Ep 35: Sacred Shadow Work for the Feminine

As we dive into Sacred Shadow Work for the Feminine today, here’s my invitation to you, specific to this topic:

Be curious but not condemning.

Lovingly notice and then consciously choose.

So be curious about what’s in your shadow, but don’t condemn yourself because you’ve put a part of yourself in the shadow.

Condemning yourself is pointless. Just lovingly notice and then, from that place, consciously choose what’s next. So let this be an exploration and adventure.

…And let that adventure begin now.

Here’s why.

Through all my years of working with my clients, through my own personal experience, my own journey into my own shadow land, my own facilitation of my clients doing the same, and my work with some pretty amazing teachers from around the world, here’s what I know about shadow work.

Within every fear, within every repressed feeling, every denial, every projection, every self-sabotage that you play out, there is a secret treasure just waiting for you to discover. And that secret treasure, as far as I feel it and know it, is what I call a Shakti, longing to be activated and embodied.

Shakti is the personification of the embodiment of divine feminine energy. There are many different definitions but let’s call her that. Beneath every feeling, there is a Shakti. Beneath every part of you, there is a Shakti, energy, derived from the source of all, that mysterious substance that lives and breathes us.

That Shakti is a super-power, so everything in your shadow contains a super-power that’s not yet activated. It’s longing to be activated and embodied so that you may truly live the “holy-ness” that you are innately, so you can live that in the world.

So my invitation is let your sacred shadow work begin today by shining the heart light of your conscious love onto these shadowy recesses of your personified self and step fully onto this path of genuine embodied liberation and empowerment. That is how I see sacred shadow work. That’s why I believe that when we approach shadow work in the way that I’m going to teach you today, it is sacred because you are “wHoly” – whole and complete and Holy.

So when we explore today, be on the lookout for the Shakti beneath anything that you realise is in your shadow. Maybe it’s a destructive pattern or a self-denial or a suppressed feeling – anything you relegate to the shadow, a judgement of self or others. Just know that beneath it there is a Shakti, there is a super-power and you’re the only one who can shine that heart light of your consciousness to reveal that Shakti, to embody that Shakti, that super-power so you can then gift it to the world.

One of my teachers, David Deida, always says that beneath your greatest fear is your greatest gift. And what if that were true for you? What if beneath what you’ve relegated to the shadow was a true super-power?

So here’s what I find exciting about shadow work, and here’s why it’s so important that we dive into it like we are today and like I did in the  Mentor Group three part training recently. It’s because first of all, if you’re even listening to this, you’re on the precipice of real and authentic emPowerment, capital P. If you don’t explore what’s in your shadow you’ll be operated by it. That’s the truth.

One of the ways that I describe what’s in the shadow and how it runs you is this…

You know those big, old boats – the ones where you have the rowers down below? It’s very dark and dingy down there, and the captain of the ship is at the helm and there’s total light. So she can see everything on the horizon, can see everyone who’s above deck. But down below in those old days it was pretty dark and dingy.

So in this example, maybe you said, “I want to go to Tahiti,” a.k.a. “I want to drink more water every day,” “I want to liberate my sexuality,” “I want to embody my power with this person, with that family member,” whatever it is. But in this example the captain of the ship wants to go to Tahiti.

Now here’s the thing: in those big old ships the rudder and the power is down below. So if those rowers down below are afraid of bad weather do you think the captain of the ship is going to get to Tahiti? They’re deathly afraid!

There’s no way they’re going to power that boat to get to Tahiti. If they can divert it to go somewhere else, what happens is conflict? And what happens is there’s this conflict going on within us all the time until we are consciously aware of what is driving those rowers down below to not want to go to Tahiti, to not want to speak your truth.

So, we’re shining the heart light of your consciousness onto what’s in the shadow so that you don’t leave your power unclaimed. So you don’t repeat old patterns, so you don’t destroy or sabotage what your heart most deeply desires, whether it be in relationship, out of relationship and connection with others.

The other reason shadow work is so important is this… Let’s talk more about judgment. For now just know that whatever you judge in others because you have not acknowledged it within yourself, it’s in the shadow land of your psyche. If you judge something as negative in another person, for example, you become separate from that person. You cause a separation.

And that’s incredibly painful for the deepest part of you, because the deepest part of you wants to feel and know and trust the innate interconnection between you and everyone, you and everything. So this is where this conflict arises. You feel separate and there’s a conflict about that as well as a conflict with the other.

So shadow work is truly a powerful path to your own evolution. It helps you to reveal what’s true for you and it also helps you to reveal Truth, capital T, whilst letting go of illusion and patterning. It’s also a beautiful path for maturation, emotionally and spiritually.

