The Heart of Shadow for Women (with Violet Lange & Luke Adler)

Violet Lange: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a really fun and deep episode today about what is shadow work for women? We're going to be telling you about shadow work, sharing some personal examples, and then teasing out, you know, are there differences between men and women doing shadow work and how does it show up in their lives after they've done shadow work? What are the changes that people see? And if this is something that you're brand new to now, strap in.

Jason Lange: If you.

Violet Lange: If you're someone who's already done a lot of shadow work, you know, we can always be learning more and we would always love to hear from you. So reach out if you're curious about this episode or if you have any questions about our upcoming programs. Jason and Luke both lead a shadow program for men, and the three of us are leading a shadow program for women.

Luke Adler: No, we're super pumped. I mean, I think Jason, you and I had talked about it many years ago doing heart of shadow for women, and we were just so focused on men. And I think Violet had the inspiration and it was like, oh, fantastic, let's do this. It was so exciting. Prior to our collaboration, I had done some shadow work with men, but really I started doing shadow work with women because as an acupuncturist, 90% of my clients were women. So I was like, well, I guess this is who I work with. And so it was actually a stretch for me to start working with men because I didn't know as many men. Men, but. But I really got my start with women, which, to be honest, was. Was really lovely because it was. It. Women, I found, just have more emotional literacy.

Jason Lange: They.

Luke Adler: They get more training, which, Jason, is something you and I talk about a lot. And so, you know, there. There was the. The kind of barrier to entry was a little bit lower for women in that they already have.

Jason Lange: They.

Luke Adler: They can name a lot of emotions and can articulate them. And, you know, I have a very loving mother. So for me, connecting with women's very easy. It comes very natural. I can be kind of androgynous, so kind of dipping down my masculine traits and being a little bit more, you know, attuned and in tune with women. And just for me, it's a place I've always felt very at home with. And then, you know, just, Jason, you and I have been friends for so long. You have such a incredible masculine embodiment and your attunement to, you know, being sensitive and attuned and gentle and caring. I mean, I knew instantly, I was like, at some point, Jason, we got to lead shadow work for women. I mean, it's just going to be so fantastic. So I'm thrilled. I think this is. We're going to have a lot of fun. And the program that, Jason, you and I have developed over the last three, four years, it's incredible. I've been telling you, Jason, I want to do this program. It's so good. So it's exciting to be able to offer, like, what we're going to be offering women is this very polished program that, you know, its first iteration was, you know, not near what it is today, and then violate your ability to shape it and kind of, kind of tailor it into, you know, the nuances of femininity and female power. You know, I am so incredibly thrilled for this offering that, that we're going to be making to the community and really happy to talk about it with y' all tonight.

Violet Lange: Yes. And let's start with, you know, what is shadow for people who are just brand new, like, you dropped a few gems, Luke, that it's about emotion or it's about, you know, even relationships with our parents and how those shape us. Jason?

Jason Lange: Yeah, Shadow work, right, is as we often talk about, it's just the process of bringing what's unconscious to the conscious so up into the light. And oftentimes these are just different patterns of protection that we often developed in previous points of our lives that we don't even realize are running the show for us. So we often talk about, you know, people say, why should I do shadow work? And one of the most common things that brings people to us is this thing keeps happening. I don't want it to be happening, but it keeps happening, Right? So, like, what's going on? Like, I try these things and it doesn't actually do anything. Oftentimes that is pointing to there's some deeper shadow material underneath that's actually controlling our behavior without us being aware of it. And oftentimes these things come from different elements that we're just not aware of, from our family, from our culture, beliefs we have about how we need to be in order to be successful or get love in the world. And oftentimes it also just relates to, you know, particularly with men, but I think with women, too, moments in our lives where things were so overwhelming for our nervous system, we didn't actually have the capacity to fully metabolize or process it. And as we've, you know, talked a lot about in our work with men, but it's equally true for women. That stuff doesn't go anywhere. It gets Stuck in the body, right? So our body holds these memories and tensions and that shows up in every relationship, every interaction, every breath we have. So shadow work is the. That, you know, it's kind of like meditation in that you can say, hey, I meditate. And people are like, well, what kind? Right? There's tons of it. There's lots of different strategies for shadow work. What Luke and I are really passionate about and which Violet has experienced is a pretty intuitive, somatic based version of it where we don't necessarily know where we're going to go or what we're going to discover. We just become radically present with the person and start to feel into what's happening in their body. And as they reveal to us, they're actually often leading the session. Actually we're just kind of directing in a sense, but all the important information is coming from the person who's receiving the attention. And we're just noticing where are their openings, closures, where's there more energy, less energy. And as we start to guide from that place, it often takes people deeper and deeper and until there's often some kind of insight, seeing something we've never seen before, or some kind of deep cathartic release in terms of some emotional content we've been holding onto, sometimes for decades, sometimes pre verbal starts to finally come through because it's being held in a container of deep love and presence.

Violet Lange: Luke, anything you want to add about how you think about shadow?

Luke Adler: Well, I guess I'll be a little more specific with regards to women. Some of the classic examples, we just look at the, the kind of rainbow of emotions that women, when we look at shadow work, we're particularly looking at the emotions that we're not allowed to express. So for men there's not that many that are permissible. For women it's similar, but there's one in particular that women are just culturally really only allowed to express kind of in a, in a diminished or kind of diminutive form. And that's anger. So a lot of, a lot of shadow work for women, kind of we have to like set aside this really specific space where women are allowed to get in touch with not having to be the good girl, not having to be sentenced to, not seem like they're too much. You know, this is like one of the primal fears in the feminine nervous system is like, I'm too much, it's too much for a partner. And really giving women this, this stage where they get to be too much, they get to be fully expressed, feel their sacred rage comes Up a lot. And, you know, one thing about being a man leading shadow work for women is sometimes we get to be as facilitators, the. The honored recipient to allow women to bring their full power and. And anger at men towards us, you know, but. But in a held and conscious way. And so shadow work is a space where things that, particularly culturally, are not permitted, have full freedom to come, not just gently to the surface, but powerfully to the surface. And that's one of the, kind of the distinctions of the work Jason and I lead is that, yes, we're very gentle. Yes, we're very attuned and present, and we're inviting for what's not just in the background, but deep, deep, deep in the nervous system to come gradually or quite quickly to the surface. And anger is one of those big ones, because, you know, the.

Jason Lange: The.

Luke Adler: The sentence, the kind of judgment that society wields onto women is if they're angry, they're. They're the B word. You know, they're a. This is like. This is just the judgments we have. If we look at culture at large, you know, it's just flung around. And so women are, like, taught to get back into the nice girl archetype, you know, to the good girl. And so there's this way that women, at least culturally, don't get to come forward powerfully. And part of. Part of our work in this offering is, you know, getting in touch with that and then learning to bring it forward with. With more embodiment and power. So that's just one. One example. Of course, when we get into sex and sexuality, this is where we really see the deviation between men's shadow work and women's shadow work, which we can get into a little bit later. I just wanted to give that. That one kind of specific example, nuance that I've. I've noticed in. In working with women.

Violet Lange: Yeah, thank you so much for both of your shares and painting the picture here. And I think, to piggyback on what you're sharing, Luke, the anger oftentimes isn't in the body, or it's just. I'm just speaking it from my throat, you know, versus speaking it from a deeper place. And therefore, um, we can feel like, oh, well, when I do speak my anger, I'm not hurt or I'm not taking seriously or what's the point? And, you know, we've not been taught to run that energy through our body all the way down, and. And. Or we've been taught to express it in a way that's Very calculated or strategic or like, corner office Y. Because we want to become, in quotations, like, become the man to, like, win at the man's game, or we've. We've had to distance ourselves from our inner feminine in order to be taken seriously in our anger and otherwise. And so I think sometimes it is about finding the anger, and sometimes it's also about finding the softness and being able to toggle between the two or inhabit both, because I've worked with some women that they can do the anger piece, but it's not fully authentic because it's expressed in this calculated or more strategic way, which in some cases is very effective, and in other cases, like, in a more relational sphere, isn't quite as deep or heartfelt. And I know for some of the women I've worked with and also myself, sometimes it's like, oh, my God, I've done all this work on myself just to realize that I'm afraid of being soft, you know, or afraid of being vulnerable. And that probably comes through for. For men too, right? Like, maybe we talk a little bit about when we reclaim these emotions. Are we also reclaiming parts of our inner child? Is this similar to parts work? Like, how would you describe how our inner child shows up? Or do you even use that language when you're doing shadow work?

Jason Lange: We definitely do a lot of inner child work. And I would say it's. I mean, honestly, at the root of 90% of people's material most of the time. Is there some thread that goes back to our early attachment experiences with our caregivers? Luke and I, neither of us are trained in ifs, but we're aware of ifs. And, you know, there'll be times we'll kind of bring in that languaging, but we don't exclusively use it. We tend to lean a little bit more into the embodied side of things. And so if there's really where, we'll kind of use it if we can, if we feel it matches someone's pace more. Because ifs tends to be kind of a little bit slower mapping, okay, this and then this. And that's really important for creating safety for some people. Right? We don't necessarily only use that, though, because sometimes, you know, particularly if we're doing work live, we really want to get to the root as fast as we can. And the structures of ifs can just, in my particular opinion, can sometimes get in the way of that. Because then it's another thing that we start labeling to create a distance from our experience rather than actually being in the experience. But we do a lot of inner child work. We definitely work with different parts. We'll definitely have people play out the energy of different parts in these more embodied ways, which is really potent and important. And, and as much as we can just go all the way in, it's the only way I can really say it in that we want to get to the root. Right. Our program is called the heart of Shadow. We want to get to the like what is the very first little tendril that created this whole framework. Often in our lives and usually there is something that can be traced. Sometimes it's super obvious, sometimes it's not. But we'll dive in and we'll do that incredibly profound re parenting work that happens not only individually as we're working with someone and having them become aware and bring some of that energy. But we very specifically do this work in the group format because of what becomes possible when other people are actually there and how other people's energies and, and the group's energy itself, something we've now seen in, you know, three years of running our men's program, the group itself can become this kind of super parent in a sense that far transcends what any individual parent could give because. Right. We'll often have people show up sometimes that had pretty challenging relationships with their family units. Some had, okay, like their parents, you know, their, their mom, their dad. They were, they were really giving it the best they could. But I've personally never found a parent who could give a kid 100% of everything they needed. They're. They're really gifted in some areas, often less so in others. But one of the profound things about doing this kind of inner child work, particularly in a group, is usually the group can give like every little nuance of that energy because of the different variations of people that are showing up in kind of great presence. It can bring that. I don't think any individual can.

