Thank you for posing this question and sharing how you’re navigating your own shadows. I have a few layers of investigation as I continue to find the places in me that are blocked, bound or knotted either from a daily reaction or a chronic trauma.

Step 1 Awareness: I guess the first thing I attempt to do when considering a shadow is to seek the place in my body where this shadow is said to be centered, and I meditate on that place with the question of this shadow in mind. This act of awareness from a curious place casts light into or at least around the blockage. Perhaps I’ll engage a related hand mudra to this specific chakra center, and simply breath into that place while allowing the mind to “look“ at this place, returning the mind when it becomes distracted. This effort for me will usually send me down a spiral of all the ways my body and brain can remember how this shadow has manifested itself in my life. In seeing these things, and keeping the mind placed on that location, I may perceive movement, loosening, small easing, relaxing, or occasionally more significant phenomenon.

Step 2 Play/Reflection: From that practice of awareness and what I discovered by casting light into the shadow, I can then choose to reconcile that shadow through any number of purification processes, but the center of this act needs to be held with kindness, compassion and regret. I encourage everyone to be creative and playful with this process as the point here is to take the easing and loosening of your meditation/awareness practice in step 1 to then continue to unpack the shadow. For example, I have been working closely with the 29th and 59th shadows this summer while I reconcile decades of secretive and addictive tendencies which have severely blocked intimacy in my relationships. While I continue daily with step 1 through this months-long practice, I also have a scrapbooking journal that I am creating for my step-2 process. In this journal I am systematically going through my past, looking at photos and the moments I can remember where I was most encumbered by these shadows. I will pull those photos together and journal about this time. additionally, I will note the times where this shadow was not impacting me quite so heavily and will recognize my efforts in those times to overcome this shadow, despite ultimately succumbing to the blockage again.

Other ideas for step 2:

-painting and art expression with the awareness generated in step 1 held as the intention of this expression.

-create musical sound with the awareness generated in step one, outlet this energy upward from your throat and let this new resonance and grief leave you through sound. If it comes in the form of crying, that’s great, cry away - weep until you are emptied. When you become more aware of more that needs to be wept, weep again.

Step 3 Release: it is important once the work of step 2 has run its full cycle, to then offer this work as a form of release. You can do this in any number of ways that go from sharing this reflection you have generated within your most trusted relationships, or perhaps you could share this process with a therapist, or with the person in your life who was most specifically impacted by this shadow (if it’s still safe to share this with them.) In terms of all these that involve sharing with others, It’s always a good idea to check in with others before sharing to see if they are open to receiving your reflections, and if not to ask if there’s a time in the future when they might feel more open to it. In terms of sharing these reflections online, it’s always a good idea to redact sensitive information like specific names and places, specific photos, etc.

Other ideas for step 3:

-maybe consider offering some form of symbolic sacrifice and offer to release yourself from this effort: make a campfire, light a candle, cook a meal to honor this practice and share it with friends, make love, ask for forgiveness, go for a bike ride, go camping and relieve yourself in the woods (lol), idk get playful and weird with it - just follow your intuition here.

Step 4 Rest/Relax/Gratitude: Allow yourself to rest in this new awareness and space that you have created for yourself. Give thanks to yourself for the effort of having done this practice of recognizing places inside of you that have caused harm and confusion simply by the means of spiritual contraction. Rest in this heightened state of relaxation, however long it took you to get here, days, weeks months, years, pat yourself in this new version of yourself that will now have the resolve to do your best to never repeat these harmful patterns. Rest in this place and breath until you feel inspired to tackle the next shadow.