Practicing shadow work in our intimate life – actively and consciously – is essential to creating a healthy and fulfilling relationship. Without integrating our shadow, we will continue to unconsciously sabotage our intimate life and push our partner away, even though we crave closeness.

By taking full responsibility for our shadow and remaining conscious, we can shift out of unconscious relationship dynamics that feed our shadow and create a sanctuary of healing, safety, and trust in our relationship.

In this episode, Lorin walks through the four phases of shadow work, with practical examples for how to move through the toughest phases.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Deep Polarity Program
An 8-week immersive journey to unlock the deepest intimacy through masculine & feminine dynamics.

There is a lot of confusion around shadow work.

What is it and how do you know whether you are truly integrating your shadow?

In today's episode, I will go deep into how and why every single person in this universe should practice shadow work, specifically in their intimate life.

Without integrating our shadow, we will continue to unconsciously sabotage our intimate life.

We push our partner away, even though we crave closeness.

We say things we don't actually mean.

We respond heavily to a trigger, even though that is not the way that we want to show up.

All of these can be changed if we actively and consciously practice shadow work in our intimate life.

Today I will reveal this practice to you.

Welcome to the Masculine and Feminine Dynamics podcast.

My name is Lorin Krenn and I'm a relationship coach.

I help you to embody your awakened masculine and awakened feminine in relationships and life.

Let's dive in.

I want to start with the following.

You are either unconsciously strengthening your shadow in a relationship, or you are actively, consciously integrating your shadow in a relationship.

There really is no in between.

So at the beginning I will talk about what shadow work is, the different phases of shadow work, and then I will get very practical later on in the podcast episode about how you can apply that in your intimate life.

Now, I'm gonna give you some examples of what it means when we unconsciously strengthen our shadow, or we can say relationship dynamics that feed our shadow, which are based on unconsciousness, unconscious behavior.

So for instance, if you struggle with being a pleaser, if you struggle with not being able to set boundaries, not being able to stand in your truth and to speak your truth freely out of fear of being abandoned, criticized, rejected, right?

That's a whole other topic for another episode.

I won't go deep too deep into that how, why, and how that shows up.

But if, for instance, you and every relationship dynamic end up in this pleaser role and you are constantly pleasing, then that relationship dynamic is unconsciously strengthening your shadow, because your shadow is around being a policer, suppressing your anger, suppressing speaking your truth, out of fear of being abandoned and resentment is growing towards the other person, which is all feeding the shadow.

You know, It can also go the other way, that you are the person who is with a policer and you are completely dominating the relationship.

You are controlling, overly being controlling with the other person.

You are lashing out onto them.

Or it can be that you are the one who is controlling in a relationship, overly dominant, exerting control and dominance in the relationship.

Or you could be the other person who is constantly playing the victim, who is a victim of, of an unhealthy relationship.

Any relationship dynamics that are based on unconsciousness, strengthen the shadow within us unconsciously.

Whether we are the pleaser, whether we are the victim, whether we are the person who lashes out on the other person, passive aggressively, whatever it is, all of that strengthens the shadow within us.

That's gonna be different for every single person, but the shadow is the same for every single person, at least the way it operates.

How it expresses itself is different for every person.

The opposite is actively integrating our shadow, meaning we choose to actively work on our shadow and no longer unconsciously feed such relationship dynamics.

We go from unconscious to conscious.

Now we can have this idea that love is enough in a relationship and the relationship will simply take care of itself.

But this is not the case, because our shadows are so sneaky in how they recreate, old, familiar experiences of suffering, which the shadow can feed from, love in itself or feeling a deep connection is simply not enough.

We need to make this the highest priority.

Otherwise, our wounds, our shadow, will sabotage the potential for us to experience a true sanctuary, true sacred union in our relationship.

Now, a relationship will not take care of itself.

You have to take care of it, of it.

And you do that by working on your shadow, by making this one of your number one or the one of the highest responsibilities in your relationship.

Now let me explain here a little bit about the dynamic.

Why is the shadow trying to hinder us from experiencing why is the shadow sabotaging right?

And also you can replace shadow here with ego, ego minds.

There's so many definitions for this in the spiritual world.

And that is totally fine.

