On the Clean Talk CD, Cliff Barry uses the phrase “the story I tell myself” when it comes time for him to own up to how he is assessing a situation. [Read more…]
Equine-Assisted Shadow Work®
“Believe in your dreams, even when you can’t see the way.” This motto (and potential bumper-sticker) sums up my journey of finding a way to bring my two passions together: Shadow Work® and equine-assisted healing.
Chrissy McFarren at home in West Virginia, with Jesse
“Believe in your dreams, even when you can’t see the way.” This motto (and potential bumper-sticker) sums up my journey of finding a way to bring my two passions together: Shadow Work® and equine-assisted healing.
Since I was a young girl I have shared my life with horses. I’ve ridden and shown horses, and I worked at prestigious Virginia race horse farms starting two-year-old thoroughbreds. I’ve trained horses and taught riding lessons, and I’ve raised and cared for horses for decades.
I can’t imagine my life without horses. I owe my own sanity and emotional growth to my years of working with them, knowing them and understanding them. I totally identify with horses.
Horses are highly sensitive, sentient beings who are prey animals and owe their survival to their highly tuned senses and ability to read body language and energy. Over the years of working with them I learned their language and it made sense to me.
As an adult woman, I went through an intensely traumatic survival situation with my first husband and was subsequently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). While I had years of therapy, I truly believe it was the horses that helped me not only heal but learn how to work with my PTSD and to learn from it. I honed my skills in working with trauma in horses and humans while continuing to learn myself.
In 2006 my husband Dave and I became certified as Shadow Work® group facilitators. Since then we have enjoyed leading Shadow Work® weekends here at our farm in Summit Point, West Virginia, a little over an hour west of Washington, DC.
“PROBLEM” HORSES
During this time I continued to teach riding lessons and was also being asked to work with people’s horses on their farms. The horse owners were usually asking me to come work with their “problem horse.” Inevitably, these sessions would turn into coaching for the horse owners themselves, and they were (usually) open enough to see that the horse wasn’t the one with the problem. The horse was simply reacting to some unresolved problem or issue of the owner’s.
Before I stopped giving riding lessons, the universe sent me clients who were dealing with trauma, and we ended up working on body/energy regulation. I’m so grateful for those students because working with them helped guide me on the path of my own journey.
I discovered there were certification programs in this world of equine-assisted learning (EAL) and equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP), so I began taking trainings, and in 2009 I was certified as an equine specialist. The program I was certified in called for a facilitation team made up of two people (an equine specialist and a mental health practitioner) and at least one horse. I approached a friend who is a therapist, and we began seeing clients here at the farm using the horses I already owned. In 2011 we started a non-profit, Full Circle Farm Growth and Healing Center, which offers EAL and EAP for children, teens, adults, groups and veterans. In the past four years I have been blessed to witness the same type of magic I have witnessed in Shadow Work® processes, but now in a round pen working with horses.
LEARNING IN THE MOMENT
Equine-assisted work is experiential and offers in-the-moment learning. Horses are naturals at this work because, as prey animals, they see humans as potential predators. Yes, that’s right, even a huge, one-thousand-pound stallion can see us as predators, while at the same time we might wonder how we will survive an encounter with a creature with so much raw energy and strength.
Because of this natural predator/prey dynamic, horses are really good at reading us, our body language, and our energy, and they react to it. So therapeutically, horses offer feedback to a person that is based purely on how that person interacts with the horse, and not tainted by judgment, history, or expectation, as human feedback often is.
During this time I also started seeing the possibilities for Equine-Assisted Shadow Work® (EASW). I was already using some of my Shadow Work® skills and theories in the arena with the client and horse. In order to see what EASW could look like, I first had to let go of what Shadow Work® looks like on a seminar weekend. Once I let go of the idea of fitting existing Shadow Work® processes into equine work, the vision got clear and simple.
REAL, NOT RITUAL
The key lies in the fact that the foundation of a traditional Shadow Work® process is Magician energy, whereas EASW is based more in Lover and Warrior energies. In a traditional process we create a ritual container and symbolically represent the participant’s shadow dynamics using role players. We then give the participant the opportunity to access their “inner Magician” to gain new perspectives and then try a “new way” of doing things.
