We're all aware of how "negative people" can bring us down but can positivity become toxic and how so?

This episode explores two obstacles to spiritual development - toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing. Both of these deepen and add to the shadow while allowing the ego to grow in an unhealthy way.

Host and spiritual teacher, John Moore goes through each of these, how they're related, and what you can do about them.

Announcer 0:30

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, john Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now here's john.

John Moore 0:49

Hello, everybody, wherever you happen to be in the worlds

as I record this episode of the podcast, it is a Sunday morning where I am. So I wish you good morning, even though it could be any time of day that you're listening to this, and it's one of the cool things I love about technology and the internet and all of those wonderful things is that I can speak to people all over the world, I think the last count, when I looked at my podcast statistics were 30 different countries, people were listening to this from so welcome wherever you're from. And whatever time of day, you're listening to this. And I'm, it makes me super happy to hear from people who've listened to this and, and just know that people are listening, and hopefully I, you know, do my best to offer useful tidbits and, you know, things I've picked up along the way and things I've learned in my training and discoveries I've made and that sort of thing. And I hope it's extremely useful for you, beyond just sort of pontificating, or, you know, this is, pardon me, this is how things go. By the way, I don't edit these. So if I cough a little bit or something, you get it wrong. I feel like that's a little more authentic, when I come to you without editing of any kind. So anyway, I hope this is useful. My whole intention of this podcast is to provide useful information, not just, Oh, that's interesting, or, you know, something that you can put to use or some understanding that you can get that helps you on your spiritual path, or gives you information about a spiritual path, you may want to explore or, you know, that sort of thing. And with that in mind, I'm going to talk about a subject that is that comes up for me a lot, particularly when I'm teaching or when I've led groups in the past and that sort of thing. So there's these two related concepts, one, you know, I'll give them different names, but they're kind of two peas in a pod are two sides to the same coin, if you were the one concept is this idea of toxic positivity. And that may sound a little strange to you. And you may never have heard that phrase before. And the other one is spiritual bypassing. And in and again, you may or may not have heard those, either one of those terms. And so I'm gonna, as always, if I introduce something that may be new or different concept, I'm going to define those terms, I'm going to define them from my understanding also, not because my definitions are correct, simply so you understand where I'm coming from. And you may have heard different definitions of these terms. And I'm not here to say that they're incorrect. I'm just here to say, this is how I'm using them so you can understand them when I talk about them. So, you know, we probably all have the understanding of toxic or really negative people in our life, right? We have people who, you know, we've all encountered people who seem to live to complain about things. And, you know, they people that can, can really bring you down can bring the energy of a room down. And, you know, it's understandable why some people might try to flip to the other side and look at everything in a positive light. And there's there is a there's this spiritual truth to that there's a spiritual truth to the idea that people are on their own path. And people are experiencing things for reasons unseen, and we're all evolving and all of those things. Where this kind of becomes a problem is or not even kind of where this is, there's a few places where positivity can become a problem. Right? So,

