What the Solar Eclipse Teaches Us About Shadow Work

I've been asked more than once about my logo: "Why an eclipse?"
And also, more curiously: "Why do you talk about light when you’re doing shadow work... isn’t it about embracing your dark side?"

It’s a good question. Especially when so much of what people encounter online under the umbrella of “shadow work” is wrapped in dark, heavy aesthetics: black candles, gothic fonts, ominous, witchy vibes.

And look, I get it. I have a low-key love affair with the moon. My crystal collection is ever-growing. And yes, I’ve been known to weave a spell or two. But when I visualise shadow work, what it truly is and what it asks of us, this isn’t the imagery that comes to mind at all.

And while I honour the dark as sacred and necessary, the chrysalis, the womb of transformation, the soil where growth begins, I don’t see shadow work as being about the dark.

To me, the real work is about light.
Reclaiming it. Living it. Integrating it.

This isn’t to say I’m sugar-coating the process. I’m not talking about “love and light” spiritual bypassing, or about chasing “high vibes only”.
(It’s really somatic bypassing when you think about it. Skipping over what’s difficult to feel in the name of staying elevated.)

Quite the opposite.

I believe in turning toward what’s hard with steady presence, but always in service of coming back to the essence of who you truly are.

Let me explain.

Debunking Common Shadow Work Myths

Before we go further, let me say what shadow work isn’t.

Shadow work is not about making yourself feel broken or haunted. It isn’t about endlessly spiralling through your past, digging for pain, or defining yourself by your wounds. It certainly isn’t about justifying poor behaviour by claiming that we are just animals with primal instincts. I believe humans are capable of far higher levels of consciousness than that.

It’s also not a badge of intensity or superiority. It isn’t about performing how much darkness you’ve endured or trying to out-depth everyone else in the room, even if that’s what goes viral on TikTok, complete with videos of groups collectively screaming into the forest, thrashing sticks, or sobbing together in choreographed waves of emotional release.

I don’t advocate for that kind of uncontained group catharsis. It’s often not trauma-informed, and it can blur the line between expression and re-wounding.

Shadow work, in my world, is a highly personal and growth oriented journey. It requires attunement, timing, and safety. What unfolds for one person will look entirely different for another, and that’s exactly as it should be. It can be held in a group, in fact we run Shadow Work Retreats where people have profound experiences by harnessing the power of mutual support and witnessing, but this needs to be done with deep respect for each individual’s unique process, and takes several years and hundreds of hours of study and practice to learn to facilitate safely.

Shadow work isn’t a performance. It’s not a brand aesthetic.
It’s a path. A commitment. A relationship building process of cultivating space, compassion, and care for parts of us that we had to leave behind along the way to adulthood. A journey of re-membering ourselves to wholeness.

Understanding What Shadow Work Is

Shadow can only exist in the presence of light.

In the Jungian sense, the shadow holds the parts of ourselves we repress, deny, or disown: traits and experiences too painful, shameful, or vulnerable to bear. And it’s not just the less desirable parts we exile. Often, it’s our brilliance, gifts that feel too dangerous to own, lest they attract envy, sabotage, or judgment for shining too brightly.

As Jung said, “the gold is in the shadow.” He estimated that up to ninety percent of what we find there is not bad or broken at all, but precious. But the act of hiding requires something to be suppressed. And what we suppress is often essence. Aliveness. Wholeness. Inner resources.

We are not born fragmented. We become so over time, cut off from parts of ourselves to fit, to survive, to belong. Shadow work is not about dwelling in the dark. It is about becoming whole again: to integrate, from the Latin integrare, meaning to make whole.

And to become whole, we must turn gently toward the parts of ourselves that cast the longest shadows.

The goal is not to judge them.
But to see them.
To love them.
To reclaim what they’ve been protecting all along.

Because the shadow is a vault of complexity. We may have put anger into shadow as a child for example, because it caused rupture, punishment, or shame. But along with that anger, we often lose our capacity to set boundaries, to discern what’s ok and what’s not, or to channel strength in a nuanced, appropriate way.

Shadow work allows us to untangle what was once lumped together and placed out of reach in order to adapt, and to welcome back the gold that got locked away with the grief.

You can’t outrun your shadow. It follows you, whether visible to you or not. But when you turn to face it with courage and kindness, it becomes a doorway. And what waits on the other side is light: a more grounded, embodied light that you can use intentionally and selectively, in ways that weren’t possible when you were just a child navigating a big, scary, unfamiliar world.

The Solar Eclipse as a Metaphor for Shadow Work

An eclipse is a beautiful metaphor for this journey.

During a solar eclipse, the moon, a symbol across many traditions of the feminine, the instinctual, the emotional, the unconscious, moves between the Earth and the sun. For a moment, the light source is obscured. The sky darkens. There’s a hush in the air. In ancient times, people panicked. They thought the sun had disappeared. That maybe it wouldn’t come back. That the Gods were punishing them.

