Once you’ve listened, let us know in the comments below — what was one key point that intrigued you most about our interview with Sandra?
In this episode of The Natural Healing Podcast, we converse with Sandra Ally about illuminating the shadows to find our light and to change the trajectory of our lives. By experiencing the full range of emotions, we can reclaim the parts of the self that are often kept hidden. She takes us on a journey toward self-love by thinking about the ways we can connect to our higher, spiritual selves and to the earth.
Sandra Ally first connected to her spiritual self as a child growing up in a mixed-religion household. Through experiencing multiple religious traditions, Sandra built the foundation for understanding that humans are more than just physical apparatuses. The diversity of her upbringing allowed her to find connections between different religions and how they revolved around similar questions: How do you connect with something greater than yourself?
She then went on to study Psychology in college, searching for answers about the self. Her foundation in Psychology provided a framework and language for understanding the self, and she spent time in the field of mental health and social services, where she worked with people from marginalized backgrounds. This helped her examine the parts of herself that were still in survival mode.
Though studying Psychology gave her the language to explain herself and her stories, Sandra found that knowledge about the self wasn’t always enough. She experienced a disconnect from the way her ancestors knew how to live. In order to embark on her healing journey, she pursued a spiritual journey that led her to wise Elders and Shamans. By learning the Tarot tradition, she learned the ancient ways of being one with the spirit.
Illuminating the Shadows
Shadow work allows us to connect to the parts of ourselves that we often don’t know are there. The pressure to hide parts of ourselves can come from messages we received as a child, social pressures, and the small traumas of everyday life that we aren’t aware are affecting us. Hiding and suppressing the self can manifest as physical ailments or pain. Inner child work helps us connect with and manifest our true selves by addressing big traumas and small traumas that have impacted us. From a young age, we’re often taught not to be our true selves, and are instead taught to fit into society or into our families.
Inner child work means reconnecting with the full range and spectrum of human feeling. Children will often ride the full wave of an emotion, allowing it to pass through the body. Adults will often interfere with this process, but children intuitively know how to live out the entirety of an emotion. By embracing that intuitive ability to feel our feelings, we can prevent ourselves from getting stuck inside a particular emotional state. Shame, depression, sadness and grief are lower-frequency emotions, and experiencing the whole range of those feelings are just as important as riding the wave of happiness or joy.
Furthermore, our shadows are mirrored back at us. The way we treat ourselves often manifests in how we treat others and how we treat the planet. To grow our love for ourselves, we have to begin by acknowledging what we’ve repressed or have been unwilling to access.
For Sandra, shadow work involves holding space for people to feel everything that is trapped in their physical vessel. It requires slowing down in order to feel, resisting the urge to hustle or distract from a more authentic way of living. By quieting the loud and overwhelming voices in our heads, we can reset the nervous system and escape the perpetual state of fight or flight.
When to Seek Shadow Work
Shadow work may be helpful if your outward daily life is not bringing you joy. We are often trained to lead achievement-oriented lives, whether through school, through our careers, or through personal relationships. However, at a certain point in life, we may begin to slow down and realize that achievement is not enough to provide true fulfillment or happiness, or that an achievement-oriented way of living is causing physical ailments.
This is the start of an awakening process, and it may be an important time to begin noticing any repetitive mental looping or obsessive thinking. By reconnecting to the spirit and to our true selves, we can find a way to stop perpetually living inside our minds.
Physical symptoms and ailments often have deeper mental and emotional roots that require examination. It can be a sign to slow down, allowing the voice of the spirit to become louder and to act as a guiding light.
Emerging from the Shadows
This is a time of awakening for humanity: The vibration of the planet has increased, and the collective shadows and chaos around us is part of the process of healing. By the time a symptom appears, it is already working its way out of our energy bodies. Rather than signaling the worst of it, the surfacing of a shadow means that we are nearing the end of it. During the process of healing and purging, symptoms may become more acute and expressive. It is often necessary to experience a healing crisis in order to find true healing.
Our current time of crisis allows the wisdom of ancestors and nature to emerge and find its way to the surface. In Chinese Medicine, it’s possible to break a hereditary pattern by cleansing your Jing and your lineage. Similarly, the disruption of the pandemic allows us to break cycles and find more sustainable ways to live. It’s easy to spend most of the day on autopilot and without being truly tuned into ourselves and to the world, and the process of rebirth and cycle-breaking can help us reconnect to our whole selves.
In the face of Covid, it’s more important than ever to become healthier both physically and mentally. In Chinese Medicine, gut health is connected to the element of Earth. One easy way to build your Earth element us by cooking for yourself, which is one practice that has already become more prominent during the pandemic. Connecting with the earth naturally resets the nervous system, and standing in contact with the earth allows it to absorb energy and transmute it into abundance.
How to Begin the Process of Healing
The process of healing may seem daunting, but it can begin with as little as two minutes a day. One exercise that Sandra recommends is to sit down and close your eyes in a quiet place at the end of your day, or during the transition between work and home life, and ask yourself one simple question: How was your day today, my love?
You can notice if there’s no response, if your mind generates a tirade to vent any frustrations, or if any patterns emerge. Taking two minutes a day to sit down and breathe can create the space and time to truly slow down. Awareness of your thoughts and your emotional state is the first step to healing.
Rather than getting rid of trauma or pain, shadow work is about shining a light on the parts of yourself that have been hurt, disempowered, abused, or neglected by ourselves or by other people. By learning how to love those parts, you can reclaim your true self and emerge as a sovereign being, using the wisdom of spirit to make decisions and maintain agency in your life.
To learn more about Sandra Ally and her work, click here.
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