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Transcript:

Isha Vela 0:01

Welcome to Devotional Anarchy, a podcast about intimacy, attachment, sexuality, spirituality, self expression and other relational themes from a trauma responsive somatic energetic lens, and with a queer polyamorous twist, of course. I’m Isha Vela trauma psychologist somatic intimacy Alchemist shadow doula love at our guest, intuitive channel and sovereignty coach. You’re here because you understand that integrating intimacy wounds build safety and trust within your body. And that safety and trust is what allows you to fully own and direct your erotic and creative lifeforce, in your relationships in purposeful work. My intention is for the conversations and tools shared in this podcast, to light a fire in your heart and under your magical ass while supporting you on your kinky human journey to owning all of yourself.

Unknown Speaker 0:53

Hi there. I feel like I want to start this podcast episode with a big breath with just like just taking a big breath. And just

Unknown Speaker 1:07

because I want to acknowledge that we’ve been in a shadow portal for what seems to be so far this entire year, at least for me. And I wanted to drop this episode on the full moon eclipse during Scorpio season. I just felt like it was the thing to do.

Unknown Speaker 1:26

And I’ve mentioned in another podcast episode that I’ve been doing a lot of shadow work this year in my personal life and in my business. And it’s just felt like just in the last few days, it’s felt like I’m coming out of it. According to my astrology, I’m not done. But I have a few days to breathe. So I’m dropping this episode.

Unknown Speaker 1:48

Because I just feel like I have enough space to step back and have perspective on what’s happening. So yeah, and sometimes we need we need that distance to be able to talk about things and that’s why like, you know, integrity is something that I talked about a lot digestion embodiment. Right, that is what integrity is, is integrating what’s happening. So

Unknown Speaker 2:16

there are so many ways that I could talk about the unconscious, your shadow. And I think that what makes the most sense to me is to come back to it many times and in different ways. Because it’s so complex, it’s so layered. And I’d rather take small bites of it over time, instead of piling it up in one episode, right? So the way I’m going to talk about shadow or unconscious today is about unchaining and untamed ing it specifically related to your authentic expression in your relationships and your business. Because, you know, what makes you fucking magnetic is your shadow right? Like, it’s, it’s really, it’s yummy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be fans of Taylor Swift, you know, we all love a good villain. And fully claimed your shadow is essential to congruence, in your relationships and in your in, in your authentic expression in your business, right? Because

Unknown Speaker 3:21

it reflects the full spectrum humanity of who you are, right, we all have shadow. And our, our shadow is part of our wholeness. And when you when you transmit when you express when you share your wholeness, when you share some of the unsavory parts of who you are. It builds trust, because it’s just truthful, right? It just reflects everyone’s reality. Everybody’s like, whoa, okay, you too. And it’s, you know, again, like just, it’s congruent it like

Unknown Speaker 3:57

who you say you are, matches who you be. Right, it’s just kind of like it. The front end matches the back end right front facing matches what’s happening in the back. So I’ll talk a little bit more about this later. But

Unknown Speaker 4:15

so my perspective is always is

Unknown Speaker 4:19

relationships and business as a sacred relationship, not only the relationship you have with your business as a sacred relationship, but also the relationships that you nurture within your business with your audience, right with your clients, with colleagues. And all of that, for me is centered around attachment and intimacy. So whether you’re an entrepreneur or a lover, this is going to be helpful to you. So I’m going to start by talking about what shadow is. I’ll share about how I came into my own shadow work, which will be a good lead into talking about how it’s formed. And then get into the authentic expression and

Unknown Speaker 5:00

and magnetism piece and then at the end, I’ll speak a little bit to how to move through it, how to do shadow work. First of all, I prefer the term unconscious self, because it’s a lot less loaded and scary than shadow, right, we associate shadow with darkness and fear and like the unknown. And so it can, it can create some, some negative connotations. And also like, you know, darkness can be, you know, related to anti blackness. And so I’m aware of that. And

Unknown Speaker 5:35

I use the term shadow just because it’s what most people are familiar with, and what most people are used to. And people know what I’m referring to when I say shadow. So the shadow is the disowned and repressed parts of our larger self. So if you were a pie, imagine yourself as a pie. Think of the shadow as slices or slivers of the pie that you’ve cut out.

