Where to Start Your Shadow Work Journey

The Shadow Work Journey.

Shadow work is not complicated or problematic, it is simply a relatively new concept to humanity, and humans have a tendency to shun that which they don’t understand and are scared of. If you have read through everything in the ‘Understanding Shadow Work‘ section, you hopefully have an understanding of what shadow work is and why it is so important. Your self reflective healing impacts you, your immediate circle, the collective consciousness, Gaia, and even your ancestors.

If now that you have this understanding you are considering starting your own Shadow Work journey, but are unfamiliar with the territory and not yet ready to engage in immersive work with a practitioner, but would like to just dip your toe in, to make a start, then here you will find some basic guidance.

My first advice is to reconnect with yourself. Socrates is quoted as saying “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”, and this is certainly true when it comes to self reflective healing. 

I would recommend you engage in some practices to consciously connect with your body, walks in nature, breath-work, yoga, an indulgent bath, prepare and eat delicious nutritious food, anything that really connects you to your vessel and allows you the space to feel it. How is your body feeling? What is it trying to communicate with you? Yes our physical body is a means to experience the world outside of us, but it is also the key to understanding the world within us.

Body Communication.

The body will use many methods of communication, and try to get our attention, unfortunately, our bodies often have to resort to physical discomfort and pain when we fail to listen. If pain and discomfort is a regular concern for you then learning the bodies language would be key in your shadow work journey. Bessel van Der Kolk wrote an incredible piece of work called ‘The body keeps the score‘ and indeed Gabor Mate’s ‘When the body says no‘ and his other extensive work on trauma and the body would be highly recommended reading.

Learning to connect with your vessel in this way will allow for an open communication between the body and the psyche. If you have been very enmeshed within the matrix you may never have talked with your body before, it can feel a little un-nerving at first, especially for your body and inner voice. If it takes a while then I encourage you to be patient, it may even take weeks for your body and inner voice to start responding. Try to have compassion for this, many of us have been in abusive relationships with ourselves, if you have only ever been critical toward yourself, verbally declaring self hatred and have been harsh on your body for the ways you perceive it has failed you, then it is going to take a little time to heal and build trust. You could try to do this very simply at first, maybe place your hand on your stomach and ask it what it would like to eat, our bodies are very intelligent at knowing what we require and the answer will be something healthy and mineral rich (in all likely hood). The more you communicate with your self, the easier it will be for answers to arise, you could be able to start understanding why you experience anxiety or deciphering pains and stiffness. If you experience frequent aches and pains then Louise Hay’s ‘Heal your body‘ and Evette Roses ‘Metaphysical Anatomy‘, will be useful reading (I certainly recommend them to clients and have the books as a reference myself) and aid in your reconnection to your body. Disconnection from the body not only causes disease and discomfort, but also results in energy field imbalance, chakra blockage and damage (please see ‘The Energy Field and the Chakras’ for more information on healing this damage). 

Once we understand when and how our body communicates its needs to us, and we learn to have a compassionate nurturing attitude toward ourselves we can learn to identify our inner voice, if you have a loud chatty head then learning to quieten the circus is going to be helpful. I found the teachings of Eckhart Tolle (in particular ‘The Power of Now‘) to be very useful on learning to soothe and control my mind. Once the mind is more regulated it is easier to distinguish the inner voice, the internal guidance system, locating and building trust with your inner voice (your true self guidance) can be life changing, (especially if you are a people pleaser, or someone who always holds back).

Once you have a clear understanding of how to utilise these tools (that are already there inside of you) you cannot help but become more confident in your own ability to navigate this life.

• This is the voice that says a polite but firm ‘no, thank-you’ when you are invited to a social event and feel obligated to go.
• This is the voice that says ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ to something you haven’t done before and are a little scared but excited to try something new.
• This is the voice that says ‘thank you for your advice, but I know how I want to handle this’ to obtuse and unsolicited opinions.
• This is the voice that reminds you to be more gentle if you are defensive and gruff.
• This is the voice that whispers ‘its not personal’ if you are someone who is reactive to other peoples emotions.

That’s why I believe that finding this voice is life changing.

Now we can see how connection to your body, allows you to ‘hear’ what your body needs. Learning to quiet and control the mind allows you to hear your inner voice. Once the inner voice is located, and respect and nurturing toward your body starts then healing can begin. This is the least convoluted path to start your shadow work journey. 

The Shadow Journal.

My next recommendation is to keep a shadow journal, this is decidedly different than regular diary keeping. Your shadow journal will become key in deciphering your shadow self (the shadow self is that which is unseen to us – please see ‘Shadow Work Illuminated‘).

Phase 1 of shadow journalling could start by recording when you have become aware of being triggered by something, and use prompts to unveil what the trigger is alerting you to (please see ‘The Ground Work‘ for more understanding of triggers).

• Record what happened, the where and why too.
• How you felt (very honestly),
• How you reacted,
• What were the consequences (if any).  

Also record when bothersome memories pop up, flash backs, nightmares, record anything on the darker side of the psyche. Eventually you will start to see patterns, maybe you get into conflicts when you’ve been consuming alcohol, perhaps you end up with low self worth after you’ve spent time with a particular individual. These identified patterns are the key to unlocking the door to your shadow, once you identify a pattern its harder to ignore the issue. Let me demonstrate with an example…

You start shadow journaling already aware that you struggle with anxiety and its getting worse, lets say after some months of records you’ve identified that your anxiety is worse at certain times, in particular you are crippled with anxiety on Sunday evenings. Next time Sunday evening comes round you are prepared for it, you do some calming breaths and settle yourself, and connect in with that inner voice, you ask yourself what you are anxious about, the answer will likely be convoluted (perhaps you have a heavy load at work, you feel over whelmed and can’t ask for help because there have been several redundancies and and and). Each time you get a convoluted answer record it and distill the next question. I am feeling anxious about work? Do I want to work? Does working in general give me anxiety? Is it this job in particular? What would I prefer to do? Through this process you can sometimes arrive at a surprising destination. For example, maybe you really wish you could go back to education and learn how to make your true passion your job. Perhaps its not the job that is the real issue, but your lack of alignment with your path and your true power that is the issue. It could be that part of your shadow self is actually someone who is powerful, strong and determined, but your cultivated socially accepted persona is a quiet wall flower.

It is not necessarily the personality traits that are the issue, its the lack of personal authenticity, living your life by the standards imposed upon you, rather than stepping into the power of who you really are.

Some people learn that they can have easier communication with their inner voice by free writing. You ask the questions and just allow your arm to write the answers, it can be very illuminating.

Once you have kept a shadow journal for a while, patterns emerge, and your shadow self has started to become more visible, it is likely you will get an idea of what you are suppressing about yourself, and what traits you may have banished to your shadow (please see ‘Shadow Work and the Higher consciousness‘, and ‘Shadow Integration’ for further information). 

Phase 2 Shadow Journaling would be to go deeper, to identify your triggers. You recorded the ‘what’ (phase 1), the next step is to identify the emotion you experienced, and then you would be hoping to learn what the actual trigger was, this is normally another process of distillation. 

Phase 3 Shadow Journalling would be quite deep work, you identify the real trigger, then go deeper to why that was a trigger for you, triggers are our personal flag system and my triggers will likely not be yours. If you keep following the trigger through the path of distillation it will eventually lead to a wound. The original wound. This is often the sort of work you would do with a therapist, or a soul speaker and is definitely no longer dipping your toe into the shadow pool. 

Once you’ve been journalling for a while you may feel ready to go deeper on your shadow work journey, to find out more about going on this journey with me please see ‘Shadow work with Ascension Roots‘.