What would you really like to have happen in your life? What gets in the way?
What patterns keep repeating themselves causing pain, frustration and lack of freedom?
Shadow Work is a way of supporting the exploration of these underlying patterns and can bring resolution, increased freedom and deep healing.
As we grow, our conditions impact us in so many complex ways. Certain behaviours and emotions may be unwelcome in our culture or family of origin and we learn to repress or deny important parts of ourselves in order to fit in or simply to survive. We may experience painful or traumatic life events and disconnective experiences that close our hearts and make it feel really risky to open to love or trust. We may lose our connection to our full range of emotions, our sadness, joy, loss and healthy anger. We may struggle to create powerful boundaries and make our dreams manifest. We may have a harsh inner critic that disables us and causes us pain. We may shame ourselves viciously. From the perspective of Shadow Work it is understood that our power, life force and energy can get hidden within, bound up with these repressed parts of ourselves.
Shadow Work offers a place to explore our inner life in a respectful way that truly welcomes all that we bring. Being held in a way that allows everything to have a place can have a deep effect on integrating our inner life and finding more peace.
Trauma can be released, resolutions found and situations reframed. We are invited to explore and discover parts of ourselves we may have hidden, denied or repressed.
By bringing these parts out of shadow in a safe, experiential setting, we can unlock the power of our true selves, with all our gifts and strengths. We use archetypes to help us to understand parts of ourselves and why certain things may flow or feel blocked for us.
Following Shadow Work, people often feel more able to feel good about parts of themselves that they have previously felt negative about. It is a compassionate and shame-free approach, reclaiming power and energy that has been locked in unconscious inner dynamics.
If you would like to read more about how Shadow work and conventional counselling or therapy differ you can read this blog article.
I can also recommend these videos by my colleague Marianne Hill which are useful introductions to the concepts of Shadow work. Shared with permission and thanks. (Marianne Hill)
Testimonial from a participant
I came to Jill searching for answers to problems that had held me back from experiencing my full potential.
Using sensitive, intelligent questioning Jill drilled down to what lay at the core of my issues and together we unearthed deeply held negative beliefs and in their place we planted the positive truths that were revealed during the session. Jill’s unwavering faith in the power of Shadow Work quickly dispelled any reservations I may have had as to the efficacy of the work, and I jumped right in and was rewarded with insights into my past that might have taken me years of conventional therapy to glean. I can not recommend Jill’s work highly enough. She is utterly brilliant.
Rosie Miles.
SHADOW WORK OFFERS US THE OPPORTUNITY TO:
• Increase ability to make powerful choices and find our inner ability to love ourselves and others unconditionally (Sovereign)
• Develop new solutions for old problems and understand persistent patterns (Magician)
• Deepen our capacity for intimacy and activate our creative talents (Lover)
• Improve our ability to set boundaries, develop our ability to take action in our lives and follow through on our ideas and projects.(Warrior)
There are two ways i work
COACHING
Workshops
Shadow Work COACHING
SHADOW WORK COACHING
Shadow Work is a personal growth process. Often we need to hide parts of ourselves in order to survive, or develop protection mechanisms to keep ourselves small. Shadow Work seeks to bring these parts which may have been hidden out of the unconscious and into the light. This allows the power and the energy which has been contained within them to be made accessible. We don't always allow ourselves to use all the energy we have, and often we have lots of power held in our fears, anxieties or doubts. We have all been hurt, and we have learned to hide parts of ourselves so we don't get hurt again.
Shadow Work is a way to explore the inner landscape and discover the gold that is hiding in the shadows. It is a way to become more and more who we really are. Shadow Work is a way to face the hurt, the fear, the anger and learn how to live more fully.
Most of all, it is a way to love ourselves for the journeys we have chosen. As a certified Shadow Work coach, I can support you to journey with this safely and at the pace that feels right for you.
About Shadow Work Coaching
We decide together whether we are going to do a full days session on a particular issue, which lasts between 4 to 6 hours. The alternative is a series of shorter sessions lasting an hour to ninety minutes each. After a cycle of sessions to look at the issue or issues you bring we decide whether to continue or to take a break. We decide if we are going to work in person at my practice in Brighton or if we are going to work online via zoom. I find the zoom sessions lend themselves better to shorter sessions generally speaking, although we can do a full session on an issue in one day with appropriate breaks.
