The Taproot Podcast - Somatic Jungian Parts Meditation & Archetypal Meditation on Transforming Shadow and Phobic States 🧘‍♀️✨🌌💖🌀😌🔮💡🌱🙏🎧🌟📖💬💞

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

  Welcome to this transformative guided meditation designed to help you connect with the wisdom of your inner parts and integrate shadow experiences with compassion. In this meditation, you’ll gently explore where your distressing emotions reside in your body and invite them into a dialogue with your protective and vulnerable parts. 🧘‍♀️✨🌌💖🌀😌🔮💡🌱🙏🎧🌟📖💬💞 What to Expect: 🧘‍♀️ Somatic Exploration: • Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down and begin with deep, cleansing breaths. • Focus on a distressing or overwhelming emotion as a “shadow” feeling in your body. • Notice its qualities—temperature, texture, and energy—and let it reveal images or metaphors of your inner landscape. • Allow protective parts to emerge naturally as you cultivate a sense of inner safety. 🌌 Archetypal Integration: • Transform a phobic experience into a vivid metaphor that reflects your inner world—whether it’s a tiny, anxious creature or a powerful symbol of potential. • Use this metaphor to invite a compassionate dialogue between your wounded and protective parts. Featured Therapeutic Approaches & Resources from Taproot Therapy Collective: Process-Oriented Psychology (Arnie Mindell): Learn how Arnold Mindell’s work helps you follow the “process” of inner experience and deepen body-mind awareness. URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/?s=Mindell Voice Dialogue (Hal & Sidra Stone): Discover the pioneering work of Hal and Sidra Stone and how Voice Dialogue invites you to engage with your inner voices. URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/the-psychology-of-selves-the-pioneering-work-of-hal-and-sidra-stone/ Parts-Based Therapy & Internal Family Systems (IFS): Explore our parts-based approaches—including IFS and Ego State Therapy—to understand and integrate the many subpersonalities within you. URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/category/psychology/models-of-psychotherapy/parts-based-therapy/ Additional Resources on Parts Work: • Generational Cycles and Parts-Based Therapy: URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/generational-cycles-and-parts-based-therapy-understanding-generational-differences-as-overreactions/ • Self-System Therapy Overview: URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/self-system-therapy-in-depth-overview/ • What is Internal Family Systems Therapy?: URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/what-is-internal-family-systems-therapy/ Connect with Taproot Therapy Collective: • Visit our main website: URL: https://taproottherapycollective.weebly.com/ • Listen to our podcast for more in-depth discussions: URL: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-taproot-podcast/id1615446348 • Learn about our other therapies: URL: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/treatments/ Like, Subscribe & Share: If you find this meditation helpful, please like, comment, and subscribe for more guided meditations and holistic healing content. #SomaticMeditation #JungianHealing #ShadowWork #ArchetypalPsychology #ProcessOrientedPsychology #ArnieMindell #VoiceDialogue #HalAndSidraStone #PartsBasedTherapy #IFS #InternalFamilySystems #EmotionalIntegration #MindfulnessMeditation #HolisticHealing #TaprootTherapyCollective

Hey guys, it's Joel with the Taproot Therapy Collective Podcast and I want to welcome you to another somatic Jungian based meditation. We have gotten a lot of requests to do another one since I have an old one and I do those fairly differently now with some principles from Somatic Experiencing by Peter Levin, Process-Oriented Therapy by Arnie Mendel, Voice Dialogue Therapy by Sidra and Hal Stone, and IFS techniques developed by Richard Schwartz. These are largely somatic and post Jungian therapies that build on Jung's insights and you can read more about them on our website if you're interested. We've got a lot of biographies and things on our

blog but the therapy meditation that I did on Jungian shadow work was one of the most popular things that we released on YouTube and we got a lot of requests to do another one. So here's an update of how I do those meditations now. You wanna be sure before you start this that you're in a safe space, a comfortable space, nice temperature, well-fitting clothing, and you just somewhere private where you can relax.

There's ambient noise, that's fine. Just make that part of your process of recognizing annoyance as a somatic or a unconscious protective part Any things that might pop up You're never in the perfect place to do a meditation, but you do want to make sure that you're not driving You're not Anywhere it may be dangerous and we'll go ahead and begin that meditation now. So I want you to find a nice to open posture sitting up

or lay down if that's comfortable for you. And I want you to just kind of map your psyche for a minute and find the things that you avoid, not just an emotion, but an implicit emotion, a deep relationship between your inside world and your outside world where you feel that you cannot survive, that this is wrong. Maybe it's feeling trapped for you. Maybe it's feeling less good than other people, feeling inferior. Maybe it's feeling powerless, you know, unable to act. It might be powerless like you have to do something but you're not strong enough. And it may be a powerlessness like a paralyzation, like you are wanting to do something but you don't know how, what, or where that kind of action should come from.

