Reframing Shadow Work
Shadow work seems like kind of a buzz phrase these days. I’ve definitely gone to the depths of my own shadows in the last 5 years or so… so I know its value.
But more than that, I feel that in this particular time in history with so much awareness of conflicts and genocides and more in the collective, putting some of these global shadows into perspective and making them perhaps slightly more digestible in a sense, feels important.
Hope you’ll join me for this exploration of a deeply healing and world-changing practice.
In this essay, I’ll cover the following:
What happens to trigger shadow work
How shadows or old patterns/programs affect our daily lives and keep us from the lives we desire
Why shadows exist
What a shadow is
How to approach shadow work
Examples of shadow frequencies
How to do the work to examine, integrate, and release our shadows
The stages of shadow work
How to implement new helpful practices and frequencies in the space created by shadow work
How our individual shadow work ripples out into the collective
Why we have collective shadows
An option to help support you in your shadow work
We start to feel like something is off. Something doesn’t quite feel right. We sink into a bit of a funk. We become hyper-critical.
We feel like we’re not ourselves but we also feel we don’t have a choice in what’s happening or how we are presenting ourselves to the world, our families.
We might even begin noticing all the events or people or things in the world that rub us the wrong way. This creates a snowball effect wherein we become increasingly more reactive, sensitive, and perhaps even aggressive.
What’s happening? What’s wrong? What’s going on?
I would invite us all to reframe the way we think about this process and explore the idea of dissonance being a gateway to transformation.
When we start to feel off or dissonant with our external experience and our internal emotional processes, it’s a signal to us that we are starting to shift.
We are starting to have more awareness of our shadow, of the frequencies and experiences that are no longer helpful in our lives, but actually detracting from the lives we desire to live.
Every time we start to notice these lumps of coal, we can rest assured there will be diamonds inside each of them, in the form of growth and better alignment with our capital T Truth.
We just have to do some shadow work first. ;)
Sounds easy, but if you’ve explored your own shadow and embarked on this journey, you know it is anything but that!
The beginning of our journey into self discovery and growth in this realm can be challenging because the intention to grow begins to unlock the parts of ourselves and our shadow that we have been avoiding for a lifetime (or longer).
And as we cycle through layers of healing, peeling back one layer of trauma or fear-response based on a past or ancestral event, we uncover even deeper layers which are more nuanced and less easy to figure out how to integrate or release or transform, perhaps.
It’s a slow revealing of how and where we have locked ourselves out of the higher personal expressions and timelines we crave because we are caught in these repressed shadow patterns that offer reactions to live instead of responses, and being at the mercy of instead of empowerment.
But in every shadow is the diamond of our growth.
In each layer, we dust off another piece of grit that covers the diamond of who we really our, and our Truth and Purpose.
As we continue in this process, we will also notice the subtle or overt ways these higher frequencies of Self that we are unearthing in the process of shadow work, are showing themselves in our everyday lived experience.
More joy, more synchronicity, more love, more abundance, more ease. :)
This is a huge positive reinforcement, and a great signifier of the level and layers of our rebirth into our rememberance of our Truths.
And as we do the work individually, we also make space for shifts to happen on a cultural, collective, or global scale. We are microcosms of the macrocosm.
We can collectively evolve out of the old systems and ways of being and operation on a tribal, cultural, and global level that just don’t seem to make sense anymore. And which are usually based on collective ancestral fears that are no longer serving the group, just as our individual shadows are based on fears that were perhaps helpful to our survival at some point but are now holding us back from the lives we desire.
So, what IS a shadow and how do we do shadow work?
A shadow is just a part of ourselves that is not known completely.
It could be a subconscious pattern in the way we operate in the world, or a way of thinking that doesn’t quite feel aligned with how we want to be actually.
These emotional states or ways of operating generate their own frequency too, and generally the shadow frequency is of a lower vibration or frequency than a state of wellness and integration.
I want to make an important note though, that we are not wanting to “other” our shadows.
We don’t want to think that they are this low vibration external emotion or entity that has come to our experience from the outside. We don’t want to view our shadows as bad or this part of ourselves that we should shame.
Treat your shadows as you would treat your children. With tenderness and grace.
Honor their place in your life, their helpfulness in the past, and shine light on them so they can work FOR you instead of keeping you from the new timeline you’d like to shift onto.
Our shadows are a part of ourselves. We must be kind to all parts of ourselves. If we resist or judge our shadows, they will persist.
Wrap yourself, your whole being, every part of you, including your parts that you or others have deemed “less lovable,” with unconditional love.
That is the path of true healing and integration.
Otherwise our shadows and their patterns will reemerge at some point in the future, which will feel much more challenging to our growth process!
Some examples of shadow frequencies are
Being reactive instead of responsive
Preferring chaos to ease
Intolerance
Love of conflict
Self-obsession
Vanity
Over-compromising
A feeling of dullness or malaise
Judgement
Co-dependency
Superficiality
Need for control
Dishonesty
Addiction
Contraction over expansion
Pride
Selfishness
Feeling purposeless
Half-heartedness
Insatiable desires
Arrogance
Repeatedly failing
Dominating others
Struggling
Need to constantly provoke others
Expectations
Being too serious
Oppression
Feeling inadequate
Corruption
Feeling agitated frequently
Constantly stressed
Immature
Greed
Feeling like a victim
Easily distracted/lack of focus
Unease
Dissatisfaction with life
Psychosis
Over-dependence or inflation of intellect
Doubt
Fear
Confusion
(The above list is from the book Gene Keys by Richard Rudd, a book which offers the framework for a journey into self-exploration and growth. The Gene Keys organization also offers courses to deepen our understanding of how these shadows work within ourselves. I highly recommend diving in to the Gene Keys if you feel attracted in the slightest!)