Unknown Speaker 6:10

That you’ve cut out and you’ve just put somewhere else you’ve put somewhere else, you don’t know where they are, you can’t see them. They definitely exist somewhere. But

Unknown Speaker 6:20

it’s like, you can’t see the pie. And you can’t see that these pieces are missing. It’s more of a a sense that you sense there’s some pieces missing, you can’t see which they are. And, yeah, it’s just there’s that

Unknown Speaker 6:38

there’s some split, right, there’s some, like, there’s discomfort around that. And

Unknown Speaker 6:45

we tend to project the pieces that are missing, because we’ve put them away somewhere, we tend to project those out on to other people, and I’ll get that get to that in a second as well. So the unconscious part of us, right, this shadow part of us is, is a very strong co creator, and much stronger co creator than we give it credit for in fact about, I don’t know, there’s evidence to show that like 90% of our lives is run by unconscious or subconscious parts of us. So for example, you know, people say they want things right, you, you say you want something

Unknown Speaker 7:24

you say you want, I don’t know, I want to like be,

Unknown Speaker 7:29

you know, an entrepreneur making 2,000k a year or more, or I want

Unknown Speaker 7:37

a sacred partnership with such and such a person. Right? So you say you want something,

Unknown Speaker 7:44

but there’s a part of you that you’re not aware of that is moving in the actual opposite fucking direction of the thing that you want. Right? He’s like, actually, I don’t want to 100k a year, because that would mean that I would need to sacrifice such and such right, like, the part of you that is frightened of the thing. Or, actually, I don’t want to be in a sacred partnership, because I don’t want to be seen, or I don’t want to have anybody that close to me, or I don’t want to give up my freedom, right? So there’s pieces of shadow that are like that.

Unknown Speaker 8:19

And,

Unknown Speaker 8:20

you know, and then we get frustrated when we don’t get what we want. And that makes sense, right? So you want to become aware of the part of you that desires to not get the thing that you want, so that you can bring it on board and into alignment, right. And that’s part of coherence is like having having all the arrows pointing in the same direction. So the more intimate we become with our shadow, self or unconscious, the more of it

Unknown Speaker 8:50

the more of it can come into consciousness, the better our lives and relationships will be because of the congruence. Because we are creating from the awareness of these parts of ourselves, right? Like, whenever I do something, I’m aware of the part that like, lately I’ve been very aware of, you know, working through some relationship stuff I’ve been become very aware of the part of me that wants to push people away.

Unknown Speaker 9:18

And I’ve just been holding space for that part and watching that part and monitoring it as I move through these different dynamics with people or even in my messaging online.

Unknown Speaker 9:30

So I like to work from the assumption that you are whole because you are and doesn’t matter what you’ve experienced in your life, what you’ve been through the assumption is that you’re whole, and that there may be parts of you that you can claim, right so that they’re not stored somewhere else that they can be brought into your relationships and into your business in ways that feel good. Right? But because we live in a binary world of good and evil

Unknown Speaker 10:00

We go through great lengths to avoid the unconscious or the shadow in our healing work because we’ve learned to be afraid of it. Like our whole culture is designed around not confronting it, we’re afraid, we’re bad because of it, we’re afraid we’ll lose credibility or respect, if we show these parts of ourselves to our loved ones, our audience, and we prefer to stay in our mask of goodness of spiritual cleanliness, or in our mask of competence, or powerfulness, right, this false self, or we like to be in an idealized self image, right, like this spiritual gaslighting that was talking about in one of the previous episodes of the podcast where we’re like, we only show up in the place where we’re holy, and we’re healed. And we just got it all together. Right, and that really gaslights people because you’re presenting a false

Unknown Speaker 11:03

a false version of humanity.