In EASW the participant is not in a ritual container. When they step into the round pen they’re in a real container with another real being, and their shadows immediately start to show up as thoughts and body energy, which the horse naturally reacts to, giving the participant real-time feedback.
In a traditional process the “anchoring” of the new energy in the body usually doesn’t happen until the end of the process and is often symbolic. In EASW the “real-ness” of the container means the anchoring starts right away and is often felt more intensely by the participant and has a more lasting effect.
Celebratory finish to a round-pen session at the women’s retreat at Laramie River Ranch
As a Shadow Work® facilitator I see a huge positive potential for working in this Warrior/Lover model. I’m not saying EASW is better than traditional Shadow Work® I just see it as another option for healing, especially for folks who have a hard time retaining the learning/growth they got from a traditional Shadow Work® process.
SINGING UP THE CANYON
Last fall, I had a wonderful opportunity to test my new theories and methods of EASW with a group of women at a retreat I was co-facilitating with two other women who are the board of our non-profit.
The retreat was held at Laramie River Ranch, which is located in northern Colorado near the Wyoming border. Each day of the retreat the women had an opportunity to be in the energy of one of the archetypes as it showed up in the relationship with the horse they were partnered with for the four-day/five-night retreat.
As we do in Shadow Work®, we spent our last day in the blessing energy of the Sovereign, the place of positivity. In our final round-pen experience, we witnessed each woman claim her new authentic self while she was led bareback on her horse. Through the rhythm of the horse’s gait, connected to her body, she felt the authentic truth of moving in a new way. When all the women completed their processes we went on a celebratory trail ride up through the canyons, singing all the way! I will never forget that feeling of joy and thinking, “This is the work I was destined for.”
And, as if to verify that thought, I looked up to see that a bald eagle was flying with us and she screamed out her celebratory song along with all of us!
To find out more about the equine retreats and workshops we offer, including the next retreat at Laramie River Ranch, visit the Full Circle Farm Growth and Healing website.
Chrissy McFarren is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator in Summit Point, West Virginia. For more information about working with Chrissy, or about Shadow Work® events run by Chrissy and her husband, Dave, contact Chrissy at (304) 728-9812 or at [email protected], or visit the Full Circle Farm & Seminars website.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in February 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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JourneyDance™ and Shadow Work®
November 2014, by Sally Bartolameolli
During the last couple of years in facilitation and group work, I’ve wanted to use my body more. It’s taken me many years to risk trusting my physicality and move with joy and less self-consciousness. Today when I am dancing or moving to music, I have many moments strung together when I don’t even consider what I look like or if I am doing it “right.” Pure joy for me.
Through the study of trauma both personally and professionally, I also know that our bodies carry our pain. As a woman recovering from an eating disorder and distorted body image, I know that our issues live in our tissues.
“Trauma causes the body to be in a frozen state of fear, terror and hyper-vigilance and the relationship between trauma and our bodies is very intimate,” says Dr. Bessel A. van der Kolk, a clinical psychiatrist and founder of the Trauma Center in Brookline, Massachusetts. “Fundamentally the effect of trauma is in relationship to one’s body.” I think as individuals working in the emotional healing field for many years, we have known this as well.
I believe we often try hard to “figure out” and understand the painful dynamics and patterns that we carry. It is helpful for our Inner Magician to understand and name some of what is happening for us. I also believe that some of the most powerful release is through the bio-energetics that we experience in Shadow Work® and other conscious dance and movement practices. An added bonus of all the healing and trauma release work I do is that I want to connect freely to my own creativity through writing, art, music and dance as well.
This year I have become certified as a JourneyDance™ facilitator with Toni Bergens. When choosing a conscious dance movement to learn and bring into my Shadow Work® and Trauma Transformation practice, I spoke to the founders of several different somatic modalities. My desire was to find someone who understood what it means to create a safe container and an intentional ritual space. When I spoke with Toni, she noticed I was a Shadow Work® facilitator and asked me if I knew Cliff Barry. Voila! It was easy from there to know my direction, and my experience with Toni as the founder of JourneyDance™ has been gratifying, informative and great fun. Her primary modality is dance. Toni is able to hold space for the deep work that so many are hungry to experience and to create the shame-free container, just as we are trained to do with Shadow Work®. Safety and shame-free are integrated in me, and it was comforting to see Toni’s skill with these values.