Because when you do this sacred shadow work you begin to take strong responsibility. You no longer hold back. You’re fully expressed. You contact your own truth, your own illusions and you consciously choose what you’re going to live, what you’re going to embody.

So you free yourself.

As you know, a lot of the work that I do with women is around intimacy and relationship and whilst we don’t have the time to go as deep into sexuality in shadow work as we did in the shadow work training in the Mentor Group recently, we will touch on a little bit today. Just know that exploring what’s in your shadow sexually helps you to awaken desires that have been there but you haven’t had the courage to acknowledge. It helps to free you from fears, to consciously choose and not live by the taboos of cultural society. It helps you to open as a full embodiment of the innately sexually free woman that you are, but perhaps had suppressed.

So in relationship it’s important to know that anything that you play out dysfunctionally is happening because those rowers down below are in charge instead of your conscious intention. So it can result in unhealthy intimate and sexual relationships. You can attract dysfunction. You can repeat old patterns.

Let’s share a little bit about how you can tell when something in your shadow is, shall we say, “coming up”. So one of the ways is when you have an intense reactive feeling. So let’s say someone said they don’t like your dress. It’s trivial to some. To others, maybe not. If you have a desperate fear of disapproval, you’ll react rather than respond. You’ll feel triggered by it. Maybe you’ll lash out. Maybe you’ll shrink back, depending on what your habitual pattern response is.

So you can tell that your shadow’s running the show in any given moment because you have an overreaction to something. You don’t receive it as information that you consume and digest or an opinion of another. Instead, the reaction you have overwhelms you.

Whereas when you are in a moment when you totally love who you are and you’re totally okay whether someone likes your dress or not, you’ll take it on board as information, as their opinion. And there’s that feeling in your body of, yeah, I get you don’t like this dress but you know what? I’m good. I like me. I like me in this dress. And you don’t make it mean anything negative about yourself. So feelings can be in the shadow, belief, behaviors, and characteristic traits.

But here’s what I want to say, and I hope you’ll remember this. Let’s say you have feelings that you’ve relegated into the shadow, for example, anger. We’ll talk more about how to work with these.

Let’s say anger is something that you relegated to the shadow. You don’t like giving it, you don’t like receiving it. If you don’t know how to feel it and own it, it will own you.

So maybe your anger, because it’s pushed down and suppressed, will come up dysfunctionally. Perhaps you shrink back and not speaking up at all. Perhaps your anger comes up as volcanic rage. Maybe it comes up as bitchy, whiny, naggy but it will come up dysfunctionally. It can’t move through you in a healthy, conscious way if it’s in the shadow.

The other way to know when you’re in the shadow lands or when the shadow is running the show is when you have a very strong negative judgement, when you’re making others wrong. There’s a difference between being wrong or right and just expressing your knowing. This is what I know. But you’re not attached to everyone agreeing with you and you don’t feel pressured by having to agree with anyone else.

So, if you can feel it, you can own it. And when you own it, it no longer owns you.

The other way to know when you’re in the shadow lands or when the shadow is running the show is when you have a very strong negative judgement. When you’re making others wrong. There’s a difference between being wrong or right and just expressing your knowing. This is what I know, in my body, my heart or my Soul. But when it’s you’re knowing, you’re not attached to everyone agreeing with you and you don’t feel pressured by having to agree with anyone else.

So this piece around wrong and right versus knowing is really important. When you’re making other people wrong, then you know there’s something in your shadow. I mean, look at all of the politicians, for example, the politicians who have ranted and raved about prostitution and how it’s immoral, and then you see a scandal about that very same man being caught with a prostitute.

Why is that? It’s someone acting from their shadow, over-the-top judgement, over-the-top reaction because they just can’t own something about that within themselves.

Whereas if you’re at peace with the fact that you feel, for example, anger, there’s no need to make others wrong for being angry. There’s no need to project your anger upon someone else.

You won’t make anyone else wrong, you won’t make yourself wrong. You just accept there is a feeling of anger here and then you consciously work with that anger so that you can liberate the Shakti, the super-power, within that anger.

What is that super power for you?

Is it passion?

Is it a ‘no’?

Is it a very clear boundary?

Is it fierce love in action?

What is the super-power within that anger holds for you? For everyone it will be different. So this is your work.

Maybe there’s a holding back. When you find yourself, when you lovingly know that it’s yourself holding back, just know that there’s something in the shadow running the show, because if you’re holding back a part of you unconsciously, it is like an anchor and it drags other parts of you down with it.

