When it comes to personal growth and healing, many of us turn to talk therapy for support. While traditional talk therapy can be a powerful tool for understanding patterns, processing emotions, and gaining insight into our lives, it often falls short when trauma runs deep. Some wounds are embedded in our bodies, emotions, and energy fields, requiring tools that work on a deeper level. In this article, we’ll explore three powerful healing techniques—EMDR, revision, and self-guided soul retrieval—and how they can help you reprocess, reimagine, and reintegrate your past to restore balance and wholeness.

Why Go Beyond Talk Therapy?

Talk therapy helps us unpack mental and emotional blocks, guiding us toward insight and self-awareness. However, when past trauma becomes deeply ingrained, it can feel like talking alone isn’t enough to fully release the emotional charge or heal the fragmented parts of ourselves.


Going beyond talk therapy means recognizing that healing is not just a mental exercise—it’s an experience that involves our emotional, physical, and even spiritual selves. Modern therapists are using tools like EMDR to go beyond verbal processing and help clients release trauma on a neurological level. Meanwhile, spiritual and imaginative practices like revision and self-guided soul retrieval have emerged (or re-emerged) as effective ways to reclaim lost parts of ourselves and heal from within.

Each of these approaches offers unique benefits, and together, they provide a more holistic approach to healing. Let’s explore how each one works and how they share common ground despite coming from different traditions.

What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapeutic technique developed in the late 1980s by psychologist Francine Shapiro. It was designed to treat people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related issues. EMDR works by helping the brain reprocess traumatic memories so that they no longer hold the same emotional intensity.

How Does EMDR Work?

EMDR is based on the idea that trauma can sometimes overwhelm the brain’s natural ability to process memories. When this happens, distressing experiences can get “stuck,” causing them to continue to trigger intense emotional responses long after the event. EMDR helps unlock these memories and reprocess them in a way that allows the brain to neutralize their emotional charge.


Here’s how a typical EMDR session works:

1. Recall the Trauma: The client brings a specific traumatic memory to mind.
2. Bilateral Stimulation: The therapist guides the client’s eye movements, taps, or uses sound to stimulate both sides of the brain.
3. Reprocessing: As the bilateral stimulation occurs, the brain begins to reprocess the memory. The emotional intensity tied to the memory decreases.
4. Integration: Over time, the memory is no longer as distressing, allowing the client to integrate it into their past without being triggered by it.

The Benefits of EMDR

EMDR is highly effective in helping people reduce the emotional charge of traumatic memories, which can significantly decrease anxiety, PTSD symptoms, and emotional reactivity. By engaging both hemispheres of the brain, EMDR helps you create new, healthy associations with past events, enabling you to move forward more freely.

What is Revision?

Revision, as taught by spiritual teacher Neville Goddard, is a self-directed visualization technique that allows you to rewrite your past experiences in a way that brings peace, empowerment, and healing. The core belief behind revision is that your imagination can change the emotional impact of your memories, and in doing so, it can reshape how you experience the present and future.

How Does Revision Work?

Revision invites you to revisit a specific past event and reimagine it with a more favorable outcome. In this technique, the focus is less on processing the exact memory and more on creating a new emotional reality through imagination. Here’s how you can practice revision:

1. Identify a Memory: Choose a specific memory that carries a negative emotional charge—perhaps an event where things didn’t turn out the way you wanted or where you felt hurt.
2. Enter a Relaxed State: Close your eyes and relax. Bring the event to mind in as much detail as possible.
3. Rewrite the Outcome: In your imagination, change the event so that it aligns with a positive or healing outcome. For example, if you experienced rejection, imagine being met with kindness or understanding instead.
4. Feel the New Emotion: Engage your emotions fully as you visualize this new outcome. Allow yourself to feel the peace, joy, or relief that would have come from this new version of events.
5. Live from the New Memory: After revising the event, carry this new emotional reality into your present life. Whenever the memory comes to mind, recall the revised version instead.