Violet Lange: Yeah, I love that because the group has its own field, like you said. That's brilliant. The super parent. And that field can fill in different spaces you're connecting to like the field of divine mother or universal Mother as it lives through these individuals. And I'm glad you brought that up too because I think it's one thing to feel your shadow and explore your shadow with a therapist or someone, one on one. And group dynamics, especially when you're going to be hanging out with people in person or over a series of weeks online, like these containers are, stuff is going to come up within the group. And so One thing I love about this style of shadow work is it's about what's alive and emergent in the moment. It's not like, oh, you know, I have this thing I've been working, working through with my therapist for the last 10 years, and, like, it might start that way or that might be on something on someone's mind, but you get in a few weeks or, you know, you start being with each other and it's like different things are popping based on what's happening with each other. And what I find is the beauty of that is in some ways it's easier. Like someone's doing some of your work for you because you see someone do their work in a group and you're like, wow, that touches something deep in me, you know, and everyone's crying and everyone's in the moment, and there's again, like that group uplift from the group field, but then also the. The efficiency, for lack of a better word, of. Of doing in a group. Yeah. What. What are your experiences on how the group field or group dynamics kind of inform the work that you guys have seen in the cohorts that you've done and, you know, talk about too, like online versus in person. Because this program is unique, that it does both. Like, yeah, can the.

Luke Adler: The distinction we want to make, particularly around shadow work and the way. That way that we've been taught with some of our other mentors is that it does. It does move into. And I want to. You guys can help me name this, but it really moves into a transpersonal, transcendental, you could even say kind of a shamanic field where this is where the distinction from like something like ifs or, you know, some kind of mapping, psycho, psychological mapping work really differs because one of the adages we have in Heart of Shadow is that. And this is something Jason and I came up with or discovered, really, all of this is a discovery. It's nothing we're making up. Is that when you get close to the very deepest, darkest shadow within your being, the thing that you do not want to face, that your entire Persona and psychology is built to avoid. When the space is held in a safe and sacred way, particularly in a group, because most of our wounding is from a family system, it's from a community. When you get into a group experience, which is why we design it for five, six weeks on Zoom, where you develop safety and comfort, and we do shot at work. When there's enough safety and comfort, you begin to be. You're given the opportunity to face the Deepest wound, the deepest, darkest wound within your being, where you then experience the very brightest possible light.

Violet Lange: Right?

Luke Adler: So at the very heart of shadow is the most brilliant light. And this is one of our teachings. It's one of our discoveries. You know, it's brought on mostly, Jason. I had this very fancy phrase, the masculine vortex. But what we really discovered is it's love. It's the state of love. And I found this to be true from almost everyone I've ever been in a group with, is that when someone shares from their depth, male or female or wherever you are on the gender spectrum, when you share some of the deepest content about who you are, the other people in the group cannot help but have compassion leap out of their hearts. When you have. When you have 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 souls just emitting compassion, it's like a tractor beam that. Just. That. Just saying, it's okay to heal, it's okay to let go of this. We've got you. It's like this. You know, you could say it's a kind of rebirthing. You could say it's a soul retrieval. You could use some of these colloquialisms we hear in the healing world, but really, it's just what happens when enough love gets generated in a space at a deep enough level that it's not about mapping something psychologically or sounding intelligent. It really is about the very, very heart of healing. And this is a thing that Jason and I and I know in your work, Violet, we're just not afraid to face that. We're not afraid to go into that. We like it. You know, we. We like the. The gnarlier it is. The brighter the light, the brighter the light. And that's why we're so compelled by the work. That's why we never get sick of it. That's why, yes, it's hard work in a certain sense, but it continues to inspire because it lives in the very, very source place from which inspiration arises. This is the secret. This is why the work keeps unfolding, and more and more people want to do it. And it's not a technique. It's a commitment. It's a commitment that Jason and I have. You know, and those who want to do it, they're interested in it. They're like, yes, I don't want to just understand. I want to transform fundamentally my relationship to pain. And I want to reoccupy my mind, body with more sovereignty and choice. This is the result. You know, it's not that anything changes from who we are. It's that our relationship to it utterly rearranges itself.

