Shadow Work
You may have heard of the concept of shadow work or heard it in passing and wondered what it means or what it is. It’s not scary at all, it's simply the act of working, through your challenges, karmic past situations, moments, and memories from your life that will vary depending on the person and experience.
Shadow work refers to deciding to face the moments in your life that happened in your past that for whatever reason you decided to blow it off or ignore. Things that you “swept under the rug” if you will. It also is facing where you need to improve to become a better person. The type of work that brings healing to your triggers and moves through the ugly stuff.
The society that we live in creates a sense of “oh it’s fine, move on” which actually causes the shadow to show itself because your mind, body, and spirit can only handle holding it all together for so long before you feel like you might snap under the pressure of “keeping it all together”.
Shadow work gets stirred up when you notice you may have gotten triggered by an interaction with a person. In those moments of reaction based on perceived slights. Maybe you start having dreams about an issue in your waking life or you keep seeing a similar situation play out on repeat. Something within that experience is ready to be acknowledged and worked through. There's some truth in it and it's up to you to see it clearly or not.
You can always choose to avoid it but understand that at some point that lesson will get trickier to process and heal until you decide to turn around and look at it face on and look at what you ignored.
There has been a lot of this going on, the energies are supportive of it, but that doesn't mean that each of us will want to be mindful and work through it.
Keep in mind that whatever resurfaces from within you, you have the tools to allow it to heal. Work through what you are able to handle at the moment and take it day by day.
Shadow sometimes is not understanding how to process emotions in a healthy way. To be honest, we as humans haven't been processing emotions in the best way for a while. Think about the generations in your family and what challenges they had as people. Did they move through their challenges or did they ignore them?
This is an example of how tough it can be to face things and why shadow work is sometimes perceived as intimidating. It's helpful to have a support system of family and friends as you work through things. Remember to give yourself grace.
It’s difficult to work on emotional moments without understanding the psychology and philosophy behind it. Working with a professional to move through the big stuff might be helpful for some people.
Lastly, It’s one thing if you don't know why you react one way, feel one way, do something that interrupts your peace, but once you do, that's when you can make a change.
Here are some tools that you can try to help support your shadow work.
Journaling ~ taking a pen to paper and writing what comes out might surprise you in a good way and help you process what feels stuck, don't overthink it, just write!
Mindfulness ~ being aware of your thoughts and what is really going on in your heart. Practice stopping and thinking before reacting. Ask yourself why you are getting triggered by xyz.
Find a good Therapist ~ great people to help you are the ones who train and have the education to help you.
Reiki and body work support ~ your body stores these emotions you're working through and when you have a breakthrough or the things you're holding feel heavier than normal, body work can support your body and energy in rebalancing so you can continue on.
Myofascial release session ~ we hold trauma and stored emotions and energy in our fascia, receiving fascia work can help remove them from your body no matter how old they are.
Shadow work is something everybody does as they evolve and self heal. It's part of becoming stronger and better versions of ourselves. It's amazing the things that you can experience when you can show love to your shadow so good luck and preserve!