People that have done spiritual work in their lives have often talked about shadow work. This is something that people either want to know more about or they are too afraid to have to face it. There is such thoughts with the term shadow work that it can be something that can cause people to think of dark things or it can be an exciting practice to learn.

Shadow Work

Shadow work is the idea that comes from Carl Jung about who we are and the dark parts of our subconscious that we tend to hate or hide. This is the human shadow or the part of you that needs to be worked on. When you work with your shadow self, you will use your spiritual and your magical ways to make things work better and to find out more about who you are.

There are many benefits of doing shadow work including the fact that you can improve your life and help to make yourself happier in the long run. It can also help you to face the world in a way that is healthier than just going by.

A shadow self is the parts of you that you have experienced and that you think of yourself and the world around you. The shadow is something that you start creating very early in life and it is part of the subconscious thinking that you have on how you see the world as something normal.

The idea of being normal and seeing the world as normal is based on the different experiences that you have had as you grew up and it is often in homes that the parents are too busy to have time for you or when you have romantic partners that never have time for you either. You often will mess up good relationships with people that do have time for you because your subconscious does not find this to be normal and you try to find a way to stop it and get to something you know is “normal” in your own thoughts.

Once you are able to know what you feel and the patterns that you repeat, you can change things so that you can feel normal in a new and good way. You can learn to be around people that care for you without wanting to push them away.

Magic is sometimes used by witches to help them to find their shadow self. The magic can help to enhance the thinking of what needs to be changes but as a witch you need to know yourself in and out in order to make your magic even work.

Shadow work is somewhat like therapy, but it is something that all witches need to do in order to be able to do their magic to the best that they can. You cannot just understand yourself if you do not go deep.

Why Do Shadow Work?

It is important to do shadow work because you want to be better at what you do and better at who you are. You need to find the parts of yourself that you have hid for so long and ignored because you didn’t think that the world wanted these things. You need to learn not to just change these things but to learn to accept who you are and to love every part of yourself, even the parts that you think are unlovable.

The darker parts of yourself are parts that you often want to cut out and avoid because you do not want to face them. The point of shadow work is to face these parts of yourself until they are able to live and work freely in your life. You have to stop hiding them and being ashamed of who you are.

When you are doing magic, the things that you believe deep down are the things that you need to know and face in order to make your spells work. You cannot expect a spell to work when you have blockages in your life that you have hidden because of beliefs that are at your subconscious level.

When you feel stuck in your career and you never have enough money, you can still do your spells, but when you have something that you believe about your self-worth that is causing you to doubt yourself and to believe that you don’t deserve something better, you will not be able to do your magic effectively.

Beliefs that are negative will cause your magic not to work. Even if you put all the magic that you have inside of you into doing a spell, if you don’t believe you are worthy of love or money, you will not get it. You will believe things such as money is evil, or you are not good enough to get what you want. This is the things in your subconscious mind that you have to find out and embrace.

This is all part of shadow work, and it is something that helps you to be aware of who you are. Once you are aware, you can learn to accept yourself and learn to go against your subconscious and to fight to be the best that you can be.

How to Use Shadow Work with Magic

Now that you want to know more about shadow work and face it, there are ways that you can do this. This is never an easy subject to work on because it means that you have to look deep and face things that you don’t want to see. But you can do this, and you can make room to be the best you can be.

Let Your Emotions Come Out

The first part of shadow work is that you have to face things that you don’t like about yourself. This can be hard to do when you have hidden these things for so long.  Even though this step of the process might seem hard or easy, it is the most important step of shadow work.

You have to learn to know who you are even when it is things that you don’t like. You have to learn to be honest with yourself and to learn to see the things that you have rejected for so long. Even if you don’t want to be these things, you have to give yourself love in those situations as in all the other parts of your life.

Maybe you think about things that happened to you as a child. If you saw a child that was hurting or upset, you would likely have the intuitive sense to go to that child and help them to figure out what is going on. Something might not make sense to them, or it might be something that scares them, but you will help them.

This is kind of like shadow work. You have to take the parts of yourself that are hard and that you are afraid of and learn to face them. You have to manage them and learn how to handle yourself with these emotions. If you are confused or scared, you have to look at that emotion and why you have it.