Important if you are arguing about the correct definition or if you have a specific system in your head, which like, no, that's not the shadow, that's the ego, that's this, that's that, that is the shadow as well.

So, um, understanding the shadow needs to happen at an embodied level, conceptually, being aware of it still means we are usually trapped in it.

Because someone can be intellectually aware that they have their shadow, have a shadow or a wound or an ego, but they're not able to shift anything.

So this is really deep embodied spiritual work that happens.

So my definition of the shadow is the shadow is that which tries to stop us from evolving.

Which tries to stop us from going to the highest level of love, whether it's in a relationship, but also in our general life, because the shadow cannot feed from that.

The shadow cannot feed from love.

It cannot grow from deep safety, deep trust, the spirit of sacred union.

It simply can't.

It can only grow through dysfunctional relationship dynamics, pain and unsafety, some form of suffering.

And your shadow will give everything to create this suffering in a relationship, no matter how strong the love and no matter how strong the connection is, simply because it can't feed from love, from true love, at least, not many of our illusionary perceptions about it.

Now, the universe wants us to evolve in union.

Because for the mirror of our relationship, we are able to rapidly speed up our evolution, ultimately, the evolution of our soul, of our consciousness.

Because all our wounds, everything is just exposed rapidly from moment to moment without delay.

Now, when we realize ourselves, whether it's in a relationship or whether it's not in a relationship, we become an active threatt to the human shadow.

The shadow expresses itself on a collective level.

It's ultimately is one shadow, but it expresses itself on an individual level as well.

But it's all ultimately one and the same thing.

That's why I often say that the shadow has our collective tightly in its grip, and it expresses itself through every single one of us, and that is why we need to work on it.

Because when we go to, when we realize ourselves, when we truly awaken, doesn't mean the shadow is gone, but it means the shadow no longer, we're no longer identified with it.

It no longer has the same power over us that it once used to.

We can consciously create from a place of love without fear, without suffering from a place of deep joy.

And spiritual freedom.

And then we become a threat to the shadow, to the collective shadow, because we anchor in the highest frequency of love, of true healing.

And the shadow will fight.

It will try to sabotage your intimate life.

And for some people this will be incredibly strong.

And this can easily get confused with our intuition.

We think we get so identified with the momentum that our shadow creates ,and we believe, oh, it's our intuition.

So for instance, you might ask yourself, Why is this so painful?

Why is this so difficult?

Why are all my wounds exposed in a relationship?

And this is usually how the shadow will hijack and trick us.

And then we run away or we say, that's my intuition telling me it's not the right relationship.

But that's of course, often not the case, because a deep and ancient spiritual teaching says the closer you come to the truth, the more the shadow will attack you.

This is expressed in my own words.

Which leads us here into the phases of shadow work, and I need to give a further understanding of this so I can actively explain how to practice it in a relationship.

But the closer you come to the truth, the more you realize yourself, the more you awaken, the more the shadow will actually become activated or will have a go at you or will attack you, we'll try to trick you.

Because you just, you are, what you are doing is a threatt to it.

Which leads us to the stages.

So stage number one, it's not shadow work.

It's copying completely unconscious.

So I ideally it, a shadow doesn't want you to know of its existence.

It wants you to be entirely identified with it so that you don't even know you've got a shadow.

You believe that shutting down in a relationship, pushing your partner away, even though deep down you want closeness, that that's you, that that is actually you who wants that, which of course is not true.

It's your shadow which wants that in order to feed from the pain, the drama, the suffering.

This is the total unconsciousness state.

It's ideal for the shadow.

The shadow can do whatever it wants.

We're fully identified with it.

It feeds from us, then it goes away for a little while only to come back again.

And this process keeps continuing and we're totally lost.

But then as we awaken, we enter the shadow work phase one.

The shadow work phase one essentially is when we become conceptually aware of the shadow, but we're still tightly in its grip.

Self-sabotage, or we're sabotaging still our intimate life, but there is awareness around the fact that we're doing that.

And sabotaging our intimate life, everything in our life, but it shows specifically in our intimate life, because when we realize ourselves in union, that is when so much evolution happens, right?

That's why it's such a fret to the shadow, to realize ourselves in a relationship, to awaken, to heal deeply and profoundly in a relationship.

