Ayurvedic Consultation
Shadow Work
What is Shadow Work?
Shadow Work is a personal development method that helps transform parts of the Self with compassion and understanding. It offers facilitated processes that allow individuals to explore and change their behavioural patterns safely, choice-fully and without pressure.
Based on Cliff Barry’s unique synthesis of ancient and modern process work tools, Shadow Work uses a four-directional ‘map of the mind’ to help you identify and process ‘shadows’: those aspects of ourselves, our behaviours and feelings we believe are not acceptable, must not be expressed or shouldn’t show up in everyday life. They become the part of the Self which Carl Jung termed The Shadow and defined as all the parts of ourselves we hide, suppress and deny – either consciously or unconsciously.
In Shadow Work we believe that the core of every shadow contains a nugget of power and strength, and the work seeks to support you in bringing your hidden powers out of shadow and into the light. We all have these powers within us, but we don’t always allow ourselves to use them. Many of us have been hurt and learned to hide certain parts of ourselves, so we don’t get hurt again.
Shadows are like a goldmine of buried treasure, filled with forgotten creativity and useful energy. Remember how, as a very small child, you were able to let all your emotions out without holding anything back? Can you also remember how young you were when you began to learn that such uninhibited displays were somehow wrong or unwelcome in some way? As you grew up, it is likely that people around you - parents, teachers, siblings and friends - taught you which behaviours were acceptable in this culture and, even more strongly, which ones were not. Unrepressed displays of big emotions such as anger, fear, grief and even joy, may have been frowned upon. Were you ever shamed for crying, punished for being angry, ridiculed for being frightened, or belittled for being proud of yourself? Maybe you were very young when you began to feel the deep hurt of these painful experiences and learned that the best way to protect yourself from such wounding was to hold your feelings back.
Shadow Work is a way to explore our inner landscape and discover the gold that is hidden in the shadows. It is a way to become more of who we really are by facing the hurt, the fear, the anger and the joy, in order to learn how to live more fully. Most of all, it is a way to love ourselves for the journeys we have chosen.
What is Shadow Work for?
Most people use Shadow Work in order to:
understand why they behave in a certain way
get help or support for unfolding more of themselves
work with feelings like fear, grief, anger or shame
break through old patterns of behaviour.
Before you come to a session or workshop, you don’t need to know exactly what you want to work on – just that you want something to change is enough. You won’t ever become a ‘shadow-free’ person, but by using Shadow Work you can learn a great deal about yourself and exercise more conscious choice over how you live your life.
A Shadow Work process generally involves the safe exploration of core emotions:
Anger opens us up to our ability to set our boundaries. It helps us learn when to say “Yes!” and when to say “No!” It stops us from getting trapped in unhealthy situations, and it helps us to know who we really are.
Sadness is a doorway to our connection with other people. It opens us up to love, revealing our vulnerability and desire for loving relationship. Sadness helps us connect with the spiritual realities we hold sacred. It helps us stay in tune with our bodies and with nature.
Fear can help us detach from a situation and look at it objectively. Fear can be a wonderful advisor, which creates new options for our future and counsels us about the present.
Joy inspires us to live our dreams. Joy gives us courage and direction when we are lost and blesses us with the knowledge that our lives have real meaning.
Exposing parts of your shadow can feel risky. To work effectively with your shadows, you need a place where you feel safe — a place where you can trust others. Shadow Work facilitators endeavour to provide you with such a place.
"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
Maya Angelou
The Origins of Shadow Work
Shadow Work was developed over 20 years ago by Cliff Barry and Mary Ellen Blandford. They integrated and correlated their work with other disciplines such as Gestalt, Voice Dialogue, Accelerated Learning, Metaphor work, Bio-Energetics, Family Systems theory, Addiction Recovery work and other personality systems such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram. They are also indebted to the pioneering work of Robert Bly, Robert Moore, Doug Gillette, David Grove, Ron Hering, as well as Hal and Sidra Stone.
Shadow Work Seminars
To experience Shadow Work, you can attend a 2 or 3-day Shadow Work seminar. There you would work in a group of people to share the path of exploration and to support each other with acceptance and encouragement. You may choose to learn from watching how others process their shadows. When you see others finding the courage hidden within their fear, or the power in their anger, you may be able to apply that learning directly to your own situation. For information about upcoming Shadow Work seminars, please visit www.shadowwork.eu. Visit also if you're interested in training in this approach.
Shadow Work Coaching
Or you may choose to experience Shadow Work in a one-to-one setting, where your exploration is facilitated by a Shadow Work coach over a few hours. Some of our clients choose coaching because it offers more privacy than a group seminar. Others simply want to work at times when no seminar is scheduled, or through more than one issue in the same session. Shadow Work coaching offers a degree of safety that people may need in order to work on issues that would be too difficult or embarrassing to address in a group setting.
How Coaching Works
Shadow Work coaching helps to create profound shifts in perspective, perception, behaviour, and emotional well-being. When you have an issue to work on, we take you through a process that begins with your goals — what you want to accomplish relative to your issue — and ends with strategies for how to integrate what you’ve explored and discovered about yourself. In between these two bookends usually lies a journey of deep enquiry, experimentation and emotional catharsis.
We believe Shadow Work coaching is successful for three key reasons:
Core Patterns: Shadow Work coaching seeks to uncover core psychological and behavioural patterns that underlie your issues. Once you see and shift a core pattern, it usually shifts other secondary patterns concurrently. This provides the added benefit of evolving many dynamics at the same time.
Risk Assessment: When it comes to change, few accomplishments come without a price. In our years of working with people, we have found that safely identifying and exploring your risks greatly increases your ability to make substantial changes. It’s a psychological paradox that succeeds almost every time. It works because a risk is something you choose to take. This creates an experience where you control how far you want to push yourself. It allows you to choose the risks you are willing to take in order to get what you want.
A Safe Learning Environment: Shadow Work can be an intense experience. The willingness to explore your issues deeply, in all their facets, may be risky. We want you to feel comfortable and safe to reveal whatever you choose and therefore endeavour to co-create with you a work environment free from shame, blame or judgment.
Arranging a Session
Both Sascha and Rebecca are trained Shadow Work coaches. If you are interested in having a one-to-one coaching session with one of us, please contact us to arrange a time to speak, so that we can explain more about the work, and you can assess if this approach feels suitable for you.
