SOUL RETRIEVAL

The essence of the soul is eternal, but that doesn’t mean it cant experience separation, loss, or injury while here in the temporal world.  Experiences like trauma, shock intense stress or loss can occasionally cause parts of the soul to “flee” from the body as a survival technique.  This is often referred to as soul loss, which can cause a person to feel disconnected, fragmented, or incomplete – and in severe cases it can manifest as depression, heartbreak, anxiety, or mental illness. 

In shamanic healing, the shaman’s role is to locate and retrieve the lost part of the soul and deliver it back to the persons energy field.  These fragmented parts of the soul are often reluctant to return and typically require some form of persuasion or healing before they are able to return to the body.  Occasionally, there are also obstacles that need to be overcome in this process, like protective spirits that need to be worked with to keep them from holding these parts of the self in the ukhu pacha (interior realm).

Yet, before the shaman can accomplish this feat on behalf of another, they must learn to do this for themselves first.  Only then can they acquire the wisdom to truly facilitate a soul retrieval for another person. 

This is where we must begin.  By calling all of the disparate parts of ourselves back home in cohesive wholeness.

ENVIRONMENTS CONDUCIVE TO HEALING

Step away from your everyday routine, and slow your stride to a ceremonial pace... to the pace of nature itself.  Let the whole of you catch up.  Call back the parts of you that are sprinting forward.  Wait patiently for the parts of you lagging behind.  Move at a pace where every part of you can walk together.  This is the pace of ceremonial movement.  And this is the pace that creates the environment for soul retrieval to take place.  

MEET OUR FACILITATOR

Mateo Magee has been serving communities as a spiritual teacher, guide, and expedition leader since 1998. His book Peruvian Shamanism: The Pachakuti Mesa was the first written account of a lineage that spans thousands of years, bridging the Northern Coastal Huachumero and Southeastern Andean Paqokuna traditions of Peru.

Though he holds multiple university degrees, Mateo regards his true education as having come from decades of immersive living and apprenticeship with traditional Indigenous communities across North and South America.

With 27 years of dedicated study in the Peruvian systems of curanderismo, his current work explores the power of receptivity in nature, stillness within movement, and the profound teachings found in silence and solitude.

One of Mateo’s core gifts lies in his ability to be a student at all times.  This mindset allows him to make complex and often elusive spiritual principles both accessible and deeply relatable to his students. His inclusive teaching style fosters a safe, expansive spaces where every soul can stretch out in, evolve, and ultimately find their way home.    

OUR RETREAT CENTER AND CEREMONIAL SPACE

The property is on 10 acres of forest-covered hills, the ecological “gem” of which is a living spring that feeds the local creek, and is home to crawfish, turtles, snakes, fish and more. Other wildlife on the property include deer, armadillo, red fox, snakes, a number of birds, and insects who pass through the land on their annual migration. This spring has been continuously occupied for thousands of years, and features the archeological remains of many tribal peoples, most recently the Apache. These lands have a long history of traditional ceremonial work.

The temple is a dodecagonal maloka with a 36’ diameter, loosely styled after the Munay Sonqo maloka in Peru’s Sacred Valley. It features a beautiful spiraled roof design centered over a selenite altar.

TESTIMONIALS: