has passed, that life has continued, that you have been out here searching. It is simply... there. Suspended in a moment that, for it, has never ended.
The first thing I do is let it know it has been found.
Four Steps That Bring a Fragment Home
Once I have located the soul fragment, I move through four stages with it. Each one lays the ground for the next.
Awareness.
The fragment has no sense of its own situation. I begin by simply making contact with it. Acknowledging its presence. Letting it know, gently, that it has been seen. That someone came looking. That it is not forgotten.
Understanding.
Then I bring it understanding: what Soul-Based Trauma is, what fragmentation means, and what is now possible. Not as information to be processed. More like a soft light being brought into a room that has been dark for a very long time.
Compassion.
This is where the work becomes tender. I bring white light. I bring love and a complete sense of caring. I work to build a genuine feeling of safety and warmth around the fragment; to earn its trust the way you earn the trust of anyone who has been hurt. A soul fragment that has been held in fear or pain for years, sometimes for decades, does not simply agree to move because it is asked. It needs to feel safe first. Truly safe.
A call to return.
Once that trust is there, I explain what is possible: that the fragment is only one part of something much larger, that the rest of the spirit exists somewhere else and is waiting, and that it is time to be reunited with it. If the soul fragment is ready, the journey back can begin.
If it is not ready yet, we stay. We keep working. More gentleness, more reassurance, more patience, until the fragment feels secure enough to make that journey. There is no pressure. The decision to return is not made by me.
Nothing here is forced. The fragment leads, always.
The Journey Back: The Spirit Animal
When the soul fragment is ready to return, I do not carry it myself. I never connect my own spirit with a fragment in order to bring it back. That boundary is one I hold for good reason.
Instead, I call on a spirit animal to come forward and accompany it home.
The belief in spirit animals as guides and protectors is ancient beyond measure. It appears independently across cultures on every inhabited continent: the Americas, Africa, Asia, the Celtic world. This is not one tradition that spread outward and took root elsewhere. It is a recognition that arose again and again across human history, in people who had no contact with one another, because it points to something real.
The spirit animal that comes forward is not random. It carries a quality of wisdom that belongs specifically to this fragment, this person, this moment. In its presence, the soul fragment feels safe. And so, together, they make the journey home.
Back to you. Back to the present. Back to where they have always belonged.
The Reunion
When the soul fragment arrives, you have something important to offer it.
I ask you to welcome it the way a loving parent welcomes home a child who has been lost and frightened and is finally, finally back. No questions. No conditions. Just warmth, and open arms, and a love that does not need to be earned.
Tell it: you are perfect. You carry no shame and no guilt. You are loved. You are needed. We are whole again together.
This welcome is not just a kind gesture. It is doing real work. A soul fragment that returns but is not welcomed, that is met with distance or silence or indifference, will not feel safe enough to stay. It will begin to withdraw, and the familiar feelings of emptiness and disconnection will start to return with it.
Your love is what makes the reunion real. Your attention is what makes it last.
While You Welcome It Home, I Am Still Working
While your attention is on the soul fragment, mine returns to the past event.
We cannot change what happened, but what we can do is transmute the energy of it, shift the relationship your spirit holds with it, so that it no longer reaches forward and touches everything that comes after.
Think of the past, present, and future as three rivers running alongside each other, always in contact, each one shaping the others. When a past event is still carrying unresolved energy, it does not stay quietly in its own river. It bleeds into the present. It colors the future before it arrives. By clearing the energy of the past, we change the quality of all three at once.
This part of the work takes many forms. Some energies release with very little resistance. Others are layered, old, deeply settled in. The process is as individual as you are. What never changes are the intentions: to free what has been held, so that you are free to move.
Coming Back Together
When the work is complete, I bring my full attention back to you in the present moment.
The first thing I want to know is how you are. Safe? Settled? Grounded in your body? How you feel afterwards tells me whether the session is complete or whether another journey is needed. If something feels unfinished, if there is restlessness or a lingering sense of unsettledness, it often means more work is waiting. If so, we go again.
