Star Process: Soul Transmission and Re-Patterning

Star Process: Soul Transmission and Re-patterning with Dr. David Myers

By SANDRA CORCORAN and LYNNE STEWART-WHITE with JOAN PARISI WILCOX. Originally published in Spirit of Change Magazine

One of our clients had witnessed a suicide but didn't know it. When Sheila came to see us, her body was emaciated and she walked with a stoop. She suffered from vertigo, but medical doctors could find no physiological cause for her complaint. Unable to hold down a job, Sheila was clearly a woman who, although wounded, still had the courage to seek answers to her problems. So now, at age 45, Sheila had turned to the alternative healing community and, through word-of-mouth recommendation, had come to us for a shamanic healing-for a soul retrieval.

Soul retrieval is a millennia-old shamanic healing technique that approaches healing from not only a physical perspective but from a spiritual one as well. In shamanic healing, the body is perceived to be much more than physical-it is energy. There are many layers to this energy body: the subtle bodies consist of the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and reincarnational bodies. But beyond all these is the luminous body, the energy body that encompasses all the subtle bodies and that is a direct link between the subtle bodies and universal "Source."

In the Andean mystical tradition-one of the healing traditions in which we have been trained- the luminous body is called the poq'po, a Quechua word for "bubble." Through it, we have direct access to the universal Wiracocha, which is the space of the sacred. Our luminous body, which is composed of filaments of light, is a template for our physical body, and any energy disruptions in the filaments of the luminous body ultimately manifest as illness or "dis-ease" in the physical. When Sheila came to us for a soul retrieval, our session was directed at assisting her to access states of being outside of time and space so we could trace her emotional and physical Illnesses back out to her luminous body and perceive where, in the filaments of light, aberrant energy patterns existed.

Once Sheila perceived the aberrant energy patterns, she could, with our assistance, move toward healing her wounds by cleansing her lightbody filaments. As we began the soul retrieval session, Sheila described the emotional pain she was feeling about her only brother's death. In fact, she identified his death as the source of her problems. He had suffered from a degenerative disease and, originally vibrant and robust, had been little more than a shadow of his former self at the time of his death. Sheila's body mirrored this state, and she felt her dead brother was somehow reaching out from the grave and calling her to him. When we began the guided visualization that would launch Sheila into her shamanic journey, her brother's spirit was palpable. We, as the shamanic guides, sensed Sheila was right-her brother was calling her. But she was wrong about why. He was calling not to menace her hut to alert her to something she needed to remember. We sensed that Sheila's Issue was not her brother's death, but death Itself. As the session progressed, Sheila's agitation grew and we felt another, stronger, presence in the room. We asked Sheila what other loved ones had passed on. "My grandmother," she responded, "although I don't know why she suddenly comes to mind. I was just a baby when she died." We sensed that this seemingly innocuous statement was important because of the energetic tension that was rising in our bodies. Sheila's growing agitation confirmed our feelings as she explained that although she knew her grandmother had committed suicide, she did not know any details because her parents had always refused to discuss the subject. Trusting our instincts that this was the area that needed to be explored, we assisted Sheila in journeying deeper into the realms outside of time and space.

As Sheila's shamanic guides, It was important at this point that we impeccably hold the space of the universal Wiracocha so that she could more easily experience her own personal poq' po and access the injurious patterns of energy in her filaments. The farther she went beyond temporal boundaries, the more her discomfort grew, until, unexpectedly, her physical body went into tetany, her muscles contracting and stiffening. She began to relive a monument from her infancy: I'm laying in my crib, agitated and confused. I sense- something ominous but I don't understand why I feel this way because I'm looking into my grandmother's loving eyes. I watch her eyes recede as she leaves the room.

Suddenly, Sheila's body recoiled, her hands flew to her ears, and she screamed: "I hear a shot. My grandmother just shot herself" Crying and pressing her hands over her ears, Sheila began to once again relive that moment: I'm lying in the crib, crying and screaming-but there's no sound coming out of my mouth! Where Is everyone? There's chaos all around me, but no one is coming to comfort me. I'm screaming but there's no sound. I'm nothing but a soundless mouth! We worked with Sheila's energy body, raising her energy frequency and holding the space of the Wiracocha. We cleansed her energy field using, among other things, q'uvas, power stones used by Andean healers to clean dense energy from the luminous body. In the midst of her pain, we encouraged Sheila to pick up the baby, to comfort it, but the baby was so horrifying to her that she refused to touch it. This was the crucial moment for Sheila, the moment within the timeless where the past comes face-to-face with the present. This is the moment in nearly every soul retrieval when the client wants to flee rather than face truth. At this moment with Sheila, this was the place where we, as her shamanic guides, needed to comfort the pain of the baby as well as the pain of the woman. We worked patiently and persistently with her, but Sheila refused to engage emotionally or psychically with the baby or with the rage she was feeling. As her resistance increased, Sheila's mouth widened, mimicking the baby's gaping but silent mouth.

Finally, as we continued to cleanse her energy field, Sheila said that, although she couldn't bear to pick up the baby, she could move into what she perceived as the quiet of its cavernous mouth. However, once she was inside, the cavern itself became terrifying-ugly, dark, and grotesque. The moment of catharsis was at hand: finally the baby's scream was unleashed as Sheila screamed, releasing the terror and rage she had held for 44 years. Weeks after her soul retrieval, Sheila called to tell us that her mother had confirmed the truth of these memories. Since her soul retrieval, Sheila's life has dramatically improved. She no longer suffers from vertigo, her body posture is normal and relaxed, and her health has become more robust. She has been successfully holding down a full-time job that involves major responsibilities. While this case is emotionally dramatic, it is illustrative of the powerful healing that may take place during an intensive soul retrieval session. To conventional psychotherapists, such an episode-with it dramatic revelation and its immediate and profound therapeutic effect on functioning and long-term health- seems almost impossible. However, in our experience, Sheila's shamanic healing is the norm rather than the exception. So just what is shamanic healing? As we said above, the concept of soul loss- and thus soul retrieval- is the core technique of shamanic healing, a technique that helps a person release dense energy and energy encrustation from his or her luminous body. Illness from the shamanic perspective is seen as the accumulation of dense energy in the filaments that make up the luminous body. There are many ways that aberrant energy builds up in our filaments.

For instance, almost from birth many of us are led to believe that we are nothing more than physical beings, and so we spend our lives disconnected from the very source of wellbeing- the Wiracocha. Even as children, we begin to learn the patterns that foster the illusion of our isolation and imperfection. We remake ourselves according to the messages and beilefs-no matter how positive- acquired from our imagemakers, messages that often overshadow the reality of our divine and energetic selves. Over time, these aberrant energy patterns form encrustations in our energy filaments or create weaknesses and leaks in our energy fleld. They may eventually cause a blockage or stoppage in the layers of our subtle bodies. If not cleansed from our luminous body, these energy densities and encrustatlons may manifest as psychological or physical illness. Simply put, we lose well-being, and this loss manifests as emotional trauma, pain, addiction, disease-those very conditions that we so blindly accept as defining our humanness. For example, when our energy bodies are out of alignment, we tend to react from fear, instead of from love. Fear-based behavior and thinking provokes a disruption in our energy patterns that spin us into shame, guilt, control, anger, lust, excess, and so on. The resultIng separation from the reality of our personal poq'po and cosmic Wiracocha is, In our view, what the judeo-Christian spiritual tradition calls the "fall from grace." Seen shamanically, the fall from grace is soul loss.

The shaman recognizes that what a person believes determines what a person Is. Consequently, shamanic healing always involves changing the framework of a person's belief system. What is so beautiful and powerful about shamanic healing is that this perceptual shift is partly engendered by the presence of mystery that the shaman brings to the healing process. Everything is inherently mysterious because everything is fluid, ever-unfolding, always in a state of becoming rather than of being.

