Healing Soul Loss Through Movement

[Image credits: Detail from Anderson Debernardi’s painting “Iniciacion Shamanica”, seen at Exhibition Visions Chamaniques. Arts de l’Ayahuasca en Amazonie Péruvienne, ‎⁨Musée du Quai Branly, 2024. Photo by Eline Kieft.]

Far from being an exotic diagnosis, soul fragmentation is considered inevitable. Neo-shamanic literature suggests that the average adult, even one who has never experienced capital-T trauma, may experience between 3,000 and 5,000 moments of soul fragmentation over a lifetime. Some are subtle and barely noticeable. Others feel like a sharp tear in the fabric of the self. Either way, these fragments don’t always find their way back home unless we actively call them.

The good news is: you don’t always need to “go see a specialist to retrieve your soul part” While traditional retrieval ceremonies are practiced in many cultures, contemporary approaches invite us into an empowered relationship with the territory of our soul, our inner landscape if you like. We can actively call back lost vitality ourselves. This might happen through meditation, dreamwork, ritual, or through embodied practices such as conscious dance. 

Some Personal Examples

For me, soul retrieval has often happened spontaneously, in fields full of bluebells, Neolithic burial mounds or on the moors.

Another time, while moving through the grief of leaving professional dance, I realised I had cut off my own creative source in order to fit into an external mould. Through dance, I reclaimed my inner Handless Maiden, the part that dared to move in fullness and freedom, and express all parts of myself unapologetically. My dance became a fierce, embodied “yes.”

One of my most powerful soul retrievals came after an undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy in 2019. Nine months after the surgery, I created East Wind, a healing dance ceremony. I moved with the memory of the rupture, pain, fear and all the layers of recovery. I allowed each phase to express itself in form, breath, rhythm. Finally, I called back my wholeness after invasion and loss. This timeless connection to the feminine mysteries, full of strength, clarity and deep reverence for life anchored in me, and I danced until the wisdom gifts of this experience were kneaded into every cell.

A Wider View on Healing

Healing, in its truest sense, means becoming whole. The root of the word ‘heal’ comes from the Old Saxon hal, meaning to become whole or sound. This wholeness is not about perfection or immunity from pain. It isn’t the same as ‘curing’ either. It is the active process of reweaving your being, to include the experience that you’ve gone through. The willingness to acknowledge what was broken or hidden and to welcome it home. There is a beautiful Japanese art form called Kintsugi, where broken pottery is mended with golden glue. This honours our scars, and our return to something more than before. 

Healing isn’t something you do once, and then it’s done and dusted. It’s an ongoing dance between rupture and return. And perhaps most importantly — it is not just for mystics or shamans. It’s a process that belongs to all of us.

Whether through quiet meditation, guided journeying or dancing in your kitchen, you can learn to recognise when something is missing and gently invite it back. You will recognise its signature, the familiar hum of your soul string, and the relief when a dear part of you returns. Sometimes it arrives like a soft breeze. Sometimes it needs a dialogue and commitment to make space for it in your life again. Sometimes it’s like a homecoming festival. Read how to do this in my earlier post A Recipe for Dancing Your Soul Home.

Soul Retrieval on the Dance Floor

If you’re in the UK this July, I’ll be holding a specific space for calling home the soul, in Sealskin Soulskin, one of the powerful stories featuring in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves. It’s a women-only workshop in Birmingham (25–27 July). We will use dance, ceremony and creative enquiry to explore the sacred work of shapeshifting and soul retrieval. 

If you feel called to reconnect with your own inner wildness, reclaim lost pieces of your instinct, intuition and joy — you are warmly invited. There are still places available and I’d love to step into sacred ceremony with you. You’ll find all info below.

Publications and Performance

• Kieft, Eline. (2020). “Soul Loss and Retrieval: Restoring Wholeness through Dance.” In Spiritual Herstories: Soulful Research in Dance Studies, edited by A. Williamson and B. Sellers-Young, pp. 180–206. Bristol & Chicago: Intellect.
• Kieft, Eline. (2020). East Wind: Dancing the Story of My Ectopic Pregnancy, Online Performance. Watch here
• Kieft, Eline. (2022). Dancing in the Muddy Temple: A Moving Spirituality of Land and Body. Body and Religion Series. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Order here with 30% discount.

Related Soul Articles on FAR

• Do You Hear Seal-Woman Calling?
• Untangling the Triad of Life Force, Spirit and Soul
• Oakness as a Metaphor for the Wild Soul: The Dance Between Life Force, Personality and Original Nature
• A Recipe for Dancing Your Soul Home

---

Invitation

Bio

Her book Dancing in the Muddy Temple blends theory and practice in service of land, body, and spirit. Now leading Wild Soul Centre for Embodied Consciousness, she offers coaching and courses to support deep transformation and inner strength through movement and the body. You can also find her on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and Substack.