Dance With Your Dark Shadow
Date published: 06 July 2010This month's book review discusses Fight Your Dark Shadow: Managing Depression with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. A JOL reader has informed me that my clients might want something more than some of the simple techniques the book describes. I feel that some people could find the book helpful as a quick fix - it describes instant remedies for low mood supported by cute cartoons.
However, after thinking about the reader’s comments, I realised that I spend most of my time helping people to embrace their dark shadows, rather than fight them. I sit in my therapy room with clients, helping them to go to places that they don’t know or understand very well. Sometimes they feel very afraid of taking the lid off their feelings or finding places in their hearts they may have never acknowledged, or tell me stories they have previously never dared to say aloud
After a Hakomi session or other mind-body work, or by simply telling me their secrets, clients almost invariably feel better. They come to realise that their shadows are part of them, and they do not need to be afraid or feel ashamed.
While I was walking through the cemetery with my dogs this morning, I realised that perhaps the book would be better called Embrace Your Dark Shadow, or Dance With Your Dark Shadow. I decided to experiment with embracing my dark shadow while I was walking, and found it very enlivening.
I was listening through my earphones to Radio BBC 2 and heard Van Halen's Why Can’t This Be Love? With the rising sun behind me, I was fully in the moment, dancing along a quiet cemetery road, dogs by my side, my arms moving in rhythm with the music as I fully embraced my shadow.
After a minute or so of being absorbed in the moment, I felt another presence. A vehicle was behind me, driven by a rather dour-looking cemetery worker waiting for me and my dogs to move aside. As she drove past, not acknowledging me, I wondered if she too needed to embrace her dark shadow. I continued dancing home with my dark shadow becoming smaller and smaller as the sun rose behind me, warming my back.
Today’s meditation is not about how to embrace your shadow. Instead, it's about dancing with your shadow in the literal sense. Try it.
« back to latest news listing