Duality: The Shadow Self

Day two begins in restorative pose and deep abdomen breathing. Today I am going to wait until my body moves me - I want to discover where it is heading. Slowly my head moves from left to right, feeling the cerebrospinal fluid flowing, I track the movement and sense where I am holding. My right side (as always) feels heavy, planted on the floor sluggish with tension. I feel myself holding in my hands and pelvis, resisting the urge to break free for now as an image appears. Floating orange dots swirling above my head, directing me how to move. Feelings of distrust and hurt flood through me into energy that needs to be released as my head surrenders to the image and sways around the room, drunkenly swimming through space. Suddenly a narrative appears and two distinct voices permeate my body:

I ran away once, hid, pretended no one saw me. Until that day, BANG, I  appeared again on the door step of my own love. I pleaded with myself, “Let me in, let me in”, but you disowned me and slammed the door in my face. “I want you out”. I didn’t know who she was …was she me? I could not tell. All I knew was that I liked her, I hated her, I cherished her, I resented her. “I want you out” said she to she, me to me. I turned to you. “I want  you out”, getting quieter and smaller….when will the words  f A L L off this page? Maybe I can write s d r a w k c a b to conceal, will that work? Will they fail me?…

Moving between alternate voices, I found myself in the indeterminate space between my conscious thinking mind and my sub-conscious knowing mind. How can this be useful in terms of the life/art bridge? Firstly, it enables one to become aware of a deeper sheath - a part of ourselves that is perhaps in conflict to how we ‘know’ or perceive ourselves. Jung refers to this as the Shadow Self, as that which contains the repressed and wounded recollection from childhood. In Daria Halprin’s words, ‘the personal shadow from which no person can escape contains the collection of qualities and feelings that were not allowed - the negative emotions, the not-so-nice characteristics, the disorderly and chaotic, or any other aspect of our person that might jeopardize the well-constructed façade of the ego’ (2003; The Expressive body in Life, Art and Therapy, p.177). Accessing alternate voices in movement allows us to be consciously aware of the Shadow Self and thus begin to work with it creatively. To use Halprin's words once again,‘Our wounds when worked with imaginatively and mindfully, can ultimately engender transformations in ourselves and lead to more meaningful relationships with others’ (Ibid, p.178). Today's movement exploration manifested as a strong emotion being released through utilizing two distinct voices speaking together. The next step; working deeper with the Shadow Self to continue the search for resolution and balance...