If you feel steady, we move into the meaning of what was shown.
You share your sense of it first. This matters greatly. What the imagery meant to me is often far less significant than what it means to you. The story was given to me in a language that is drawn from your life. The medicine is in how it lands, not in how it was witnessed.
Then I share the wisdom the spirit animal brought: the specific quality of guidance it carried for this journey, and what that might mean for you going forward.
Every soul fragment that returns carries something with it. A quality that was lost or worn thin by Soul-Based Trauma. It might be missing sense of patience in the relationships that matter most to you. The ability to generate courage when life shifts without warning. The quiet capacity for joy. The ability to trust again. When that fragment is returned and reintegrated, that quality comes back with it.
Not as an idea. As something you can feel and actually live from.
What to Expect Over Time
A single soul retrieval journey takes around ten minutes. What happens afterward does not always arrive on the same schedule.
Some people feel a shift almost immediately. Something lifts. Something that had been absent for a long time quietly comes back online. They feel more like themselves again. They will feel lighter. Some gain a sense that something they didn’t realize they had been carrying is finally gone.
Others feel very little at first. That is not a sign that nothing happened.
Soul-Based Trauma accumulates across a lifetime. Most of us carry more than one point of fragmentation: different events, different ages, different pieces left at different moments along the way. One session addresses one piece. A series of sessions, spaced over time, tends to produce the most lasting and meaningful change.
There is no fixed number. No protocol to follow. There is only the work, done gently and carefully, at the pace that is right for you.
About Mark Lemohr and This Work
Mark Lemohr is a third-generation healer with over 50 years of healing experience and 18 years of professional practice in contemporary shamanic healing and energy healing. His healing work has been recognized by some of the most respected medical institutions in North America, including the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, Vancouver General Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital, and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
Sessions are conducted remotely and available to clients worldwide. If he cannot help you improve your condition, you receive a full refund. No questions asked.
Does This Feel Like Something You Have Been Looking For?
Soul retrieval may be worth exploring if:
You have never quite felt like yourself after a particular event or period in your life
You have put real work into therapy or personal development and still feel like something essential has not shifted
You feel emotionally flat, hollow, or like you are moving through your own life from a distance
You have a quiet but persistent sense that part of you was left behind somewhere back there
Something in reading this felt less like new information and more like being understood
If that last one is true for you: that recognition is worth trusting.
Ready to take the next step?
Start with a conversation. Sessions are conducted remotely and available anywhere in the world.
Book a Free Consultation Call From Anywhere in the World →
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to remember the traumatic event for soul retrieval to work?
No. You will not be asked to recall or relive anything. The work happens at the energetic and soul level, where the fragmentation actually occurred. Memory does not need to be involved at all.
What if I have no idea what event caused my soul loss?
That is more common than you might think, and it is completely fine. The journey can be directed toward whatever soul fragment most needs attention right now, without targeting a specific event or memory. The process finds what needs to be found.
How will I know if it worked?
People describe it in their own words, and no two descriptions are quite the same. A sense of feeling whole again. Emotional presence returning after years of flatness. The ability to move forward from something that had quietly held them in place for a long time. For some people the shift is immediate. For others it settles in gradually.
Can I do this alongside therapy or medical treatment?
Yes, and many people do. Shamanic healing and energy healing on layers that conventional approaches were not designed to reach. They sit alongside, not in place of, any medical or psychological care that is already supporting you.
How many sessions will I need?
There is no single honest answer to that. One session is enough for some people. For others, working through a series of sessions over time reaches places that a single session cannot. Soul-Based Trauma builds across an entire lifetime, and healing it at depth takes the time it takes. We go at your pace.
Important Notice:
Mark Lemohr is not a medical professional and does not provide medical diagnosis or treatment. This work is intended to support overall wellbeing and is best used alongside care from licensed medical and mental health professionals. If you are experiencing a medical or mental health emergency, please contact your local emergency services immediately.