Now, phase one of the shadow, shadow work is when we're conceptually intellectually aware.

You are aware that there is something within you that is doing something or that is hindering from you, going deeper from you, opening your heart deeper from you, healing and becoming more free.

Something that's limiting you, something that's almost pushing you into the other direction, that your soul, that your heart actually wants to go towards.

This leads us as we continued and doing our work, it leads us to phase two.

Phase two is where we are trying hard, but we are still feeling like we're failing miserably, so we are no longer just consciously aware.

We already had some breakthrough moments of where we realized ourselves as as free from the shadow, at least for a brief moment.

Some people experience this through ayahuasca, others through meditation, others through breath work, whatever it is, a moment where we experienced ourselves called it as love, as conscious as it doesn't matter.

But then the shadow comes back again.

Boom.

So we have this moment of freedom, boom.

And the shadow is back.

It's a very small moment, but it's a crack.

It's a crack that where the light floods in.

It's a, where the love floods in and it makes us realize, whoa.

This is much stronger and much has me much more in its grip than I would've ever thought.

The way I'm living my reality is not at all actually in accordance to how I truthfully could experience this world and uh, the reality I could truly experience and create.

Now, this is where it gets very difficult because we're trying hard, we experience some breakthrough moments only to be pushed back, our shadow to hijack us again.

Because the shadow is realizing that you are integrating it.

It doesn't like what you're doing.

It doesn't want you to continue.

You have now become a proper threat to it because you are aware of it, so strongly aware of it, and you had these breakthrough moments where you start to realize yourself.

The shadow is realizing that you are losing power, that it's losing power over you, and it starts to attack you as aggressively as possible.

This is where a lot of people get serious.

Lose hope, lose trust in their journey, are riddled with self-doubt and negativity.

But if you persist, if you continue to go deeper and face it a million times per day or even more often if it has to be, then you enter what I call phase three of shadow work, and this is where you start to get in control.

So while the shadow is still there and still tries to trick you, it no longer has the same grip and power over you.

You can very fairly quickly shift out of it, and you're human.

We're all imperfect, but this is where relationships become a sanctuary of healing, safety, and trust where everything starts to change and you can create the most beautiful a most abundant reality available to you in this life.

Because the shadow is still there, but it, you're no longer so identified with it.

It can no longer pull you left, right up, down.

You can now consciously create from your truth, create a really abandoned, beautiful reality in every possible way in your life.

And the shadow will come here and there it will speak to you.

It will try to tell you right unworthy or whatever.

And there might even be moments or a few days where you feel more trapped in it and it's a bit difficult.

But then boom, it's almost like in this phase three the sacred and the infinite intelligence of universe, enough of it has entered your heart, your life, so that you are now almost like protected.

There is a protective membrane around you.

That's how I often like to describe it.

So even though the shadow might come hard, there is this sense of simultaneously awareness of love, a deeper sense of of peace, a deeper sense of all is well, that you are protected, that you are guided.

That's how I personally experience it.

they're also thresholds to this.

So, in phase three, you can still fall a little bit back into it, but you can never lose that deeper state of consciousness or realization that you have acquired.

Whereas in phase two, you will be thrown from total unconsciousness back into consciousness, total unconsciousness back into consciousness.

In phase three.

It's not that.

It's not that I'm enlightened or that you are enlightened in phase three or totally free of all suffering, but you've reached a certain level of consciousness where you don't fall back, no matter how hard the shadow strikes.

It's no longer that pendulum doesn't swing that strongly anymore.

And of course it goes deeper, but at the end of the day, great if it goes deeper than phase three.

But phase three is already fucking amazing.

Life is amazing.

Life is overall incredibly beautiful, so it doesn't really matter whether you can go deeper, of course, and you will give your best to continue to go deeper.

Now, getting to this phase three is not easy.

It'll require all your courage, all your strength, but it is possible and the hardship makes it even sweeter.

When you then experience yourself in that.

It makes it even sweeter that you have gone through this hardship before.

So now this leads us to what do we need to do in our intimate life to actively integrate our shadow and experience the sacredness and depth, I call it the spirit of sacred union that we truly want to experience?