This is true even for our physical self, for our perceptions ground becoming into being on the material plane. Consider, for instance, that when we are healthy we say we have physical "well-being." From the shamanic perspective, "physical well-being" does not mean physical fitness, beauty, or freedom from impairment or disease; it means, instead, the integration of joy and spontaneity into our lives. Well-being is the realization of wholeness and the unconditional expression of our unique gifts and talents. It Is the harmony that exists among our subtle bodies. In shamanic healing, well-being- and, by extension, health- means that the "you" that has manifested on this material plane resonates with the perfection of your luminous self. Thus, shamanic healing is done essentially to preserve the well-being of the "soul," not necessarily to cure Illness or to preserve one's life. In the shamanic domain, healing deals with our spiritual self, whereas curing deals with our physical self. Consequently, shamanic healing is not the same as curing although curing often occurs when one cleanses one's poq'po.

Most shamanic traditions share these core healing beliefs, although they may use different terminology when describing them. What varies from tradition to tradition are not the beliefs about what causes illness, but the techniques for healing. Shamanic healing can be accomplished in many and varied ways, depending on the shaman's innate gifts, the structure of the tradition in which he or she is trained, and the strength of the lineage through which he or she has been given the responsibility for healing. Classical shamanism is a technique where the shaman/healer journeys In an altered state of consciousness to seek out the lost part of the client's soul and to coax it back to the client.

The shaman practicing classical soul retrieval believes that whenever a person experiences trauma or stress, a piece of his or her soul flees or becomes disconnected from his or her energy body. The shaman must journey to find the lost part of the individual, determine why that part fled, and then coax it back to the individual. The shaman reintegrates the lost part of the soul Into the person by blowing its energy into the person's body.

Thus, In most classical soul retrievals, the client is largely passive. He or she has only to maintain an openness of spirit and energy so that the shaman can journey on his or her behalf. The various forms that classical soul retrieval have taken throughout history and indifferent parts of the world are described In detail by ethnologist Mircea Eliade in his seminal book, Shamanism: The Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. The modern practice of classical shamanism is best known in the United States through the work of Michael Harner and Sandra Ingerman. Our method of soul retrieval, called the STAR Process® (for Soul Transmission and Retrieval), however, is very different from classical soul retrieval. We believe that people must engage their soul loss directly and that everyone is a shaman, therapist and client alike. Therefore, we act as shamanic guides, assisting our clients in journeying with us to the domains outside of time and space. In classical soul retrievals, only the shaman journeys in an altered state of consciousness. In our practice of soul retrieval, however, we utilize techniques such as guided visualization, toning, rattling, and camaying (animating with breath) to assist our clients in entering the domain of the multidimensional themselves. By achieving transcendental states-somewhat like those experienced during meditation-our clients can access the reality of their nonphysical self and much more easily tap into the knowledge held within their energy body. Furthermore, we may use bodywork and chakra cleansing techniques, so that we are working on the client's physical body as well as on his or her luminous body. We may work with crystals or with q'uyas- which are power stones used in the Andean mystical tradition- to cleanse the fibers of the luminous body.

We may also use energetic/galactic transmissions, where we serve as grounding rods for light-encoded energies that may manifest from other realms and that can be accessed to provide information and cleansing. Through transmissions, we work directly with the energy of the shamans/healers of the Andean lineage we were initiated into and with the Legions of Light, which we discuss in more detail below. We may also work with power animals, angelic presence, personal guides, Ascended Masters and the like. To understand the transmission of energy, it may be helpful to briefly outline the energetic domains of the Andean tradition with which we work. In the Andean cosmology, there are three worlds of energy: the hanaq pacha Is the upper world, from where the most refined energetic frequencies may be accessed. The middle world is the kay pacha, perceived as the everyday, mundane world. Finally, the huju pacha is the lower world of our unconscious and dreamtime. We may work with energy frequencies at any of these three levels by making perceptual shifts that bridge panya, the domain of the ordinary, and yoqe, the domain of the non-ordinary. For instance, while working with one of our clients- a warm, gentle man whom we'll call Eric- loud, menacing growl emanated from the corner of the room while he was engaging the energy patterns connected to the emotional pain of an abusive father and a cold, unresponsive mother. He had unwittingly manifested his rage as an energy vibration from the huju pacha.