the first, the first kind of most obvious one is the denial of reality. Right? There's sort of this famous, I don't know where it comes from, but there's this on the internet, there's this famous meme image of, it's a dog who's sitting, I guess, in a house or something, and everything around him is on fire. And he's saying, everything is fine. Right, everything is fine, I'm just going to ignore the circumstances around me, I'm not going to take care of business, that sort of thing. That's when and that leads to all kinds of problems that leads to poor boundaries, right? with friends, oh, they're okay. You know, oh, this, you know, this person's Okay, that that sort of thing, it leads to us not setting up proper boundaries with people, sometimes it leads us to not taking steps necessary to solve our problems. That sort of thing. So in that way, positivity, sort of unwarranted positivity, which takes the form of ignoring reality, or ignoring the steps need needed to be taken in certain circumstances. There in it becomes toxic. I think going into things with having the attitude of I'm going to do all I can do and things will turn out, okay. It's totally fine. Right, things will turn out as they are supposed to, I'm still going to do what I need to do. And I, I tend to approach things from you know, obviously, I'm a shamanic practitioner, my training is in shamanism. And so I tend to approach things from that perspective. And in shamanism, we are, you know, practitioners are expected to walk in multiple worlds, that is we deal with physical reality. And we deal with spiritual reality at the same time. And, you know, traditional shamanic cultures, you were, you know, if you held the role of Shawn and a culture, you were not just a healer, but you would probably be expected to, you know, help your, your help your tribe in other ways, such as help them know when to plant things or help them know when to move a herd or when to hunt, or, you know, that sort of thing. You're taking care of the every day, things that help kept your community healthy, safe and sane, as well as attending to the spiritual needs of the community. I know in and I am not an expert, but I you know, I've read a little about the, you know, the Kahuna in Hawaii, and the Kahunas. You know, we might call them shaman or medicine men or what have you. But my understanding is they had specialties and there were Kahunas who were good at navigation and good or good at fishing or good at planting crops or, you know, could navigate by the stars and all of these things. So there was a level of really practical, real world survival and thriving knowledge that they had to have besides this sort of hidden spiritual teachings that went on, as well. And that, you know, that's true in other cultures as well that the shamanic people in other cultures may have had specialties, some may have been healers, some may have been diviners, some may have had other other types of specialties. And I find that true even with modern shamanism with core shamanism you know, I know people who are say, you know, work with animals, animal whispers, I know people who are specialized around soul retrieval or deep possession or you know, bunches of practices and people that are specialized around them, whether shamanism is a specialty for some people, that sort of thing. But again, the idea is is attending to the entirety of reality, which includes physical reality as well. So, the other side of toxic positivity, and I'm going to, I'm going to spend some time at near the end of this podcast talking about

holding space and what that means holding space for others, who may be experiencing something painful, and how to be how to be a healing presence for those people who are going through something challenging difficulty. So, again, so toxic positivity where you know, again, so we it can be become toxic with ourselves when we are ignoring circumstances that are going on. And it can become toxic towards others, when we seek to have them bypass their pain, right. So this is the one that you know, people are, people have great intentions sometimes, and when a loved one passes away, and this happens frequently, in my experience in the United States, and I don't know if other cultures have similar, similar things. But this is something that happens here that I've seen a lot. So somebody passes away, and people try to comfort their loved ones by saying pleasantries like, oh, they're in a better place now, or Oh, they're out of pain or, you know, look on the bright, you know, look on the bright side of your loved one passing away. And these people are absolutely well intentioned, loving human beings who just want to alleviate the pain and grief that another person is going through. The issue with this is grief is a natural process that we all need to go through. And you can't really bypass it, you can push it off, you can shove it down into the shadow part of you, I've talked a lot in the past, I've done an entire podcast on Shadow Work. And this is an area of mine that I focus a lot on. Because everybody, everybody has a shadow and everybody should be doing Shadow Work, in my opinion. So, you know, when you know when somebody is going through something rough, whether that's the loss of a loved one, or a breakup or something else, loss of a job loss of a home, and you show up and try to paint something, you know, painting in a better light or something like that. That's not particularly helpful. Actually, you know, a person may or may not feel a little bit better for a very short period of time. But you're bypassing the natural grieving process. This is, I'm going to talk about a solution for that, I'm going to talk about what it means to hold space for somebody towards the end of this podcast, after I get through the toxic parts. Again, you know, I try to be useful. So if I'm just talking about things that are bad, these are, you know, not bad, that's a value judgment, these are sort of stumbling blocks, stumbling blocks to becoming a more integrated person and helping others to become more integrated and or staying out of the way of other's own integration work. So, you know, again, this is toxic, and I have you know, personally when I've been through something rough, and somebody comes to me and says, Oh, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna be great, you're gonna get back in the, you know, data that you're ignoring my pain. And I often feel, have felt, I guess, resentful of that. I felt resentful of somebody trying to bypass my pain and saying, you know, basically, it feels like somebody saying your pain is legitimate. Because you're just not looking at things from the proper perspective. And that is a real, that's a real judgment. It's in a in a subtle way, and as well intentioned, does that maybe in a subtle way, it's very shaming. It's saying there's something wrong with you for feeling Pain is something wrong with you for taking the death of a loved one so harshly, you should be looking at things from a different perspective, and then your pain will magically go away. It's not how it works. It's not how it has ever worked, it's not how it will ever work.

