Uncover how the light and darkness within you coexist as In Focus Shadow Work guides you in embracing your shadow self to discover a happier you.

This comprehensive guide includes a beautifully designed, removable 16 × 24–inch poster featuring at-a-glance references for quick learning anytime.

Over the course of your life, you push difficult emotions and experiences aside, but they never truly leave you. These elements form your shadow self , the dark side of your personality that most people try to repress. Shadow work is a method of embracing and seeking to understand this darker aspect of yourself so that you can release the pain and trauma of the past and become a more healed and balanced person. Darkness and light exist in every person. Only by doing the hard work of acknowledging and understanding the darkness can you begin to heal, love and accept yourself, and truly grow.

The book
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Once you have found self-love, self-acceptance, and genuine growth through understanding the dark and light that coexist in you , you will be able to guide others in this practice while living a truly authentic life. Take the first step with this essential modern guide to shadow work.

The In Focus series applies a modern approach to teaching the classic body, mind, and spirit subjects. Authored by experts in their respective fields, these beginner’s guides feature smartly designed visual material that clearly illustrates key topics within each subject. As a bonus, each book includes reference cards or a poster, held in an envelope inside the back cover, that gives you a quick, go-to guide containing the most important information on the subject.

I found this to be extremely helpful. I thought that it was easy to understand. I no longer think of meditation as hokey as reading this book has taught me what I was doing wrong. Will recommend to others.

4.5⭐️
We all have shadows, even Peter Pan. He was just looking in the wrong place!

👤Shadow work is about recognizing our repressed emotions (what the ego doesn’t want to see, the parts of ourselves we protect), and working through them to create an inner harmonious balance. Without that awareness, the “shadow” within us grows darker and more subconsciously consuming. The darkness is an energy zapper, and can lead to an overworked nervous system, which can lead to emotional and physical dis-eases.

“you can go through a lifetime of therapy and work painstakingly on improving yourself, but all of your efforts will be with your conscious mind. If you ever deal with your shadow, your life will still be driven by your subconscious.”

📖This book offers a great introduction to the topic, how our nervous response system can cultivate lifelong issues, and thought-provoking exercises that are easy enough to try at home.

It’s a very quick read with topics like:
—What is a shadow (triggers, ego, projection)
—Methods to reveal your shadow
—Parts of our shadow (false, disowned and lost self)
—Conscious, Subconscious, Unconscious mind
—Ancestral DNA trauma
—Effects of trauma on the nervous system
—Healing the Inner Child
—The cyclical patterns of healing
—4 restorative yoga poses
—Nervous system response hacks
—Journal prompts

🧘🏼‍♀️Chapter 4 was very insightful for me. After reading this, I have a new respect for meditation, sleep and dream journals. I gained a slightly deeper understanding when putting all of the consciousness aspects into perspective.

✌🏼The “lost” part of myself speaks to me deeply as well. I kept the little hippie part of myself locked away for decades, so that I wouldn’t be judged by my peers. The past few years I have FULLY embraced my inner hippie self, and it feels SO good. 🥰

✈️ I also learned that I may have more “flight” tendencies than I realized. Workaholic and burned-out adrenals is screaming at me 😆

QUOTES:
“Chronic fight-or-flight responses will cause a person to distract themselves from inner turmoil.”

“Pain creates edges for us to exist within”

“Pain stretches you into a new version of yourself, expanding your capability to hold energy and direct it toward your will.”

“When you are pointing a finger in blame, notice you still have three fingers pointed back at you.”

👏🏼 Overall, I got a lot more out of this book than I thought I would, honestly. I’m not new to the topics, but I still learned some interesting info. I think this book is worth owning a physical copy to refer back to for journal promptimg and future reference.

A huge thanks to NetGalley, Quarto Publishing and Stephanie Kirby for providing me with a complimentary ARC to review.

This is structured to cause you to think about your inner and outer world with wonderful prompts. Great book for anyone interested in self reflection.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This book is great and concise on an interesting concept. I was apprehensive going in as I hadn’t heard much about shadow work and thinking about the shadow self didn’t feel right to me. However the book does contain some really good stuff like the yoga section and the journaling prompts throughout. I appreciated how well Kirby handled the concept of triggers and approaching them and the illustrations are awesome.

In Focus Shadow Work by Stephanie Kirby is a portal through which one can connect to their higher and true honest selves.All one needs to do is to grab themselves a copy and get the ultimate gift of life.
Stumbling on this book after recently embarking on a spiritual journey comprising of Eastern practices,this book came in handy!

I am very open minded so I was drawn to this book because I didn’t know anything about shadow work. I found it interesting and useful in my daily life. I do want to purchase the physical copy so I can have the wall chart.

The book is visually pretty, but I have doubts about the authors competencies and credentials to write about the subject. It feels like she's riding the wave of a trendy topic, which Shadow Work nowadays seems to be, and simplify it to this digestive format. However, I have my doubts about ethics of encouraging readers to touch on subjects that are often painful or traumatic without promoting use of professional help.

Another enjoyable read by Stephanie. Shadow work is new to me and I had no idea what it was but was intrigued. I liked the examples, the exercises will come in handy. I liked the wording as it makes it understandable.

The diagrams were good too, good to look at and colourful.

This seemed like an attempt to approach an interesting topic that unfortunately fell flat. Such a short book needs to be focused, and this was all over the place, like it was trying to seem like the ultimate authority on everything without explaining anything very well.

I'm unfortunately very sceptical about trusting any of the information in this book based on my previous impressions of Stephanie Kirbys books.