Although we were all startled by the disembodied growl, by using techniques appropriate to the huju pacha- where one engages one's dark side or shadow self- we could assist Eric with engaging this dense energy. The entire STAR Process is a fluid and dynamic Interplay of perceptions and energies. Not two STAR Process soul retrievals are alike. However, one thing is universal to all soul retrievals-the journey. To bridge panya and yoqe, to move from the domain of the ordinary to that of the non-ordinary, one must make perceptual shifts and journey in the multidimensional realms outside of time and space. This type of shamanic journey may be easier to understand if we compare it to a well-known mythic journey- that of the hero's quest. The hero's journey, which is a motif found in literature and myth, can be summarized as the search, the battle for knowledge, the bestowal of wisdom, and the return to the community. Initially, the hero is compelled to leave the safety of his or her familiar world to venture out into the unknown in search of the answers to a profound question.

This, of course, is the same impulse that compels our clients to seek a soul retrieval in their search for answers to their questions and problems. The search may be for something as specific as relief from chronic physical pain or as amorphous as a general sense of not being "whole." For instance, one of our clients, whom we'll call James, came to us in search of his childhood; be had no memories from before the age of about five and very few from the period between age five and eight. Although be had had a stressful childhood, coming from an impoverished family with an alcoholic father, he was experiencing no problems that were adversely affecting his life. He was happily married and successful in his career. Instead, he had a general sense that he was "missing" an important piece of himself; as be approached middle age, he felt more and more bothered by his lack of recall. So became for a soul retrieval to quest for his childhood memories. Once the quest has begun, the hero journeys into unfamiliar territory where be or she must face tests and trials, confront fears, and slay both literal and metaphorical dragons. During this part of the soul retrieval, the client, with the assistance of the therapists acting as shamanic guides, enters an altered state of consciousness and journeys to the domains outside of time and space. He or she moves into the space of the Wiracocha in order to engage the filaments of the luminous body directly.

During this process, the client retrieves memories and recognizes the core issues causing the distress. The dysfunctional energetic patterns come into focus and the client begins to see how the aberrant energy pattern ripples through time and space to affect the client's present life situation and physical self. One never knows where the journey will lead. For our client James, this part of the journey took him not back to his childhood, but back to the womb! Many of our clients have found themselves in past lives or in other dimensional realms. Once at the site of the injury-whether that injury manifests as a physical, emotional, mental or spiritual wound-we and the client viscerally engage the energy within the filaments of the luminous body. In the hero's journey, this would be the point where the hero battles the dragon or the giant. In the STAR Process, the battle is better understood as a compassionate battle with self. This Is the most crucial point of the journey/soul retrieval, for it is the point where the client decides to either fight or retreat. To proceed, the client must consciously engage the adversary, which is the emotional imprint of the wound encrusted in the energy filaments of the luminous body.

However, unlike the mythic hero, who battles in desperation or using trickery and cunning, the client of a soul retrieval must battle with detachment and love. The shamanic guides assist the client not only in choosing the nature of the battle but also in understanding that the battle is a compassionate confrontation with his or her own dark side. The energies engaged at this point of a soul retrieval can be tremendous, for they are usually very dense or heavily encrusted in the client's light filaments.

