Take Advantage of Winter Stillness – Dance with Your Shadow – Release and Bloom into Spring!

Elaborating on earlier post: I am delving deeper into Shadow work and have started to read Debbie Ford’s The Secret of the Shadow.

Sitting in a cubicle, at a kitchen table, in a room with friends and yet feeling like a stranger. Unable to run, hide, and eat your way out of the discomfort that looms in your body yet that is all you can think about is escaping. Is this how the caged animal feels?  Is this what being a captive is?  Are we all captives at some level? Most of us feel caged. Feel as if the boulder blocks our path.

Where is the Key to Unlock these Chains?

“Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow.” “You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You will no longer have to prove you’re good enough. When you embrace your shadow you will no longer have to live in fear.” Debbie Ford

As Debbie Ford says when you make peace with the shadow you will no longer have to pretend to be someone you are not. My experience has been that when I’m living someone else I’m living a self-imposed prison sentence.

Hiding From and Recognizing the Shadow

As I dive into my journey of making peace with the shadow, I flirt with fear, lack, limitation, fear of going out into the world, growing up, shining my light, fear always, always fear.  Yet It wasn’t until recently have I been able to fully engage with the shadow. Most of my 30s and 40s were devoted to dance. I needed to unleash who I was through music and movement. I needed to scream, twirl and land on the floor broken open.  I danced I moved into the music and pushed out anything uncomfortable. I danced to empty out; to get rid of the feelings. In fact the form I taught for 10 years told us that when you dance you release all the stuck energy without having to truly feel it. I never felt the shadow I was dancing with; I never acknowledged any of the feelings, I danced them aside. In the end I was left danced out, freed, a wild woman who was still owned by the shadow self as I attempted to re-create my life. I recognized my shadow during the simple act of affirmations and stillness. Many of you have heard about or even do affirmations and I think they are fabulous – truly fabulous. Why?

Moving into the Voice of Doubt:

I’ve repeated affirmations but never could relate to them. I feel like a phony so I quit. I revisit them and try to ignore the nagging voice that says “who are you kidding.” Little did I know that the power of the affirmation for me was held in the nagging voice.  In the process of sitting with a feeling that is opposite to what the affirmation was creating I became free.  I danced with the Shadow.

You see when I felt all of it I ceased resisting; ceased trying to control it, move it, get away from it.  Instead of my usual MO which was to go to my Nia class to release the shadow and make myself feel better, instead I allowed myself to feel it deeply by sitting in my chair. I carried the feelings with me as I washed my dishes, did my laundry, and worked my job.  I carried it with me always waiting for the release.  Four days later it began to shift – the veil began to lift – and what most people ‘try’ to create I experienced from deep within. I felt the most moving, mind-blowing feelings of love, gratitude, and clarity about what I want to do with my life and who I am.

I’m learning that my dance with the shadow has a never-ending playlist.  Some say it’s facing your fear and do it anyway.  I agree but I also want to feel that fear and not be afraid of it.  I want to love my shadow back to its origin so that more of me, the true me, will be shining. For many of us there is no need to practice a zillion techniques just….stop resisting – start releasing. Resistance is your lock – release is your key to freedom.

This work isn’t necessarily pretty; in fact most of us are trying to avoid these feelings 24/7. Entire industries have made millions in trying to avoid our Shadow selves. Talking about Shadow can cause some to feel bad…oh no…you mean we may remove the mask of positiveness and actually feel all the emotions to truly be free. I like it – but then again I’m almost 50 and am clear that I am done with staying stuck in the illusion.

I committed to making 2012 the year I fully dance with the shadow to become Alive again! I look forward to helping a group of women do the same in U Thrive U Shine.

Inspired Action:

Take an affirmation you feel called to. Perhaps it will show up in a journal exercise or you saw one that resonated with your current life needs. Repeat the affirmation daily and as soon as you recognize the voice that says the opposite, feel it, feel it and feel it.  Feel it in your body, notice the feeling to run from it, feel that. Feel all of it. Stick with it – don’t try to get rid of it too soon. When you are ready – and you will know when – release.  Release by packing all of those feelings up (you don’t have to label them unless those labels reveal themselves – they usually will) and send them up to the sky with “love and appreciation”.

If anything I say resonates and inspires you – dance with it. If not, discard it.

What is the reward for facing and embracing your Shadow?

In Debbie Ford’s words, “We live under the impression that in order for something to be divine it has to be perfect. We are mistaken. In fact, the exact opposite is true. To be divine is to be whole and to be whole is to be everything: the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, the holy man and the devil.”

To be whole is to love and appreciate all of you! Look with wonder at all that is before you and within you.

Silence is our witness. Silence has seen it all. Silence cradles our pain until its ache wakes us.

Let go, let your heart-break, let your life be Beauty made visible, let all things awaken you, let your life be Poetry, the music of Truth, the epiphanously idiosyncratic soulsong of significance. And all the words die so, so soon in an avalanche of Silence, their sound and meaning and audience gone. But how they danced in their bright sliver of a moment! And how we danced and loved and wept and blazed in our brief time!

The door is, as always, already open.

Openness awaiting openness.

The invitation that will not go away.

We are dying to live. Let us not wait any longer.

Let us do what it takes. There are not higher stakes.

~Robert Augustus Masters