Unknown Speaker 11:07

So, in the unconscious self is like, the shadow self is usually a very delicate, protected place, like

Unknown Speaker 11:18

you have to be willing to feel the pain and discomfort.

Unknown Speaker 11:24

And, you know, even though shadow work can be painful, I approach it from a place of pleasure, it can actually be really pleasurable, and I’ll share my personal story about this particular piece. So I came into my four year certification in energy Cymatics, after my PhD and trauma psychology, having after having my two children and having a full body breakdown, I was not able to

Unknown Speaker 11:56

really properly digest food, I wasn’t absorbing nutrients.

Unknown Speaker 12:01

I was at my lowest weight ever, I, you know, had no menstrual cycle like I was just a hot hot mess, I was like, as near death as you could be, and still very much functioning.

Unknown Speaker 12:17

It was just it was stress related, it was like burnout related.

Unknown Speaker 12:22

And in that, in that four year program, I began to recognize all the trauma, both more personal than the collective, the collective came later. But the trauma I was holding in my body that I didn’t know was there. But that was unconsciously guiding all of the decisions I was making in my life from, you know, from the relationships, I was choosing right friendships, marriage work, like how I was designing my business, I mean, everything. And it wasn’t until I arrived in my class on what what in my program was called the lower self.

Unknown Speaker 12:59

It’s sort of a hierarchical thing, but I don’t really like that term.

Unknown Speaker 13:04

Until I arrived in my class, in year two, that I realized how much energy was in this place, like how much repressed energy was in the space, and part of my motivation for coming into the program was like,

Unknown Speaker 13:22

you know, getting back in touch with my sexual energy.

Unknown Speaker 13:26

And lo and behold, I did, there was like, it was all in my shadow, like, all of my sexual energy was in my shadow.

Unknown Speaker 13:35

And I had like, even though I had been, you know, studied psychology, I had no idea what my shadow was, like, I only had a vague sense of what it was like, theoretically from, like, studying Jung. But beyond that, we never touched it, it was incredible. And because I had such a strong, idealized self image, right, I thought I needed to be good because I had so much shame around my badness. Like, I really believed that there was a part of me that was bad. I really, really believed it. And it was I really struggled with that part. So I was constantly trying to be good, be good, be good, be good, do good things, and be this person and do that. And that was like my idealized self image. It was like this.

Unknown Speaker 14:20

Like a firewall,

Unknown Speaker 14:23

protecting me being able to like access my shadow. So it was really, really hidden. And, you know, this wasn’t something I was gonna get to with journaling, the deeper aspects of shadow and I’ll speak a little bit like,

Unknown Speaker 14:40

I’ll speak to that in a second like around like, the layers of it and and like that it exists on a spectrum. I find that the deeper aspects of shadow need coaxing, right, because like, they’re so deep in the unconscious, like, you need to, like poke around in there, and I was never gonna get to it through journaling. I was probably gonna

Unknown Speaker 15:00

Like just touching the surface of it. This is why it drives me crazy that people do journaling practices for shadow work because the intimacy ones that are associated with the shadow are very, very deep. They’d like touch deep, deep. I mean, they’re like, you know, they’re nonverbal. They’re nonverbal. So like, how do you expect to get there with words? So,

Unknown Speaker 15:20

you know, you’ll.

Unknown Speaker 15:23

Anyway, when I started to do shadow work, I really started to connect to pleasure. And in our program, we were encouraged to feel how much pleasure we felt around the patterns that were unhelpful to us. Or that were creating pain in our relationships. And this was designed so that we could release shame around it. Like if we were able to feel the pleasure, we were able to feel sort of like the the affirmation of like, Yes, this is so alive. This is so like, rich and juicy, right?