Because the energies can be so dense, we believe a soul retrieval practitioner must be well-trained in shamanic healing, and preferably in other healing techniques. They must have done their own work cleansing their own luminous body before they can help others through this often grueling process. More importantly, they must be well-trained to handle crises no matter what form they take- the emotional horror and physical tetany Sheila experienced or the disembodied growl Eric manifested. For our client James, the compassionate battle began as he re-experienced the force of his drunken father's kick at his mother's swollen belly. The force of the remembered blow manifested physically in James as he curled into a fetal position with his arms locked over his face for protection. For more than fifteen minutes James' body remained in tetany as be engaged the reverberations of the aberrant energy pattern that he had carried within his luminous body from the time before he had even been physically born. Using bodywork techniques anti chakra cleansing, we were able to ease James' emotional and physical agony so that he could continue the compassionate battle with this dense energy pattern.

To win the battle the hero of the mythic quest must slay the dragon. To win the compassionate battle with self, the client of a soul retrieval must raise the energetic vibration of the injurious pattern to a higher energetic frequency so that it can be cleansed and reintegrated Into, the luminous body. Here we encounter our greatest responsibility as shamanic guides- to bold the space of the wiracocha with impeccability and humility. Here the client occupying the domains outside of time and space- must divest his or her attachment to the familiar Western paradigm of fragmentation, of healing piece by piece, and embrace the shamanic paradigm of wholism, where healing is instantaneous and complete. Both the shamanic guides and the client may be guided in the cleansing process- as they can at any other point in the journey-by their connections to higher vibrational frequencies (devas, power animals, their Higher Selves. galactic and spiritual guides, and the like).

We, as shamanic guides, are able to access the energy of our lineage of healers to derermine how to best help the client cleanse his or her lightbody filaments and to make the perceptual shifts necessary to raise the injurious pattern to a new energetic level. Here again we may work with q' uyas, chakra centers and pressure points, sound and toning, camaying, essences, and a host of other techniques to help cleanse the client's poq'po, or energy field. The hero's journey is successfully completed when the hero journeys back to his or her commuunity to integrate the new-found wisdom into everyday life.

For the client of the STAR Process, the journey comes full circle as the client's luminous fibers are cleansed and the shamanic guides assist the client to integrate the energetic patterns that have been illuminated into all four levels of awareness- the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual. This integration takes many forms. In the body, a physical catharsis releases the dense energy of the perceived trauma from where it is held in the body. In the emotional body, the imprint of the perceived trauma no longer links the client to the reactive memory of the trauma or to his or her past. The mental body and perceptions are often reframed by the entire soul retrieval process as the client perceives the reality of the Wiracocha and experiences muitidimenslonality, the non-causal realms outside of time and space. The spiritual self is fed by the unbounded possibilities of our individual wholeness and of our connection to the cosmic whole.

Although the STAR Process journey just described -and the compassionate battle in particular- may seem to be intensely personal, shamanic healing is always more than individual. At the cosmic level we are all connected -our luminous selves are all expressions of the universal Wiracocha- when you re-awaken your connection to your luminous body, you enhance the potential for others to also re-awaken. By re-awakening these connectIons and cleansing your filaments, you re-inform the universal Wiracocha; that is, you add clarity to the great web of being. The connection between ap individual and the collective is not normally stressed In classical soul retrieval. However, it is fundamental to the STAR Proccss.We see an important distinction between re-awakening and re-informing the luminous body. The re-awakening process is a cleansing of the energy filaments of the luminous body; the re-informing process strengthens the individual's connections to what we call the Lineage of Light.

The Lineage of Light can be described in two ways, although it encompasses much more than these two aspects. First, it is , the unfathomable organizing principle of the universal, Wiracocha. Second, it is the various manifestations in time and apace-in the physIcaI-of this organizIng energy. These manifestations may be a person who has refined the energy of their luminous body- Buddha, Christ- or they may be powerful nature energies, or the energies of vortexes, sacred sites, and the like. In addition, transmissions involve directly perceiving and organizing the energy of the universal Wiracocha.

