The term “Shadow Work” has been gaining quite a popularity, especially in the wellness, spiritual, and coaching communities.

And it’s about time. 

For so long, the focus has been placed solely on “love and light” principles and practices, like visualization, positive thinking, affirmations, charging crystals—the list goes on.

Don’t get us wrong, these things can all support us in the process of healing and transformation.

However, the real work comes from continuous awareness and curiosity around your Shadows, along with learning from and alchemizing them.

Radically accepting and integrating these parts of ourselves allows us to free ourselves from those unconscious, disempowering patterns in our lives and cultivate unconditional love for ourselves.

This work helps us step into our most unapologetic and authentic expression of ourselves, which ultimately makes us magnetic to our deepest desires. 

In this blog post, we’ll talk about what the Shadow is, how to confidently confront and safely befriend your Shadows, and how you can use Internal Family Systems as a technique to uncover and integrate your Shadows, or “Parts.”

 

Intro To The Shadow 

The term “shadow self” was first coined by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Jung stated the shadow is the unknown dark side of the personality, and much of what we know about the Shadow comes from Jungian theories.

Your Shadow Aspects are essentially the parts of yourself that you reject, disown, repress, have shame around, or believe are “taboo”, etc.

This type of introspection isn’t a new concept, cultures around the world have been using their own methods of self-discovery for centuries—from Ayahuasca to Shamanism.

 

What is Shadow Divination™?

In the Tabwoo Institute, we take a different approach to working with our Shadow parts of self; it’s called Shadow Divination™.

In short, Shadow Divination™ is when we commit to excavating, understanding, and integrating the parts of ourselves that we have shunned. Shadow Divination™ is a reclamation of ourselves. The truest act of self-love. The understanding that we are, in fact, whole beings.

Shadow Divination™ sets us free in ways we didn’t think were possible. It requires us to strip down bare and confront ourselves—and then, slowly, bit by bit, begin to understand who we truly are, uncover our true essence and magic, heal ourselves, and forge a new path.

This isn’t about changing the past, this is about extracting what we can from our past in order to make new, aligned, skillful choices to shape and change our present and future.

It won’t happen overnight—it’s a practice, and practice requires time, effort, and energy for the long-term, sustainable payoff. 

The question that is most often asked is “will my Shadows ever go away?” The answer, quite simply, is no. 

Shadow Divination™ is not about “removing” our Shadow Aspects. 

Our Shadows will arise in different ways over time. The practice is getting to know your Shadow Aspects, exploring and accepting them, discovering what opportunities and knowledge they present, and integrating them. 

 

Bypassing and Shadow Divination™

Ha haaaa, you didn’t think we were going to talk about Shadow Divination™ without addressing bypassing, did you?!

Ok, we actually want to talk about a different bypassing than what you might be thinking. 

First, let’s break down what we mean by bypassing: Anything you have an aversion to or avoidance of.

Plain and simple, right? There are triggers we avoid or things we have an aversion to. We advocate for cultivating a safe space for yourself, which means cultivating safety WITHIN yourself. 

A lot of times, especially in the wellness, spiritual, and coaching communities, the ‘love and light’ emphasis is pushed…but…how are you supposed to go from 0-100 immediately?

How are you supposed to go from resistance or avoidance to loving, accepting, and understanding your Shadows? It seems kind of weird, right?

What if, instead, you learned tolerance of the Shadow and yourself…and then neutrality…and THEN compassion and love—step by step, in whatever time is right for you?

This aspect of things is important because it’s going to be a lot harder to attempt to convince the subconscious that the Shadow is something to be loved, let alone convince our ego that we are worthy of validation, self-acceptance, and compassion!

Now that we’ve talked about what Shadow Divination™ is, here is a modality that we teach inside of our Archetypes + Shadow Divination™ course—Internal Family Systems—that will support you or your clients with uncovering and integrating your shadows, or “parts.”

 

Using Internal Family Systems to Uncover and Integrate Your Shadows

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a model of therapy developed in the early 1990s by Richard Schwartz that focuses on parts work. 

It was created on the basis that people can’t be understood by just looking at the individual alone, but must be understood by looking at the family system and community they come from.

Essentially, there are many parts that make up each person and by identifying the various parts or subpersonalities that exist and examining their relationships with each other, we can create harmony in our internal world.

It is believed that when we are able to reorganize our Internal Family System, our external reality will shift accordingly.

In IFS, we work with our “Parts”. 

Parts are the multitude of aspects that make up who we are. They are subpersonalities that interact with each other just like people in a family unit or community might interact with each other.

There are 3 types of parts in IFS—Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters.

• The Exile parts are the wounded parts of us that have experienced trauma, shame, hurt, and fear, and as a protection mechanism, the system sends them away so we can function in the world.
• The Manager parts are always making sure we are prepared for what’s coming next and help us to function in our day-to-day life. Their main goal is to prevent the person from experiencing undesired painful experiences.
• The Firefighters are the parts of us that unconsciously get spurred into action when the “danger” hasn’t been successfully avoided and they feel our survival and well-being is being threatened. They’re the ones who get called in when things are on high alert.

In this replay of one of our Certification Experiential Calls, we walk you through an Internal Family Systems experience to guide you in working with a specific “part” that you’ll choose and establishing a better relationship with it for greater harmony and functioning.

You’ll want to carve out 1 hour to be in a space where you can experience this uninterrupted. 

Pssst! Don’t have time to do it right now? We invite you to choose a date and time that works best for you right now and add it to your calendar as a reminder to yourself to come back!

 

 

We would love to hear your biggest takeaways, shifts, and breakthroughs! Send us a DM on Instagram @tabwooinstitute or share inside of The Tabwoo Facebook Group!

IFS is just one of the tools and techniques that we teach our Students inside of our Archetypes + Shadow Divination™ course. 

If you want to learn how to use IFS, along with other Shadow Divination™ tools and techniques,  for your own self-exploration and with your clients, keep reading 😏

 

Become Certified In Archetypes + Shadow Divination™ 

Want to further explore the realm of Archetypes and Shadow Divination™ and learn how to facilitate this soul-changing magic with your clients? 

Our Archetypes + Shadow Divination™ course is for you!

This course will help you become the go-to practitioner for helping your clients uncover the identities and archetypes that exist within them and reclaim these parts of themselves so that they can embody their most authentic selves and live fully expressed lives.

With the successful completion and certification in this course, you will be qualified to call yourself a/an…

• Shadow Divination Guide
• Archetypes + Shadow Divination Level 1 Practitioner
• Archetypal Practitioner
• Self-Exploration Practitioner

Click here to learn more + enroll today at our “VIP Early Witch Price.” 

We’re currently pre-selling our Single Modality Certification Courses, which means that you’ll get $900 OFF the regular price of our Archetypes + Shadow Divination™ course when you enroll by January 31st! 

This price goes *POOF* at the end of the month so get in now at the lowest pricing while you can.

Have qs about our Single Modality Certification Courses and want support making sure this is the most aligned decision for you? DM us over on Instagram or send us an email at social@lexidangelo.com and your personal Success Sorceress, Niché, will be there to help!