What is Shadow Work?

The term “shadow” was first used by Carl G. Jung to describe the repressed or denied parts of the self. A basic premise of Shadow Work is that as infants, we all initially expressed the full breadth of our human nature, without editing or censoring. As we grew up, however, we learned that certain parts of ourselves were unacceptable to the people around us. So, we learned to repress those parts of ourselves, the ones that got us hurt. It was as if we threw these unacceptable qualities over our shoulder into a bag, which we've been dragging around behind us ever since. In Shadow Work®, we define "shadows" as all the parts of ourselves that we have stuffed into the bag. These may be "positive" parts or "negative" parts. Our shadows are all those parts we have split off, repressed or denied — the parts of ourselves we are afraid to show. We believe it is proper and useful to have a shadow bag, and to keep some shadows in the bag. But when the weight of the bag slows us down and prevents us from being who we really want to be, it is time to look into the bag, examine its contents, and see what needs to come out. Shadow Work offers you a safe environment where you can experiment with letting things out of the bag slowly, without the fear of real-life consequences. We believe that the core of every shadow contains a nugget of strength and power that we want in our lives. Shadow Work enables us to become more and more who we really are.