So again, you know, I'm gonna talk about towards the end, I'm going to talk about the solution, a solution for that, how you can show up for people because, you know, most people care about other human beings. And, again, these can be very well intentioned things that we're doing when we show up for somebody and say, oh, look on the bright side, you can have the best of intentions, I'm just here to alleviate this person's pain, I want them to feel better. But there's another part of this as well. Another part of it is that I'm there can be discomfort and awkwardness, with experiencing somebody going through something hard, going through some painful emotions, some painful challenges. And so, you know, maybe on an unconscious level, we want to avoid that we want to avoid experiencing that. Because we're empathetic, and we feel what other people are feeling. And it's painful to see somebody we care about going through something hard, went through something painful. We want to make it better, we want to fix things, I fall into that category. I'm a fixer, I love to fix things, it was a hard, it's a hard lesson for me, I want to jump in, make everybody feel better. It's been a real work, you know, it's a work in progress for me to not rescue people from their feelings. And this comes up in teaching quite frequently when I'm teaching. Teaching shamanism in particular. You know, we sit in, we sit in a circle, which is a sacred shape. And so we can see everybody interact with everybody. And there's a sort of energetic connection that that happens in a circle, that's a little hard to describe. There's a closeness, even if the people you're in the room with are strangers, you're in their energy field, you're observing them, that sort of thing. And sometimes people have some really hard emotions come up, some times people break down and cry, and circle or that sort of thing. And there's this urge, because people, there tend to be good people who want to be helping others, and they're spiritually conscious, and all of these things, there's this urge to rescue them from their feelings. And at the beginning of any training circle, we always tell people, when somebody has these tough feelings come up, or somebody gets emotional, or they start crying or whatever, it is not your job to rescue them. There's a there's a number of reasons for that. One is people are fully capable of rescuing themselves. And we go from that assumption that everybody has sovereignty, including emotional sovereignty over themselves. You know, another reason is, is exactly what I'm talking about. We're not wanting people to bypass these feelings that are coming up there. So they're coming up for a reason. You know, whether it's some old trauma or just something else, you know, this stuff that's been stored in our body, mind and spirit for so long, wants to come up and be expressed. And we should let that we should honor it, we should allow it. We should allow people to melt down. Obviously, we don't allow people to harm themselves. We make sure people aren't in an OK condition to drive when they leave, or you know, are grounded and integrated before they before they head home. And that's a safety issue more than anything else. We just don't we don't want people having an emotional breakdown and hopping in their car and getting into an accident or harming themselves in some other way or you know, that that sort of thing. But that's not bypassing it's not you know, that's just a safety issue. But you know, so I've seen this over and over again, somebody has some emotions and people Like, you know, want to jump in and talk about it, want to jump in and rescue, save that person from themselves saving them from their tough emotions? No, you're supposed to feel those. They're supposed to come up.

