To understand what Shadow Work is, you must first be conscious of your shadow. The shadow, according to Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, consists of those parts of ourselves we choose to repress or hide that we don’t like. We do that by pushing them down into our unconsciousness during childhood.
Several examples of shadow aspects are selfishness, aggressive impulses, being self-centered, arrogance, shameful experiences, and fears. These aspects lead to certain types of behaviors, such as criticizing someone else that has your flaws, letting people know you’re entitled, judging people unfairly, and always being the victim.
Many negative issues that affect your life can result by keeping your shadow hidden and locked away. These can include:
Addictions
Uncontrollable rage/anger
Social anxiety
Obsessive/compulsive disorders
Sexual deviancy
Depression
Self-sabotage
Neuroticism
Limiting beliefs
Shadow Work is the process of exploring these aspects and is an endeavor you enter into on your own. There are various means to do this, but you must first acknowledge your shadow, and then embrace and befriend it. It is only by bringing these aspects to the surface that you can begin to live authentically, discover your inner wisdom and life purpose, and gain access to your Soul or Higher Self.
In my practice, when clients choose Shadow Work to connect with their intuition, I utilize other mediums to help facilitate the process since they are all interconnected. Sitting in silence is one way to start, so a Mindfulness Meditation practice is valuable to have in your toolbox. Learning to live in the present moment is key to connecting to your Higher Self.
Cultivating Self-Compassion and Self-Awareness are also key to being able to confront your shadow. Mindfulness Meditation helps foster non-judgmental awareness – the ability to stay in the present moment without involving the inner critic or other modes of judgment.
Journaling your emotions and new discoveries as you experience them – stream-of-consciousness writing – gives you an unfiltered window into yourself. Writing your insights and reviewing them later helps encode the discovery into your awareness.
“Why should I do Shadow Work?”
Working with your shadow allows you to slowly deepen many interior aspects of yourself and become loving and kind to that which you previously rejected, eventually allowing you to become more compassionate to both yourself and others.
When you work with the shadow you begin to reclaim the projections you put onto others. You turn inward and begin to gently listen and heal those aspects within yourself instead.
Shadow Work is how you integrate the aspects of your unconscious psyche into your conscious experience and allow the positive aspects of the shadow to express themselves. When properly used and channeled, the shadow-self has traits that you can use to further your own personal development.
Some of the traits include:
Creativity
Intuition
Resilience
Self-Esteem
Shadow Work is not easy, but until you own your shadow, your shadow will own you. Wouldn’t NOW be the time to begin your journey to self-awareness and freedom to live the life you were born to live?
What you resist, persists. This is a phrase I often use with my clients when teaching yoga, but it is a straightforward law, that once understood and put into practice, will change your life forever.
Would any change in your life, large or small, be something you find beneficial? Then pick one thing you struggle with and observe how you speak and think about it.
More people know what they don’t want, more than what they do want:
“I don’t want to be in debt.”
“I don’t want to be overweight.”
“I don’t want to be unhappy or sad.”
“I don’t want to look foolish in this yoga pose.”
Instead, they should say:
“I want to be financially secure.”
“I want to maintain a healthy weight.”
“I want joy and happiness in my life.”
“I want to do my best in this yoga pose.”
It is not the experience itself, whether being in debt, overweight, unhappy, or foolish looking that causes your pain and suffering, it is your resistance to the experience.
Simply by shifting your thoughts and words from what you don’t want to what you do, will create the results and change you desire. To accomplish this, however, you must make a conscious decision to reprogram your thought process. It’s a simple process, but not an easy one. I used index cards to remind me.
In 2006, when I was digging myself out of a large debt leftover from my divorce, I kept saying, “I can’t get out of debt.” Just as the Law of Magnetic Attraction states that like attracts like, my coach at the time told me I was attracting more debt.
He told me to write the affirmation – Money flows freely and abundantly to me – on an index card and carry it with me wherever I went. I let go of my resistance to the idea of attracting more debt and a magical thing happened.
I won the Power Prize Jackpot at the Borgata for $35,574!
Now I can’t guarantee you’ll have results on that scale, but I do know that when you let go of the resistance to anything, it allows things to flow to you freely and abundantly.
Know that the Universe is on your side and go with the flow!
Have you ever not wanted to commit to something?
Do you say the first thing that comes to mind?
Have you ever regretted what you said to someone?
If you are like me, you are living life on autopilot. In other words, your responses are programmed. When I was discharged from Caron Treatment Center, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, I found it necessary to change only one thing; that one thing was everything!
That was a tall order! Instead of being overwhelmed, I broke it down into smaller steps. One of the first things I noticed that needed changing was my vocabulary, not only the words I was speaking but also the thoughts in my mind. So I began to remove words that didn’t empower me, such as try, probably, and hard.
Take the word try; it prevents us from committing. When we try to do something, we allow wiggle room. Trying means we aren’t devoting any energy to do something. It also provides us an excuse for why we didn’t achieve the results we wanted, letting ourselves off the hook when we fail.
Try to pick up a pen, glass, or anything for that matter. When you do pick up the object, try is impossible. You have picked it up. There is no try.
THAT’S THE POWER OF THE WORD TRY!
Are you trying to eat healthily —or are you eating healthy?
Are you trying to exercise daily—or are youexercising daily?
Are you trying to set boundaries by saying no—or are yousetting boundaries by saying no?
Do you see the difference? When you hit a pause button, it will be an effort not to say the word try because you’re now dealing with another kind of power. You are going from “not committing” to “committing.” Feel what it feels like to say, “I’ll be over at one o’clock,” instead of, “I’ll try to come over.” It’s a different kind of power.
Nothing changes in a person’s life who uses the word try. If you want to change, here are three steps you can take:
Eliminate the word try from your vocabulary.
