Shadow Work
Real beauty comes from falling in love with our inner essence.
We want you to fall in love with the human that is complicated, scared, strong, and vulnerable. The constant search for some idealized, perception of who we think we should be is exhausting, and only creates further disconnection.
Constantly comparing ourselves to others, we feel shut down and hurt.
In order for us to fully love ourselves, we must be willing to acknowledge ALL of our being, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
We often are able to appreciate and accept the parts of ourselves that we are comfortable with and learned were okay to share with the world at a young age. Then there are those pesky other parts of us that we do everything to keep hidden. These hidden parts of ourselves need acceptance, and without it, they run our lives from behind the scenes. In order to find true acceptance, we must be willing to fully embrace the ugly sides of ourselves.
When we repress any aspect of ourselves, we thereby cast it aside, where it becomes a shadow aspect of us.
Shadow work and the critical voice
Understanding that the critical voice comes from hurtful experiences beginning in our early years helps us to cultivate compassion for it. The critical voice forms in early childhood from painful experiences and conditioning. When we are young, we are incredibly vulnerable and cannot protect ourselves emotionally. When we feel sadness, abandonment, fear, or anger that is not accepted by our primary caregivers, it is frightening to us at a deep level. We are born with biological needs to attach to our primary caregivers so that we will feel safe and loved.
When our feelings or behaviours are rejected by loved ones, we learn that we must avoid these emotions and behaviours to be loved and accepted. We learn to bury the unaccepted emotions and behaviours as the critical voice does its job to ensure we are protected.
Essentially, we form an inner voice that can be composed of our parent’s hopes and fears for us, our influential peers and teachers, our religious upbringing, as well as our competitive culture. Overt and covert criticisms, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and bullying can all lead to adopting negative internal beliefs. With so many influencing forces, this inner critical voice has the potential to become powerful. As the sacred warrior woman learns how her critical inner voice was created to keep her safe, she begins to feel a hint of compassion towards it. She sees that she must connect with her own inner strength in order to help the critical part of her understand that she now has the skills to be able to protect herself.
Our vulnerability is a portal to the divine within us. Our own life experiences have been other wonderful teachers, helping her to connect with deep-seated compassion, powerful self-love, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.
My training to assess you has been greatly beneficial in helping to support people with shadow exploration. Most of our shadows are created in childhood. Helping others to navigate the inner world that they inhabit, especially the parts that are unfamiliar and scary, creates a safe environment for healing to happen.
Benefits
- Help people to look at their shadows, or aspects of themselves that they have hidden away (teal swan)
- Bringing the depths to the surface
- Get to know yourself through myth and mystery
Shadow Work Questions
- What is our shadow?
- How does it show up in our lives?
- What is shadow work?
- Why bother to look at your shadow, isn’t it important to think positively about a positive mindset?
- What is the importance of shadow work in manifestation?
- Why do we need to connect with and heal our shadows in order to truly embrace life?