Welcome to Week Three:
Embracing the Shadow Self

Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who was the first to bring shadow work into the Western world of science in the early 1900's, noticed that traits we repress, judge, deny, shame or reject in ourselves are cast into the unconscious. Shamanic healers, however, have been masterfully working with shadows for thousands and thousands of years.

What is the Shadow Self?

The more we repress, the more we cultivate an unconscious entity called The Shadow Self. This can be a sub-personality, an identity, an emotion, an impulse or an entire collection of beliefs and thoughts. The Shadow Self is any part of you that you do not see, acknowledge or accept, it is unconsciously present affecting your day to day world. This is not just a personality trait living in your psyche - the shadow is multifaceted from a spiritual perspective and parts of the shadow can exist outside of the mind and in your body.

Shadow comes from both negative and positive aspects of your being - it’s not just scary & dark. Power, joy, bliss, talents, etc can all be very present in your shadow and held captive by the shadow, held in the shadow by fear. At some point, usually in childhood, you learned that aspects of yourself were not accepted, were not safe, for the sake of survival these traits were cast into the shadows thus creating a false self.

The Shadow Self can profoundly affect your behavior and life experiences. Our shadows are our biggest teachers!

WEEK THREE REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
Embracing the Shadow Self

1. What parts of yourself do you dislike?

2. What parts of yourself do you judge or fear?

3. If you were not afraid of ANYTHING in this world, what would you do?

I N I T I A T E

Each week I will offer new ideas for you to consider “initiating” into your system. What does this mean? It means that I’m inviting you to read, listen, and/or watch a resource and absorb it into your entire being or “system.” This means you will take it in cerebrally, you will also feel into it in your subtle body taking careful notes of the internal dialogue, the feelings or body wisdom cues, and your response, projection, and/or reaction. If the material triggers you or causes resistance this is important information, if the material is easy, feels good, invites you into a place of peace and calm and feeling “at home,” this is also important information. Please create sacred space, and dedicated time to INITIATE this information into your system each week, and keep the notes in a journal for discussion.

Please INITIATE these resources into your system:

What Is SHADOW WORK? [5 Effective Ways To Do It!]

Embrace The Darkness (Carl Jung & The Shadow)

Shadow Self: How to Embrace Your Inner Darkness (3 Techniques)

A N C H O R

When we “anchor” into something, we connect to it…we make it ours. Each week I will invite you to ANCHOR into the theme for the week and this means that I want you to make the thoughts/work/ideas yours, intimately yours. You will be exposed to various resources to consider which each have their own ideas and positions, you will hear my thoughts and the thoughts and input of your fellow sisters in our discussions, and you will be asked to anchor into the ideas that resonate and guide you - in your own way. Please anchor into what feels good in your system, good in a “home” way, or good in a way that you have identified this as your work/practice, and let the rest go.
If something doesn’t sit well with you or resonate with you, let it go love.

THIS WEEK’S ANCHORING PRACTICES + INVITATIONS:

R E F L E C T

At the end of each week I invite you to reflect on the week’s journey;
isolate it and take note.
Where did you start this week?
What growth, change, new awareness and/or new practices and ideas did you experience and/or adapt?
What further questions do you have?
What tools and resources do you need for future contemplation?
Take note of the resistance, or the list of things that you let go of, be sure these things are healthy surrenders.

PLEASE MAKE A LIST OF YOUR REFLECTIONS TO SHARE WITH MELANIE IN YOUR ONE-ON-ONE ON FRIDAY

I N T E G R A T E

When we integrate this means we have chosen to anchor into a belief and made it ours and now we are putting it into practice to begin to INTEGRATE it into our system, life, experience. How we do this is up to us, and whatever outside help we call in (teachers, resources, examples…).

PLEASE BE PREPARED TO SHARE ONE IDEA, PRACTICE, OR NEW AWARENESS WITH THE GROUP THAT YOU WILL BE INTEGRATING FROM THIS WEEK.*

*If you are feeling extra inspired by something that came up this week, please reach out to me to share how you might lead the group in a discussion or practice around this new inspiration: this will be a beautiful way that we can hold each other accountable for “integrating” this work.