The Taproot Podcast - 🌗Jungian Shadow Work Meditation for Integration

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

To subscribe to the podcast, you can click on the following 🎧🌟 Podcast link:  https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Check out our youtube for more meditations and content: https://youtu.be/_FP6w_TapXE  Check out our website for more resources: GetTherapyBirmingham.com   For additional free resources, you can visit the Get Therapy Birmingham website: 💻 GetTherapyBirmingham.com One of the available resources on the website is a meditation designed to help you connect with the shadow part of yourself, which may have been repressed due to trauma or negative experiences. This meditation aims to bring awareness to the aspects of yourself that you may avoid. Please note that the resources, videos, and podcasts provided on the site and social media platforms are not a substitute for mental health treatment. If you require professional assistance, it is important to seek help from a qualified mental health provider. In case of an emergency, please contact emergency services or a local mental health provider. The provided phone number and email address are for scheduling purposes at Taproot Therapy Collective and may not be regularly monitored for emergencies. For more information and to explore additional content, you can visit the Taproot Therapy Collective website: Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services. #depthpsychology #meditation #meditate #integration #jung #carljung #psychology #asmr #trauma #healing #growth #shadow #alchemy #creativity

Hi, it's Joel, and today we're going to do a meditation to help integrate some of the shadow, or the places where we feel an extreme emotional reaction, a shame, a sense of being overwhelmed, a lot of things that we repress and try and run away from in life. Some of these things can come from pretty early in life where we're learning as children how to feel emotion. How our body needs to react. How much energy we should have if we have to have muscle tension to protect ourself or defensive posture to protect ourself. And other parts of the shadow may come from trauma or events in life that are overwhelming and upsetting. And this exercise is designed to take you into what old Jungian analysts used to call the psychisoma, or the place where the mind meets the body, and the body's emotional response, and stress response.

And today we might call it something like the subcortical brain, the body brain. The part of the brain that thinks in emotion, doesn't think in language, and helps us respond intuitively and instinctively and with a felt sense to the things that happen in life. But when we have unresolved trauma, unresolved anxieties and issues, it can sometimes keep us moving all the time a little bit too much or make us respond with a little bit too much emotion. And so before we start the exercise, it's important to realize that self-help and guided meditations like these can be a powerful tool,

but they're not a substitute for trauma treatment with a qualified physician or therapist. And so please do not use this to treat a severe trauma or post-traumatic stress event without also being in the care of a therapist. So as we start the exercise, we want you to find a comfortable place to sit or to lay back. It's probably best to put this on speaker or headphones where you can move freely. You're not restricted to leaning close to something to listen to it or a cord.

And get into a comfortable unrestricted posture. You can lay down, you can sit Indian style, it doesn't matter, just make sure that you can directly feel your body. And this exercise is going to let us directly experience and start to integrate the shadow to the places where we don't feel like we can survive, and so we try and turn them off with protective parts, and we try and move away from them. This isn't going to help you analyze it or theorize about it. The point of the exercise is to directly experience these places of trauma and shadow in the psychisoma and in the body brain.

So as we start, start to regulate your breathing and just take a long, slow breath in. One, two. And a long, slow breath in, one, two, and a long slow breath out, three, four. And just try and keep the rhythm of slow and steady breathing. And reflect on your life, the places where you feel the most powerless over your emotions. Think about the people or the situations that make you the most angry or the most ashamed or the most confused. Places in life where you may not understand what your emotional reaction is or why you react the way that you react.

You may not have a lot of sympathy for yourself. Your thinking may be rigid and not adaptable. That's just how I have to do it. That's just what I am. That's just what I... places where you're not open to compromise or change. Or where your emotional reactions scare you or you don't understand them. It could be a coworker, a boss, it could be things that you see on the news, situations that you get in that you like to avoid. Just take a minute and reflect and see what you would like to work on.