Unknown Speaker 15:57

So when I started to get in touch with these parts, like it was obviously painful to me, but I always, not always, but I also felt

Unknown Speaker 16:07

the pleasure of round being a controlling badge, silently judging others and withholding my attention in love. Right. So that I was able to also see like how it wants served me, like the part of me that had been rejected or that felt rejected. It was really important for me to be able to push people away in order to protect myself from the pain of being ostracized or bullied or, like, just, yeah, just not not cared for in a particular way.

Unknown Speaker 16:45

So what’s inside of the shadow, okay, so, just a short list here. cruelty, fear, terror, misalignments, such as hypocrisy,

Unknown Speaker 17:01

or incongruence. destructiveness victimhood, shame, arrogance, separation, withholding, hoarding, pride, the desire to be special, better than attitude. And then it also includes like taboo desires, thoughts, intentions, and ideals, usually ones we don’t like, or that we have a difficult relationship with.

Unknown Speaker 17:31

And addictions have written that have roots in the shadow because they can also be like self destructive, like self destructive aspects of ourselves. And I say this all with absolutely zero judgment. I feel absolutely neutral, talking about the stuff like, I don’t feel the place in me that is,

Unknown Speaker 17:53

that is good or bad. It really is just about energy. We’re just talking about energy. This is all part of your lifeforce energy, your sexual energy, and I want you to listen to this episode with as much compassion for yourself and as little self judgment as possible, that actually helps alchemize it much more smoothly.

Unknown Speaker 18:15

And we all have shadow, I don’t care who the fuck you are, I don’t care if you’re the Dalai Lama, you have shadow, okay. And even children have like, you know, as innocent as they are, like, we are born with the potential to to have shadow so because, you know, we are there are parts of us that are not appreciated and seen. So I’m gonna get to that in a second. But especially if you are someone who is, you know, you’re on a spiritual path, or you’re weaving your spiritual path with your business, part of your life’s work, right, in your business, or in your relationships is integrating your shadow. And what does that mean? It means reclaiming those parts of yourself like, like, grabbing them from wherever they are, and being like, Oh, you’re mine. And usually these are the parts that you weren’t allowed to be.

Unknown Speaker 19:11

And those are precisely the parts that that make you so fucking magnetic to your people.

Unknown Speaker 19:18

They’re the parts of you that are bossy, that are loud, like the too much parts or your witchiness right, we have so much which wounding

Unknown Speaker 19:28

or the parts of you that are awkward and clumsy, right though cert can also be part of your shadow. Like I noticed that with my own kids.

Unknown Speaker 19:37

Like when they’re when they’re clumsy, I get really like I can I noticed myself like getting uncomfortable because I wasn’t like I had to function really well in my family. And so if I was awkward or clumsy, which I totally am.

Unknown Speaker 19:53

I got yelled at. So

Unknown Speaker 19:56

So those parts that we weren’t allowed to be at whether it you know, you weren’t allowed to be those in your

Unknown Speaker 20:00

Her family of origin or by, you know, by the standard standards of society, you know, these are things we typically dislike in other people. And that kind of gives you a clue, like I said, as to what’s part of your shadow.

Unknown Speaker 20:14

You know, I used to, I used to not like people who were attention seeking. Because I was, I was shamed for seeking attention, I was ridiculed for being dramatic, and I shut it down in myself. And I learned to be humble and quiet about my achievements. And

Unknown Speaker 20:33

yeah, like, I don’t like it and other people, and I didn’t like it and other people. But since claiming it since being like, Yes, I love attention, give me attention, look at me, and allowing myself to have that it’s just, it’s just freed me up to be more visible online, I enjoy it. Now. That part of me feels really satisfied and joyful. So, and if you’re a parent, like I was saying earlier, if you, you know, you’ll have a good sense of what your shadow is typically things that you don’t enjoy, about your kids.

Unknown Speaker 21:09

And, of course, you know, this is what so many couples struggle with. And their relationship is the projection of their shadow qualities onto their partner, like I used to choose going back to my example of like attention seeking and being ridiculed for being dramatic. I used to choose very intense and dramatic people as my partners and friends, because I wasn’t able, I wasn’t allowed to have that. But then I would get pissed when shit got chaotic.

