What is shadow work and how to do it

Shadow work is healing your inner child.

When we are young, our hearts are vulnerable, open and full of love. Little by little as we grow older we get the message that there is no place for such a thing in this world.

A kid pick’s a flower for his mother, and gets punished for picking the flower.

A kid wants to console his crying sister who is in “time out” but we tell him no.

We get made fun of if we cry or show sensitivity at all.

Parents take out their frustrations and anger on us.

We are told that our dreams are fiction and day dreaming is dangerous to the success of your future.

You get the picture.

After some time, our hearts have been too hurt, they close, and they suffocate. We stop seeing through our heart and we begin to see only through our minds. Ego is born!

Shadow works with this kind of trauma, reteaching your inner child (which is just you, or an aspect of you) how to trust, open, and heal the heart. If you have ever had children you may know that a hurt child can be quite out of control. It is no different with your inner child. S/he’s a real rascal, and will sabotage anything and everything in your life in order to get your attention so you may heal it.

The first step in shadow work is to accept that you have one and that it is there. Imagine a hurt child, whining and crying. The whining and crying bother the parent so the child is scolded and told that it is not behaving well. Or the child is tucked away in the back corner not allowed to come out because it “can’t be trusted”. This does not solve the problem, but makes it worse. Is the child any closer to healing now? No way!

We are ashamed of our shadows. Our shadows make us feel like are bad people because we want to do terrible and shameful things. But those things are only symptoms of the hurt.

Accept the darkness inside you, because the darkness itself is repressed light! Once you accept it, your heart can finally heal and you may find that loving flows naturally out of your renewed heart, just like when you were a kid, offering a flower to your beautiful mother!