If you feel these shadow frequencies within your experience, how do you do the work to examine, release, and integrate these parts of yourself?
How do you pave the way to live in expansion, joy, ease, and bliss; deeply connected to your Purpose?
My opinion is to approach with love and curiosity.
Choose one shadow at a time, explore where you feel it in your body, explore where you see it in the world around you, explore how it makes you feel, how it shows up for you personally, how you initially respond to this shadow.
Just explore with curiosity.
You can dive into the shadow and really embody it completely. When you dive in and let the frequency of this shadow grow and grow to envelop your whole being, what does it share with you? What does it say? What does your body receive from it?
Contemplate how this shadow feels tangibly and how it makes you feel emotionally, physically, spiritually, energetically.
Allow space for any emotions that emerge to express themselves. Anger, grief, sadness, overwhelm… just love those expression as you would any other part of yourself or your inner child. Allow them to be.
If this process ever feels too big for you to hold on your own, reach out to a trusted friend or advisor to help you explore and integrate. I offer one-on-one sessions for this very purpose.
The point is to bring awareness to our shadows first and foremost. With awareness comes growth and integration.
As you move through your life and your daily lived experience, notice when you feel uncomfortable.
Pull out your perspective in those moments and think about how this particular shadow you’ve chosen to explore might be responsible for how you’re feeling.
Tap into your knowing and trust your intuition. Where does this shadow come from? What fear, from your current experience or your childhood or maybe even your ancestral line, could be behind this shadow?
As you bring awareness to this shadow and your experience of it, your subconscious will do this beautiful work of slowly chipping away at the shadow in order to know how it works and what it needs.
Put your experience out into the field. “The field” is the collective matrix of consciousness and love that we are all connected to. Another way of saying this is “Give it to God.” Or maybe even “Jesus, take the wheel.” :)
You can also call in the power of your guides and your higher self, that part of you that is timeless and is connected to all knowing that exists in the universe, to help give you perspective and guidance on the process.
See what your life, the universe, your higher self, or God shows you in terms of how to best integrate this shadow. This could be very clear signs or thoughts that come through your mind, or more subtle ways your life rearranges itself in order to show you what needs to be seen.
This process can take a very short amount of time or longer… Days, weeks, months.. it’s all normal.
And when you think about how long this shadow frequency has been in your lived experience, the amount of time to heal and integrate our shadows is actually a blip.
Just have patience with yourself and with the process.
Eventually, you will have a breakthrough!
Allow the breakthrough to unfold. There may be parts of your old self that want to cling to this old way of being and experiencing life.
Honor the ways in which this shadow has helped you at some point in your life or your ancestry. Acknowledge that it was necessary for survival at some point. Rest in the beauty of the way your Self organized this shadow within you to keep you safe and alive.
You can let this part of yourself know that it is no longer needed and from now on, YOU will be the one to decide what is best for yourself. You will be in charge. You will lead your experience of life with love and compassion, and this old part of you can release the illusion of control and fade into a period of rest and integration, or release back into the field to go back to the original source from which it came.
The thing about complete unconditional acceptance of all of yourself, is that once you settle into that frequency, the shadow will be purged from your experience.
Your DNA will shift and change because you’ve changed your daily lived frequency of existence. Your body will do what needs to be done to purge that old pattern from your experience.
This is why some people experience sicknesses during this process.
When I made a huge breakthrough and released a huge shadow pattern of mine when we were in Costa Rica, I immediately fell ill with a high fever and my entire body down into my bones ached very painfully.
My body was doing the work to excavate that shadow frequency from my body down to a cellular level, down to the bones. Since healing from that week-long “upgrade” (as I call sickness), I have been a completely different person.
It doesn’t always unfold this way, and the process could be much more drawn out and/or gentle than that particular one was for me. It’s all good and normal.
If we can wrap ourselves in love and gentleness and call in ease during our process of unfolding and aligning with our True essence, the universe will give us the exact process we need and believe we deserve.
And as we purge or integrate what is no longer serving us, we make so much space for calling in what we actually do want in life.
This can be a great time to establish a daily practice of self-care, however that looks for you.
Breathwork can be an amazing tool for supporting the process of release and renewal. Moving our body either gently with a practice like yoga or more intensely with high impact workouts can help move energy through the body. Meditation, baths, altar work, ecstatic dance, time in nature, a self-pleasure practice.. these can all help us process our experience and integrate new belief systems and ways of being into our daily lives on all levels, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
As you rest easy in your new frequency, your healing will ripple out to your family, your friends group, your community, and the world.
This is why shadow work and examining what is holding us back from our dream life as an individual is so important. As we do the work to release, integrate, and care for these parts of ourselves, so does the world outside of us.
We notice what is no longer serving us on a global scale, and we know we have the tools to help shift the global shadow as well.
We notice what is holding us back collectively from the more beautiful, easeful, blissful world we are all dreaming of, and we now have a proven pathway in order to work, dance, play, and excavate in that direction.
We notice how all of the parts of our collective experience that feel off, sticky, misaligned, or even dark, are just our collective shadows — which are old patterns and frequencies that did help us survive up to this point, but which are no longer serving us collectively — and we honor these parts of our collective, we love them, and we can work to shift and integrate them and then replace them with what is actually in alignment with our new frequencies.
This is how we create the New Earth.
So cool, right?!
It all starts with doing the work on an individual level.
If you’re in this process, or starting down this path for yourself as an individual, and you’d like some guidance, coaching, love, or support on your way, please reach out or book a session.
Sometimes it’s nice to not have to do it alone :)
I’d love to witness you in your journey and hold space for your unfolding and flowering into your Truth!
