Shadow work exercise for beginners or beginner shadow work is a spiritual practice for healing side effect. Most people practice meditation for different purposes.
At the initial level, this kind of purpose is seen in the body, mind, and relationships, while some people practice it for personal growth, emotional healing, or spiritual development.
It doesn’t matter for what purpose you are starting meditation, if you have practiced it for a long time then you start coming across some aspects which are not pleasant.
During meditation, if you go through some such situation which is not right, we know it by the name of Shadow Work Exercise. To get out of this kind of situation, we do shadow work for beginners.
Our personality and conscious thoughts, emotions, decisions as well as our interaction with physical activity are all controlled by the conscious mind.
Conscious mind is equal to the tip of a needle in our mind because most of it is made up of subconscious mind and unconscious mind.
The motivation behind any kind of decisions, thoughts and feelings mainly stems from the subconscious and unconscious mind which decides our personality.
Despite influencing us so much, we know about it in the limit even today. This is the reason why the biggest benefit of meditation is that it not only calms our conscious mind but we can also start a deeper journey of ourselves.
Let us know how we can understand ourselves through meditation.
How to do shadow work exercise for beginners
This whole process is actually the liberating process of meditation which was always a part of it. The question is, are you ready for this? Would like to accept this challenge.
If your aim is personal growth, healing, or spiritual development, then you can say that yes it is fine, but if you look at it from another perspective as a simple stress-relief exercise, then hardly would you like to experience the shadow work thing.
To get out of this kind of trouble, you can take the help of Shadow Work Exercise, in which we do meditation practice as healing. Before this we know what is Shadow Self?
What is the Shadow Self?
We keep some thoughts or feelings throughout the day, which we are not able to say openly in front of others. Every thought that we have been suppressing does not end, but remains inside us in the form of shadow self.
If seen, it represents our negative personality. In this we have personal and collective psychic elements which are incompatible in our social life and we are not able to express them.
Everything or feeling that happens inside us but is not revealed in front of others strengthens our shadow self through Shadow Work Exercise.
You must have seen that some people have narrow mindset but their energy field is very strong and they influence us through negative energy.
We all have a dark side. The less we share it with others, the more it becomes strong and black.
According to Jungian psychotherapy, the more we integrate the shadow into ourselves, the more we can heal ourselves. You have to face it face to face, know its secret, and use its energy properly.
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How your inner shadow affects you
Your shadow side can have a negative impact on your well-being when you ignore or reject it. This part of yourself craves to be understood and explored. This is because it was ignored and possibly shamed throughout your life.
Even if it was less dramatic, we don’t feel mentally and emotionally at our best when our shadow is not integrated into ourselves, which is to say — when the shadow and self are far apart.
Meditation and Your Own Replication
The deeper we go into meditation and perform Shadow Work Exercise, the more we go on unlocking the subconscious mind. Doing this makes our conscious mind less busy and the consciousness starts getting the right direction to go deep.
It is at this very moment that we face those hidden fears from which we have always been running away.
All our fears and dark intentions live in this place, due to which whether it is meditation or tratak, in the beginning we are faced with unknowing fear. This includes every activity that you are not able to express such as
- difficult emotions
- hidden traumas
- “wild desires”
- complexes
- negative thought patterns
- shame, guilt, regret
- aggressiveness, anger
- unconscious fears
- unresolved emotional processes
Experiences are not always good
When it is encountered for the first time, then there can be a panic situation for the beginner meditator. Shadow work activities helps you learn how to Shadow Work Exercise.
They feel that by doing this they have started feeling themselves even more confused or else the situation has become more anxious and restless than before. In reality, this never happens in the state of meditation, rather it is already inside us, which we are exposed to.
Although there is some difficulty in the beginning, but later you start feeling them clearly. Shadow Work Exercise is like a glass filled with dirty water, in which after standing still for some time, the dirt settles down and we can see the dirt and clean water separately which were one some time ago.
Meditation not only makes us calm and clear, but along with increasing sensitivity, it also sharpens attention, due to which we are able to reach the astral level.
People who have good experiences, they increase personal and spiritual growth, whereas people with narrow mental thinking get entangled in their own dark side. It is like opening a box in which we keep things ourselves and get the same. The way we think in our subconscious mind, Shadow Work Exercise works in the same way.
If seen directly, while doing meditation, we free our own shadow. It will be positive or negative, it depends on us.
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What is the goal of shadow work?
If you want to protect yourself from the dark side during meditation, then you should take help of Shadow Work Exercise. Through this, you will not only be able to stop yourself from getting trapped in negative energy, but you can also make yourself strong for personal mental and spiritual development.
You have to adopt just some tips like
Reduce practicing meditation
If you find yourself trapped in dark intrusive thought, then reduce your meditation practice. If you are practicing more than 30 minutes daily, then limit it to less than 30 minutes.