So what if, because you’re afraid to reveal all of who you are, what if you’re actually denying the world your very best bits, the very best parts of you, because you’re afraid to reveal all of you who you are?

How will you even know all of who you are if you’re not willing to shine this love-light-heart-consciousness onto what you’ve put in the shadow and begin to bring it out and embody Her?

How will you even know all of who you are if you’re not willing to shine this love light, heart, consciousness onto what you’ve put in the shadow and begin to bring it out and embody her?

So holding back something because you’re either completely unaware of it, it’s that deep in the shadow, or you’re afraid of it or you judge it as negative or for whatever reason, holding something back and putting it in the shadow means you rob yourself of embodying its Shakti, its super-power.

And you rob the rest of the world. This could be your greatest gift.

So what gets relegated to the shadow – thoughts, feelings, beliefs, judgements, values, energies, characteristic traits – in all realms of your life, sexually, spiritually, professionally, parentally, as a friend, as a mother, as a daughter.

Your work is to become so lovingly aware of what’s in your shadow that you can actually begin this process, to liberate the Shakti, to liberate the super-power within it, to liberate the wisdom, to integrate it into your everyday life, your everyday living, so you can embody this wholeness, this “wHolyness” that you are, more and more and more every day.

You have to remember that fear is the powerful rower down there in that ship that we’ve been talking about. That fear, any fear, is a very, very, very strong rower, is a very strong force. One of the biggest fears for the feminine heart is the loss of love; because you just know in that moment remembering that you are Love, with a capital L.

So you act from fear because you fear losing love. Maybe it’s in the form of sex. Maybe it’s in the form of approval. Maybe it’s in the form of something else, but one of the biggest fears for the feminine hear is loss of love. For the masculine heart, the masculine part of you is the loss of freedom.

And as a human being I would say that probably one of the biggest fears aside from death and the loss of love is humiliation.

Think about what the fear of humiliation causes us to do and not do, to hold back and not hold back, to relegate parts of us into the shadow because we fear humiliation. It’s pretty powerful stuff.

So I want to take you through a process that I shared with the women in my Mentor Group that I feel as the beginning foundational steps to this sacred shadow work. Because where do you start, right? 

There are many different ways but if you do this, wow, you’re on a very potent path for revealing and embodying and living all of who you are.

So the first step is…

Ground yourself in your innate worthiness. Remind yourself that you are Love. There’s nothing missing. You are Love. Therefore, innate worthiness exists because it’s not even a question, your worthiness. It’s just not.

Ground yourself in that. In the power that resides within you, the love that resides within you and the knowing, the remembering that you are whole.

It’s just that you are yet to see it. It’s like there’s this cave down below and you haven’t yet shone this heart light of your loving consciousness onto everything that’s in the cave. It’s there. You just can’t see it.

So you are whole. You are Love. So, start with the knowing of that, the grounding yourself into that. Not grinding yourself into it! Grounding, like as in landing and being present to that knowing, embodying it, trusting it, allowing it, remembering it, recognising it, “re-cog-nising” that you are that. That’s the first step.

The second step is…

Begin to notice, lovingly notice what triggers you. Like I was saying before, this is an indicator that you’re operating from your shadow.

So what triggers you?

What drives you frikkin’ crazy and you find yourself reacting way over the top? Is it that people are inconsiderate arseholes? Some people – the whole idea of people being so inconsiderate when you are so considerate?

What is it that you overreact to?

What is it that you’re overly attached to?

People, places, opinions, beliefs?

What do you repeat over and over again, even though you don’t consciously want to?

So these are like doorways to lovingly walk through and begin to notice.

Like I was saying, this piece around wrong and right versus your knowing is really important because you lose connection with the other.

As soon as you see a woman walking down the street and you say, “Well, she looks pretty slutty,” because you have not yet embodied and embraced and fallen totally in love with the slutty part of you, as soon as you project a negative judgement on her you’re denying the Shakti that would exist within. You’ve not allowed the embodiment of that sexual freedom that exists within that you might term as slutty.

Or maybe it’s being rude, or maybe it’s overbearing, or maybe it’s selfish. But as soon as you see a woman walk past you and you judge her as negative, let that be your “ding” – wake up call.

That’s your moment you go“Oh, wow! Clearly I have not yet embraced and embodied that part of myself.” That is gold, that recognition, because now your work begins to explore where you are that, why you’re ashamed of it, why you don’t like it, what beliefs you have about it and you begin to do the exploration work to start to excavate the gold.