As an experiential learner and facilitator, I am so grateful for all the teachers and traditions in my own lineage and for the unique ways that we each weave our own gifts into the sacred work we do as Shadow Work® facilitators. I am looking forward to bringing the conscious practice of JourneyDance™ into all my work and create ritual containers where participants are inspired to release what no longer serves and embrace what is deeply liberating in their own lives.
Sally Bartolameolli, M.Ed., is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator, author, holistic health counselor, transformational coach, yoga instructor and JourneyDance™ teacher living in Houston, Texas. Visit her website: www.SallyBartolameolli.com.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in November 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Healing the Effects of Trauma with Shadow Work®
November 2014, by Karin Green
As adults, we often don’t remember the physical, mental, and emotional childhood traumas we experienced, but our bodies always remember. As children we store trauma in our bodies. In traumatic moments, where we can’t control what is happening, we make decisions that we hope will protect us, and we make promises to ourselves. The decisions we made were the best ones we could make at the time, but they were based on a child’s understanding, which often doesn’t have the whole picture.
In adulthood, a childhood trauma can manifest in many different ways. For example,
- we might feel as if we’re choking when we try to speak up.
- we might have pain in the stomach when we go into certain situations.
- we might have tight, painful shoulders as if we’re carrying a heavy burden.
- we might have sharp pains in our sexual organs when we’re intimate with someone.
- we might have aching feet when our boundaries have been shattered and we haven’t spoken up for ourselves.
Although I am not a specialist in trauma, I have training in recognizing its presence and assessing whether a person can benefit from doing Shadow Work® or should see a trauma specialist first.
“PULLING OUT” THE TRAUMA
The first step in healing the effects of trauma with Shadow Work is to get clarity and understanding. Shadow Work® is a powerful and helpful resource for discovering the promises we’re still keeping that are bringing us pain, disconnection and suffering.
Once we see more clearly what effects of trauma we are still living with, Shadow Work offers a variety of tools and techniques for healing. One of them is to “pull out” metaphorically what is choking the throat or causing pain in the stomach or feet, or to “throw off” the burden from the shoulders. This work can access the body’s wisdom and release trauma from the body. Once the trauma is out, we can give it back to the one for whom we were carrying it, or we can stomp our feet and set a clear boundary.
As a Shadow Work® facilitator, I have witnessed many people metaphorically “pulling out” trauma and pain and I’m still fascinated at how powerful this technique is and how permanent the healing can be, regardless of what the trauma was or its cause. I have used this process myself to remove a painful stomach ache that would appear every time I had to speak up for myself. After pulling this pain out in a Shadow Work process I no longer have that pain. Today when I do speak up for myself there is a slight discomfort in my stomach, but the pain is gone.
SEXUAL TRAUMA AND THE FOUR ARCHETYPES
Sexual trauma can be more complex, since the perpetrator is often someone we know, and even discussing sexuality is difficult or even a taboo subject for many people. Often the victim of a sexual trauma believes he or she is responsible for what happened, thinking they could have done something to prevent or avoid it. As children it may have been too dangerous for them to say no, so they learned to drop their boundaries. In the Shadow Work® Model, it is the Warrior part of the self that knows where the lines are, and when we bring Warrior energy out of shadow, we learn where our natural boundaries ought to be and how to set them clearly.
In moments of trauma, we felt fear, anger and grief, and those feelings are still with us, in our bodies, preventing us from living our lives fully and joyfully. It is the Lover part of the self that feels, and Shadow Work® provides a safe ritual container for uncovering and releasing these feelings from the body and bringing Lover energy out of shadow.
In childhood, there might not have been anyone truly caring for us and loving us unconditionally. The Sovereign part of the self is our internal parent, and bringing Sovereign energy out of shadow restores our lost self-love and self-esteem.
A child who is the victim of sexual trauma internalizes the voice of the perpetrator, and it can show up in adulthood as a strong inner critic voice that is merciless. It is the Magician part of the self we work with to have a dialogue with the inner critic and transform it, leaving a sense of peace and strength.
Shadow Work® gives us the gift of loving ourselves for the journey we have chosen to live in this life. As we come to understand why we made certain decisions and promises, the ones that got us to where we are today, we can experience great healing and evolve more and more into who we really are.