Unknown Speaker 21:42

Because I was like, I was holding the space of being the organized one and the straight edge, right, like the, you know, the non chaotic. And I wasn’t aware of how I was choosing that I was absolutely not aware of it at all. And it was partly my desire to claim my drama, right to claim my attention seeker, my own internal chaotic bitch. So we all have parts of ourselves, which were unseen, unappreciated, or even actively disliked and punished.

Unknown Speaker 22:21

You know, and what I was saying earlier about the the range, you know, this is

Unknown Speaker 22:30

something that I really want to emphasize, because there are things in your shadow that are mild, that there are things in your shadow that you can journal through

Unknown Speaker 22:43

stuff that you can easily bring into your awareness that is kind of like it’s kind of it’s, it’s at the edge of your awareness, or it’s just out of your awareness. And you can sort of bring it in with the right questions. And like I said, there are other things that are deeper to excavate, that are nonverbal, that touch into deeper wounding. So it’s helpful to think of this as layers of an onion, the outside may be mild, not too edgy. But the further you spiral in, the more unconscious it tends to be, the more intense you will feel it in your body, the more intensely you will feel it in your body. And the harder it is to MMA, more challenging it is to excavate and transform just because of the discomfort that comes up. And, you know, for example, over this year, like

Unknown Speaker 23:36

the I have had days where, like the terror that I feel is really like it’s just felt like

Unknown Speaker 23:46

whole body just shaking vibration for an entire day. You know, so it’s like, I know that when that happens is that I’m like, I’m I’m at a deep level of tear inside of that damn onion. So yeah, that’s it’s been it’s been a ride. So how do we stop ourselves from facing our shadow? Right? We we project these disowned parts on to other people know it’s you with the problem, right?

Unknown Speaker 24:15

We get self righteous about it like I’m right, you’re wrong with we see this a lot in political debate. We make excuses for ourselves, we justify Well, the reason I’m doing this is because you didn’t adapt. We blame other people. We are in denial. We exonerate ourselves, we indulge ourselves well, it’s because I’ve had trauma or it’s because this and that we sort of the self indulgence, it’s a little bit of a collapse there. We is just repressed. You know, sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know. Right? Or we evade it. We don’t want to, you know, we sort of we know it’s there, but we don’t

Unknown Speaker 25:00

Want to touch it? It’s kind of like, yeah, no, thank you can we just move away from it.

Unknown Speaker 25:05

And a lot of what keeps the unconscious out of our awareness is shame. And I’ll explain why that is, I’ll just go into a little bit of the visibility piece, and I’ve talked about this before. But

Unknown Speaker 25:19

you know, we, we, it’s just helpful to hear it again, sometimes. So the shadow forms, through our interactions with family and societal systems, right are conditioning. And, again, approaching this from an intimacy and attachment perspective, you know, your, your caregivers, as much as they love you, they have limitations on their time, their patients, their own emotional capacity, and there were likely parts of your energy that weren’t fully welcome. And I know that, you know, maybe today’s generation, they’re just much more

Unknown Speaker 25:50

open, but I know that, you know, my generation, I’m, I’m in my 40s. And, you know, my parents are now in their early 70s, early to mid 70s, you know, there was a lot that wasn’t welcome. And that’s, that’s just what parenting was,

Unknown Speaker 26:10

you know, there may have not been room for your anger or your vengefulness, or they may not have been there may have, there may not have been room for

Unknown Speaker 26:21

parts of you that were really like lovely, you know, it just really all depends on your family systems, family system. And,