Violet Lange: Mm. I love that shift from mental mapping to embodied transformation. And I'll just add on that the masculine vortex, or whatever you want to describe it, is in some ways also the same energy as the dark mother, the womb of creation, like the cycle of life, death and rebirth. And for women that are listening and they're like, I don't know, pain and all these things, like, first of all, you're already living pain. Like, we all have a relationship to pain, whether we want to admit it or not. It's how much suffering are we incur, incurring, you know, day after day, year after year, and how we are or aren't facing and being with that pain. And I think there's a part of the feminine that just intrinsically understands the life, death and rebirth cycle, whether you're a mother or not and whether you're currently menstruating or not. And so it doesn't mean that it's, you know, like a leg up or something, but just a reminder to anyone listening that might feel a little intimidated, like, you know how to do this. You've just forgotten. Because our society has a problem with pain. You may not have a problem with pain when you strip away some of that conditioning from your family or from the systems that we live in. And there is like this delicious pleasure and visceral sense of joy mixed with relief, mixed with wonder or awe, like when you go into these deep in quotations, dark places. And I think the dark feminine is so needed right now in our society, this ability by all gendered beings, but the feminine within all genders to metabolize suffering with compassion. And so I hear that even in the heart of shadow for men that you've been leading, there are a lot of feminine principles. And this does really apply so much to. To women as well. And I think that's exciting and I'm excited for not only the three of us to lead this program, but also what becomes possible as cohorts, you know, more and more cohorts come through, because then there'll be co ed trainings and all sorts of, you know, iterations that. That flow through.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think what we've discovered with the men's program, and I think we're going to discover here with the women's program, is ultimately shadow work is just human work. Like, when we really get deep down to it, actually, the wounding is often the same. It's what created that Wounding often is very different circumstantially. And the Power, particularly of first getting into the work of the safety and the shared reality of being around men who have experienced the unique wounding men experience and women experiencing the unique wounding women have experienced just creates that safety to really become comfortable with the experience. And you know, our trajectory is then ultimately beyond that we'll be able to do some co ed work and with people who are kind of used to the work in a sense in that. Right. I think what you two have named here is really the heart of shadow. In a lot of ways what we're doing is we're getting to the root of where yet has love not flowed inside of us. So shadow is often the place where either we believe or our body has constellated or we've been taught that it's something where love isn't allowed to be. It's too dark, it prevents us from being available for love, for being worthy of love. It's a story we have inside of ourselves. It's some overwhelming amount of pain that's still locked in our system that leaves no room for love. And really what's going on in the heart of shadow in the group kind of trajectory we've created is the individual shadow work is usually really starting to open that system so love can flow in. But then what, what you guys were talking about, the kind of what we call the vortex, the accelerated learning piece is, I mean, it blows our mind every time a group comes together that right in whatever kind of mirror miraculous way, there's connective tissue already that exists between the men before they've ever met in terms of their wounding, their backgrounds, their story, stories. And I'm sure the same is going to happen with women. So what starts to happen is not only is love starting to flow in an individual, but as the group gets deeper, love starts to flow through the group at an accelerated rate where it's just going wherever it needs to go to open. And so once person's work starts vibrating someone else and then the love starts flowing there, which vibrates someone else in by the end of the retreat in particular, it's quite profound the, the vibration that that is created in the work. And again, why it's so powerful is, you know, the gift of us here in the west and psychotherapy and all that kind of stuff is, you know, it really points out some things that need to be pointed out and that work, the shadow of it is it tends to just focus on the individual and not the collective, not the group. So we go to therapy and we're alone in the room with our therapist, which is very different than doing your work in front of people, right? There's a different kind of vulnerability, but there's also so much more love available. And, I mean, honestly, if nothing else, that's really what we're doing, is Luke and I come in, we set strong agreements, and we create a structure for love to start to flow in that people just begin to open. We're very skilled at what we do, but people begin to open in the presence of that much love. And then where things get really wild, like you talked about, is when a group first starts in the trajectory we've created. The work people are bringing in often is coming from the outside, Things that happened previously in their life, et cetera, whatever. But as a group matures, the developmental trajectory is a family system does form, right? We start playing the role, Certain tendencies start coming out. Things start to happen within the group. And where the most profound healing we often see actually comes in is when the group gets to a place where it starts working that where actual hurt or wounding or feeling dropped or whatever it is happens inside the group. But then the one thing that is possible there, that's often not possible back home, is we're willing to work on it. And we have the structure, the container, and the love and the agreements. And so these really potent things get to be worked out in real time. We were just on retreat almost a month ago now already, which is kind of crazy. But it was a perfect example. You know, it was our second to last day, and a man brought something forward in real time in the group, and it ended up being one of the most profound pieces of work he did, because it was the first time in his life he had ever been able to bring that kind of thing forward and have it actually be worked with and not demonized. And it ended up creating a lot more connection, trust, and safety in the group. So that that trajectory, what's really powerful and why the program we create, it is a journey. It's a journey of first getting to know each other online, virtually from the safety of your home, and kind of building some rapport, doing some deep work. But then we do go on retreat for three and a half days at a point where you've already kind of gotten to know each other. So it's not like just showing up to a retreat where everyone's strangers and you're feeling each other out, You've seen each other be vulnerable, and we can basically just hit the ground running. I mean, it's wild. Like, we just. We just go and by the time we walk out of there, you know, the connections are lifelong connections. And then Luke and I really set up the program. And now, with your help, for the women, for the women that want it, this will be a group that can grow with you throughout your whole life that you can keep coming back to. There's structures, there's tools. We teach you the basics of the shadow work. So the group itself has the ability to continue forward, which is really where it becomes the most potent it could ever be and the most rewarding and the most useful because that's the thing a lot of people don't have. And what we are specifically working here, I think that does make it unique is, you know, for the men, it wasn't just a men's group, and I think for the women, it's not going to be just a women's group. But the frame we're really teaching is this is a shadow work group which really can cut beneath the surface of a lot of the things that often cause groups to fall apart long term, in my experience, because it keeps it very visceral, very potent and very directed in terms of what are we doing here. It's not a place to just come report about our life for 20, 30 minutes a piece, right? It's. We set a little bit of context, but then we go in to. To create movement, to. To. To feel, to express, to go deeper. And what we found is the groups we've created so far with men are. Have been quite durable, right? Our very first group, we started three years ago, they're still meeting. And every group since then has continued to meet in our hope is it's going to be the same experience for women. And, you know, I'll just name here, you know, someone ladies Ling might be like, well, why are men leading shadow work for women? Right? And the way Luke and I are approaching this is we're really good at leading shadow work. We are not necessarily great at leading a women's group because we're not women, right? And that's why it's very important that we're partnering with Violet in this. She'll be involved in the shadow work and she'll be kind of holding the structure of the. The women's group itself in a way that we just don't know the inside of in terms of that work. So it's going to be an actual collaboration in that sense. But ideally, you know, what we want to do by the end is really hand over the keys to the group so they can bring it forward and it's not our group. Right. It's your group. It's whoever comes into it and really wants it. And what we've seen is the ownership of that just really changes things because it's, you know, once we're done with the program, you're not paying us a membership. It's not like I have to pay my monthly dues. The group is yours. It's yours. Right. No one can take it away from you. And that, we are finding is a very rare and precious thing.