It is often helpful to give the work space to let it land and we don't enter into a classical psychotherapeutic relationship with a commitment to a weekly session.
Your confidentiality is paramount.
In a session or series of sessions we explore in depth what you are wanting in your life, and the patterns and dynamics that get in the way.
We look at the archetypal model that this shadow work approach is based on as it can be very helpful for understanding parts of us that may have got wounded and needed to shrink or inflate in order to help us survive and resource us with good tools for self care following the work.
We work with parts of ourselves or messages we feel triggered by and seek to externalise our inner dynamic symbolically so that we can step back and have a good look at what is running inside. It can be profound to separate out "the part of us that...." and have a really good look at what role that one is playing, why it showed up and what is going on for it.
When we have identified a clear and specific want, taken a detailed family history and explored the model that this work is based in the session shifts into a different mode. The shadow work happens on the carpet in the centre of the room which represents your inner world. You use coloured cloths to symbolically represent different parts of yourself, stepping onto the carpet and inhabiting these different aspects and speaking and acting from them. This exploration builds up a picture of what is going on inside you. You then have the chance to step back and see things from a different perspective. Once all the parts relevant to the situation have been represented on the carpet we look at what changes you would like to make and find a way to make this happen. It is a creative and symbolic way to work with our inner life, it goes beyond understanding why we feel the way we do into moving old and stuck patterns.
We explore how we can find more balance and flow in the patterns we see by a number of different energetic processes that can address the issues in our lives. For example, setting clear boundaries, supporting a part of ourselves, stepping into some aspect of ourselves we hate but controls us, reframing a certain story from an adult perspective with compassion for what the small child of us was not able to manage or tolerate are all things we may end up attending too.
It is tricky to describe the work because it is so unique to each individual, however what I find potent and compassionate is that we move beyond an understanding of why we might be stuck in a certain way of doing things into exploring how that energy might feel if it was moving differently. I find this can be very life changing, even though there are no magic bullets.
A part of the work I pay close attention to is integration so we look at how we can ground any shifts or insights into your life and I am always available for backup following sessions.
This includes a follow up conversation following a day session and an email sumarising your work to help you integrate.
I ask that 48 hours notice is given for any cancellation following booking and that payments are made on the day of the work unless we have come to a prior arrangement.
My phone number is 07931576007. If you would like to message me we can arrange a mutually convenient time for a no obligation initial 20 minute conversation. Upon booking you will receive a detailed intake questionnaire to support us both to prepare.
Fees
My fee scale is designed to accommodate the variety of clients that I work with.
I have a sliding scale based on ability to pay. The cost is from £60 - £100 per hour. On booking, I ask that you place yourself at the point on this scale that is appropriate for you. To contact me to enquire please click here. If this price scale is prohibitive for you please get in touch to discuss.
I am fully qualified, insured, and receive supervision.
If you would like to read more about how Shadow work and conventional counselling or therapy differ you can read this blog article.
I can also recommend these videos by my colleague Marianne Hill which are useful introductions to the concepts of Shadow work. Shared with permission and thanks. (Marianne Hill)
Shadow Work WEEKENDs
SHADOW WORK WEEKENDs
Doing Shadow Work in a group over time offers a different perspective to one to one coaching. Working with other people creates an environment of acceptance and encouragement. Watching how others process their shadows can bring lots of learning. It can be really motivating to witness others finding the courage hidden within fear, or power within anger, or finding deep support. In groups, there are often shared themes and situations that arising that resonate, and it is often possible to bring that learning and healing directly to your own situation.
I have not confirmed upcoming shadow work weekend dates for 2022, but please get in touch if you are interested as I will be running a group in Autumn.
I can also refer you to trusted colleagues who are running regular weekends in Brighton through 2022.
“Something ancient in us bends us toward the origins of the whole thing. We either drown in the splits and confusions of our lives, or we surrender to something greater than ourselves. The water of our deepest troubles is also the water of our own solution. In surrender, we descend down to the bottom of it and back to the beginning of it; down into what is divided in order to get back to the wholeness before the split. Healing, health, wealth, wholeness: all hail from the same roots. To heal is to make whole again; wholeness is what all healing seeks and what alone can truly unify our spirit.”
- Michael Meade, The Genius Myth