Unknown Speaker 26:31

you know, because our survival is much more important than our authenticity, we just really repress and compartmentalize these places that we’re not seeing it’s a it’s a decision, a very intuitive, survival based decision, and you put it in a drawer, you put those parts of yourself in a drawer marked unacceptable, and you close it. And it really is sort of like, that’s where the slicing of the pie happens, you’re like, oh, this part needs to go, we’re gonna slice it up, and we’re gonna put it somewhere else, we’re gonna put it in that drawer, and we’re gonna close it, and we’re gonna put it in, kind of put a lock on it. And we’re gonna put the drawer in the basement, right, and it gets just more varied over time. And this is a survival based manipulation of your energy that over times becomes habitual, and pattern and quote, unquote, normal. And even though it worked for your childhood, right, hurray for for raid to you for surviving really well. But it may be in the way of what’s getting

Unknown Speaker 27:27

in maybe what’s getting in the way of your relationships and your business now, right? Because we don’t grow up being seen and all of who we are, we become blind, we ourselves become blind, we forget that the drawer exists. In other words, we forget that we put it in the drawer, we forget that the drawer exists, we have no idea what tie is, right. And we we become disconnected and blind to some of the most juicy and creative parts of us, we have an internal blind spot. And we develop this fear and shame around those hidden parts, right? The shame, the shame says, These are bad, these are wrong.

Unknown Speaker 28:10

And shame is not something that we like, we feel it, that’s something that we avoid, really at all costs. So and there’s some times we have an awareness of real fear, like it’s most kind of like, I know, the fear is there, but I don’t feel it. But I know but there’s a place in you that knows that if you bring them out, you’ll get canceled, you get rejected, abandoned, people will be horrified. You’ll get ridiculed, right? And these turn into our visibility wounds. There’s they’re very vulnerable places. And we present ourselves in socially acceptable ways to get acceptance, right, and we took away the other parts, again, a manipulation of energy. And this is where the spiritual gaslighting piece comes in. And we’re we’re not really presenting the whole picture.

Unknown Speaker 28:59

We’re presenting a false image. And with regard to your content creation, you’re not coming across as coherent and whole, when you present only a quarter of the pie or a half of the pie to your audience and don’t ever address the other, you know, three fourths or half.

Unknown Speaker 29:18

And the people you speak to your audience, your people, they want to feel whole, they want to feel validated and affirmed and people are so hungry for truth and authenticity, right? We we know that we have that there are villains and us that there are monsters in us. And we want to see that other people have them too and that’s why we love people again, like Taylor Swift and other artists that that claim these parts and because it gives us permission to to have them for ourselves. Right. And that that

Unknown Speaker 29:57

does more to help your clients

Unknown Speaker 30:00

then to help them in the way you think they need to be helped, right, which is your particular four step model, right? Or whatever it is that you teach. It’s just showing up. It’s just letting yourself like be. So

Unknown Speaker 30:17

what’s required in your business now is to shift out of this manipulation and into coherence and wholeness, right, telling your story in a way that really lets people relate to you and to see themselves in it right to have an accurate mirror. And communicating your value without false humility, right, sharing why your process works, like being unabashed about like, yes, my shit is awesome, right? Because we learn to be like, oh, you can’t be too showy. Right? Be on shame. You can’t be shiny and showy. That’s something that a lot of us have, right? This is where some of the most beautiful parts of our personality get shamed. And like, oh, tone it down, right.

Unknown Speaker 31:01

And

Unknown Speaker 31:04

releasing perfection and embracing messiness is a really, really big part of this. Because, you know, this is sort of the, the defense pattern, the protection that we develop around our shadow parts is that we’re like, oh, we have to really like make sure that nobody sees this. And so we, we develop all of this perfection around it.

Unknown Speaker 31:26

And we also, like I said, have easy to love parts of ourselves and our shadow, the parts that are, you know, maybe the parts that are that come really easy to you like your intuition, your sensitivity, your love.

Unknown Speaker 31:40

Maybe it’s your dramatic flair. Well, we often turn into our too much NISS

Unknown Speaker 31:46

we just don’t appreciate these aspects of ourselves because they weren’t valued and celebrated. And maybe they it was like it maybe it wasn’t even a negative experience that you had, maybe it was just that it wasn’t seen. It just was like it wasn’t mentioned. And so that becomes part of the shadow as well.