I picked up the book In Focus Manifesting by Stephanie Kirby along with this book, and I choose to read that first because I already knew a fair bit about the basics of manifesting and wanted to solidify and expand that. It was unfortunately filled with misinformation and the few trustworthy bits in it was generic stuff like 'meditation is good for you'. So, because I know next to nothing about Shadow Work (that's why I wanted to read this book) I'm very hesitant to take anything at face value since my last experience with Kirbys writing was so poor, and I'm not sure I can suss out all the things that are wrong. There were places that jumped out to me as odd, but since I don't know much about this area of spirituality I can't really tell if it's just odd to me because I've never practised it, or if it's because it's plain wrong. The illustrations were beautiful.

I'm still going to be optimistic and rate this a 3/5 since this could be a solid introduction to Shadow Work, I just don't know enough about the topic to be a good judge on that.

As always, thank you to the author and publishing house for letting me read an advance review copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Overall I did enjoy this book, but I struggled with the format and I think it would be best read in physical format. However, it was informative and insightful, and I will definitely be buying a physical copy!

Lovely illustrations and great content. I will enjoy having the hardcover version when it’s released.

Thanks to NetGalley and Wellfleet Press for an ARC of this book.

tl;dr: This book was a bit slow to start, but once it gets going, it gets going. This is more of a starting point or introduction for shadow work, and in that sense, I think it delivers. Though if you're familiar with psychology and the concept of shadow work, this won't bring anything new to the table, but may still be enjoyable.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Not tl;dr

"According to Jung, the less you are aware of what lies within your shadow, the denser and darker it is."

I think this book offers a nice introduction into shadow work. It's a practice that's been made much more mainstream thanks to Pagan and metaphysical communities, but it is a concept first discussed in psychology. So don't feel turned off by this book if you're not a spiritual person (or a non-Pagan). Working with your shadow is all about looking within and analyzing who you really are, which is a practice anyone can (and everyone should!) partake in.

That said, this book does seem to be aimed at a younger audience. Probably teens and early 20s (YA). Just something to keep in mind if you were to want to read this book. As the book went on, it felt less age-specific though, which was nice. Either way, this is still a book teen+ could easily read and get something out of.

I did struggle a bit with the start, as while the introduction was nice, it did feel a bit repetitive, and I worried the whole book would be like that. Thankfully some variety was added the more you go, and there was clearly effort and love put in.

"Imagine you're suppressing essential aspects of your personality because your ego thinks they are undesirable and unacceptable."

I loved the idea of the author really encouraging you to use a journal alongside this book, with lots of questions and activities to follow (and I mean LOTS lol). I will say that I wish things were organized a bit differently. Right off the bat we're instructed to make a playlist of songs that represent our shadow, but the book had yet to really give us insights as to what our shadow is, how to get to know it, etc., in order to correlate that to music. They touched on jealousy/envy, but that was pretty much it. But the shadow is a LOT more than that, which they discuss /after/. And I think if they put the music activity later in the book, after we had more chances to answer questions and introspect about ourselves, that'd give us more opportunity to know what songs to choose and engage with.

There are lots of illustrations throughout the book, and while they did add some nice visual elements and things to let your eyes rest on, some felt a bit out of place. And one graphic with a chart explaining the different parts of the brain had the exact same image, just different colors? At first I assumed the colors correlated to highlighting the areas of the brain being referenced, but, no. I feel like that was an easy missed opportunity.

"Pain creates edges for us to exist within. Love is borderless, but pain indeed has boundaries."

The good outweighs the bad for sure though, with this book. There are dozens and dozens of questions to help you dive into your psyche and be introspective. Seriously, this book is packed with questions. And I definitely appreciated a list in the back with the main questions asked again, so you can both review them to see how you might've changed as you've read through this book, and also to easily find them again if needed.

There is also a list of books and resources to check out in the back too, for further research and learning. The author was also very clear that this book is the START of a journey, and gave some helpful questions to check in with yourself to make sure you keep up your self-care.

All in all, I definitely enjoyed this book and am grateful I had the opportunity. If you're curious about shadow work, I say this is a good place to start! :)

I don't know much about shadow work, but I found this book to be quite helpful and easy to understand

Shadow work has always intrigued me, so when I saw In Focus Shadow Work by Stephanie Kirby available, I had to request it. I've always wanted to explore shadow work but wasn't sure where to start. This book, in my opinion, is an excellent starting point and serves as a great foundational guide for those seeking to learn, work through, and become more knowledgeable in the practice.

The book is a practical guide to shadow work, filled with calls to action and thought-provoking topics. I recommend grabbing a journal to fully take advantage of what this book offers.

Overall, there's a lot to unpack here, but it is well worth the read. Each section is easy to understand, and I anticipate revisiting this book often. I can't wait to get a physical copy to add to my ever-growing library.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Wellfleet Press for gifting me the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This was a very thorough guide to a topic that can be a bit confusing and hard to understand. I appreciated that the author included call outs and "action items" for the reader, as well as really informative illustrations and diagrams. I plan to purchase this book for myself to really dive deeper and use as future reference. 4/5

I learned a lot about a topic I had only heard about in the past. The book was easy to understand and full of useful information. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

As someone new to practicing shadow work I was very excited to receive this title. Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group – Wellfleet Press for access to this digital arc! Grab a journal and a cup of coffee to pair with this title, and a nice place to perform yoga. I can appreciate so much of this title, the ease of starting where you feel called within a new school of thought stands out. I would have loved to be able to work on prompts within the title as I’m not a big journal focused person but can see this being a gateway to starting to journal more regularly. I greatly appreciated the yoga poses because as someone who practices yoga it’s always nice to gain new perspective on poses to add into your daily practice. I would recommend this book for those a new to shadow work!

Really nice and insightful. I’m a firm believer in shadow work so this was a nice tool to use. I will be buying this once it comes out

I enjoyed reading this book. It really opened my eyes on various topics. Shadow Work is something I think everyone should take time to learn about and utilize in their day to day life.