And they are unpleasant. But when you're when they you allow them to move through you, they have less of a hold on your life. And I would encourage you to, I'll probably do more episodes on shadow stuff going forward. So we're talking about, you know, at this, this point, we're talking about toxic positivity, and how how it kind of shows up in ways that stifle the natural movement of emotion. Or we use as a way to blind us to the reality that we're in. Right, we're sitting in the room that's on fire going, everything is okay, I feel great. I'm no recognize that you're afraid. And I remember, you know, a few years ago, obviously, before the pandemic, I was hosting meetups in the area, for a group called spiritually conscious professionals. And we, you know, there were basically open to anyone who had any sort of spiritual consciousness or spiritually curious or, you know, that sort of thing. And we had people from all walks of life and all different types of spirituality show up, we had people who were minister, Christian ministers, who were counseling ministers, we had people who were acupuncturist and practice, you know, Taoism. And we had people who were your Reiki practitioners or shamanic practitioners or what have you. And it was really nice, meetup and I hope to get back to it post pandemic, in person. And it was great, there were lots of shares, lots of viewpoints. And I'll never forget, there were two young women who showed up to one of the meetings and they were new to a spiritual path. And they were both in recovery from drug addiction. So fairly new to recovery. They were, I believe, getting outpatient treatment for substance addiction. I don't, you know, I don't know which substances but um, you know, that's a pretty big deal. And they have been working, in part they've been working spiritually to help them with some of the challenges of overcoming addiction. And Gosh, what a hard path. That is, I, you know, as an outside observer, you know, and having lots of people that I'm related to, and lots of people I know, struggle with addiction, what a hard path that is. And we should recognize that, you know, we should recognize what challenging what a challenging thing addiction is. It is not something I wish on anybody. It's a horrible thing to kick. Anyway, these two young women, great intentions, they came, you know, they came to talk about spirituality and all of these things. And, you know, one of the young women was talking about how she thought, you know, she thought that she was at the point in her spiritual development where she shouldn't get angry at people anymore. Wouldn't that be a lovely thing? Right? And, you know, on her way over to the meeting, somebody she was in traffic, and somebody had cut her off or something, and she got angry with that person. And then she noticed she was angry with that person and became angry about being angry, I shouldn't be angry. And you know, and my question for was well then were you angry that you got angry that you were angry? And how far does that go? You know, if you had just had allowed yourself a human moment and said, I feel angry right now. It would have passed probably in a few minutes. But she hung on to it and then she got angry at herself. And this isn't necessarily toxic positivity because she wasn't bypassing but there was this idea that is present in toxic positivity and and spiritual bypassing that I'm I'm evolved to the point Where I shouldn't feel these feelings anymore.

Or it's wrong to have certain types of feelings or it's, you know, it's the shoulds. When we get into the shoulds, and the showdance, we tend to be shaming ourselves. She was basically shaming herself for having a human moment. And it's not to say you can't reflect on your feelings. It's not to say, Gosh, I got really mad at that guy a few minutes ago for cutting me off in traffic. And you know, that seems like a silly small minor thing to get mad about. But where's that coming from? For me, that's when this can turn into a positive thing. When we start to look at the stuff that might be in our shadow, why am I getting triggered by this? Why am I getting angry about this? And that's not to judge it. It's not to say this is bad or wrong, or, again, should or shouldn't. It's not about judgment. It's about discernment. It's about what's going on for me, what is what is in me that needs to be healed? Or where is this coming from? Where is this anger coming from being triggered is a really good indicator, usually that there's a wound in the unconscious, or there's a wound that is unconscious, I should say, it's a better way to phrase that. There's an unconscious wound. And, um, you know, from talking about shadow stuff, and Shadow Work, we know that healing and integration is really about casting a light on the stuff that's in our shadow. It's not about pretending that it's not there. It's not about pretending that we don't get angry. It's not about convincing ourselves that we're bad because we feel angry, or we're not enlightened or evolved or ascended, or what have you, because we feel anger. None of those things. It's about recognizing that we're human, and we have those moments. And, um, you know, you may get to the point in your spiritual development where things bother you a lot less, you become more imperturbable. And that is a noble goal. But that is not something that you can fake it till you make it. Because by faking it, again, you're cramming these emotions down into your shadow. And the stuff that's in your shadow, if you don't recognize it, integrate at work with it, it will run your life in ways that you don't even expect that you don't even know. A good example, if you've ever watched the show Seinfeld. You know, there's an episode where the character George's father has this little phrase that he repeats. serenity now, he's just serenity now, serenity now, but he's getting angrier and angrier and he's, instead of calming himself, it's, he's screaming it. Right? And, you know, it's, it's a joke, you know, it's meant to be funny, because here's this guy screaming serenity now is he's getting completely outraged. Um, but it's, you know, if you honor if you honor your feelings, and you look at them, and you look at them from not, you look at them from a non judgmental perspective. You know, it's, you know, it's hard to it's a little bit hard to say this, but if you treat yourself a little bit like you would treat a toddler. Okay, a toddler who's having a temper tantrum, screaming and shaming at that toddler is not going to stop that toddler from having a temper tantrum. That will not work that will make things I'm a dad, I know that will make that would make things much much worse.