Heed Yoda’s advice and decide to “do or do not.”
Commit fully to the outcome you want.
Another response I encounter from many people who operate on auto-pilot is their reply to my “Thank you.” I almost always hear, “No problem.” No problem? Should it be a problem that you waited on me? That’s your job. But the more critical issue is that you’re sending out negative vibrations to the universe—and me!
Since the universe doesn’t hear a negative, when you say, “No problem,” it hears “problem.” And for me, you can keep that problem; I don’t want it, nor will I accept it. Instead, I ask, “What happened to ‘You’re welcome,’ or ‘My pleasure?‘”
If you’re not creating the abundance you want in life, take a moment and reflect—Am I choosing words that empower me or disempower me?
Choices have consequences. Your choices today will affect the rest of your life. Choose wisely.
A great book I highly recommend. It’s called “I Get To,” by Alicia Dunams. It helps you transform your world with words and empower you to harness the power of intentional communication.
Schedule your complimentary 15-minute Assessment to begin your journey of empowerment today!
As I enter into myself
I become lost,
Immersed in ecstasy.
I feel a million points
Of light
Piercing love into
My soul.
Is it you, God?
Where are you leading me?
I am lost without you.
I hear your voice calling me.
But to where?
I tumble and fall
But you are there
Catching me in this
Unreal realm,
Putting me back into
Wholeness,
Guiding me from the
Unseen world to the seen,
So I have the strength, courage, and
Love
To hold my Center
In the face of humiliation and
Hatred, and become
Your servant to guide
Others out of their
Darkness
Just as you did for me.
Amen.
What is being true to yourself mean? What immediately comes to mind for me when I ask myself that question, is authenticity, and was something that eluded me for years. It wasn’t until I was recovering from alcohol addiction at the Caron Foundation, that I fully understood that it meant to accept myself as I really am and didn’t have to hide behind masks anymore.
The revelation occurred in what I consider a miracle; images, that were received as spiritual downloads during meditation, appeared as faces with drama masks. The masks melted away the same morning it was my turn to participate in the Psychodrama Therapy, where another person represents you as a child.
After I identified my masks and began to remove them, the person sitting opposite me suddenly shouted, “That was your vision this morning. The masks melted away.” The therapist stood back, amazed, and said, “You’ve had a true spiritual awakening.”
It was an initiation for me; with the death of my egoic self and a rebirth where I called back my authentic soul. From that instant on, I didn’t care who thought what about me— I knew and God knew if I was living true to myself, and that’s all that mattered to me.
I was free—free to be the person I was born to be. Being true to myself means living with integrity, honesty, and unwavering principles. It means I didn’t have to worry about pleasing other people or caring what they think about me, which is none of my business anyway.
It means I know who I am and accept myself as that person; knowing my strengths and my life purpose, and then living in accordance with those truths. I live by Polonius’s words in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “This above all – to thine ownself be true.”
Suggestions on Living True to Yourself
Cultivate a deep and trusting relationship with yourself
Live and speak with integrity
Be congruent and authentic
Follow your own value system and beliefs, not others
Make personal choices for truth
Be completely honest about what you feel and value
Being true to yourself is a life-long practice that requires commitment as you grow and evolve. The answer to your truth exists at the core of who you are. You just need to give yourself space and time to listen. So, go within and begin living true to yourself.
What does living in the present even mean? Present moment attention focuses entirely on what is in front of you and what you are doing right now; this is how your life plays out. Too much of the time, we occupy our minds with past experiences or daydream about future ones, which cause us to lose sight of what is before us—our lives.
So many of us have lived our lives in our heads rather than through experiences. One of the points I stress in my yoga classes is to let go of thinking about how a pose should look and begin to experience how the pose feels. Noticing what a yoga pose feels like allows you to go within for the experience instead of looking outward, allowing you to be present.
The easiest way to discover how to live now is to visit your favorite park, river, woods, or another place in nature. Admire everything you see. Touch whatever is before you, feeling its texture: a gnarled tree, the smoothness of a blade of grass. Smell whatever scents there are: the air, the fragrance of flowers wafting, the earth.
Using your five senses brings you to the perfect present. Examine how you feel when you bring your awareness to the forefront and savor the beauty of God’s creations. Things you may have missed, such as the laughter of children playing, the birds chirping noisily, the warmth of the sun, or the brightness of a star, now penetrate your physical being, making you feel alive.
— Go Within Spiritual Coaching (@thedebbiegill) March 9, 2017
When you are more present, your body relaxes, causing you to release stress. Stress occurs in your body when you don’t have relief between continuous physical, mental, or emotional challenges and can lead to harmful symptoms or diseases. When you live in the moment, all thoughts of stressors are gone because everything is taken care of; you have no issues, worries, or problems.
Living in the present allows you to connect with people more fully by listening, letting go of past judgments, and improving your focus. They can sense when you are distracted by your surroundings and when you able to tune out interruptions, making them feel that you are listening.
The more present you are, the more energy and creativity you have. Meditation is an excellent way to provide you with a deeper level of intuition and creativity; it opens up the channels within you and comes from the space between your thoughts, rather than thoughts themselves. By calming your mind through meditation practice, you allow this space to be discovered.
If you are overwhelmed, stressed out, and don’t know what to do, breathe. Watch your breath as it enters your body, and watch it leaving. If you find yourself creating fantasies that haven’t happened yet, breathe. If you find yourself in a state of mourning, grief, or resentment, breathe.
Meditation is a practice, not a goal, and being more present in your life results from that practice. Set aside five minutes a day to start, then gradually increase a minute each day or two. Decide to notice new things in your life, especially using your senses. Remember, life is all about the journey (the present moment) and not the destination (the future).
For further information about how you can learn to live in the moment, schedule your free 15-minute Assessment today!
