Nurturing Our Body with Soul Essence
     Instead of Comfort Food
By Kathleen Downey, Shamanic Counselor / Past-Life Therapist

Taking time to eat well means a whole new way of life for most of us in the industrialized world where rent control and stabilization has become obsolete. How do we live with the rapidly-rising cost of living and take time for ourselves? How do we ignore media saturation enticing us with rich, fast and fatty foods and having it “our way” at such a low price?

Obesity, bulimia and eating disorders plague as many as sixty percent of the population in industrialized countries. Countries where many people have to work two jobs and consider it normal to put in ten to fifteen hour work days to make ends meet. In fact, due to the large number of Americans who are seriously overweight, scientists, advocacy groups, federal agencies and insurance companies are seriously debating about whether obesity should be declared a “disease.”

Classifying obesity as an official disease will eliminate some of the stigmatism that accompanies getting help to resolve physical and emotional issues around overeating, much as the classification of alcoholism as a disease made it easier for many alcoholics to get help.

We are always at choice. Take your life into your hands, turn off the television, read labels on packaged foods, recognize your self worth and creative gifts, and give yourself permission to create your own life based on your choices. Decide that you do not want to ingest something that has ingredients looking like they belong in a science project and have zero nutritive value.

Decide that you deserve to take the time to visit the local Farmer’s Market for produce not tampered with or covered in pesticides that can cause serious effects to your health. Give yourself the chance to ingest whole foods that the earth offers us, taste the difference for yourself.

How do you give yourself permission to make these changes and stop addictive food habits like convenience foods, sugar,  caffeine and msg? Perhaps by recognizing the hunger existing in you may be a void in your energetic or soul’s body that food cannot fill, no matter how hard you try.

When trauma, injury or illness occurs in our lives, and it can begin in the womb; we lose a part of our essence — our energy and life force is thus depleted and food will not help bring it back.

From time immemorial our ancestors, Shamans, medicine men and women, understood that soul loss, soul theft, giving away part of the soul occurs for human beings. The need for Soul Retrieval is more strongly evident today with our fast-paced, stress-filled lifestyles than it was 30,000 years ago. Dealing with physical imbalance, a sign of soul loss, through Soul Retrieval is as much a part of indigenous culture healthcare as yearly checkups with the doctor is part of our culture.

Getting back the energy, or essence of that part of our soul lost to trauma, will induce a feeling of fullness and contentment that food cannot. Retrieving the part of our soul which remains in times of trauma has been known to miraculously heal the body and the mind. Consider that our physical body is a reflection of our spirit body, it is our gauge that tells us when we need to look deeper. Consider that the hunger gene would not exist if the soul lived in a state of wholeness.

Unfortunately,  psychology doesn’t ask where parts of a person’s consciousness go when they disassociate. So instead of moving on with their lives, some patients stay stuck for a long time in their therapist’s office trying to find out. Others who cannot afford a psychotherapist, or don’t consider the need, look for ways to fill their spirit in the physical realm with food, drugs or alcohol. Still others can become so familiar with the void in energy that soul loss creates, they maintain that void by undernourishing themselves, subconsciously believing they do not deserve to be fed and nourished.

I have seen several women with eating disorders heal with Soul Retrieval and change their lives for the better, they are no longer prisoners of a dependency. One situation found a young woman who complained of an eating disorder. I did a soul retrieval and brought back a part of her essence that had remained connected to a childhood trauma.

Soon after her Soul Retrieval she reported an improvement in her condition. During her integration work we looked at a past-life — this journey showed that she needed to make a clear choice to accept back the part of her essence from childhood that was given to her, and consciously take care of that part of herself.

During her guided past-life journey she saw herself carrying out a task she resented — it was for her father. On behalf of her father, who was a land owner, she was forced to collect rent from the tenant farmers on his land. She continuously showed resistance as she was in conflict. She loved her father yet did not like what was happening with him in this past lifetime. Some of the ‘poor” tenant farmers gave mon-ey, others gave valuables and good homegrown foods for rent. When she brought these items back to her father, they were stashed in his locked safe where they rotted. She was incredulous. “He didn’t even notice these things.” Everyday she resentfully continued to take these precious gifts from the willing farmers.

One day she was amazed to find that one farmer gave her a child. This child was very dirty and undernourished; she didn’t want to accept her. When I asked her to take the child home to her room and clean and feed her, she discovered the child was in fact her. I asked who the farmer was that gave her the child and she said it was me. She stopped giving her energy to her father and focused on the creative gifts she discovered through Soul Retrieval work. From that time her eating disorder no longer existed.

Kathleen Downey is a Shamanic Counselor and Past-Life Therapist. Working out of Cardiff-by-the-Sea and Los Angeles, CA, she can be reached at (858) 646-9808 and in Boulder, Co at (303) 449-1349. She will be giving workshops on “The Authentic Celtic Journey” on March 14th in Carlsbad, CA and “Past-Life Journeywork and the Incan Medicine Wheel” on April 24th & 25th at Warner Springs, CA. See  www.corelevelhealing.com for more information. Look for her upcoming book, “Map of The Soul: Journey to the Soul Mate” in the summer of 2004.

Copyright 2003

Return to the March/April Index page