Instead, you you know, one tact is to recognize the toddler's feelings and say, Oh my gosh, you're so angry. You know, tell me about what's making you so angry. You know and sit with them and respect that they're feeling angry. You can't talk a toddler out of feeling angry. So there are parts of us there. There are parts of us inside that are childish as well. parts that may never have grown up and that's fine. We've all heard of the inner child and all of that sort of thing and a lot of our emotion comes from there. Some of it comes from childhood wounding or Other traumatic experiences, and you can't yell at or shame yourself or, you know, convince yourself that that stuff doesn't exist. But you can honor it, and you can work with it. And it will have less of less of a grasp on your life, I'm not saying you'll feel emotions less, I'm saying you'll have fewer unconscious responses, you'll be less reactive, maybe you'll feel better, you might have less depression, you might feel healthier from not suppressing constantly. Um, I know I do. I know, you know, for years and years, I repressed a whole lot of stuff. Decades actually. And, you know, my own story is, you know, I come from a background of trauma, serious childhood trauma. I come from a family where there was Domestic Abuse and Child Abuse and substance abuse, and you know, the word abuse happens a lot. And I bypass that for decades, because it was so painful, it was so painful to look at, it was painful to express my feelings. And that came to a head with a real health crisis, actually. And that's what got me to sort of come into shamanism as a way to heal myself, I, you know, I will fully admit that I came to shamanism from a 100% selfish perspective, that I just wanted, some self healing. But those floodgates opened and I was not in control. And it was, you know, it was, it was a extremely uncontrolled mess. My life became a mess. And as a dad, I was, you know, not always the best dad, I could be. I never, you know, I never used my children or anything like that, but I just couldn't be present for them. Because I couldn't be present with myself, I can, you know, I was lost. I went through a crisis. And, you know, in allowing myself to move through that, and working with my shadow material, and all of those things, I really did take better control of my life, I really did get a grip on things, and I really did become the Father, I wanted to be and have the relationship with my daughters, I'm so close with my daughters, very, very close with my daughters. And, you know, I treasured nothing more than my relationship with them. Have a fantastic relationship with my daughters. And, you know, there's a lot of research that says that when parents do their own work and heal, that has an extremely positive effect on kids mental health. So, so I'm happy to say, and I will never say that I'm perfect, I will never say that I'm done. I will never say any of those things, continually work on myself, continually do my self work. But in the process, I found out that I was pretty good at helping other people as well. And then I loved teaching. And I loved teaching especially people to help themselves. Because ultimately, we are all

you know, internally, we are all sparks from the same divine light. And you are, you are as divine as anybody. You have the same piece of divinity within you that everyone else has, you are connected to everything. And you have talked about divinity a lot and I will probably talk about it more in future podcasts. But I believe that and I've seen that and I have seen people shine their light and it is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So anyway, toxic positivity. You have talked a lot about that. And I want to talk a little bit about spiritual bypassing, which is a another another kind of aspect of the same phenomena, I guess. So when we talk about spiritual bypassing, we're talking about people who are again, there you spirituality to bypass and I realize I'm using the term to define the term but I will, I'll get better with this, I promise I'll narrow it down a little bit more. They're using spirituality, to ignore their feelings, to bypass boundaries to you know, again, it's just like with toxic positivity, they're sitting in the burning room going, everything is fine. This is what was meant to be. I am, I am ascended. You know, and again with the story with a with a young woman who came to my meetup and she was, she was angry at herself for getting angry. what she was doing was she was attempting, unsuccessfully to spiritually bypass her anger, to say, I am at a level of spirit now where I don't have human emotions. Um, you know, I haven't met too many people that have completely bypass spiritual, you know, use spiritual means to completely bypassed human emotion. And by I haven't met too many people, I think the exact number of people I've met is zero. And I have met all kinds of people. I have spent time with Tibetan Buddhist monks and new lots of new age people and that hundreds of shamanic practitioners and energy workers and all kinds of all kinds of people. And yeah, I mean, there, there's a fair, fair amount of people who are have declared themselves enlightened or ascended or what have you. You know, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna speak to that too much, I think. I think they're, you know, I think there are people who have an abiding consciousness of their non dual nature, I think there are people who've gotten there. It's pretty rare. I mean, by inviting I mean, all the time, I think lots and lots of people have these glimpses of their connection to everything. I certainly get them. But it's, it's a hard place to abide in because we all have egos. And we all have identified with, to some degree with a body and with a name and with labels, you know, I'm a dad, I'm a shamanic practitioner, I'm, I'm an American, I'm this I'm that. And, you know, part of the work that I do spiritually is to spend some time dis identifying with those labels, roles and ideas. However, I still get to come back into waking reality and, you know, show the tribe where to plant the corn, show the tribe, where to hunt, the elk, you know, those kinds of things. Of course, I'm being metaphoric here. Although I do live next to a farm where they grow corn, I do not tell them where to grow it, and I don't hunt elk. But being metaphoric, I still have to walk in both worlds, I still have to, you know, take my kids to school

