Shadow Work and Expressive Art

The Shadow Effect

Shadow work is a way of transforming parts of yourself that you’d like to change with compassion and understanding. The shadow was first discussed by Carl Jung. He saw it as a weakness. But we now know it holds your golden nuggets.

The Shadow Effect is a book written by Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson and Debbie Ford. The shadow is that part of us that we don’t want to look at. Our anger, and fear, and mean thoughts. And we spend most of our life running from it.

And although it might be scary, our shadow is the key to happiness and success. We see our shadow every day. When we get angry with our kids, when we feel disappointed, and when we sabotage our success.

But keeping our shadow hidden in the dark, only makes its effect stronger. By shedding light on our shadow, we uncover our true gifts.

“In trying to express only those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us the acceptance of others, we suppress some of our most valuable and interesting features and sentence ourselves to a life of reenacting the same outworn scripts. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have relegated to the shadow is the most reliable path to actualizing all of our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes a divine map that—when properly read and followed—reconnects us to the life we were meant to live and the people we were meant to be.” — Debbie Ford

Sometimes, the challenge is trying to discover what shadows you actually have.

Expressive Arts and Shadow Work

And that’s the beauty of expressive arts. Not only can it be a tool for discovery, it can also be a tool for transformation. I recently had a Creative Experience with fear. I decided that I was going to first express my fear in movement. I closed my eyes and really tried to connect with my fear. I started swaying and hugging myself. I curled up in a ball on the floor. And then I started getting mad. I started pounding the floor and kicking my feet. I was really surprised the fear turned to anger.

Even though the fear transformed to anger, I felt much better. I then moved on to create some art. I was interested in transforming the Fear/Anger into something else. First I created a piece that represented the fear/anger. Then I used that piece to create another piece as the transformed anger.

Fear/Anger - Dancing

And I feel like the second picture is like a phoenix rising… and dancing! So the message I got was that anytime I was afraid, dancing is a good antidote.

Have you done any shadow work? What has been your experience?