Creating a Safe Crucible:

Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into

Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.
Creating a safe crucible is key to promoting deep innermost change. This is important work that must first be
done by the yoga therapist in order for her/him to support another human being in their own studio or private
practice.
As Bud McClure, transpersonal psychologist on staff says, “Creating a proper holding environment in the
therapeutic relationship invites clients to enter into a liminal state in which rigid personality
characteristics formed by early childhood experiences might give way to more spontaneous behavior. On
the mat, in the safety of the studio, clients might experience an unintegrated state. Here the unburdening
of ego boundaries may occur, compulsivity may be relinquished and the client’s psyche may be freed to
enter a state of play. The client may develop a more enlarged, conscious sense of self.” McClure 2014.

Yoga North ISYI has developed a tiered curriculum for supporting yoga therapy certification and teacher training
students to explore their own shadow work.
This CIC and supporting document will demonstrate how three phases of curriculum that focus on
compassionate self-discipline, long term mind study and shadow work explored through facilitated group process,
prepares the student to hold safe space for their own personal growth and healing and that of their clients. This
program utilizes best practices for supporting each student to take his/her shadow journey while simultaneously
maintaining healthy group dynamics. Exploring shadow work is a valid and important curriculum component for
high level graduating yoga therapists as demonstrated through previous graduate testimonials.

In addition to a code of conduct at each level of training Yoga North utilizes a Safe Space or Brave Space
Guideline agreement to create a safe container or crucible for personal development and healing.

Brave Space Guidelines

 Confidentiality
 What is said stays here
 No fixing, analyzing, changing, shaming, judging, or saving self or others - our work is to lead an examined life.
 Speak to the group
 What you have to say may help someone else learn – the community is what makes this event work
 Introverts speak up: Extroverts make room for them.
 Make “I”statements
 “You” or “they” statements take away from the experience.
 WAIIT: Where Am I In This? Speak to your part in the story - not others’.
 Elephant in the room
 Cold? Close the windows – speak up for what you need.
 Uncomfortable? Do something to help yourself.
 If something is not working for the group and it is being silenced or spoken about in side-conversations, it
needs to be brought into the learning space and to the whole group.
 Trust that this circle will handle what needs to get cleared.
 Beginners mind
 Allow yourself to be who you are, others to be who they are, and the work to be what it is.
 Stay present
 If you notice yourself deflecting discomfort by getting up and being busy, can you stay for a moment longer?
 Everything is open for inquiry
 Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.

Yoga North ISYI begins Shadow work curriculum at the 200-hour level of yoga teacher training with self-study
(Svadhyaya). Two books which guide this self-exploration are, Making a Change for Good: A Compassionate
Guide to Self-Discipline by Cheri Huber and Conquest of the Mind by Eknath Easwaran, both books strongly
encourage meditation as a major tool towards self-discovery.

In Cheri Huber’s book, Making a Change for Good, we work with the tools of compassion to begin or re-
discover our path with discipline. Below are some of the concepts used to explore the shadow self:

 Uncover EgoCentric Karmic Conditioning(EKC), which keeps one in a negative relationship with one’s
self and promotes a punitive discipline style
 Start to witness how one uses discipline in one’s own life and how to move towards being kind and
compassionate, rather than stressed & punitive
 Begin to work with one’s own inner mentor. Who is unconditionally accepting, conscious, compassionate
awareness that is their authentic nature (see image 2)
 Start a Meditation Practice daily to support one’s witness stance and connection with the inner mentor
 Partake in a 30 Day Guided Retreat, practicing the tools of Compassionate Self Discipline
Below is a survey we have the student’s take at the beginning of this course work.

Exploration of Self Discipline

What does “self-discipline” mean to you?

2. What is your history with self-discipline?

3. What are you currently disciplined about (look around your life and what action/habit do you act on with
regularity)?

4. What does it mean to live in the present?

5. Write down several personal concerns that you are hoping to bring more discipline to in the near future(put a
star by the one that has the most charge for you or impact in your life).

6. What does compassionate self-discipline look like to you?

 Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.