and, and those kinds of things, and deal with a pandemic. You know, I just got my first vaccine shot, and I'm looking forward to getting my second one so that I can start to have gatherings again with other people who have been vaccinated. You know, as spiritual as I am and into spiritual healing as I am, I still trust the science I still trust medicine, I still go to the doctor. All of those things they don't spiritually bypass that. So I think you know, what happens and in you know, this is something I've spoken about before, as well is that when you are doing spiritual development, I'm speaking in a very broad term here. you're developing your astral body and again, I'm you know, I'm speaking in a very broad term as well here because you could be doing all kinds of things you could be developing your physical body using yoga asanas. You could be developing your a theory of body by you know, meditating on chakras and doing cleansing and you know, that sort of thing. But when you do when you do Do these things and when you gain knowledge, and when you practice and you meditate and you pray and you make offerings, and, you know, any of these things that you do that are spiritual, that offer spiritual development, you are developing your, your astral body, right, you're what we might call your soul body, you're developing that in its, you know, not developing, like you're building muscles on it because it is a formless thing.

just, I don't know. It's just a term that I've seen thrown around a lot by people who are sometimes sleazy for lack of a better term. And not everybody, certainly not everybody using the that term or not even most people. But it's a hide. So if you're using spirituality as a hide, if you're using it as a method of denial, if you're using it to not feel your feelings, or you're using it to not address your shadow, you're doing what we call spiritual bypassing. The danger of that is you're not doing your cleanup work, you're not doing the Shadow Work that you need to be doing. In fact, you're probably increasing your shadow. You're probably cramming more trauma, feeling hurt down into your shadow saying it's unacceptable for me to have human experiences. I should not I'm too spiritual for that. I don't get angry, I've ascended. This is not to say you can't let go of feelings, they come up. And you can let them go as they come up. But you can only do that if you're addressing them. You can't do that if you're denying them. You can't You can't release feelings. You can't release emotional energy, if you could deny that it exists. Right? It's like, you know, it's like in spy movies when they're holding, you know, when they're holding somebody in secret in a secret location. And nobody's gonna seek them out to rescue them because they don't know that they exist. Right? Or they don't know. They don't know that they're in danger. Right. I'm a big fan of the old James Bond films I, you know, I loved Sean Connery and Roger Moore, and you know, all those guys, you know, and they tended to have to rescue themselves because they were, you know, they were on this top secret mission. And that's what your feelings are. If you push them down, your feelings are not meant to be secret agents. So, let's talk, you know, because, again, I want these podcast episodes to be useful to you. Let's talk about some solutions for this. So the first solution is when you're dealing with your own stuff, you know, first of all, do Shadow Work, seek out somebody to teach you to do Shadow Work, read about Shadow Work, find a you know, work with a depth psychologist or work with a shamanic practitioner who is versed in shadow work. And do this work. If you're doing spiritual work at all, and you're not addressing your shadow, you're missing at least half but probably more of the work to be done. But I think everybody could benefit from Shadow Work, whether you're doing spiritual work or not. And there's all kinds of ways to do that. So that's, that's the first one. The second one is to become observant to become really observant of your feelings as they arise. And it's okay to you know, it's okay to label them. It's okay to examine them. But don't, you know, don't push them away. And I know it can be hard if you're in a situation, you're sitting at work and you're overcome with an emotion and you're like, I gotta just get through the day. I get that. I do get that. And sometimes you just need time, you know, some time to I get I have to, you know, I've got to focus on something right now. And I'll deal with this later. The problem is when later never comes. So one of the you know, One of the healing practices that I have myself used and and have gotten great benefit from is to learn to become comfortable with the discomfort and sit with painful emotions. And when I say sit with painful emotions, I literally mean that I mean sit and just experience the emotion and allow it allow the emotion, what will happen is that