Violet Lange: Yes. I want to expand you into, you know, as the program goes on and as the group continues to meet, both within the men's groups and men's shadows groups that you guys have led, but also, Luke, with the shadow work that you've done with your female clients, like, what are some of the wins or impacts that you're seeing?

Luke Adler: Yeah, the thing that Jason emphasized that we discovered through Heart of Shadow and through our own men's group. Jason and I had been in a men's group for eight, nine years now. And we all know this. Those of us that. Those of you out there that do spiritual work and transformational work, you all know this. You go to a workshop. You go to a training so amazing, the training. You experience God. You hear transcendental messages. The angels come to you. The mother Ayah gives you the instruction, the key to the kingdom for your lifetime. And then, you know, inevitably, it fades away and you're back doing your same old shit, and you get clogged up by the world, and. And then you're like, when's my next program? You know, and truly, truly, one of the things that we've discovered is that real transformation and change that's integratable over time occurs when that space of depth is held over time. This is the real genius of Heart of Shadow. And it's nothing that we. We didn't know it was going to occur. We just. We just, again, we discovered it particularly for men. Also true for women. A little bit different, though. Men are so vanquished from the experience of masculine love and safety. You know, Jason, in my generation and the couple generations before us, I mean, there's no generation of men alive right now that could say their fathers were incredibly present and loving and caring. I mean, the two guys in my life that I've met that are like, God, this guy's so wonderful, turned out to have dads who were super present and encouraging and loving and emotionally sensitive and strong. I was like, oh, that explains it. Right? And in a men's group over time, what happens is we get to experience all of these dimensionalities of masculine love that are so healing when that is present over a long period of time, years, not just a weekend workshop or a 10 week course. This is also true for women. Women in some ways maybe have a little bit easier time generally around having loving, supportive relationships, maybe with mom as compared to dad. But there are of course issues there when a group of women get together over time. And I can attest to this because I've started several shadow work groups in the Northwest that are still meeting. And like you said, Violet, the surrogacy of the presence. And it's not just feminine love, but it's just masculine love, feminine love, all the different varieties of the virtuous expressions of love start to make manifestations in the constellation of people. The remediations, the remediated vibrational energies that, that are needed start to appear in the group. Right? And so over time, this is why Heart of Shadow is so genius. This is why I want to take the course. Over time, the, the remedies that we're seeking, the love that we've never touched starts to, starts to get reflected and refracted in the group. And it's just so incredible to discover new experiences of love which are impossible to even consider because deep in the shadow isn't just your pain. Deep in the shadow is all of your healing, all of your love, all of the love of the universe that can move through, up and into your embodied experience. So that's what's possible in the continuity of a group. And we really engineer the program for continuity. Our goal is that by 10 weeks there's enough depth, safety and trust to continue in perpetuity, if that's what you feel like you're up for. But for sure, if you're interested in healing, if you're interested in having a life that truly works, and yes, it's successful on many levels. Having the container of depth over the rest of your life. It's already been decided. I don't know who's going to go first. Jason and I are virtually the same age, but one of us is going to be at the other person's funeral. It's not even a big deal to say. It's just like, well, of course that's what we're going to do. That's the level of commitment that we're at. And we didn't start with that. We didn't start with that. But maybe a few years ago it was like, yeah, we're family it's just evident, you know, this is a certain connection, and that's how it's going to be. It's not a connection out of obligation. It's not a connection out of some weird kind of earsot facsimile sense of duty, of being some kind of good soldier. No, it's born entirely out of this source place of inspiration and over time, what women will get to experience. And I'm just talking to one of the groups that I started many, many years ago. They meet, they go on retreat several times a year, and their work has evolved into all kinds of amazing places that deviated way from where we started. And I don't even check in with them much anymore. They're just off having this incredible experience of deep, deep friendship and deep love and unconditional support. And I think my very first piece of shadow work that I ever did was with Jason in Hawaii maybe nine years ago. I can't remember what time of year. I think it was spring. We all. We all fundamentally long for love in all of its varieties and flavors that we've never experienced. We just do. We're built for that. And what I would add to it, why I think it's different, and I'm all in on shadow work, is that I do think there's some ultimate path around having that experience be embodied. Not apart from the body, not a transcendence. That's body exclusive, but that's body inclusive. And so in shadow work in this context, we're very body positive. We listen to the body, the body is wise. We honor the bodies of everyone in the circle. Understanding that wisdom is being brought by everyone. Everyone in the circle is. Is a healer. Everyone's a teacher. If we do our job well, we enable that teacher to come forth fully. And over time, it just comes. Comes forth more and more fully with more power, with more kind of penetrative presence, and, yes, the utmost tender sense of softness. A softness that's so inviting and so safe that you cannot help but completely surrender, you know, and this is. It's just endless. It's endless discovery, truly.