Now, number one is, We need to start taking full responsibility for our shadow.

There can be no part inside us that is still outsourcing that responsibility, that is still saying, because of this, my shadow got triggered.

No need to take full responsibility that this is our spiritual battle, our spiritual journey, and we need to work with our own shadow.

No one can do this for us.

Now, what this means is that we need to start giving everything to remain conscious, to not lose consciousness.

As long as we are conscious, the shadow might come.

It might annoy us.

It might irritate us, but we can consciously experience it.

It's when it pulls us into unconsciousness, where it feeds from us, where we unconsciously strengthen it.

And by the way, when you hear this, don't be afraid of strengthening the shadow unconsciously.

That in itself, that fear is created by the shadow.

The greatest paradox is that your shadow is going to try to trick you as you do your shadow work.

Now, you need to start giving everything to remain conscious of it.

This doesn't mean that you become overly serious, so be mindful of that.

Remaining conscious doesn't mean you become ultra serious.

Now I need to be conscious all the time.

I need to be conscious all the time.

That is also the shadow hijacking you as you do your shadow work.

Remaining conscious means that you are not fully identified with it.

That means there can be some humor or there's another sense of awareness that tells you that that is not you.

So remaining conscious is the most important thing, but just remember that remaining conscious doesn't mean you become overly serious.

It means that you just give your best to remain conscious so you don't fall into unconsciousness where your shadow hijacks you, and you show up in ways that lead you away from that which you truly, truly want to create.

Now also, we need to work on a perspective shift when it comes to shadow work.

We need to shift our perspective from all the relationship is irritating me.

Why is this so difficult?

Why is this so painful?

Which is what the shadow loves to say.

We can reframe this to too it is a blessing when our partner exposes things within us, or when the relationship container exposes things within us.

It is a blessing when our shadow gets exposed in a relationship.

This means there's an opportunity for growth, and I want you to hunt down these opportunities.

Every single time.

Their relationship irritates you, pushes you into unconsciousness, bam.

That is where your work lies.

If you put your whole focus on that, you're going to spiritually accelerate like never before.

So many of us bypassed that, and we are all in the love and light.

Love and light.

No, it's in the darkness.

It's in the ugly of that.

That is where true spiritual awakening happens.

Now, also something you can do when your shadow starts to hijack you, your body shuts down because it's hijacked by your shadow and you, and you start to show up in ways you don't want to show up, you can take a deep breath into your heart.

And you can connect with your true desire.

You can ask yourself the question, what is it that I truly want to create?

And this is the most important thing.

This is what we call a pattern interrupt.

A pattern interrupt can be taking a deep breath, focusing on a long exhale.

But that's usually not strong enough, otherwise we all will be enlightened already.

Just take a deep breath because the momentum of the shadow is so strong and so powerful.

So before you shut down, before you say something, before you show up, in a way you intimate life you don't want to show up, you need to create a pattern interrupt and you need to find what works best for you.

So for instance, upright posture, deep breath.

That is one way how we can, um, create a pattern, der, because we remain conscious.

Our breath, being aware of our breath Connects us with our true nature.

It can also be feeling like I mention to our heart and asking ourselves, what is it that I truly want to create?

Becoming aware of that, feeling it in your heart, and then c consciously choosing to create that.

This is what then means the shadow is burning, because you are going the other way of where it wants you to go.

You are not doing what it wants you to do in order to feed from you.

You're consciously choosing to create a different reality.

The reality, you are men, you're anchoring the highest frequency of love and consciousness.

So these are all ways.

Then you can do embodiment practices.

You can do shaking.

You can listen to music and just dance like a fucking maniac.

Whatever it is that works for you.

Now, I teach so many embodiment practices, uh, in my programs, in my workshops, but it will, it'll become an hour, say, many hour long episode if I go into every single one of them.

But you can find it in lorinkrenn.com/trainings or by clicking on the show notes.

Um, if you want to go deeper and really learn the most life-changing and powerful embodiment practices.

Now, also a really powerful.

A way to work with our shadow is, so find whatever way you can do a pattern interrupt.

This can also be bringing your awareness to your feet, feeling the earth grounding, anything that works, that interrupts the pattern because that's when you start to connect with what you truly want to create, and then you choose a different reality.

