Three types of psychological shadow with developmental psychologist Kim Barta

Kim Barta is an experienced and versatile developmental psychotherapist, specialising in delivering specific therapeutic techniques to the different developmental stages humans grow through in their lives. He is skilled in working with the ‘shadow’ a term coined by Carl Jung to denote the parts of ourselves that our outside of our conscious awareness. Often the shadow is treated from a single perspective addressing only one aspect of the shadow with a bias towards integration. Kim breaks the shadow into three types: projections (which we do want to integrate back into ourselves for example if we project our own power onto an authority figure), introjections (which we actually want to let go of rather than integrate into us for example many aspects of sexual abuse), and split ego states (which we want to bring into awareness and harmonise for example when we feel conflicted about whether to chill out or work hard). The importance of distinguishing these types of shadow is that if the wrong technique is used it can create more harm than good - for example mistakenly trying to integrate aspects of sexual abuse that should be really be let go of. For more information on Kim’s work please visit https://www.kimbarta.org where you can find out about his year long, in-depth course on meditation, psychological development and shadow work.  For more information about my work please visit www.bodyheartmindspirit.co.uk To hear more of my music please visit my soundcloud page www.soundcloud.com/ralphcree My YouTube channel is www.youtube.com/channel/UCUfQp5jM16pPB7QX2zmMYbQ My Facebook page is www.facebook.com/bodyheartmindspirituk/ My Evolving Spiritual Practice Podcast can be found on all major podcast platforms P and C owned by Ralph Cree 2022

Om Podcasten

Spiritual practice, like everything else in life, is evolving. What does this mean? By ‘Spiritual Practice’ I mean any activity that expands your sense of identity, for example meditation, contemplative philosophy, prayer, yoga, martial arts, psychedelics, transpersonal psychotherapy, fasting, visualisation, lucid dreaming, conscious parenting, forgiveness and much more. By ‘Evolving’ I mean that everything develops and adapts over time. Most of the spiritual traditions that have spawned these transformational practices emerged hundreds and often thousands of years ago in the pre-modern era. Modernity (rationality and science) and post-modernity (cultural diversity and the information age) are hugely influential historical periods that have happened since then, and I believe that contemporary spiritual practice needs to integrate the insights of these two worldviews as well as the premodern in order to keep being relevant and adaptive in a changing world.