Violet Lange: Mm. And I think that if women are listening, are like, well, you know, I kind of have a lot of connection in my life or have a lot of female friends. I want to highlight what Luke was saying about depth, because I think the shadow of some of the dynamics that happen in circles of women is. Is that it can become caddy or competitive or, you know, betrayal or all these very complex, like, social things that happen in groups of women. And when you do shadow work. Yes, it is about reparenting and, and the inner child stuff, but it's also about all the cycles of our development. You know, some of the most powerful shadow work that I've received was about being bullied in middle school and high school and like how that played out. And so it's from the youngest part of ourselves, a preverbal, all the way through the different stages of development. And I personally think that there's an opportunity for feminine authenticity and depth and kind of rawness beyond the complaining or the gossiping or whatever we've, we might have gone accustomed to or might be expected from, from women. So I just want to throw that out there that there are, like you said, Luke, infinite ways of relating and layers that we can get to. I also just want to share that. If you're listening and you're like, well, what about other types of shadow work? I do constellations, family constellations work and systemic work and dream work and archetype work and like other types of shadow work. But the difference with this is the depth. It's the embodied depth that you're going and getting. And even though constellations in some ways like works through the body, it is about, well, how broad can we go? Like, let's look at our ancestors, let's look at our past lives, let's look at our cosmic influences. It's. It's about ever widening frames to make sure that you are including. It's the science of inclusion. And I think this type of shadow work is really about the science of deep, like how many layers can we peel back of the onion as it's showing up in our nervous system, real time with other humans, until we can get to this place of. It sounds really poetic, but it's, it's like an orchestra, right? Like our note as it shifts and changes and we develop our own melody combined with everyone else's melody and having permission to be like, well, I'm not just going to be the violin the whole time. Like I've been doing that my whole life. I don't want to be the fucking violin anymore. You know, I want to like bounce, pound those cymbals and drums or whatever, whatever we've kind of boxed ourselves into. So this program is different than the other work that I've done through my other programs because it's led in a co ed container, because it's online and retreat, which I've done some of before. But because structurally the group continues even after the work in the container itself, led by the three of Us is done. And because for those of you who don't know, Luke is an acupuncturist, and he knows about meridians and acupuncture points and where in the body we're storing trauma. And one of the teachers that the three of us all studied with at different times, Robert Masters, also is aware of the body and how energy is flowing into the body. But I want to make another distinction, which is that some schools of thought or some people think, you know, shadow work is a little bit about provoking. Okay, well, how do we, like, poke the tiger to get the shadow? Or how do we get the biggest explosion of, you know, energies that we can move through it? And. And I've seen. Not Robert, I'm talking about other people now, but I've seen teachers that are kind of like, ooh, I'm gonna work this person, because that's gonna be good for my. My appearance or my ego, or, like, people are gonna see that I can go the deepest. And that's not what you guys are about. It's about safety, and it's about group trust, and it's about being with what's emerging. And if resistance is emerging, then being with it versus betraying the resistance or pushing away the resistance in order to get, like, some. Some big reaction. And I think as a culture, that's where we're hopefully evolving to, is that it doesn't have to be about these, like, crazy wisdom. Teachers are like, hey, everything is wisdom, so use it if you can, and it's okay if you've got re traumatized because, you know, it was a good show. Like, that is not what this is about. I just want to be crystal clear for any of you that have had, you know, challenging experiences with leaders or with groups, that the principles underlying this are really about safety, about trusting your own body's wisdom, and, of course, like, playing with your edges and playing full out. But sometimes reclaiming your sovereignty and reclaiming your truth and. And reclaiming your boundaries is part of the work. And saying, like, yeah, I'm here. I'm complete right now. I'm saturated. And that being heard and that being respected and loved.

Jason Lange: Foundational to the work we do, in that we set very, very strong agreements for our container of which honoring self is a crucially important one. Um, and, you know, it's. It. This kind of leads me into. For a long time, I didn't know how to describe kind of the work we do, like, what is it we actually do? And the closest I could. I could name for A long time was a type of emotional midwifery where it's like, we can. We can support you, but you actually have to do the work. Right. We can give you strategies for how to be in the pain and start to move the energy and whatnot, but you ultimately have to do the work. And, you know, as we deepened into the men's version of that, I was like, well, what's kind of the male equivalent of that? Which doesn't have to just be men, but I think it's a similar energetic, in a way, is we now use the term sherpas. Right? Like, we can't climb the mountain for you, but Luke and I are very skilled at navigating challenging terrain and supporting you on the way. And it's a journey we've done in our own ways. Yours will be unique, but we can say, hey, you know, this is kind of where you might want to go here or here, but ultimately, you have to climb the mountain. And we are dead serious when we say we do not push. So wherever your edge is, is your edge. And some of the most beautiful work we've witnessed. The movement has maybe been this big. So on the outside, it looks like, wow, okay, that was like, his, you know, he moved a little bit of energy, but for that man or, you know, that woman and their karma and their history, that actually, that movement is actually revolutionary. And that was like, as far as their nervous system could go in that moment. And so we celebrate everyone's work for exactly where it goes. Because ultimately, you know, another one of our agreements we go with is ultimately, you are responsible for your healing. Luke and I are not here to heal you. You're not healing to heal the women ultimate. You will. You are. We can provide a structure to support you in that, but you have to be the one that knows, okay, this is it. I. I'm. I'm going in. I'm going for it. Or. Yeah, this is as far as I can go right now. Cause I can tell more than that would. Would actually be a break. It wouldn't just be a stretch, and my nervous system wouldn't know what to do with that. So we are. You know, we've both been involved in transformational work for decades now and have been on. On the. The tangent of seeing plenty of communities fall because of that more crazy wisdom, dangerous type energy that is more about generating reactivity than it is about bringing love to the shadowy parts.