Through initiations that have been bestowed upon us by our Andean teachers, we are able to access organizing energies from the three worlds: the hanaq pacha, the kay pacha, and the huju pacha. We may channel these energies for our clients In diverse ways: for example, through the power object -such as the healing rocks, called q'uyas in the Andean tradition- or through the energy of a lineage passed to us in a rite or ceremony. One of the most profound energies we work with is the Pachakuti energy, known variously as the energy of the One Who Steps Outside of Time, the Awakened One, or the Illumined One. The Pachakuti rite was bestowed upon us in Peru by don Mariano Apasa, a Q'ero kurak akulleq, or master shaman. In that ceremony, after readIng our energy fields to see if our hearts were aligned with the heart of Pachamama, Mother Earth, don Matlano cleansed our fields, embodied Pachakuti, and then blew the energy of the lineage of pachakuti into our crown chakras, temples and hearts. There are actually two Pachakuti rites. One is a transmission of the archetype -a transmIssion that connects you to the energies of the hanaq poeha. The other, the Pachakuti rite we received from don Mariano, Is the transmissIon of the lineage. That is, during the rite, don Mariano actually embodies the energy of the One Who Steps Outside of Time and passes the ancestral energy of his line of shamans and that of the Lineage of Light through his Medicine Body to our Medicine Bodies. Because we have been bestowed the gift of Pachakuti, we can in turn pass this energy on to those with whom we work.

The transmission of this energy links our clients directly to the multidimensional Lineage of Light. It also activates the client's cellular memory field and attunes it to the light-information and encodement from galactic and multidimensional realms. The client can then extract the information and knowledge that best serves his/her re-awakened self. Because the client is fully active in a STAR Process soul retrieval, he or she joins the two of us to form a "tri-radiant core" through which we embody and amplify the energetic web of connections between self, community, and planet.

Because shamanic healing is more than an individual healing and because it connects us to universal energies, it is always an act of responsibility on the part of hotit tite shamanic guides and the person seeking healing. Furthermore, healing in the shamanic realm-because it occurs outside of time and space-is always instantaineous, although Its effects may not manifest instantaneously in the kay pacha. Instead, the energetic and perceptual shifts the client has experienced reverberate according to the ability of the client to assimilate them into conscious living. In the kay pacha- our mundane, everyday world- our simultaneous existence as physical beings and as luminous beings continuously propels each of us toward a crossroads where we are compelled, moment by moment, to make crucial perceptual decisions.

One of the most fundamental is, Do we restrict our definition of our selves to the material plane, or do we accept the unbounded possibilities of our existence as luminous beings and take our place in the ranks of the Legions of light? In terms of well-being, this distinction-is paramount, for when you believe yourself to be nothing more than a physical being, health is one-dimensional and static: it is a discrete state in which' you are either healthy or you are not. When you believe yourself to be a luminous being, in contrast, health is multidimensional and dynamic. It has little to do with being free from disease and everything to do with accepting personal responsibility for your individual truth. Fortunateiy, at this point in our history, a tapeistry of Truth is being woven with threads from diverse spiritual and healing traditions. Regardless of whether you choose the STAR Process or some other method of re-awakening, what is most important is that you reach beyond the confines of who you think you are to embrace the fullness of who you are becoming.

NOTES: The names and identifying characteristics of clients have been changed to protect their privacy. Sandra Corcoran is a body-oriented psychotherapist, cranio-sacra1 therapist and children 's.book author. She has been trained extensively in energy work and ceremony by Grandmothers in the Native Way, and is acknowledged as a kurak in the Andean mystical tradition by kurak akulleqs Americo Yabar, don Mariano Apasa, and don Manuel Quispe. Lynne Stewart-White is a professor of nursing, psychotherapist and third-degree Reiki Radiance Technique® practitioner. She lectures extensively on alternative health practices and is acknowledged as' a kurak in the Andean mystical tradition by kurak akulleqs Americo Yabar, don MarianoApasa, and don Manuel Quispe. Joan Parisi Wilcox is a free lance editor and writer whose diverse areas of in terest include' science, metaphysics and shamanism. For the past two years 'she has been undergoing personal training in Andean mysticism in Peru.

For information about the STAR Process call
508-875-9501. www.starprocess.com