One of the most powerful learnings our faculty and school has had after teaching 34 teacher training and yoga
therapy certification programs is the rampant use of negative and punitive discipline practices by the students to
create, build and sustain their yoga practices. We have found it crucial to help them start to examine the
"ingredients" they are using in developing their yoga and life practices. In order for any of us to have a peaceful,
joyful, inward flowing mind, we need to practice connecting with the "inner mentor" and use the ingredients of
kindness and compassion to propel us towards our next level of integration and evolution of ourselves.
 Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.

At the 500 hour and Level One Yoga Therapy Training students engage in an eight-month Mind Study that uses
components of Yogic Philosophy and Yogic Maps to help facilitate and begin the practice of “Complete mastery
over the roaming tendencies of the mind is Yoga”. (Sutra 1:2 Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, PhD)

Below are two of the yogic maps that are used in the curriculum to help the students begin to have mastery over
a mind that is disturbed, distracted and stupefied. Encouraging the students to re-establish themselves in their
joyful, still, inward flowing state of mind. The first map is the four functions of the mind and the second map is
the kleshas, the path to suffering.
 Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.

These images are samples of how the students can work with the previous yogic maps and begin to put practices
in place that continue to move them towards freedom from their suffering and shadow and toward the mastery
needed to be a capable and effective Yoga Therapist.
 Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.

At our Yoga Therapy Level Two program we do an Ashram style immersion at the edge of the wilderness. This
setting creates a unique realm for the work of moving through relationship and group work. We begin this two-
year study with an emphasis on building relationship excellence and a strong crucible to hold both personal work
and group work. Once we have established our relating “tools” we then dive into projections and shadow work
using our Yoga Therapy cohort as the grounds to explore shadow work.

The two maps below are a sampling of maps we use to build relationship excellence.

10thdot.com

Yoga Therapy Certification & Teacher Training Programs.
These are nine guidelines to explore when learning how to establish relationships of excellence.
Know Thyself from 10th Dot
The world is our autobiography.
That is why the formulation of
knowledge can only go as far as you,
the seeker, possess an articulate
knowledge of your own self.
Because of this limitation to the
boundaries that you, the knower,
have of yourself, there is a strict
equivalence at every stage of
development between your make-
up and the make-up of the world
that you can see and the world of
which you can think.
Organizations:
Yoga North International SomaYoga Institute
Ann Maxwell & Molly McManus
www.YogaNorthDuluth.com 1-218-722-9642(YOGA)
10th Dot
Vonda Vaden Bates - Sr. Consultant & 10th Dot CEO
http://www.10thdot.com/10thDot.com/Coaching.html
Vonda@10thdot.com 612-247-1448
Creating a Safe Crucible:
Incorporating Shadow Work Curriculum into
While we are working with shadow
and projections work we use the
acronym, "W.A.I.I.T", where am I in
this? When one is starting to leave
their own work and begins to
project onto others they forget to
pause and use W.A.I.I.T. Below are
five red flags that allow one to
realize they have left their own
shadow work and are now doing
something completely different,
heading towards suffering.
Red Flags -- 5 D’s Below are a few Red Flags!
How we keep ourselves from PAUSING.
DENIAL Choose to ignore what we don’t like.
DELETION Stay in Mind Chatter.
DISTORTION Contort “What is” to fit our view.
DISTANCE Socially engaged but don’t show ourselves.
DESENSITIZE Make noise around us.
10thdot.com
Resources for Shadow Work:
Books & Literature
Bates, Charles (2001). Pigs Eat Wolves, Yes International
Easwaran, Eknath (2001). Conquest of Mind, Nilgiri Press
Huber, Cheri (2007). Making a Change for Good, Shambhala Pub.
McClure, Bud PhD. (2010). Putting a New Spin on Groups, L.E.A, Inc.
& (2015). Yoga Therapy: Building a Holding Environment for Somatic
and Psyche Change, International Journal of Yoga Therapy — No. 25 (2015).
Tiganait, Pandit Rajmani PhD. (2014). The Secret of the Yoga Sutra:
Samadhi Pada, Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy
Vonda Vaden Bates - Sr. Consultant and 10th Dot CEO