If you are sad, do not hide this and do not stop yourself from crying but take the emotion and let yourself feel it. If you need to cry, cry. Do not feel uncomfortable about your feelings or let yourself hate it because you feel something. You have to let yourself feel your emotions and work through them.

One thing to know is that shadow work is not to hurt others or to blast your emotions on other people, but it is about finding out what is causing you to feel these feelings. Find a place when you are angry and let your hatred out by screaming or throwing things, whatever you need to do. You can do this, and you can even go out and buy some dishes that are cheap to throw or put up a punching bag and go crazy.

The idea is to let your emotions out and to let them be what they are without hiding them. When you hide your emotions, even as a child, it makes it hard for you to know why you are having them. Sometimes as children we are taught to hide our emotions and to suppress them and that teaches us how to bottle up things every time something happens. This is not something good and then when you get older you will try to hide emotions that are not pleasing to you so that you don’t hurt others.

Do not go find people to be angry about or do not try to ruin other people or hurt them but learn to express your feelings with yourself. You can start doing this by writing things done when your mind is clear. It can help you to see what you need to do to stop that emotion from controlling your life. If you feel stuck and confused, write things down and find out where this emotion is coming from.

Expressing your emotions can be something that is not fun but as you learn to do it, you will see that as your emotions surface that you are able to deal with them.

The problem with these emotions is that you have been pushing them back for so long that you are even repressing memories that come with the emotions. Your memories have created these feelings and even though you thought they were gone; they are just hidden, and this takes a lot of energy. You have to let your emotions out in a way that feels better to you. The trauma that you have is stored deep inside of you and you need to learn to express it and experience it to solve it.

Journaling

One great thing that you can do to do shadow work is to journal. This can help you to express your emotions on paper and to learn to understand why you are feeling the way that you are. Once you learn to express your emotions you can express your thoughts and your feelings.

Journaling is something that allows you to write down what you are feeling and to find out why you are feeling it. Some people will do this every day, and some will only do it here and there.

There are some people that will only journal when they have feelings. You need to start a journal and do it for a certain amount of time so that you can learn to find out what is going on inside of you. You can even do this as part of your schedule so that you don’t miss something.

Get a notebook and a pen and write whatever comes to your mind. If you don’t have time to write it now, video what you are feeling and write it down later.

Expressing Yourself with Art

Some people will do shadow work and work on their emotions by doing art. This is a creative way that you can express yourself with a different kind of medium. The art doesn’t have to look good, and you don’t have to be a real artist, the principle is to figure out what you are feeling and finding out how to make it into a physical thing. You can do this by painting on canvas, painting on paper, taking pictures, doing digital prints or whatever you want. This is completely up to you.

Moving

Another exciting way that you can do shadow work is to move. Find movements that can express what you are feeling and stop you from keeping things in. As a child, you were probably told to sit and be still and not to run around or to move too much but now you need to change that.

Movement can help you to express yourself and this can be anything you want. You can choose to do yoga or to dance or you can be physical and run and throw your body around until you are tired. You can do poses and stretches and you can move, move, and move.

Do not worry about making your movements neat or exciting or to make them look good because this is just for you. Find a place that you can do this on your own and you can express yourself without other people looking at you or making you feel weird. You can use music, but you can also find music that changes depending on how you are feeling. If you feel sad, put-on music that is sad or depressing and if you are scared, find scary music to listen to. Listen to it while you express yourself and even put it on repeat if you need to. Play this over and over until you are able to move and express yourself.

Dancing and moving is one thing that can help you to face your emotions and to let them go. You can do this and understand your emotions more. Use these kinds of movements so that you can know what is going on. If you are journaling, write down what happens when you do your movement and how it makes you feel.

When you are being creative and painting, write down what your mind is thinking. Go outside of yourself and learn to understand your feelings and figure out how you want to express them to let them out. You can learn to understand yourself more and you can use your mind, body, and soul each day to do whatever you need to get these parts of yourself out.

You might have different memories or emotions that you don’t expect to come out, but when they do, learn how to express them, and learn how to let your emotions come so that you can learn what you are feeling and why. The goal is to find a way to express your emotions and to no longer hide them. This is completely up to you as to how you want to make that happen.