And now picture one of these situations in your head. And imagine this person or place or situation that makes you feel overwhelmed and out of touch and out of depth with your ability to regulate and recognize your emotion. And remember how you reacted or how you were afraid you might react or how you're avoiding reacting. And label the emotion that you feel in this situation. Is it anger at someone? Is it just a feeling of paralyzing fear that you want to act but you can't? Is it just a deep and hopeless sadness that makes you avoid and that you avoid something, doing something that you know you need to do? Is

it just a burning angry fire that you unleash on people and you don't even know why you're doing it or you feel it welling up in you inside of yourself even when you don't speak it still is a scary response. A paralyzing fear, a sadness, an anger, it doesn't matter what it is, but find the place in your life that you felt these things. And you don't even have to know the word for the emotion, but just tap into the energy of those moments. And start to let yourself feel that overwhelming energy now. And it may be hard or scary, because you don't feel like you can handle it, but just stay

with it. And don't feel like you can handle it, but just stay with it. And don't think about it. Don't think about in your head, well, I think that I was angry because of this. No, let that go. Just let yourself feel the emotion directly. Think about that overpowering anger, a hopeless sadness, whatever the emotional energy is that you feel you can't deal with. You don't have to think about a situation that activates you. You don't have to think about something that's triggering.

Just stay with that emotional reaction. And you don't have to think about it in words, but just start to feel it in your body. And see where that emotion is in your body. And you want to make this response real, to experience it directly. Make that emotion real. If what you're afraid of is just being trapped and boxed in and not able to get away from people, then just go ahead and make that your reality. I'm free.

Everyone else is free, but you're stuck and you're trapped and try as you might. You can't escape. Just make that real. If the emotional reaction that you're trying to avoid, a place you don't want to go back to, is that you explode and you're angry and you can't control it but you hurt people, then just go ahead and make that real. You know, I'm in control of myself and I can regulate myself. So can everyone else, but you can't. You're dangerous and you hurt people and you hurt their feelings and you explode. Just make that real. If the place that you're trying to avoid that you don't want to go into is that you can't act,

everyone else can go out and they can get this stuff done, but you just become paralyzed, and you avoid it, and you do something else, and you can't do it when they can, then just make that real and go there. And probably it's not any of these things, but find the place that you're afraid to go and just honestly and bravely go into that. And when you go into that feeling, start to check in on your body and it may feel a very strong negative reaction.

At the beginning it may feel like this is too much. But stay with it and just let yourself feel trapped or not good enough or alone or unlovable. Or whatever it is that the scariest place is for you to go. And start to think about all the things that you do to turn this feeling off. Do you date? Do you get on Tinder? Do you drink alcohol? Do you overeat? Do you tap your foot? Do you stay at work and try and get approval from a boss so you don't feel like a failure? What are all the places that you go to compulsively to turn this feeling off because you don't want to have to stay in it like you're staying in it right now. What are those things, those

protective parts that stop you from feeling this? And now don't get lost in your head as you think about this, but come back to the feeling. And realize that these parts we use to protect ourselves from feeling the shadow, the place that we don't want to go, work, and they're a tool that we need sometimes. But we're going to let them go now. And you may have a voice in your head that says, no, no, no, but how does this work? But think about this, but a kind of distracting part, and go ahead and acknowledge that as also a protective part that doesn't want you to slow down and feel this right now.

It has a place, but we don't need it right now. And if it pops up, a distracting voice or an intrusive thought, just notice it and then let it go. And then come back to feeling this emotional experience in your body. And what we want to do is to try and bring 100% of your awareness to your body and your physical experience while you feel this emotion. And focus all of your attention on the energy in your body and what you feel physically when you go into this shadowy, scary belief. So close your eyes and we'll start by noticing your head When you let yourself feel vulnerable or angry or trapped or not good enough or like a failure

or whatever it is the place that you avoid is. When you start to let yourself feel that way, what do you notice in your head? Do you want to hold it high and laugh and be confident? Do you want to just let it droop down in shame? Or do you simply want to just let go and let it float away? What do you feel behind your eyes or in your jaw or in the muscles at the back of your neck? What do you feel in your throat?

Does anything feel tight or hot or cold or painful or numb? And if we haven't gotten to where you feel the feeling yet, that's okay. Just notice your head anyway. And notice what changes when you get in touch with this shadowy emotional space. And now move your awareness down into your hands and see what they want to do when you go into this bad place that doesn't feel good. Do they want to fidget? Do they want to rub your clothes or the chair or the floor? Do they want to clench into fists or grab onto the carpet? What do they

want to do? Do they feel tight, cold, hot, numb? Do you feel disconnected from your hands like they aren't yours? Now bring your awareness into your core and your posture. And when you experience this negative feeling, bad feeling, how does it want your body to move? Do you want to curl into a ball and protect yourself or hide something, keep it a secret? Do you want to stand up and fight? Muscles tight, posture rigid? Do you want to just lay back flat, hopeless and limp? Like you want to fight but there is no point? Do you want to feel like you just float away and dissolve and disappear? How does this feeling move your posture when you experience it?

