by Alyce Barry –
As many of you know, I take care of my mother, who is 87 and bipolar and currently very depressed. [Read more…]
Bring your true self out of the shadows and into the light
By -
by Alyce Barry –
As many of you know, I take care of my mother, who is 87 and bipolar and currently very depressed. [Read more…]
By -
by Alyce Barry –
As many of you know, I’ve been a caregiver for my elderly mother for the past few years. She died on September 2, and I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned about grieving. [Read more…]
By -
By Cliff Barry and Vicki Woodard
This article describes a variety of ways in which you can lend support to Rhonda and John Gaughan as John undergoes medical treatment.
Please take a moment to read through the possibilities listed below. There are plenty of ways to help without traveling.
Please use the “Share with a friend” link to email any of your family, colleagues, and friends who might find this of interest.
We are all so grateful for all that John and Rhonda have given of themselves to so many people in our networks. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Cliff Barry and Vicki Woodard
Shadow Work Seminars, Inc.
SPECIAL BENEFIT WEEKEND, INCLUDING
“INTRODUCTION TO THE SHADOW TYPES”
MARCH 30 – APRIL 1, 2012
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Come learn YOUR shadow type and at the same time contribute to Rhonda and John Gaughan.
The Introduction to Shadow Types Training offers the opportunities to see unique relationships between the four archetypal energies (Sovereign, Lover, Magician and Warrior) in your life. Knowing your Shadow Type helps honor your personal strengths and to understand your shadows in a new light. Each person attending will have the chance to do Centerwork, an individual process within the group, during which you will explore a life issue with the assistance of master facilitators and the group. In doing so, you are able to reconstruct the issue and view your shadow objectively, thus gaining new perspectives and freedom of choice.
Schedule
Friday evening: Check-in and container-building
Saturday (all day): Intro to Shadow Types Training
Sunday (all day): Centerwork processes
(limited number available)
Costs
$215 for Friday evening and Saturday’s training with Cliff Barry, Shadow Work® Founder
$175 for a Centerwork process (limited number available)
OR
$350 for both ($40 savings)
All proceeds from the weekend will be donated to the Gaughans to help pay for John’s medical expenses and care.
SHADOW TYPE SURVEY
When you register, you will receive the Shadow Types Survey to complete ahead of time and the results will be interpreted at the workshop.
Even if you can’t attend, you can still take the survey and receive an interpretation of your results by a Certified Shadow Worker over the phone for $125. To register for this option, please email Cliff Barry at shadowwk@frii.com.
TO REGISTER FOR THIS SPECIAL BENEFIT WEEKEND
Please use PayPal following these steps:
Financial challenges? For people who want to contribute and participate in the ISTT but have financial challenges, please contact Sally at salbart@mac.com or (713) 906-9808 to make arrangements.
For questions or additional information about the weekend, contact Sally at salbart@mac.com or (713) 906-9808.
DONATIONS OF $1 – $499
Another way to support the Gaughans is by making a donation.
Please send donations of $1-$499 directly to:
Rhonda Gaughan
42357 Richard Waguespack Road
Gonzales LA 70737
OR
Use PayPal to send a *gift*:
(Note: Rhonda pays no PayPal fee when you send it as a gift.)
DONATIONS OF $500 OR MORE CAN BE TAX DEDUCTIBLE
Your donation of $500 or more can be tax-deductible if you contact Cliff Barry at shadowwk@frii.com or by phone at 1-303-530-2840.
HOST YOUR OWN FUNDRAISER
Another way to help is by hosting your own fundraiser for Rhonda and John. Please contact Cliff Barry at shadowwk@frii.com or by phone at 1-303-530-2840.
Share this article with a friend
Cliff Barry is a Shadow Work® Founder, Certified Coach, Facilitator, Trainer and Mentor. Vicki Woodard is a Certified Shadow Work® Coach, Facilitator, Trainer and Mentor. Cliff and Vicki are married and live in Boulder, Colorado. Read more about Cliff and Vicki.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in March 2012. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
Back to the Articles Menu.
By -
By Alyce Barry
When I see rainwater flowing down the side of a street or crossing a sidewalk before my feet, I feel a sudden, inexplicable joy, and there’s a sensation in my chest as if my heart has literally been lifted up.
I’ve been aware of this reaction for some years and have so far been unable to determine the precise reason. I’ve wanted to write about it and have felt fear that I wouldn’t have anything profound, or even interesting, to say about it. It’s such a simple thing.
I know that, as a small child, I played happily for hours in rainwater that streamed down the gutter beside the street we lived on. I built infrastructure with sticks, rocks and mud, forming dams, reservoirs and waterfalls. Perhaps my reaction to rainwater is simply the remnant of a happy memory of play. Certainly such a small trickle of water was under my control, even when I was quite small. Perhaps that’s significant: maybe it was a pivotal early experience of creativity or even mastery of my environment.
I remember reading that Carl Jung, the psychiatrist who first coined the expression “the human shadow,” took great pleasure in damming a small stream on his Bollingen property in Switzerland; he spent hours constructing obstacles and waterfalls and called the area his “water works.” A neighbor boy is said to have reported gleefully to his parents that Dr. Jung liked to play in the water just as the boy did.
This association of water with childhood seems fitting, since of the four primary parts of the self described in the Shadow Work® Model, the Lover part of us both contains our inner child and is associated with water. We spend our first nine months of life in water.
I get the greatest sensation of joy when the street or sidewalk beneath the stream of water is brown, and not gray, as streets and sidewalks sometimes are. Perhaps that means something.
Perhaps the simplicity of the experience is also significant: seeing a trickle of rainwater is such a simple pleasure, I wondered if maybe other people also feel this joy and never think to mention it?
That seems unlikely, though, because it was shockingly difficult to find a suitable photo. Grateful thanks to Dennis Hartwell for locating and purchasing this wonderful picture of rainwater in a street gutter, which is the best I’ve seen so far.
AWARENESS OF FLOW
A friend said to me yesterday that she has a similar sensation when she feels a breeze against her face. She thinks it gives her joy because it reminds her that she’s alive. That makes sense.
Probably there is an inherent joy in an awareness of flow: the flow of energy as it moves inside me; the flow of change when I’m able to shift from stuckness to movement.
I’ve often struggled with being stoic — suppressing the flow of emotions — and maybe the heart-lift I feel is simply the joy of freely expressing what I’m feeling.
WATER’S MANY WAYS
The flow I’m referring to seems quite different to me from other, more dramatic ways that water can move.
Deep rivers winding to the sea.
The crashing of ocean waves against rocks.
The plunge of water over a waterfall.
Waves rushing up the sand before slipping back into the sea.
Tides shaping the continent.
A brook sliding quietly over smooth pebbles.
Still lakes with hidden depths.
Snow melt rushing from high peaks to the plains.
Streams chock-full of boulders.
Cascading rapids.
Rivers carving canyons ever deeper.
Roiling whirlpools.
Fountains and springs.
A wish for you, reader: that one of these photos stirs in you the memory of a simple pleasure that gives your heart a sense of lift inside your chest. It’s a pleasure I never tire of.
Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of Practically Shameless.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in June 2012. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
Back to the Articles Menu.
By -
by Alyce Barry –
In Shadow Work®, we sometimes use the term “core dynamic” to refer to the results of an event or situation that deeply hurt all four primary parts of us simultaneously. [Read more…]
By -
by Alyce Barry –
Many years ago, a friend of mine became severely ill and nearly died. To everyone’s surprise and delight, he did not die but recovered. [Read more…]
By -
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.
Back to the Articles Menu.