Sometimes, living with unintegrated shadow can feel like that. The light dims. We feel lost, disoriented, unclear. We react in ways we don’t understand. We feel stuck in patterns that seem to have a life of their own.

It’s tempting to think we’ve gone wrong.
But the eclipse is temporary.
The sun always returns.

And often, it’s the moment we turn toward the shadow, when we pause, when we listen, that the first glimmers of light begin to reappear.

What if, instead of resisting that pause, we honoured it? What if the eclipse wasn’t something to fear, but an invitation to turn inward, to slow down, to notice what’s usually hidden?

In meditation and in life, we often close our eyes to connect. We eliminate excess stimulation, go somewhere quiet, dim the lights. The dark isn’t the enemy. It’s the container.

The Still Point: Creating Safe Spaces for Inner Work

A solar eclipse invites us into a sacred pause. It is not a time for striving or rushing forward. It is a time to soften. To feel. To listen. To reflect. This is how I see shadow work, not as something to do in order to fix yourself, but as something to enter. A portal. A holding. A quiet opening where your inner world can be met with reverence, curiosity, and care.

This is why I create containers for this work. Because you cannot do this in the middle of everything. You cannot reach into your depths while performing, parenting, leading, pleasing, managing. You need a space that asks nothing of you but truth.

When you step outside the loops of your daily life, away from the pressure to hold it all together, and into a space where the only agenda is your unfolding, something begins to shift. The breath deepens. The body speaks. And the parts of you that have long waited in the wings start to stir.

Shadow work isn’t just a moment of catharsis. It’s a relationship, with yourself, and with someone who knows how to walk beside you without rushing or judging your process.

Just as the moon aligns perfectly between the sun and the Earth only under certain conditions, shadow integration needs its own alignment: safety, trust, and timing. That is what I aim to offer.

Shadow is only possible because of light. In the stillness of the forest, we remember our aliveness.

Nature’s Wisdom: Even the Trees Prepare

More and more, I find myself turning to nature for wisdom about how to live, how to grow whilst everything changes, and how to return to harmony with all that is. As a shadow work coach, I don’t just look to psychology. I look to ecosystems. To relationships. To the intelligence that lives underground and within.

Trees, for example, don’t live in isolation.
They communicate primarily through a vast underground network of fungi called mycorrhizae, a kind of “wood-wide web” that allows them to exchange water, nutrients, and even chemical and hormonal messages. Through this network, trees can warn each other of pests, drought, and other dangers.
And recent research suggests they also communicate using slow-pulsing electrical signals, especially in response to environmental shifts.

During the solar eclipse in October 2022, scientists in the Italian Dolomites recorded a remarkable event, as published in the BBC’s Discover Wildlife magazine here. The spruce trees began to coordinate their electrical activity hours before the eclipse had even begun. It was as if the forest knew what was coming. As if it was preparing.

And most strikingly, it was the older, larger trees that led the shift. These so-called mother trees play a crucial role in the forest network.
They not only supply nutrients and information to the younger, smaller trees, they offer stability. Memory. Wisdom. A kind of rooted guidance that ripples outward through the system.

I think of this often in my work. Because navigating the shadow, especially during our own personal eclipse moments, isn’t something we’re meant to do alone. We need the presence of someone who has walked through the dark before us. Someone attuned to the subtle shifts.
Someone who can hold the deeper rhythm when we lose our own. Like the mother trees, this person doesn't push or rush. They signal. Steady. Nourish. Wait.

Embracing Shadow Integration for Personal Growth

Carl Jung didn’t call it shadow work to imply effort. He called it shadow integration because the goal was wholeness.

To bring back what was exiled.
To reclaim our essence.
To step, fully and freely, into our light.

This is the paradox: the more willing we are to turn toward what we fear in ourselves, the more access we have to what is true, luminous, and unshakeably real.

As poet Julia Fehrenbacher writes:

It seems we must be stripped of the skin
of all we think beautiful before we open
to the kind of beauty that can't go away.
It seems sky must pour
and howl like it will never stop
before we notice the smile
of our own forever sun.
It seems
we must hunt with starving
hungry eyes before we know
this belly is and has always been
full.
It seems this wall
deep in the centre must be hammered down
before we let soft, breathing hands
curl in around us.
Each drop
of dark carries
with it a candle of holy
light-
with each miracle breath
we are invited to turn toward
the nearest whispering spark
and, like momma bird sheltering her baby-
like a pebble
in stream's safe lap-
listen

~ from “What I’ve Learned from the Dark” by Julia Fehrenbacher

This is the heart of my work.
That’s why I chose the eclipse.

It is the threshold between forgetting and remembering.
Between shadow and light.
Between hiding and becoming.

And every time you choose to pause, to turn inward, to meet your shadow with love, you move one step closer to your wholeness.
To your essence.
To your light.

Ready to begin the journey inward? Book a free connection call to explore your next step.