Luke Adler: Yeah, I just. I want to emphasize that, Jason, just to bring this point all the way home in that when Someone's nervous system is pushed past the edge. You use the word dangerous, and I think that's exactly right. And in certain crazy wisdom traditions, and many, many traditions still in the marketplace today, that methodology is. Is promoted. And some people are into it. It's absolutely deleterious. It is not beneficial. And here's. Here's why. Because our view around the work is if it's not. If it's not an embodied piece of transformation, meaning you can't land. Land it back in your nervous system, integrate it, and then live the new reality. It's relegated at best to some kind of adult spiritual entertainment. And at worst, as you said, Violet, something that actually damages the nervous system. And the absolute worst makes someone never want to engage in the work again. They don't want to get near transformation. They don't want to meditate, they don't want to do anything that would help evolve their experience of life. And that's the part of it, to me, that's really heartbreaking. The third part of it that can be really awful is, is to actually think, oh, wow, the teacher is doing this for me so that I can grow to actually like the whole organization and system validates that kind of behavior. And I can give very explicit examples about this, but I'll spare us. Spare us all. It's. It's why in the facilitation, Jason and I have this principle that we operate by. We never operate in a shaming environment. You will never experience. Jason and I facilitate in a way that's pressured, that's shaming or pushy. The irony of that is because the invitation has nothing attached to it.

Jason Lange: Is.

Luke Adler: That people will go as deep as their bodies will allow them to. And it's why, you know, I have. And Jason, you have gone all in. In this way of facilitating. Because it's the deepest work I've ever experienced. Because it allows someone to integrate what they're ready to integrate, make good use of and really deliver into their life, their family and communities. And it's just. It's tremendous. It's absolutely tremendous. And to be frank with everyone, it requires. It requires tremendous focus, devotion, and sacrifice. Like all of these retreats Jason and I have done, we've had to leave our families. Jason and Violet, you two have young kids. I have relatively young kids. But we do this work and we do this offering because we feel like it is. It's the. It's the highest thing we're capable of offering and service to others. And so we're just compelled to continue to do it, you know, and for those that are ready, that feel pulled to it, I promise you this, this will be one of. And many men have said this, this is the greatest adventure I have ever experienced in my entire life, verbatim. I promise you, you will, you will say it's either one of the greatest or the greatest adventure you've ever been on. Maybe one out of ten will be like, no, it was like top ten. It was like, no. Most people will say it's one of the great adventures of their lifetime. We feel confident in saying that. We've done it many, many times now.

Violet Lange: Well, thank you both so much for sharing your experiences, your passion for this work. Jason, is there anything you want to add onto what Luke shared as we're wrapping up?

Jason Lange: Yeah, just that, you know, this is a engine, so to speak, we have cultivated so far exclusively for men. But we're excited to actually adapt with your help, Violet, to really serve women at the deepest level. And so there's going to be a lot of deep structures that are the same in the women's version of the Heart of Shadow. And there's going to be a lot of novelty in that. Like we said, it's a different experience and there'll be some different themes that we work. And it's a great adventure for us. Right, in that we don't exactly know what's going to be created because we're whoever participates. You know, this is something we're all co creating in terms of what our. What is a new modality and community structure that creates depth and healing and connection when we really need it. I think arguably more than ever on this planet. And this so far is one of the. Is really the most potent thing I think we've found for how to do that and how to really move the ball. I'd say, like Luke said, it's really important for us that this work isn't just spiritual entertainment. And what we mean by that is if it's not showing up in your life, in your relationships, in your family, to us, it doesn't matter. It's just kind of having fun on a weekend. So we're very passionate about the integration piece in terms of really landing it in the nervous system in a way we can access again and then creating some structures to facilitate that, least of which is the actual group, which we do some pretty deep work. And in that process, we often see each other's deepest pains. And like Luke said, our greatest light, our greatest gift and the power of the group then becomes as individuals, we're always going to forget our light. But the members of the group, they remember, they've seen us for who we really are. And so the group itself becomes a way to just remind each other of, like, oh, yeah, no, I was there. I felt it. That was real. That's who you are. This is just habit or forgetting. And so even when you know, you don't believe, I believe. And then it's through seeing it through each other's eyes that often things get reignited and that energy becomes accessible to us again. And we can bring things back to the people that matter the most to us in our lives. And we've seen that in a very real way in the heart of Shadow, in terms of particularly, you know, we'll launch groups, and sometimes it's been within days, sometimes within weeks or months. People hit real hardship and challenge in their lives. Health challenges, family losses, job losses. And that structure of the group, as I said in a recording I did recently, but I mean, it's just as applicable to women, is the. The group itself becomes shock absorbers for life, right? So as the terrain gets bumpy, it helps us navigate that and not be hit so hard when things get really challenging and we're all going to get hit. That's just the way life works, right? Life is suffering. It's there. But the group helps us manage that and stay connected to who we are and our real great gifts. And shadow work, you know, is the fastest way, I think, we found, to create deep bonds. Because the paradox is often the part of us we feel is the most unlovable or unworthy of love. As we bring that forward into a container with agreements and structure and safety and love and presence, it's often what makes people feel the most connected to us and those connections, as we are seeing both in our personal relationship, Luke and I's, and then in the cohorts of men we've started so far, they. They are to the grave. They're like, okay, you're in my life now, and I'm with you on this journey. So we're really excited to bring this to women and just serve an entirely different group that I think is also hungry for this type of work.

