Shadow work in tantra

There is a part of you that you would rather not show. A desire you put away. A fantasy you do not talk about. A hunger you wrap neatly in politeness, so nobody notices.

You are not the only one. Almost everyone carries a hidden layer like that. And almost everyone thinks: if they knew this about me, then...

In tantra we call that your shadow. It is called that because it lives in the dark, rather than because it is bad. Because you put it there, often as a child, when you learned that certain parts of you were not welcome.

What shadow work actually is

The psychologist Carl Jung described the shadow as everything you do not want to know about yourself. Your anger and your jealousy, and equally your strength, your sensuality, your wildness, your longing to be seen. Everything that did not fit the image you had to make of yourself.

In my work with shibari and tantra I see that the shadow hides in your body. It sits in the tension in your jaw when you want to say something and stay silent. In the stiffening in your pelvis when you feel something and hold it back. In the restlessness you feel when someone comes too close, or when nobody comes close enough.

Why tantra asks for shadow work

Many people come to tantra expecting it to be soft and light. Candles, breath, gentle music. It is that too, in part. Tantra that stays only in the light misses half the story.

The word tantra means, among other things, weave or continuity. It points to the weaving together of all parts of life, including the parts you would rather skip. The tantric tradition has always understood that enlightenment comes by making the dark conscious. Jung put it this way: one becomes enlightened by making the darkness conscious, not by imagining figures of light.

That is what I mean by shadow work in tantra. It is about getting to know your desires. About daring to feel them without having to do anything with them. About getting back the energy you put into suppressing them, as calm.

Existential Kink: the paradox of embracing

The book Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott has deeply influenced my approach. Its central idea is surprisingly simple and radical at once: what you suppress grows. What you acknowledge comes to rest.

Elliott describes how we all carry a hidden will. Patterns we consciously do not want and unconsciously keep alive, because a part of us gets something out of them. Every pattern once had a function. It protected us. It gave us something we needed at the time.

The invitation of Existential Kink is to feel those patterns rather than analyse or fight them. To let them into your body. To admit, if only for a moment: yes, this lives in me too. And then to notice what happens. Often that is surprising: room appears. The compulsion goes. What you had to hide becomes something you are simply allowed to be.

That is a bodily process. And that is why it works so well in combination with tantra and shibari.

How shame enters the body

Shame may be the most powerful guard of your shadow. It is the voice that says: this is not allowed. This is too much. This is too dark. This is too strange.

The remarkable thing about shame is that it lives in your body. When you feel shame your body literally shrinks. Your shoulders draw in, your breath goes shallow, your eyes go down. Shame is a physical experience of becoming smaller.

And precisely because shame sits in the body, you can also meet it through the body. By feeling where it sits. By giving it room. By discovering that it does not destroy you when you look at it.

Why rope works so well in shadow work

Shibari has a particular quality: it makes the invisible visible. The rope lets you feel where tension sits. It invites you to move between control and surrender, between holding on and letting go. And exactly in that field of tension the shadow surfaces.

I deliberately work with the paradox shibari offers: physical restriction gives rise to inner freedom. When the rope wraps your body, your head goes quieter. There is nothing left to do. There is only being. And in that being the layers appear that you normally keep hidden.

We never work towards pain. These are not BDSM workshops. We work towards surrender, a surrender without pain, given because the safety and the holding feel so good that you can let go entirely. That is the difference: exploring the dark from safety.

Safety as the condition for depth

Here I come to what may be the most important point. You can only really meet your darker sides when you feel safe. Without safety there is no surrender, only survival.

That is why all my workshops start by sensing the group. A short round in which everyone shares where they are and what their intention is. That is why we work with continuous check-ins, in which we keep asking what feels good and what does not, and adjust immediately. That is why there is always room for aftercare, for landing after an intense experience.

The bedding of safety is the main thing. Without it you cannot really let go. With it you can reach places in yourself you did not know existed. How I do that in practice is on safety and consent.

Where you do this

Un-Shame. An afternoon workshop that opens the door. We start with the body: moving, playing, showing yourself in an outfit you would not normally wear, finding the edge of your comfort zone to feel where it sits and discover that on the other side there is breath. Then a deepening part around connection, trust and desire, and a temple space where touch, breath and awareness come together. Un-Shame is an edition of Shibari meets Tantra.

Untie Me. Where Un-Shame opens the door, this weekend goes through it. A three day tantra retreat with surrender as its central theme, and surrender is impossible without knowing your shadow. Real surrender asks that you let go of what you hold, and what you hold is almost always tied to shame. To the image of who you are supposed to be. Everything about it is on Untie Me.

A participant described it like this: A beautiful journey that seemed to last a week. Immersed in liberating play with the right marking of boundaries. A wonderful safe setting where everything was allowed to be seen and felt: shame, pride, rejection, desires, kinks.

Have a look at the calendar for the next dates.

What shadow work gives you

People who do this work often describe a feeling of relief. As if something heavy falls from their shoulders. They did nothing spectacular. They were finally allowed to be who they are, entirely, with everything included.

That is the promise of tantric shadow work. Your desires remain, and they no longer hold you in their grip. Your shadow remains, and it becomes an ally. You do not become perfect, you become whole.

A participant wrote after a Untie Me weekend: Ik zat er helemaal op mijn plek. That may be the finest summary of all. Simply being in your place. With yourself. With everything that belongs to it.

If you come from a kink background and want to discover how tantra and kink go together, read kink and tantra: your darker desires as a path to connection.

If you are reading this and something in you resonates, that is already the beginning. You do not have to understand everything. You do not have to be ready. You only have to be willing to feel what is there.