And that is where everything starts to change.

The more you do that, the more you integrate your shadow, the more you experience safety, deep intimacy, the love in the relationship you truly desire, the more you naturally integrate your shadow.

Also very important, when our shadow is burning and we are basically choosing to create a different reality, the shadow will not allow us to do that without fighting, without pushing hard, and getting very, very aggressive, getting very volatile.

So it's very important that when your shadow is burning, as you are creating the vision and truth in your heart, that you know, as you are creating what you truly want to create, that this burning of the shadow, which naturally occurs, rather than allowing yourself to feel the sorrow and identifying with how painful it is, because that's also what the shadow wants you to do, right?

I'm my shadow work.

I'm so, I'm such a victim.

This is so painful.

Of course it is.

But don't get identified with that.

You can cultivate a sense of gratitude, a sense of openness, a receptivity.

Hmm, wow, my shadow is burning right now.

Hmm.

Let me be open to that.

Let me even say, wow, thank you.

Thank you for that painful, but awakening and enlightening experience.

So practicing to allow your shadow to burn with as little resistance as possible and as little identification with whatever the shadow comes up with in that moment.

And also becoming aware of, is that truly me?

And with time, the deeper you go, you notice that it is, of course not you.

That while it is challenging, it gives you immense spiritual freedom.

Your shadow is burning.

It's painful, but only temporarily.

If you don't identify too much with it, and you can allow that to happen, that's the power of spiritual warriorship.

That it what means to spiritual warrior.

As you surrender, surrender in it.

Which leads us to a, essentially the most important thing, pettern interrupt, ultra important.

And all the other things I mentioned.

But at the end of the day, there's only one medicine.

To truly integrate your shadow, the deepest level, and that is surrender.

Surrender means acceptance, or acceptance is an attribute of the virtue and depth of truly surrendering.

Surrender is not passive.

Surrender does not mean you give up.

What surrender means is that you surrender into the burning of your shadow.

It screams and you surrender into it.

You don't follow it.

One of the greatest skills one can ever learn to spiritually free themselves and truly awaken.

So what are specific things that you can do in your intimate life when your shadow gets triggered?

Own to your partner.

When you have gotten lost in your shadow, come to them and express to them, Hey, that was, I was coming from my shadow.

What I said and how I showed up was not how I truly wanted to show up.

And then explain to them what you truly want to create and own it fully.

This create so much safety and so much consciousness around this.

This also is an is leads to an essential burning of the shadow as you are doing that.

Also speak vulnerably about when your shadow is triggered.

Bring it out into the open.

Don't hide it, speak vulnerably.

Say Right now my shadow is triggered, and what the negative state I'm experiencing has nothing to do with you.

It's just that my shadow is triggered right now.

Observe what your shadow does, where it wants to go, but don't follow it.

Observe it, but don't get taken by the storm.

Remain conscious.

I just wanna emphasize here also the point, don't get too serious, because this will also have a negative impact on your relationship life.

Don't get too in identified as being a shadow worker.

That is the biggest delusion of it all.

Bring some humor in.

Don't take your journey too seriously.

Relax into it.

Accept exactly where you are right now.

As you practice acceptance, you integrate the shadow.

Every resistance unconsciously strengthens the shadow.

This was kind of a crash course into shadow work, and what's most important to do.

If you want to go deeper, know about the exact practices, know about how you can truly create the intimate life that you want to experience, embody your highest truth, embody your awakened feminine, or your awakened mask, depending on what your core energy is, then I teach deeper about all of this in my trainings.

You can visit lorinkrenn.com/trainings to learn more about my upcoming trainings.

I also invite you to join my newsletter, which you can find in the show notes or by visiting lorinkrenn.com/newsletters to receive in-depth powerful emails every Friday, covering a specific theme and learning more about our upcoming offerings.

I Also offer free eBooks, which you can check out in the show notes or by visiting lorinkrenn.com/books.

Thank you so much for being here.

If you have listened to this entire episode, then it means that there is a deep desire, a deep hunger within you to grow, to, to awaken at the most powerful and at the highest level.

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In order to truly experience the intimate life and life in general that we want to experience.

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