Now move your awareness into your core, around your chest and your heart and your lungs. And also feel your stomach. Anywhere in that middle of you, do you feel a pit or a chunk of rock, a black hole that's sucking in, or a pressure like something's bursting out. You feel a temperature, heat, cold. Your experience can be absolutely anything. It doesn't have to be any of these things. It could be VCR static. It could be the

color green. But just notice the way that you are experiencing the shadow, that when you experience the shadow, how it activates your body. And notice your sense of weight, how it changes. Do you feel weightless? Do you feel like you have less weight than the room? Do you feel heavy, like you just need to sink into the floor or the couch? Do you feel like a white hot plasma heat, like you're expanding or shrinking? And again, it could be anything, but just notice what you're feeling and stay with that feeling. See if you start to feel disconnected from the world around you. You may be mildly dissociating. Does it feel like you're still connected to the world?

Or do you feel separate from your physical experience, like it's not really yours but you're watching it? And start to check in with the way that you feel. Keep your eyes closed but see how the room around you feels, how the space around you feels when you go into this shadowy space. Do you feel small, like you're in a big scary place? Do you feel trapped, like you're in a cage and you can't get away, boxed in? Do you feel ashamed, like you don't want to be seen, like you want to hide? Do you feel hopeless, like you want to fight but you can't do anything, there's no point? Just let yourself feel the way that you're feeling, bravely. And see how it changes your awareness

of how you feel yourself and how you feel the world around you. Now that you've stayed here, in this scary place, this place that in childhood, or during a traumatic event, or a stressful period of life, we learned we couldn't survive. I can't go back there. If I go back there, I'll die. That's what we learn. And so we find ways of turning these places off so that we don't have to face them and we don't have to integrate them and we don't have to grow.

So now that you've been here a while and you've felt your physical and emotional reaction to these scary, undealt with places. Can you notice times in your life where these physical sensations, when these emotional reactions have started to control you, have started to push you in different directions and make you choose courses of action that are really authentic to who you are? And just think about that for a minute. How much energy do you put in avoiding this place? How much energy do you put in not going here? Do you attack people or attack situations that remind you of it?

Do you avoid doing things or going places that remind you of it? Do you do compulsive behaviors to turn it off? And now check in after you've sat here for a few minutes with this feeling, with the rest of your body. The protective parts that you have that are usually used to turn off these emotions that we don't want to feel, notice how they've come down as you've been able to go into this place that is distressing, that isn't good, that isn't fun. But notice how you don't feel as tired.

You don't feel like you need to fidget as much. You may feel kind of unsettled, but that there's a groundedness where you can relax a little bit more. You may not have the urge to eat or drink compulsively or to work, to play with your phone, to do something that turns this off. And the reason for that is that when we go into these scary places, that all of those protective parts are designed to protect us from. The protective parts come down because they realize that we don't need them anymore. That we're able to go into these places ourself and that we don't have to turn them off.

And then the protective parts of my routine will start to naturally reduce as you get better at integrating your shadow and dealing with your undealt with trauma in your past. So this meditation is a good practice to have. It doesn't do all of the work for you. But it's a microcosm of how Jungian therapy, how somatic therapy, how trauma therapy works. We're going back into these scary places where we learned as kids, or we learned during a trauma, I can't survive that, if I go back there it'll kill me. Intellectually we may know that we can do it, but emotionally and physically we don't. And we get all excited about integrating the shadow and doing these things. But the catch is that when you go back into these places, you are the same age that you were.

You may be four, you may be five. You don't know everything that you know now. And your emotional reaction is the same as when you were four or five. Or whenever you started to learn how to protect yourself from these scary feelings. But going back into these places and integrating them, not running away from them and not turning them off, and not medicating them, but facing them is the only way that we grow and change. I hope you enjoyed this meditation.

If you have a question, leave a question, leave a comment, or send me an email. And I hope this was beneficial for you. Thank you. Thanks for watching!