What is Shadow Work?
-The Ground Work

Understanding our ‘Groundwork’ and how imperative it is for health is the first step on the shadow work journey. 

• Do you have healthy boundaries?
• Do you adequately care for your physical vessel?
• What aspect of yourself are you currently healing ?
• How many fractured parts have you integrated into your whole? 
• Are you able to express all your emotions in a healthy way?
• How do you handle criticism?
• How do you handle other people expressing their emotions and opinions?

If you are not able to answer all these questions yet, please don’t worry! Read on and Your ‘Groundwork’ needs will become clearer.

The Ground Work

The first advice I would offer (a person who is starting their shadow work journey) is gaining a solid understanding of what shadow work is, why we do it, and to some extent how to do it (or at the very least – where to start). I have endeavoured to provide all of this essential knowledge to ease the journey for you, after all gatekeeping does not assist anyone. Please read through the pages in ‘Understanding Shadow Work’ at your own pace, this knowledge should be beneficial to your self reflective healing journey, and provide you with the fundamental knowledge required. 

The first step is understanding the essential groundwork we need to undertake, and trees lend themselves beautifully as a perfect analogy. 

Trees taught me a great deal about healing and in particular being grounded. The name ‘Ascension Roots’ is a play on the route to ascension being through our roots, and in the healing and balancing of the root chakra or the Muladhara (for more understanding on the chakras and why it is essential that they are balanced, please see ‘ The Energy Field and the Chakras‘ ).

We need a healthy Muladhara to grow a strong and deep root connection to Gaia, anchoring us in to this life. We cannot hope to achieve this without first having healed our root chakra, we cannot heal our root chakra if we are still carrying trauma, I explain this in more detail in ‘The Root Route‘. For strong deep roots to grow we have to do our groundwork. A root cannot penetrate solid impacted ground, stagnated and dirty water will not sustain healthy growth, trees grow upward to reach the light, and trees depend on their community to thrive. We are no different.

Through using these analogies we can see how essential it is to turn our attention toward our groundwork and prepare it for supporting abundant growth. What is this essential groundwork? The Groundwork is Shadow work.

What is Shadow Work?

Shadow Work is the term we use when describing the work we do on our hidden self. We call it our shadow because it is the part of ourselves that can remain ‘unseen’ even though it is there. We can also use “self reflective healing journey” and I use the terms interchangeably, although Shadow Work is more appropriate at times.

Shadow Work is essentially an umbrella term, it covers

• Inner child healing.
• Shadow integration.
• Trauma processing (including Bodily Intrusion).
• Concurrent life closure.
• Ancestral trauma healing.
• Chainbreaking.
• Goddess emancipation.

These are all ways in which we can be traumatised, essentially the different ways we suffer. We do not have to have ‘experienced’ the trauma ourselves or in this life to suffer the effects. For more on this please see ‘Advanced Shadow Work‘. 

Shadow work is not about spirituality or love and light, yes through shadow work we transmute our pain and suffering into love and light, but you cannot skip to the end. Shadow work IS a self reflective healing journey. Shadow work is taking radical self responsibility, it is looking in the mirror and seeing the reality of who stands there. Shadow work is accepting your own culpability in your self perpetuating misery. Shadow work is accepting that the only person that can liberate you from your gilded cage, is you. Shadow work is realising that you hold the key, and always did. Shadow work is taking responsibility for the work you are here to do, and having the courage to do it.

Shadow work is also accepting the truth of how infinitely powerful and beautiful you are, and taking ownership of that. 

A person who is on a Shadow work journey experiences a different reality to those still enmeshed within their matrix and perpetuating toxic patterns. After undertaking a self reflective healing journey a person will:

• Have a true confidence (not an over inflated ego) in their ability to navigate lives challenges.
• Love all of themselves.
• Have integrated many shadow aspects into the whole, which allows power, grace and confidence.
• Take care of their physical vessel, and energetic fields.
• Understands the power they wield and walk with considerate footsteps, an open mind and heart.
• They speak the truth, they don’t lie to anyone, especially themselves.
• Be at peace with their childhood.
• Release all that no longer serves with love and grace.
• Be able to discern what ‘is’ theirs and what isn’t.
• Take responsibility for themselves and their journey.
• Understand and accept their own part in diversity.
• Have an almost unflappable approach to life.
• Choose a life that facilitates growth
• Step into their Dharma and life purpose
• Understand that challenges are a growth tool.
• Doesn’t take anything personally.
• Enter flow state and harmony in their life path.

Grounding Exercise

One of the essential parts of our groundwork is ‘Grounding’, learning to keep ourselves energetically grounded is imperative for health. My favourite grounding exercise always involve trees. Of all entities on earth I am the most in awe of trees, their energy is benevolent and beautiful, they have community, energetically communicate, recognise their relatives and nutritionally support the weaker members of the network (Wohlleben 2016) time spent with trees is never wasted and if you are interested in raising your consciousness head to the woods and find the Matriarch tree, greet her and ask for an energy exchange (its only polite) lean against the tree if you are too self conscious to wrap your arms around. Breath deeply, stay as long as you need, but at least a few minutes. At the very least you will receive an increase in oxytocin (Das 2021) which is always a pleasant nurturing experience, and you may well receive a beautiful download that expands your consciousness. What some humans fail to realise is that not only are trees integral to our survival, but also our healing. 

Now that the essential Groundwork has been clarified, hopefully you have greater understanding of why shadow work is the first building block in a healthy and happy life. To gain further insight I would suggest you continue to ‘Do you need Shadow Work’, sneak peak – the answer is Yes!