3 Important Shadow Work Mistakes you want to avoid…

There are a few mistakes that those of us who practice Shadow Work may or may not slip into and there’s no true failure making these mistakes. Doing inner work comes with a lot of challenges and blind spots. We fail, we learn and we move on from a higher point of awareness. This is a good thing. But we can also learn faster by learning from others and so here are three important Shadow Work mistakes that you want to avoid…

Shadow Work isn’t only done one way but instead there are different ways to do SW.

Why do we think Shadow Work is the best tool for our healing? Since in Shadow Work we work with the root cause so we can experience true and lasting healing. Shadow Work and Somatic Work are basically the same thing and with this work we are able to pull out the roots from the issues that we experience (for good). In Somatic Work the emphasis is more on the survival energies and bodily sensations. And in Shadow Work we do the same thing, but we also work on the ‘why’ behind what we are feeling coming from the subconscious mind. Either way it’s pretty much the same process. It’s the process of noticing the trigger/activation and learning how to deactivate/integrate the trigger. That’s why allowing yourself to feel it in order to heal it is such an important part of SW. And this is one way to do shadow work.

But there isn’t just one way to do Shadow Work there are in fact multiple things that we can consider Shadow Work. In SW we become aware of something that we don’t see. It’s literally a blind spot. And so, anything that you do that makes you become aware of something that you didn’t know or see before is a form of SW. Whether that is inner child work, inner parenting, doing a hypnosis session, beliefs work, just living your life and realizing something major, it’s all a form of shadow work and it’s all a helpful practice for your life. Knowing this there isn’t just one way to do Shadow Work, but deactivating the triggers by feeling the somatic experience is truly what we want in order to release the baggage that we have been carrying. So, Shadow Work is an amazing and effective tool, but it’s not just done one way.

Only doing Shadow Work isn’t going to heal everything and be the solutions to our problems and challenges in life.

In Shadow Work and Somatic Work, again we work with the root cause of our triggers. And we want to work with the roots because then we can pull out all of our pain and struggles so that it truly is ‘healed’ or ‘integrated’. No other tool will do this for you then this work!

But…

SW is not the only thing that will help you in your healing journey. There are multiple techniques and methods that aid in your healing. Yoga, art, dance, tai chi, Qigong, massage, acupuncture, osteopathy, craniosacral therapy, connection etc. will all help us and help the body to release the stored survival stress. It’s about using the tools that you need at that specific moment in time.

And this is the tricky part…when do you use which tool? What do you need at what specific moment? And how do we know?

We know this when we are attuned to our body and our internal guidance system. And we can attune to this by tuning into our own feelings. And this is when we go back to doing somatic shadow work (I made this term up) and learn to listen to what our bodies are telling us. It becomes a dance between feeling what we need and then meeting that need directly. We can never avoid our feelings, if we avoid our feelings we are avoiding life and it will only loop back around until we resolve it. SW is one of the best tools, but we will have the most success in our healing when we use a combination of all the tools that are available to us.

Shadow Work isn’t a lifestyle but only a tool to use when needed and not to live by.

Truly we can do Shadow Work whenever we want to, there is no limit. It can become highly beneficial when we commit to this practice often. But we want to put SW into practice when we need to. When we are demonstrating negative behaviors and when we are making poor choices that are detrimental for our lives, then we need to stop avoiding ourselves and stop being in denial of our lives. In this case we want to do SW and dive into the subconscious mind until we find the root cause of these detrimental behaviors. Nobody purposefully chooses to suffer there is always something valid that is motivating the behavior that we want to become aware of.

But SW is not supposed to become a way of living. It’s not the only thing that we should commit to for potential success in the future. In other words, we want to dive in when something comes up and then live our lives again like we normally would, so it doesn’t become a lifestyle (continually trying to fix yourself). And at the same time, we need to be highly aware when we are in avoidance and denial and when we actually do need to do SW! And at the beginning of this practice you most likely do need to put in more work. Just be aware that it’s not the only thing in life. It’s not the only way out of our pain.

What Shadow Work can offer you is more and more awareness. And living our lives from a state of awareness is what we DO want. You can get very far in life with awareness, the more awareness the better. And Shadow Work happens to be one of the best tools to create self-awareness.

Until next time.

With Love, Naomi

P.s. if you like to know more about Shadow Work you may also want to read my blog ‘Shadow Work 101 for Beginners’, ‘You can run from your shadows but you can’t hide’ and ‘When is it NOT the time to do Shadow Work?’

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