Shadow Stalking, How to do Shadow work
Something I have been wanting to share for a while, I am teaching Shadow Stalking. A Synchrosoma Course in how to do Shadow work created and developed by my mentor Melissa Meader, where we learn to navigate the Overworld, the Underworld and the Worlds in between.
I've been living with this material for several years now. And it continues to deepen and evolve, I watch my relationship to it grow in ways I couldn't have predicted when I started.
When I first found this work I remember thinking where do I even begin? Where is my Shadow? This course opened up the dialogue with practices and prompts that made the work real, sustainable and possible. For the first time I had a structure, a container, a way in. The material and course content is rich and voluminous with audio teachings, guided somatic practices, journal prompts and writings to return to again and again.
And yet when I actually started to feel for Shadow, some part of me wanted to hide it. I judged it, thinking it could be corrected somehow if I just worked harder, achieved more, performed who I thought I should be. But what I came to realize was that the relentless pursuit of perfection, the compulsion to achieve, the performance is Shadow material. And that the Shadow isn’t the obstacle.
None of this was wrong; these were intelligent adaptations that were trying their best to keep me safe. And yet we must grapple with the Shadow. Shadow Stalking is an active role. This work asks both: the receptive Witnessing and Shadow Stalking. What stands in the way is the way.
Becoming conscious of our attitude toward Shadow is one of the trailheads one way in. For me, there was denial, fear, and then judgement. Which I would then judge!
Before finding this work I had been to therapy, I had been showing up. But for me, it all stayed in my head, all this consuming books, workshops, other people's insights with nowhere to land, nothing to plug into. Just this next thought will figure it all out, that hamster wheeling kept me from meeting myself as I was, looking for some kind of answer or authority outside of myself. We can rotate a thought or a belief about a behavior or pattern this way and that, but our body can actually digest and metabolize it.
The game changer, the thing that makes this course tangible rather than just conceptual is remembering our connection to Soma. When I found my way back to Soma, the living intelligence of the body, and started to remember Witness Consciousness, who we truly are, everything shifted. It felt like a missing link, like I could reach and stretch and really touch something that had been longing to emerge.
One of the core practices is Somatic Recapitulation a natural, intuitive way of recalling patterns and Archetypes and bringing them into conscious awareness through the body
In this course we are learning new ways to relate to our body and our experience. Together we begin to find our way toward Witness a gentle, non-judgmental awareness that lives in all of us. We are practicing meeting ourselves as we are with curiosity and care.
Presence is often shellacked with performance and conditioning; we can mistake the false exterior for who we actually are. I did, and still do. And so I practice meeting my armoring, which comes in so many forms. I had the realization that meeting our armor is presence.
Having been met and included, our armoring can begin to breathe and move- and here is where something new can arise, beyond the thinking mind alone.
We are becoming someone who can turn towards, include and own Shadow without abandoning ourselves. To remain in gentle contact with what is arising, just long enough for our systems to discover that the parts of us that have been hidden are safe to come home. And here is the gift, they become our allies.
The Shadow holds our gold.
And this is a slow process. Building the capacity to deepen and stay with ourselves.
This course is designed to support exactly that.
There are four modules: In the Overworld we cultivate sovereignty and flexibility. In the Underworld we meet what has been maligned and hidden and discover the gifts they carry. In the Limen, the worlds in between, we develop our intuition, learning to navigate the territory of our own inner landscape expanding our capacity to inhabit the threshold, one foot in each world. And in the fourth module we claim the Boon, the harvest of all this work. We develop agency, find our authentic voice, discover our gifts and abilities, becoming masters of all the worlds.
This is the gift of companioning and integrating Shadow. And it doesn't happen all at once, it unfurls cyclically, rhythmically and in its own time.
Together we create the conditions for what has been lost to find its way home. And over time and with practice, what once felt like darkness begins to reveal itself as something else entirely.
The relationship is the vessel where it all comes alive. And in this work slowly, gently, in the warmth of being genuinely met our rejected parts begin to find their way home.
And the ripple of that homecoming doesn’t stop there.
It extends beyond us. Whatever we integrate in ourselves ripples outward, it is a contribution to something much larger than ourselves.
I am honored to be bringing this course to a small, intimate group.
If this is calling to you, I would love to connect. I offer a free 20 minute consultation.
What You Will Experience:
Shadow work through the portal of Soma: Shifting from the hamster wheeling of thoughts into Soma—learning to attune to and be guided by Body Wisdom
The awakening of Witness Consciousness: Resting in the spacious, receptive awareness that connects you to everything.
Develop your intuition and attunement to the Archetypal and symbolic realms.
Begin to discover the gold waiting in your Shadow.
Build the capacity to meet whatever arises with curiosity and care: Cultivating an internal strength and a deep sense of belonging to yourself—knowing this is a result of the work, not a condition of it.
Course Details:
Shadow Stalking Course consists of 4 modules each with audio presentations, somatic practices, writings and journal prompts
Dates to be announced
Small group, 3 to 5 participants
Four 1.5 hour live sessions, one per week over one month
Investment: $432