Violet Lange: And I love that you use that word, hungry, because I think there's a longing in men and women, and I really feel it come through. Women often is. Shadow work can also be a vehicle for tapping into longings that you haven't allowed yourself to feel or that you felt but have felt helpless to bring to life. And this is not like law of attraction or you know, spiritual bypassing. It's about really being with the depth of the feeling and the depth of the longing and letting that be a shared currency in the group can be very powerful. And I'm also, I personally have an eye on this is more than just adapting a program for men, for women. I think women are really sensitive to that because whether it's health data that like, oh, this data about heart health applies to women too, but we're not even going to study, you know, get data that actually uses female bodies or oh, let's just take the hero's journey and turn it to the heroine's journey. And it actually doesn't work that way. Like we have our own mythology and we have our own cycles of creation. And for instance, not this may be too deep of a cut, but like, you know, the descent of Inanna is a much more powerful like metaphor for the feminine journey than the hero's journey or the Joseph, Joseph Campbell sort of thing. So yes, Luke and Jason have built something very powerful, very durable and very efficacious. But there's also more that we're going to be co creating together, as Jason said, and more that we're going to be learning together as the women. And it's, it's pretty cool opportunity actually to be in the first cohort for women because you are going to be shaping this experience for women to come and leaving a legacy in that way. And I think that's one of the longings on all of our hearts. No matter what gender or sex you identify with is, is we want to leave a legacy and we want to have shifted the things that we could shift karmically and ancestrally and otherwise when we're in this wild and precious time of humanity, hopefully up leveling amidst a lot of pain and suffering and chaos as well. And just to Jason's point about, you know, bumps along the way, shadow work doesn't cause the bumps like the bumps are going to happen no matter what it's about. Can I get resourced to handle and navigate the bumps that happen? And I think any sort of personal growth work, it's like you enter it and then life, lifes, life happens. And now you have a new resource to tap into, a new lever to pull a new way to thrive through a challenge and come out on the other side with gifts you didn't realize were there and a sense of community and a shared sense of holding. So I just want to name that so that people going into shadow isn't Scary. It's actually not dealing with your shadow that bites us in the ass, and that is scarier. Luke, anything else you want to add as we're closing?

Luke Adler: Just a joy to be with both of you tonight and to kind of launch our. Our campaign and getting the word out. And I'm very excited to have some more pods on this subject because there's. There's so much to talk about. And of course, this is really where I got my start in shadow work, is working with women. So for. For some, for me, it's. I feel like I get to go home in a lot of ways, working with a group of people I feel very comfortable with. And, you know, the. The. In some ways, the only reason I got into working with men exclusively as I worked with women many, many years. And then they said, where are the guys? And I said, I gotta start leading it for men because the women wanted conscious men, you know, and there's not long after that that I led some men's work for several years, and Jason and I collaborated in certain ways. So this feels like a kind of a full integration of many, many, many years of work, really, for the three of us. And so I'm just very excited. I'm really excited to be with you two. And then it's going to be so much fun to work with women. And it's very. It'll be. It'll be different in a lot of ways. But the love and longing, like you said, Violet, is really the same. You know, you take the genderizing away. And of course, we're conditioned differently from childhood so that we have to tend to that. But quickly we move past that, we feel, wow, we're all longing for the same thing, you know, really to come home. And the shadow work, Heart of Shadow experience creates an embodied home, a community. You know, it's just. It's really a lovely thing. So I'm very excited to be with you, too.

Violet Lange: Well, thank you both so much. I know this is just the first of many conversations we're going to have and maybe even some live workshops or experiences coming up, so stay tuned for that. And the links will be in the show notes of how to learn more about Heart of Shadow for women and how to sign up. We're starting. Starting in a few months, and we already have a lot of people interested. So to Jason's point, there is a magic that works in the field to align the right group at the right time, and your journey will be the perfect medicine for someone else and vice versa. Their journey will be the perfect medicine for you. And so if you do feel like, you know, I've always wanted to do shadow work or there's. There's been some things that I just haven't had the bandwidth to look at and. And I don't want to face by myself or if there's just a part of. It's like, this sounds fun, and like, the craziest sort of way I'm in, then check out the link and reach out to us. And any of us would be happy to have a phone call with you and learn a little bit more about where you're at and what you're looking for in your journey and how this might be the right fit for you right now.

Luke Adler: Bye, everyone.

Violet Lange: Thank you.

Luke Adler: My pleasure.