your emotions will peak, there'll be they'll come in waves, there'll be peaks and valleys and that sort of thing. And eventually, the energy will move through you. And the important thing is not to attach to it, don't become mired in it, don't feel it. And don't push it away. So you sit in a space of allowing, and allow yourself to feel what you're feeling. And if you decide this is useful, you can you can explore it from a sensory perspective, meaning, where do I feel this in my body? Does it have a size doesn't have a shape? When I associate a color with it? Does it have a texture? Does it have a temperature? Does it have a sound? Does it have a smell? Is there a taste in my mouth, you can explore it from that perspective, from the perspective of curiosity. Over time, over time, you know, this allows a lot of stuff to come up and out, that wants to move through you, it doesn't want to be locked in some motion this these feelings, these hard things they don't want to be locked in, they want to come up and out. So that is that is one aspects of the Shadow Work. Sitting you know, becoming comfortable with a discomfort and sitting with painful feelings. Without having to take action on them. Just feel them. Just feel them there's nothing to do. Just be with them. Okay, and the third piece is learning to hold space for with others. So this is you know, and I talked earlier on about what happens when I've been in circle teaching and hard emotions come up for some some buddy. And there are other people in the group whose instinct is to rescue that person to save them from what they're feeling, to make them feel better to comfort them. And we've got you know, we've we tried to put a really safe container around the space so people can have these feelings come up and out and it's fine. And we might offer somebody tissues if they're crying. But what we really do is something called holding space. And you can do this with an individually you can do this in a circle, you can do this as a collective. Holding space is really about being completely attentive. This is hard, it is a hard thing to learn to do. It's hard for me, it's still hard for me sometimes you sit with empathy, and total attentiveness to this other person and you become a sacred witness to their feelings. And trust me when I say there is something immensely healing about that. So you sit with out judgment. This is good, this is bad. This is you know, should shouldn't all of those things. You sit without judgment or stand or whatever, you know, it doesn't have to be sitting. I'm just thinking in my brain I'm picturing, you know, sitting in circle with people are going through tough emotions. We don't run to the rescue. We don't offer them personal stories about ourselves. This is a big one. Oh, you know, I had the same thing happened to me and blah, blah, blah. No, no, it's not about you. It is about them, is about you being a sacred witness to their pain. And by doing that, about creating that container for them for this pain, the pain will resolve. It will on its own. But not only that you're empowering this person by recognizing their sovereignty by recognizing their personal boundaries. Your job is to sit there and feel all of the awkwardness that there is. Um, the, the challenge sometimes is, What to say? If anything? right what to say to this person so that I'm not