Instead of meditation, you can keep yourself busy in constructive activities. To increase concentration, you can do such things which may not be like meditation but increase your sensitivity.
If we keep ourselves busy in constructive activities then doing so makes us creative. It activates the positive mind inside us and we find ourselves open minded, as well as changing our point of view also makes our mindset right. This Shadow Work Exercise can change your life.
Changes in technology
Thousands of methods of meditation are in existence today and not all of them have the same effect. Some methods of meditation such as Vipassana and mindfulness and Yoga Nidra, and nondirective meditation, in all these methods, we have to interact with the spontaneous thoughts and emotions that come during meditation.
If you want to avoid this, then you can do some concentration-based practices such as Mantra meditation, Chakra meditation, Nada Yoga or Tratak meditation, all these concentrate your consciousness in one place instead of walking with the flow of thoughts.
In such a situation, you can choose different methods of Shadow Work Exercise until you get the right result.
You can talk to anyone
You can talk to an experienced meditation teacher about your experience. If your experiences are not getting right like going through trauma symptoms or serious mental health disorder then you can take help of a mental health professional who has good knowledge of meditation.
If still you do not get the right solution, then it is better that you stop your practice for some time till you feel yourself well. During this kind of Shadow Work Exercise, we are able to make ourselves better.
Check the mental state and start making it strong
Many times it happens that we can understand our situation better and deal with it. Such a situation in which we have to check our mental state again and again, they can also make us stronger if they are used properly.
We can give the right direction to the thoughts buried in our mind.
Let the thoughts which have been suppressed till date come out and deal with them well so that your problem can be solved. For this you can do pranayama and witnessing can take help of.
Pranayama Breathing: Through pranayama, we focus on our breath, due to which we are able to concentrate on one thought by freeing ourselves from any other thought.
For Shadow Work Exercise you have to learn to breathe in and hold for some time and release it back. For this you can read the article of breathe meditation.
Witnessing: Dedication is a tool that can mold us in any situation. Keeping ourselves like this in the state of meditation makes us stable. In the process of meditation, we go through many thoughts and situations.
In such a situation, instead of giving any kind of reaction, if we adopt them in the same way, then everything becomes easy.
During the process of meditation, if unintentional thoughts come to your mind, then do not get entangled in them, but make yourself an observer and let what is happening happen. By doing this you will soon find that your dark side cannot affect you until you are yourself. This is what we call Shadow Work Exercise.
Parting Thoughts during beginner shadow work
As we go deeper, we go through challenging experiences and repressed emotional material and negative thought patterns along with shadow self. It starts affecting our personality, due to which we start having wrong experiences instead of right experiences.
During Shadow Work Exercise you should keep in mind that during this time only the thoughts related to subconscious material come out in your mind. In this process, we take out only those thoughts which are right for us.
It is not right to activate only certain parts during this process of journey of the subconscious mind, but it can prevent you from getting trapped in negative energy. Although this is not a best practice.
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Is shadow work right for you?
Everyone has a shadow, even if you may have heard about it through a different name. It doesn’t have to be associated with something traumatic. But the more you can integrate your self and shadow, the more healthy you will feel
Shadow work is crucial for your personal development to help you become the best version of yourself. Not all approaches to shadow work may be right for you, however.
If you’re not sure whether shadow work is right for you or not, consider trying some of the shadow work prompts below and see what comes up. If it feels at all difficult to answer these prompts, it means shadow work could be good for you.
Top 10 shadow work prompts to kickstart your healing journey
Need an extra boost to start your shadow work? Here are 27 shadow work exercises and prompts you can use to kickstart the process.
- How do you believe people see you? How would they describe you to someone else? How does that make you feel?
- How do you feel when drama occurs?
- What tends to make you judgmental toward others?
- What memories are you ashamed of?
- Who’s let you down the most in your life?
- What are your personal core values? Why are those values important to you?
- At what moments in your life have you been the hardest on yourself? Why?
- What emotions typically bring out the worst in you, and why do you think this happens?
- What do you do with your time when you’re bored? What do you enjoy doing?
- Which friendships make you feel safe and secure? Which relationships no longer serve you?
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Best Shadow Work Exercise for spiritual development
By now you must have known that right experiences are not always there during meditation. Our experiences related to the spiritual journey are sometimes surrounded by negative energy.
If practicing meditation is going wrong for us then we should look into Shadow Work Exercise. How can we bring all kinds of dark thoughts and feelings buried inside us in front of others instead of repressing them?
Doing this will not only make us better but it will also remove our negative experience.
Our shadow self is a form of our suppressed emotion and feeling, the more we suppress it, the deeper it will become. Instead of running away from it, learn to face it and make yourself capable of using this energy properly.
