One of the most important - and frequently avoided - themes in people’s lives is our unwillingness to own that part of ourselves we do not like, the part that Jung called “the Shadow”.

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Strangely, the more we suppress our ‘Shadow’ energies - and they finally seem to disappear - the more we find them sneaking up to challenge us from outside ourselves. We become projectors of our own disowned energy on to other people who now seem to play out those parts of ourselves that we refuse to own. We create enemies in the naive unconscious hope that, in blaming these people for all the things that we don’t own in ourselves, we can destroy that part of ourselves that we don’t want to believe in or even know about.

 

This is the source of much of the prejudice, persecution and destruction in the world. As we create these enemies, we lose contact with the truth of our own being. The more unaware we are of our Shadow side, the more we are likely to be controlled by it.

 

In order to explore this material, it is essential to approach it playfully, and with a sense of humour. In this fully experiential workshop, we will use a variety of creative ways such as drama, image-making, movement, meditation, play and ritual. We will create our personal Shadow Masks so that we can see this part of ourselves more clearly, and find safe creative ways to integrate and take charge of it in our lives.

 

This workshop, then, has a double purpose:

To experience ourselves more fully, freer from the unconscious forces that drive us.

To learn to talk with those onto whom we have projected our Shadow aspects, discovering how to communicate with them - not as enemies, but as human beings like ourselves.