trampling on their sovereignty? So, oftentimes the answer to that is nothing, say nothing, just sit and allow them to experience whatever is coming up. You can be encouraging sometimes I've had clients who've gone through some emotion and apologized for having some emotion, you know, I'm sorry that I'm crying or, you know, whatever. You know, and I don't want them to feel shameful or sorry that they're having some motions. So sometimes I will offer a word of encouragement and say, it's okay. Allow it all to come up. Or it's okay, let's just sit with it. What is what frequently happens with fixers and and again, I'm a fixer, I have this instinct is that will often jump into advice for somebody who's going through something. And that's not what that's not necessarily helpful. Because I'm having a moment, I'm having an emotional moment. I don't, I'm not thinking from my rational mind, when you're in, you know, just from a biological perspective, you might be operating from older parts of your brain, your limbic system, not operating from your neocortex, you're not in problem solving mode at that point. You're just in, I'm dealing with, you know, these overwhelming emotions that come up mode, and somebody jumping in. So you know, what you should do is X, Y, or Z. That is, it's not the time for that. It's not helpful. And if you if there's a question about it, if somebody comes to you, and this is something, this is something I love, I didn't invent any of these things, I'm just relaying them to you. These are things that I've learned, I've learned them from others. I've learned them from people who were practitioners, I've learned them from people who are in helping professions. So if there's a question, if somebody comes to you with a problem, and they're talking about a problem, and they're emotional, and they're, you know, whatever, your job is mainly to empathize with them. But if there's a question about offering them advice, um, just ask, just ask, would you like some advice about this? Or do you just want to sit and talk about this? You know, put it into your own words, but you know, I have, you know, I've had, you know, I've had people sort of Trump on, you know, I've had an issue, I've had people sort of step all over me and start to offer me advice, and it's usually unhelpful, or something I've already tried or that sort of thing. And then I feel like I don't want to share anymore. And so then I've got to like, stifle those feelings. So none of that puts the onus on me to deal with this other person who's trying to try to help me and they probably have great intentions, but what they're doing is not necessarily that helpful. So learn to sit and hold space. And if there is a question about whether advice or help is needed, ask, sit with empathy. It's okay to empathize with people. So, you know, just one small example from my life. You know, my, my daughter, both of my daughters are very smart. They do really well in school. And I have one daughter who tends to be really hard on herself when it comes to grades and, you know, she got a grade she didn't like on a test at one point and she came to me in tears and It was just, you know, she was a bit of a mess. She's very emotional about this. And, you know, she just starts talking, well, you know, these questions on the test, we didn't study this material, and the teacher never covered it in class, and this and that. And so instead of jumping in and trying to say, you know,

immediately trying to say, Oh, it's gonna be okay, or, you know, whatever, I did enter into her world a little bit ago, man, that really sucks. I hate it. When teachers do that. I hate it. When teachers put stuff on tests, how can they put something on a test that you never studied in class? You know, she just wanted a little empathy, she wanted some respect for what she was feeling. You know, and when she was able to calm down a little bit after that, after she saw that I was respecting her feelings, and we allow the emotion to pass through, then I could talk to her and say, Hey, you know, have you thought about the fact that this is just one test? You know, what are some things we can? What are some? What are some things that you could do? Can you contact a team, you know, and I always try to place it into the hands of the other person if I can. Because I want to respect their sovereignty and their ability to solve their own problems. I think most people have their own solutions. But we, we box people in pretty tightly. You know, we, we box behaviors in pretty tightly and people are always looking for social approval for things, and I, you know, as best you can give, give people your approval. Really, love is about acceptance and approval, and that sort of thing. You know, in holding space is really about that it's really about I approve, I, you know, I wish you weren't going through this pain, but I approve of your expression of it, I approve of you feeling your feelings. I approve of your reaction to this painful situation. I accept it openly from one piece of divinity to another. Okay, so you can empathize. Say, man, that really sucks. I had a client one time whose significant other was cheating, she discovered that her significant other was cheating. And was obviously extremely upset. And you know, I was like, wow, that really sucks. You know, that. Screw that person. I can't believe that, you know, just empathizing, not telling them that they didn't have a right to feel how they were feeling. But they have every right to feel how they're feeling. Not to feel it, but to empathize, to enter into their world a little bit. Without getting sucked in. It's important to maintain good boundaries, but to be 100% present for that person, to be receptive to be in that divine feminine state of complete receptivity, acceptance, love to look at that person and say, I love you Even though you're going through an experience that makes me uncomfortable. I love and accept you fully even though you are bringing up painful feelings in myself. I love and accept you even though this is really awkward for me. But because I love and accept you, I want you to have this experience so you can heal from it. So I see by the old the clock on the wall that I'm about out of time for this podcast. I hope this has been interesting for you. This is a topic I'm sure I will touch on more in the future. I circle around to shadow work quite a bit. Because it is. It is so important. And I think it's something that people avoid for a reason. There's a reason why this stuff is in the shadow. It's painful to examine. It's unconscious for a reason. But real healing comes from when we acknowledge it and recognize it and are okay and we offer ourselves the self love to go through these experiences. So I hope you have a great rest of your day wherever you are in the world wherever you are listening to this. I love you all. And I will be talking to you next time.

You have been listening to speaking spirit with your host, John Moore. For more info or to contact john, go to MaineShaman.com that's ma i n e s h a m a n.com