The Power of Revision

By shifting how you emotionally relate to a past event, revision helps dissolve the emotional burden tied to it. With time, your brain begins to accept the new narrative, which can change how you approach similar situations in the future. The power of imagination in revision is a profound way to reclaim your story and empower your future.

What is Self-Guided Soul Retrieval?

Soul retrieval is an ancient spiritual practice that comes from various indigenous cultures, including Native American traditions. Traditionally, soul retrieval is performed by a shaman who journeys into the spiritual realms to recover parts of your soul or essence that were “lost” or fragmented due to trauma. However, this practice can also be done through self-guided techniques like visualization and eye movement exercises.

How Does Self-Guided Soul Retrieval Work?

Trauma can fragment parts of our emotional or spiritual essence, causing us to feel disconnected, incomplete, or blocked. Self-guided soul retrieval involves reclaiming those lost parts of yourself by using visualization and similar techniques to EMDR.

Here’s how you can practice it yourself:

1. Identify What Feels Lost: Reflect on where you feel emotionally or spiritually incomplete. Is there a part of yourself that you lost during a traumatic event—such as your joy, confidence, or sense of self-worth?
2. Visualize the Retrieval: Close your eyes and imagine traveling inward to the part of yourself that feels lost. Visualize yourself recovering this lost part, holding it close, and welcoming it back into your being.
3. Use Eye Movement or Bilateral Stimulation: To deepen the process, you can incorporate bilateral eye movements (similar to EMDR) or tapping techniques to help reintegrate the fragmented parts of your soul.
4. Reintegration: Feel yourself becoming whole again as you reintegrate this part of yourself. You might visualize it as a light or energy flowing back into your heart or body.
5. Affirm Your Wholeness: End the practice by affirming that you are now complete and whole, having reclaimed what was lost.

The Healing Power of Soul Retrieval

Self-guided soul retrieval allows you to restore balance and reconnect with aspects of yourself that trauma fragmented. The process offers emotional and spiritual reintegration, helping you reclaim your power and experience greater wholeness in your life.

How These Techniques are Similar

Although EMDR, revision, and self-guided soul retrieval come from different traditions, they share a common goal: to release the emotional and energetic weight of past trauma and help you reclaim a sense of balance and empowerment. Here’s how they overlap:

• Healing the Past: All three methods address past trauma by reworking how you relate to it, whether through neurological reprocessing (EMDR), imagination (revision), or spiritual reintegration (soul retrieval).
• Reintegration: Each method helps you reintegrate fragmented parts of yourself, restoring your wholeness and emotional balance.
• Transformation: Whether working on a neurological, imaginative, or spiritual level, each technique allows you to transform your relationship with the past, ultimately freeing you to live more fully in the present.

What We Can Learn: Integrating These Techniques Into Your Healing Journey

The beauty of these techniques is that they can complement one another and be used alongside talk therapy or other healing modalities. Here’s what we can take away from each:

• Healing is Holistic: Trauma affects more than just our minds—it impacts our emotions, bodies, and energy fields. True healing requires a holistic approach.
• We Can Change Our Relationship with the Past: Whether through reprocessing traumatic memories, revising our emotional responses, or reclaiming lost parts of ourselves, we have the power to change how the past affects us.
• Modern and Ancient Practices are Interconnected: Techniques like EMDR, revision, and soul retrieval show us that modern therapeutic methods and ancient spiritual practices share a common wisdom: that we can heal from the inside out.

Conclusion: Empower Your Healing

Whether you are working with a therapist or exploring self-guided techniques, it’s important to remember that healing is not linear, and each person’s journey is unique. EMDR, revision, and self-guided soul retrieval all offer profound ways to transform your relationship with your past and restore a sense of wholeness. By integrating these tools into your healing journey, you can reclaim your power, release old wounds, and move forward with a renewed sense of peace and self-awareness.