Unknown Speaker 32:08

So

Unknown Speaker 32:11

yeah, I want to get into a little bit how to work through your shadow.

Unknown Speaker 32:16

So I want to just ask you a few questions. So if you have a pen and paper, that’s great. If you just want to like mull this over in your head, that’s awesome, too.

Unknown Speaker 32:26

So think about

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what people are your are in your environment, meaning, you know, your immediate relationships,

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what you dislike, or even hate about them.

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This includes celebrities.

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But also what fascinates you about them?

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Who are people on social media that you dislike or judge? Or what aspects about them? Do you dislike or judge

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who are the people that you idolize, or that you’ve put on a pedestal and why?

Unknown Speaker 33:23

Also, whenever we unconsciously repeat a behavior, it’s a clue for a shadow part that is taken control. Can you spot patterns in your life like repeated any pattern that repeats itself?

Unknown Speaker 33:37

Things that you kind of you find your way, maybe into the same relationship over and over again, different relationships with the same person.

Unknown Speaker 33:49

Or maybe you find yourself stuck in a place in business, you’re just like, I’m fucking stuck, still stuck at, you know, certain amount of money that you’re making, or you’re still find yourself stuck in

Unknown Speaker 34:03

a certain amount of confusion about who you are and who you serve and what you do or talking about it in a particular way.

Unknown Speaker 34:13

So some more clues to help you recognize where shadow might be showing up. It could be a lack of self confidence, a fear of speaking up so those are the milder pieces. Maybe you blame external circumstances and you don’t take self ownership. Maybe you have leaky boundaries.

Unknown Speaker 34:33

Maybe there are fears about putting yourself and your creative work out into the world because of fear of judgment. Maybe there’s procrastination or sabotage. And of course these are all tied into the nervous system as well like shadows definitely like I’m not addressing the nervous system here but

Unknown Speaker 34:50

it is tied into the attachment nervous system.

Unknown Speaker 34:55

Maybe it’s not doing what you know you want and is good for you. Maybe it’s like not

Unknown Speaker 35:00

Caring for yourself even though you know how to care for yourself but you’re not doing it you’re not moving your body or you’re not eating the right diet.

Unknown Speaker 35:11

Maybe there are money and success issues maybe you judge others who make a lot of money or whoever outwardly successful

Unknown Speaker 35:18

maybe you have relationship issues and dramas as I was explaining earlier right there some anxious or avoidant attachment styles

Unknown Speaker 35:31

Yeah, so in essence, wherever you struggle in life is where some aspect of shadows hiding. And so the questions I want you to ask yourself, are like, who did you have to be to be loved? Right? This is usually your social mask? Did you have to be the good girl? Did you have to be the little helper, little koper, things like that?

Unknown Speaker 35:51

And who were you not allowed to be? These are the parts that you may be wanting to bring into your business into visibility into your relationships? Right? This is the parts that need reclaiming or want reclaiming.

Unknown Speaker 36:10

What parts of you have you disowned?

Unknown Speaker 36:14

i This is what makes you magnetic.

Unknown Speaker 36:22

And the parts that you’ve disowned are the parts that need attunement, permission to be part of your business, your life, your love.

Unknown Speaker 36:33

And what’s fascinating is that moving towards what feels good, such as intimacy, and self love, and pleasure, can reveal the unconscious blockages to what you can consciously want, which is why this shit tends to come up. When we’re in partnership, when we’re like, oh, and we’re getting close to people, right? Like, we’re letting love in, it feels good. And all of a sudden, right, we hit that we hit that wall.

Unknown Speaker 37:00

And as part of facing your shadow, it’s just really helpful to know that this is just a place you got hurt.

Unknown Speaker 37:08

Yeah, and, you know, because we can’t see it.

Unknown Speaker 37:15

It’s you’re just, you’re just going to be getting presented with uncomfortable opportunities to integrate it right. Like, it will control your life and keep presenting you with people and circumstances that mirror those parts back to you. And, and you know, whenever you are in criticism and judgment, stay curious about that. And see where where you might be criticizing and judging yourself. So

Unknown Speaker 37:43

we heal shadow.