Karin Green is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and transformational coach in central Massachusetts. She offers workshops and individual coaching in person or via Skype. Read more about Karin or visit her website, KarinGreenCoaching.com, where you can also download the free workbook, Bust Your Inner Critic, Reclaim Your Joy.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in November 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Introduction to Equine-Assisted Shadow Work®
November 2014, by Chrissy McFarren
As a follow-up to the publication of my article on Equine-Assisted Shadow Work® last February, I want to share a few pictures with you of our first one-day Equine-Assisted Shadow Work® workshop at Full Circle on November 16th.
The workshop was for women, and I was the facilitator. We had an amazing turnout, 16 participants, and they were an eclectic mix of horse enthusiasts, therapists, educators, body and energy workers and even a well-known physician. We also had six horses and one donkey join us to help me facilitate.
Our day was a blend of Shadow Work® teaching and equine experiential activities allowing the women to explore the archetypes and their shadows through their interactions with the horses. Despite the cold temperatures, women walked away with new insights and personal knowing.
We are excited to announce that, in addition to our Introduction to Equine-Assisted Shadow Work® workshops, we have developed a new retreat offering called “Shadow Work® through the Way of the Horse and Nature: The Four Quadrants of Relationship.” We will begin offering these retreats in 2015, beginning with a retreat for women in May. Stay tuned for news about men’s and co-ed retreats.
“Thank you for a lovely day on Sunday. I came away with far more insight than I could have imagined and it was an amazing experience.” Katie, shown with equine partner Jesse
Magician altar
Sovereign altar
Lover altar
Warrior altar
Chrissy McFarren is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator in Coaldale, Colorado.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in November 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Taking Shadow Work® into the Colorado Wilderness with Horses
April 2015, by Chrissy McFarren
For the past eight years, my husband, Dave McFarren, and I have been hosting and facilitating Shadow Work® seminars at our farm in Summit Point, West Virginia, which is about an hour-and-a-half west of Washington, D.C.
One of the things that participants love about being out at the farm is the connection to nature and the horses. During any given Shadow Work® weekend, some of our processes are bound to end up outside for a blessing or for the anchoring part of the process.
Because we have a bunkhouse at the farm, many participants also stay at the farm while attending one of our seminars, which gives them the opportunity to connect in a less formal way outside the container of the seminar. In the evenings, we often have a bonfire, conversation and music. It has been wonderful to witness the healing that happens during a Shadow Work® weekend and share the joy that participants feel when they stay here on the farm. It is clear to us that all of this was a stepping stone to our next chapter in Shadow Work®.
At the end of April 2015, we will become co-owners of Badger Creek Ranch, a working cattle and small guest ranch in the high plains of central Colorado.
The Ranch is completely surrounded by state and BLM land and holds a lease on 4,000 surrounding acres.
Our dream of having a retreat location in Colorado is the result of years of doing our own Shadow Work®, embracing our dreams, letting go, risking and believing. The blessing of this new chapter in our lives is that we get to share it with Shadow Work® participants. We will now be able to take Shadow Work® into the wilderness.
Dave and I are also blessed to co-own this ranch with a couple who are already on the Board of Directors for our nonprofit, Full Circle Farm Growth and Healing Center. Brian is a wilderness specialist and Natalie holds an M.A. in Eco-Psychology.
The four of us have crafted a four-day retreat, “Shadow Work® through the Way of the Horse and Nature: Exploring the Four Directions of Relationship.” Each day of the retreat is devoted to one of the four archetypal directions on which the Shadow Work® Model is based. The day is a blend of teaching, experiential wilderness processes, equine-assisted processes, riding (optional), and meditation.
Our intention for this four-day retreat is to fully integrate and anchor the four archetypes through the power of nature and the wisdom of the horses. We believe that when we open our senses to nature, get quiet and listen, we can remember to be aware, stand in our truth, bless and love. Our prayer is that each participant leaves the retreat fully alive and awake.
We are very excited to be offering two retreats during our first season at the ranch in 2015. One will be for men in August and the other will be for women in September. Our retreat flyers will be available soon at the non-profit website. In the meantime, if you’re interested, feel free to give us a call.