It could be lots of things. But you want to find that feeling that is the hardest place to go for you. The emotional arc you're either so enmeshed with that you have to feel that way all the time or that you're so avoidant of that you feel like if you feel it you'll die, I can't go back there, you know intellectually you understand most of us do That this is doesn't matter. It shouldn't affect us anymore for lots of reasons, but that intellect is not going to help you here We have to kind of teach your body and your brain stem your

subcortical brain That this is something that you have mastery over now and that you can go back and that you can be overwhelmed and then master this space of emotion. So when you find your traumatic memory, your phobia, your emotional trigger, try and go beneath the event that created it. Don't just try and remember an event that's overwhelming, but turn the event into a state of being that is hard for you. And so don't analyze it and don't think about it intellectually, but just listen to the energy of this thing that is your shadow in your body and see what it activates. See where it is inhabiting the

most intensely. Is it that you feel your spine wanting to curl into a ball to make yourself smaller or to protect yourself with a rigidity? Is it that you are wanting to stand up tall and tight and fight, make yourself larger, less inferior? Or is it just kind of a looseness that you want to wriggle away, you want to move, just don't think about this. Let go and notice what your spine is doing when you inhabit this space and your emotional spectrum. Notice what your hands and your extremities, your fingers, your toes, are they limp or are they tingling? And scan your body for tension and notice if there is tension in your chest, hot or a cold, heavy, a light or a tight feeling.

And now notice your stomach. If your guts are locking up, if there's pain, hunger, blankness, scan your jawbone, move your jaw back and forth, left and right. See if there's tension. Sometimes jaw tension shows up creeping from the hinge of the jaw up into the inner ear. If you have TMJ at night, a lot of the times it will show up as an inner ear pain. There's no infection or allergy, but there

is a pain. Wherever you've noticed these feelings the most across your body, and I'm not there with you in therapy to listen and to zoom in on them, so you have to find them like a map and don't judge them as good or bad, even if they're overwhelming or they're upsetting or just an unpleasant feeling. Just try and turn a curiosity towards them of a kind of sense of wonder of what these things are and what they want. And just let them float there with you for a moment. I want you to notice each somatic feeling at each place that the shadow is showing up

in your psyche soma, your mind body. I want you to feel each of those spaces. See if you can get temperatures or textures It doesn't have to make intellectual sense VCR static The fizz when you open a coke Kind of dull pressure like a heavy metal object. All of these are perfectly valid things to notice Is there an emptiness a a denseness, a churning? So just sense that energy for a minute. And if there's pain, is it electric? Is it dull? Is it piercing? Is it throbbing?

Is it imploding? Don't stop at just pain. Wonder. Wonder what it is. and stay curious. So we're still in a metacognitive space that is aware of the thing but outside of it. Don't become possessed by it. Don't decide what it means you have to do or what you are, what you have to be. Just let it be and let you be. And while you are being, notice what it is doing. And just curiously feel it for a moment. And I want you to let that somatic sensation, wherever that is showing up, spread. So just give it a minute and when you turn your attention to it, see where it wants to go in your body if it moves. And if it doesn't want to move, see how it wants to move your body. Do you want to move left or right like you're under water in the flow of something? Do you want to pick your hands up

just let it do what it wants to do and see where it wants to go and you may feel the pain or the tension or the tightness whatever it is move to a new space or connect to another pain that you hadn't noticed was there before another expression noticed was there before. Another expression of your relationship to this feeling, this deep implicit feeling. It is the root of this emotion that you are not good at, that you have a relationship with where it possesses you and tells you what to do instead of you using it and noticing it. And then letting it go when you've heard it. These things want to be heard because they have something to say that we don't listen to. And if you feel it stop, as you notice it move around,

and you feel this process slow down. And you feel where it's settled, if it's moved or changed or connected to other points. Connect, as Arnie Mendel would say, to the visual channel. See if you get an image like a color or a feeling that is not quite visual like you're in a field or an outer space or in a room and just notice all of the cosmology that this thing feels around you.

And even if it's unpleasant or overwhelming or upsetting, just stay with it. With curiosity, keep a curiosity tuned and open to see what happens next. Because we're not going to stay here forever. You may have memories come back, usually not, but sometimes we do. If you get a color, remember that color. And now turn your attention to the auditory channel. And on the auditory channel, I want you to see if you notice anything that feels like a sound.

And sometimes it's like the energy of where a sound would be. Not quite something we hear, but something that we have in. And those are important too. They're part of your relationship to this part of self that you are not in good relationship with. Notice if words arise, idea words, big words, mythy words, little words. Even if they're weird or strange and you wonder why that's in your head or you think you're doing it wrong, you're not. Just remember those colors and sounds and visual sound- memories, and visual memories of what the world is like around you. And try and amplify it.