Unknown Speaker 37:45

We integrate shadow by moving through the emotions. And again, doing it moving through the emotions by giving yourself the critical space between observing what you’re feeling, and experiencing the feeling. So you can do both of those at the same time. It’s a skill, it’s a critical skill.

Unknown Speaker 38:04

If you’re believing what you’re feeling, you’re just gonna recycle the emotion, you’re gonna double down on it and just lock the shame in place. Right? It’s just not going to move. And speaking of moving, actually moving your body moving to the expression of whatever’s wanting to move through, like the expression of this part of yourself, helps you connect to the young parts of you that

Unknown Speaker 38:33

yeah, the young parts of you that maybe were nonverbal.

Unknown Speaker 38:37

So I’m just remembering right now a moment where I was in like a five day retreat, somatic retreat. And,

Unknown Speaker 38:47

you know, we were there was a group process happening and everybody was getting activated. We were in the space together. And all of a sudden, I was I stood up and I said something. And, and the facilitator, she comes by and she’s like, why don’t you let everybody know how much you fucking love judging them? And I was like, Oh, shit, yes. I love judging all of you. When I judge you, I put you over there. I send you a way. I don’t have to deal with you. You don’t get to hurt me in this place. I am unstoppable. I am invincible. And of course, I realized that I was also very alone in that place. And feeling the part of me that really wanted connection. But for that moment, I just got to feel all the juice of that. So yeah, and for those of us who have sustained, you know, more traumatic experiences, especially in childhood, connecting to sensation in the body will be more challenging than just doing it through awareness. Like we may need movement and just vibration

Unknown Speaker 40:00

and through pleasure, maybe to wake up the body in a way that feels safe to the nervous system. So there’s definitely pleasure that lives there. But when it’s repressed, it tends to be in service of some form of domination, control, powerlessness. So,

Unknown Speaker 40:21

how to face the shadow? You know, I usually do this in four steps. I don’t, you know, I’m just noticed just being noticing and aware of how it’s showing up in your life, right? So the first step is observation, just noticing and being aware of like the patterns that are arising.

Unknown Speaker 40:42

And the second step is inquiry. So you want to be approaching these parts of yourself with curiosity, and just kind of like, Huh, what’s there.

Unknown Speaker 40:53

And then there’s the approval. The third step is approval, you want to move towards it with a sense of compassion. And

Unknown Speaker 41:03

yeah, like welcoming it, right? The approval is really, really important. And really, because you want to see why, like, it’s serving you in some way. So you want to be curious about why it’s serving you. And then you want to approve that this is a very important part that has like, been with you, it’s really kept you alive, it’s helped your ego survive, right. So you want to approve of it and really see what the, what the gift is in it.

Unknown Speaker 41:33

Until the last step, the fourth step is to feel to complete the emotional cycle, you want to actually feel the feeling, again, with that sense of distance observing, right, which is the first step.

Unknown Speaker 41:46

And then you want to just take the fucking care of yourself, you don’t want to take really, really good care of yourself afterwards, because depending on the intensity, you just want to give yourself some soothing, you want to like reward yourself for having done all of that hard work, you know, that’s part of like, nervous system like integration, right? The, your body will only integrate that work if it feels safe to do so. So safety is first. And then you can you can do shadow exploration and integration. So I want to hear from you if this was helpful if there were any aha moments tagged me in a post on social media share with a friend who you think might benefit from this. All of that sharing is so appreciated, and I’d love to hear your feedback on this in any form. You can DM me or

Unknown Speaker 42:44

tag me on a social media post. All right, love y’all. Bye. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Remember to hit the subscribe button to get notified of new episodes dropping on the new and full moons of each month. And if you haven’t already, leave us a five star review on iTunes to make sure that everyone who needs this transmission receives it. And until the next episode, I’m sending you fierce fierce love.