Express News Service
The shadows never leave. It’s the trailing part of your life—the subconscious ‘shadow’ a gateway to your deepest, sometimes darkest, secrets. Gurugram-based Gauravi Rathi knows this better than anyone else. She climbed the professional ladder with relative ease, owing to her coveted Master’s in Technology Leadership from Brown University, USA. But as she rose, she experienced the proverbial loneliness at the top.
“I felt unmotivated and lost, and the feeling was chipping away at my confidence and productivity,” says Rathi, whose tipping point came when she was made director of product management at a leading MNC in Gurugram. But, she wasn’t going to get bogged down by it. Rathi was determined to get better and save her career from ruin. Shadow work, a therapeutic wellness tool that involves getting in touch with repressed parts of your being, came to her rescue.
“I saw a three-day workshop on it on Instagram. It spoke to me immediately,” shares Rathi who, over the next five weeks, applied all the techniques she learnt and noticed remarkable changes. “I became more intuitive and contemplative. My insecurities surrounding work, money and livelihood became manageable.
I understood the exact place of emotional fragility I was operating from—the financial instability I saw and internalised as a child made me abandon all my dreams and desires such as wanting to learn music, try my hand at stand-up, even give voice-over a shot. Many years later, it was showing up as disinterest and disillusionment at work and resentment towards my family,” she says.
Rathi is not the only one to have benefitted from shadow work. The therapy is becoming stop-zero
for young professionals looking to build greater emotional awareness. “Mostly aged between 25 and 35, they come from a place of confidence, not victimhood. They are clear in their intention and expectation from the workshops. They’re eager to find hidden shticks or better their chances of professional success by becoming agile, intuitive, creative, ingenious and adaptable,” says Gurugram-based biofield energy therapist, Seema Gularia, who along with her husband, are pioneers of shadow work in Delhi-NCR.
It helps that the techniques taught are easy to understand and implement. They can also be learnt through shorter sessions—workshops usually range from one day to seven—as opposed to conventional therapy that takes a few months, sometimes years, to reflect changes.
Take, for instance, Delhi-based jewellery designer Swati Sharma, who tried conventional therapy twice last year, but couldn’t keep up with weekly sessions. “I wanted something relatively short-term and easily implementable,” says Sharma, who says shadow work is not only about the darkness within you, it’s also about finding hidden talents as she did with crochet work. “I built self-awareness regarding my strengths and stopped looking at them as banal.
I always felt knitting and crocheting were too soft, and things meant for older people, but the real issue was with how I looked at myself. I desperately wanted to please and be accepted and an offbeat pursuit such as crocheting would make me an outcast among my peers. Not anymore,” says Sharma.
For Gurugram-based mixologist Ekta Malikk, on the other hand, shadow work opened up a world
of new ideas. Her younger sister’s untimely demise a decade ago had rocked Malikk’s boat. It was three years ago that she noticed temperamental changes. “Disinterest leads to creative blocks. I just couldn’t create new recipes and began limiting my work to a few projects a year unlike the professional hamster wheel I was running on and enjoying earlier,” says Malikk.
Dead set on breaking free from her mental indolence, her friend Sharma introduced her to shadow work. “I realised I was more shaken by my sister’s passing away than I had realised. I did not want to do anything exciting, thus I stagnated professionally. But I am much better now and working on a new Christmas pop-up that will be showcased in Mumbai nearer the time,” says Malikk. Cheers to that.
Though shadow work is best undertaken by an expert, there are a few ways you too can leverage
its benefits. Remember, the key here is to be as open and honest with yourself.
Projection mirror
The best way is by assessing some of your most difficult relationships to understand how your shadow operates. The greater the stimulus, the better the understanding you’ll have about suppressed emotions. This is because what we don’t like in others (their shadows) are attitudes we harbour in ourselves and are, therefore, affected by it. “To understand what these specific qualities are, bring one person on the screen of your mind and write down what you love and hate about them. The former list consists of traits you may have already, but haven’t managed to ‘activate’. The latter characteristics are those that you may have but don’t like. By becoming aware of these qualities, you’re able to shift thinking patterns,” says Gularia.
Psychological prompts
Here are a few prompts you can start with: Best and worst childhood experiences? A memory you wish you could delete? Which aspects of the past affect you the most and why? Your current state of mind and who/what is responsible for it? What does contentment mean? How far would you go to make yourself feel happy? Why did you have such a strong reaction to him/her/it? Why does this/that play on my mind so much?
Once done, review them mind-weak and notice patterns as those are your shadows. These questions help you dig deep to find what’s holding you back. “Humans make great attempts at hiding who they are for the fear of being ‘left out’, judged, discriminated against or demeaned. But the answers to these questions need to be examined to make the subconscious conscious. The key here is consistency. Decide how many times would you ask yourself these or similar questions. I’d suggest 30 minutes be segregated for shadow introspection. Write or record the responses
to reflect on them later. This step is crucial,” says Gularia.
Enantiodromia (emergence of the unconscious opposite)
This is the emergence of the unconscious opposite, especially in matters of extremes behaviour. For instance, if you had an overly restrictive childhood, you may have little regard for rules and regulations as an adult. A person who grew up being extremely obedient may start resenting it later. “The act of noticing these shadow emotions will help you get rid of self-loathing and make you consciously aware of where they might be coming from,” says Gularia.
Do it right
Shadow work should be done in a quiet, safe space
A short meditation before beginning shadow work will help silence the mind
Never dismiss what comes up, no matter how surprising, shocking or outrageous
Keep a pen and paper handy and note everything that riles you up. Narrow down your triggers and deal with them one at a time.
Be patient. Shadow work could take time. Before seeing a difference, you’ll need to sift through emotional baggage.
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