If you feel scared, like you're a mouse in a field hiding from a hawk, I want you to get scareder. And if you feel icky, like you shouldn't be here, like it's a place that you shouldn't see or you shouldn't allow yourself to make yourself feel worse, feel that ick. Give it more of a visual or sonic character, is it like a slime, does it appear like a glop or a hiss? You feel like you're not wanted here.

Try and amplify all parts of this memory, the sense of space around you, visual images, auditory images, and somatic experiencing of what they do to your body. And I want you to enhance that image and make it more vivid. And if it morphs into kind of a metaphor that doesn't quite fit, just let that be. It doesn't have to fit into language. A lot of these things don't fit into language. I mean the shadow starts to disappear when you look at it. Shrink back into different shapes. Just turn it into a metaphor. Are you a teapot about to explode? Are you an empty dry well with nothing left? Are you a cosmonaut in

space who's drifting watching the earth get smaller and smaller in blackness. And come back to the intellect for a minute, we need that too. And think about what these images that you're conjuring mean for your relationship to this emotion. Start to understand the specific ways that it overwhelms you, that it takes away your agency and that you mistake it for yourself instead of a part of you. And start to notice these other healthy parts that want to protect you from the shadow that say it isn't true, that say it isn't real anymore, that say you wouldn't make these mistakes again, you couldn't because you know more. And try and thank them if they come up for their compassion and their need to protect

you. Let them know that you're here to listen to the shadow and it's not going to overpower you. And let those protective parts relax a little bit because you need to hear them too. And now return to this shadow sensation and this metaphor that we've made with our visual and our auditory and our social and our idea based memory and our linguistic memory And notice how time doesn't quite make sense To each of these things or it does make sense, but differently Some have never changed

Ever and then others are changing all the time. And feel that sense of time as kind of a strange thing where parts of you are disagreeing about what is relevant in your felt sense of being and make space for this wounded part of you that was so scary at the beginning to be felt and seen and heard and even if it's distressing or upsetting or overwhelming try and have empathy that it thinks that this is all you are and can do and can be and have some validation that it thinks what it's doing is important and necessary and also try and accept how powerful this has been for so long.

This wasn't a perspective that we had a couple minutes ago. But we always knew deep down that there was something else. Don't look for solutions or answers or even words. And when you do that, see if those spaces in your body have started to shift or unfold or move and if they're in the same spots that's fine. And if the energy is slightly different it has a different character like a tiredness or sometimes the pain that we get when chronic tension resolves. There's adult ache that's left. Or just the kind of little spikes as enzymes discharge and muscles when we pay attention to them and we feel little involuntary movements and tremors. Any of that is And I want you to take deep breaths.

And fuel your body and your sense of consciousness as a whole thing again. That is not deconstructed, that is back together. These things are like balls of yarn, they activate these separate types of memory. We have to untangle it and wind the whole ball back together. It doesn't fix anything. It's still there. But we saw, we start to see what it's connected to. And how long it's going to take to unwind all of these things and put them back together to be a memory that we understand from

all angles not just as an instrument an overwhelming thing. Wiggle your toes and your fingers across your arms across your chest, rub your heart, the texture of your shirt, clothing, and then open your arms wide. And put your arms slowly up over your head like a snow angel. And then make one foot point and reach all the way down. And then the other foot point and reach all the way down like a ballerina standing on tiptoe. And then take your spine and wiggle it back and forth like you're a snake. And then wiggle it front

to back and let the wiggle run all the way down your spine in a ripple like you're a dolphin front to back and let the wiggle run all the way down your spine in a ripple like you're a dolphin front to back swimming now we've kind of moved some things and we've unlocked a lot and the somatic energy may have shifted so we want to bring it all back to the center scan the body and see what's different. And if there's places that feel cold or hot or in pain, what we're looking for is different. That's not bad.

If it's different than how you started. And there may still be some things left and it may be good to repeat the meditation again. But we don't want to do too much at once. We just want to feel these little changes and start to map out this place beneath different pieces of sensation. So now open your eyes slowly and look at the world around you and notice that it is different, that you feel different. And different is good. And we don't have to understand everything that happened right away. But it's normal for realizations and memories to surface. It's normal for you to notice your relationship to this emotion being a different thing that you can catch a little bit early, that your shoulders are

tight when you're angry, or that your posture doesn't stand up straight or that you slouch or you hunch or you tighten your arms when you feel threatened or something. And just look for those changes as you repeat this meditation and come back to it whenever it's helpful, whenever you have time. And now it's never quite the same. Well, thank you for joining me for the meditation. And we will try and get some more of these out soon because it's been requested quite a bit. Hey guys, I wanted to pop in here to give you a quick reminder that we do this podcast for free and there are significant expenses associated with it, including the biggest resource of my life right now, which is time. One of the things that would really help us, and hopefully would help you, would be to

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