Chrissy McFarren is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator in Coaldale, Colorado.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in April 2015. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Following The Arc Of Facilitation
June 2015, by Becky Schupbach
In a novel or a play, we use the concept of an arc to describe how the story and action unfold. The arc describes the development or resolution of the narrative or principle theme. I believe that the concept of an arc is also a useful way to approach Shadow Work® Carpetwork or other process work. When I am facilitating, I watch for the development and intersection of three separate arcs: the story arc, the spatial arc and the energetic arc. Each arc describes a felt sense of rising action, crisis and resolution.
THE STORY ARC
The story arc describes the issue or theme of the work and the way in which the participant chooses to work with it. When we ask a Shadow Work® participant what she wants to have happen, we are asking for the story. It also describes the block that is getting in the way. It may also include the people in her life who are a part of the pattern or who are caught up in the issue with her.
If a participant tells us she wants to live courageously in spite of negative self-judgments, we will explore the meaning of living courageously for her, the nature of her negative self-judgments, and when and from whom she learned them. These pieces of information inform and guide the process. They are a part of her story on multiple levels. They may represent what actually happened to her, but more importantly, they represent the story she is telling herself about her life or her situation.
By hearing her story, we learn what beliefs or old patterns oppose her forward movement. The block or resistance she faces represents the dramatic element of crisis or conflict. Once we have the elements of story as they show up in her history or her beliefs about herself, we can move the story forward in time toward a resolution that may change its trajectory. Thus, whether she ultimately chooses to confront those who taught her the negative messages or transform her inner critic or bring support for the one who wishes to live courageously, she is living her new story into the world. The unfolding of her new story moves the story arc of the process to resolution.
Some approaches to facilitation discourage too much sharing of story, particularly when the time allowed for process work is limited. It is certainly true that a participant can become so involved in telling his story that he does not move forward to change it. However, we should not underestimate the power of allowing the participant to speak his story aloud and be heard by the facilitators and other participants. Graceful and empathetic facilitation allows the participant to share his story line and uses it to co-create a process that fits the forward action of his story through crisis toward resolution.
THE SPATIAL ARC
The spatial arc describes how the process is set up on the carpet and how it moves through space. Paying attention to the spatial arc allows us to see the ways in which the position of the role-players relative to each other or the physical action of the process intensifies the energetic arc. We also notice that physically moving into different places on the carpet may also allow a Shadow Work® participant to get in touch with different parts of him/herself.
Sometimes the spatial arc of the process is dramatic and sometimes it is subtle. For example, when a participant expresses his anger and physically moves across the carpet, we see the spatial arc of his process in an obvious way. However, when a participant takes on a posture that represents the sad or frightened child self, a physical movement happens that reflects both the story and the energy of the process. To extend the theater metaphor, the facilitators serve as the directors of the process by encouraging the participant to position himself and his role players and to move and interact in ways that deepen and serve the process.
THE ENERGETIC ARC
The energetic arc describes the emotional trajectory of the process toward an end-point of emotional release. It involves the build of energy as the process unfolds. As with the spatial arc, it may be obvious or subtle. For example, we may notice a Shadow Work participant move from a powerful energetic expression of anger to tears of deep grief or relief. Or we may notice a subtle relaxation or softening of the participant’s body and face following a grief or support process. We watch as the dramatic tension of the process builds to an emotional climax, followed by an energetic or emotional release. Paying close attention to facial and body changes allows the facilitator to recognize when the participant has experienced the release.
We believe that encouraging a Shadow Work® participant to feel and integrate this energetic shift transforms old patterns of behavior or old stories which no longer serve the participant. For this reason, we give the participant time to sink into the energetic release and feel it fully. At this point, we refrain from asking him to tell us what he is feeling or posing other questions which will prematurely take him from his heart to his head. We encourage him to stay with his emotions and feelings by remaining silent or perhaps by quietly affirming with words like “yes . . . yes.” We simply watch him until we see him beginning to surface on his own from the depths of his feelings. After that, we guide him to express his intellectual understanding and awareness of what happened in the process as a further step toward integration and anchoring the energetic shift.
Using the elements of theater can help us describe how a Shadow Work® process unfolds. However, as facilitators, we do not want the process to be a performance. We want to create an experience that is both symbolic and real for the participant. By following the story, spatial and energetic arcs of a participant’s work, we interact with the participant in the moment to co-create a transformative experience based upon the issues, feelings and reactions as we see them unfold before us.
Becky Schupbach is a certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Louisville, Kentucky. Read more about Becky.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in July 2015. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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