When you don’t do that, you separate yourself from that woman, from the other, from your partner, from your parent, from your child, from your work colleague and you forget that you are this divine being, this embodied feminine goddess who is truly interconnected with everything. You forget that for a moment.

Don’t let it drive you away from your remembering of this “wHoliness”, this wholeness you are. Really. Use it as a light bulb moment to go, “Okay, there’s gold here for me to uncover.”

Maybe you overvalue something and you get really attached to it. Maybe you undervalue something. You avoid, feel ashamed of, you don’t like it in others. Just lovingly notice. And if there’s pain involved in it, let that pain be a doorway. Just lovingly shine the light of your conscious awareness on those places.

When you’re doing this shadow work, the reason I keep saying be loving in it is because if there’s a part of you hiding down in the basement of the shadowy recesses, it’s almost like a distraught child.

You don’t charge at her like a bull at a gate, do you? You’re loving. You help her to see the light of what’s actually going on. You support her and you just tenderly, lovingly approach her and work with her.

So, ground yourself in your innate worthiness, number one. Number two; begin to notice what triggers you so you know what a piece of your shadow is.

The third step is….

To use the light of your awareness to become intimate with it, to see it. Shine the loving heart of your conscious awareness of it and become intimate by seeing it fully.

Maybe you have to step back a little bit so you can see it in focus, and then gently step forward. But become intimate with it. Then you might get swept away by it. Remember what I said before – if you can feel it, you can own it. If you can own it, it won’t own you.

So use the light of your loving awareness to become intimate with what’s in your shadow. As soon as you shine the light you’re no longer blissfully ignorant and that’s a really good thing. It’s not like there’s something to fix – it’s something that contains a Shakti, a super-power. Why would you not want to liberate that and embody that?

The fourth step is…

The embodied practice. And I’m really going to say practice, practice, practice. This is how I work with practice – when there’s something new that I want to embody, I create a daily ritual to remind me to embody it. And then I also create practices for in-the-moment.

So when whatever’s in the shadow comes up in the moment, my volcanic anger or my shrinking back and hiding from the world (that has happened), what I do is I have an in-the-moment practice so I can catch myself as quick as I can and do that practice to lovingly shine the light of my consciousness onto what’s in the shadow and bring myself back into conscious choice.

And I have to say, one of the ways that I do this with my partner and with myself is just to simply say it out loud. So if I’m having a conversation with my partner and I can feel something in the shadow is taking over so I’m getting really reactive, I’ll literally say out loud, “Wow, I notice I’m feeling really reactive right now.”

And the very virtue of saying it is incredibly liberating. If you can say that to yourself that’s fantastic, too. If you can say it to your partner, it’s beautiful because then you can use loving awareness to work with it together. But if you keep it locked down in the basement you can’t work with it. So acknowledging it out loud really helps as well.

And also know the signs. What’s the lead-up? There’s always a lead-up. You can’t tell me there’s not a lead-up. There is always a lead-up.

So this really is the secret to shadow work that takes it from a cognitive process into an embodied reality, is embodied practice as well as in-the-moment practice.

The fifth step is…

Notice what happens when you’re stressed or really exhausted, because when you are really stressed or exhausted your nervous system is way more frayed, and you know what it’s like – when you’re tired you snap more easily. You need to be nourished.

So just acknowledge, ‘Okay, clearly I must be undernourished right now’.

Let that be your primary responsibility, and that’s step six.

Step six is…

Let being deeply nourished be your primary responsibility. No-one else can do that for you. Only you can do that for yourself, truly.

So anytime you find yourself saying, “I don’t have time for me,” then wake up and actually acknowledge that you’re not claiming time for you, because it’s your responsibility. This is a big one.

I have to do it for myself every day. I have to remind myself. I’m a partner, I’m a mother, I run a business, I have clients, I have a life like you, like everyone and I know from personal experience and from my clients. Every time I’m working with a client and she wants to do real deep transformational work, the first port of call is deep self-nourishment, because then your nervous system is really flexible.

You’re far more likely to make change when your nervous system is flexible.

You’re also far less likely to revert to those old habits and not consciously shine that light of loving consciousness onto whatever’s coming up. You’re more likely to be swept away by it. You snap. You’re just pulled out by the roots and taken out by the storm.

Step seven is…

Love yourself in this. And I really mean that again and again and again. Love yourself in this. You’ve got to be so compassionate with yourself.

The more you love yourself in this work rather than making yourself wrong (remember I said be curious rather than condemning), the more powerful and transformative your shadow work will be.

Love yourself in this. This is powerful work..