Sunday, March 8, 2009

#73 Embodied Mythology Series 07: Owning the Shadow with Paul Rebillot

We are continuing our conversations with our teacher and friend Paul Rebillot on the topic of the Healing Theatre – the combination of acting and drama, mythology, gestalt therapy, and rituals. For more information about Paul and his work, please visit his website – Direct Impact Creativity.

In this episode, Paul is describing the structure called Owning the Shadow.

The topics covered in this talk are:

  • What is the shadow?
    • If there is no light, there is no shadow
    • “We have met the enemy, and he is us”
    • The shadow is “forbidden”
  • Illuminating the Shadow
    • My way of dealing with shadow is to illuminate
    • Shadow is a tricky character – he escapes, moves back and forth
    • Once you begin to recognize your shadow, it loses power
    • Change the duel to the death (with the shadow) into a lover’s quarrel
  • Looking at the Shadow
    • Looking at the Shadow has to be approach step-by-step
    • Shadow frequently appears in dreams
    • People that keep appearing in your life whom you cannot stand
    • Jokes – what we laugh at
  • Revealing Shadow through Humor
    • And things we cannot laugh at and take too seriously
    • Anti-defamation (Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)
  • Distilling the qualities of shadow
    • List 25 people that disturb us most in our lives
    • Distilling 5 common qualities, drawing them and putting in the bag
    • We are dragging the bag of parts of us that we were told is bad
    • The Golden Shadow
    • Acting out the characters
  • Integrating the Shadow
    • Creating a mask
      • First of your face
      • Then add bumps and colors
    • Then have a costume party to enact the shadow completely, all out
    • Gestalt work to integrate the shadow – dressing a partner into your shadow costume and see your own shadow
    • By the end, love begings to happen for the shadow, which is really the answer
    • Finally, a medicine wheel, to take the shadow with you on a spiritual level
  • Examples of shadow integration
    • A man recognizing his homosexual shadow
    • Turing stories you tell about people to yourself into creative works
  • Dealing with political shadow
    • Take some action
    • Look at the person you dispice and see where you are doing the same thing
    • Talk about it to people
  • Justice and Vengeance
    • If become what you kill
  • Parallels in the books and movies
    • Harry Potter (book)
    • The Matrix (movie)
    • V for Vendetta (movie)
    • “The Terrorist” (movie)

[techtags: Myth, Mythology, Hero’s Journey, Lover’s Journey, Owning the Shadow, Paul Rebillot]

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