Read Marianne’s new shadow work book Healing The Shadow – Deep Process Psychotherapy
In this exciting new shadow work book Marianne Hill takes us on a journey into the transformational world of shadow work. Here is a look inside…
Chapter One: Embodied Parts Work
The room is completely silent. The practitioner, Sam, is leaning forwards, eager to hear any sound that emerges from his client Joe, who is curled into a tight ball on the floor, wrapped in a pale blue cloth. Joe is completely still. The moment extends.
After several minutes Joe makes an almost imperceptible movement with his head, very slightly turning it towards his practitioner. Sam takes his cue and asks Joe what is happening for him. ‘I feel so small,’ Joe says, in the tiniest whisper. ‘I can hardly speak; I can hardly move. I am so frightened.’ There is a long pause… ‘I am hiding.’
Welcome to the world of shadow work.
Here, Joe is in the middle of a session with Sam, and he is exploring some of the challenges he is facing in his workplace. He has chosen to step into the part of himself that lacks confidence at work. This has turned out to be a very small and frightened part of him, which Sam is speaking to with great care and sensitivity.
To explore parts in Healing The Shadow, we use a carpet in the centre of the room to represent the client’s inner world. When a client wishes to explore a part of themselves, they choose a coloured cloth to represent that part – all practitioners have a good mix of large coloured cloths in their practice rooms. The client then steps onto the carpet and decides where this part of them lives in their inner world. Joe has chosen the furthest left-hand corner of the carpet for the part he is exploring.
The client is then invited to go to that place on the carpet, to wrap the coloured cloth around themselves and to allow themselves to completely become that part. They take on the posture, the thoughts and the feelings of that part, and they speak to the practitioner from that part. This is a very different experience from speaking about the part and describing it to the practitioner. The part now comes alive in the client’s body and mind. They temporarily become that part of themselves and they feel and speak as if they were that part.
When exploring parts in this way, we enter the hidden world of the client’s inner landscape. When the client gives themselves permission to completely inhabit a part of themselves, we discover the ‘essence’ of that part. The client finds themselves speaking things they didn’t even know they thought or felt. They may be so used to trying to push that part away, or to sanitise it and make it presentable, that they have never really met that side of themselves properly and got to know it.
Stepping into parts in this way is the cornerstone of the work we do. These parts may be loud, angry, mean, aggressive, quiet, shy, scared, timid or anything in between. By inhabiting these parts and having them seen and accepted by our practitioner, we can find out more about these sides of ourselves and come to know ourselves more fully.
You may now be thinking there is good reason why most therapists don’t practise in this way! Do we, as therapists, really want to meet mean or vindictive parts of our clients, or parts that hate therapists, for example, or that hate people of our gender or background? What about parts that don’t want to live, or parts that have no boundaries?
A deep capacity for holding is required in a practitioner if they are to meet such parts. Ultimately the practitioner must have reached a point of knowing that they themselves have such parts within them, and that it has been safe to explore these parts. If we are not afraid of painful or destructive parts of ourselves, then we will find we are not afraid of the painful or destructive sides of our clients.
One of our core principles in Healing The Shadow is that all parts of every person are welcome in the room. We understand they are there for a reason. They have a role to play, and they are serving the client in some way. We see the goodness in all parts of each person.
When we’re working with the shadow, we hold the belief that true joy comes from knowing, accepting and loving all parts of ourselves. This means knowing and accepting the parts of us that are in deep grief or filled with rage, frightened, hesitant, vindictive, hateful or full of shame or guilt. It means welcoming these parts into our conscious realm, having them witnessed and understood by others, and tenderly caring for them and listening to their needs and the powerful emotions they carry. As we come to know and accept more and more of ourselves, we find we are more able to sit back, relaxed in our own skin, knowing there is nothing in us that we fear and nothing we need to hide. Sitting in this place colours all our life experiences. It gives us a deep self-assurance, no matter what is happening around us, and allows joy to arise even in the midst of life’s most difficult challenges. We lead ourselves through life from a foundation of confidence, which comes from knowing and trusting ourselves with all our varied and complex parts, and coming to love and accept the person we truly are…
To read Marianne’s shadow work book in full you can buy your copy from Amazon or ask your local bookshop to order it in for you. Reading this book will immerse you in the world of shadow work and you will come to deeply understand the philosophy and practice of this work and the healing that is possible through this modality. Marianne brings the work to life in tangible and engaging ways, using realistic examples and accessible explanations to help us enter into this remarkable world. The contemporary method of self-development work that she describes weaves together a powerful set of concepts – parts work, process work, shadow work and a current-day understanding of the archetypes – to create a dynamic form of healing known as Deep Process Psychotherapy. We are invited to explore our own lives through the lens of this comprehensive framework.
Timely, radical and above all effective, this modern approach to personal development brings about profound and lasting change in people’s lives. This shadow work book is important reading for anyone – layperson or professional – who is interested in exploring something beyond talking therapies. Marianne’s shadow work book is also designed for those wishing to pursue a career in therapeutic work and looking for a way forward that is innovative, embodied and experiential.
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