Just got this update in the email.

As most of you know, I follow Feldenkrais information as a part of my quest to help Nisarga learn and grow naturally. I have been following “The next twenty five years” which is an ambitious film project for documenting the evolution of the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. This is a clip they have released of baby Liv, which conveys so clearly the process of physical learning right from the relaxed and random to the easy accomplishment of the intentional.

Truly, if you have a child, are involved with children, or are lucky enough that the child in you is alive and kicking well, this one is an insight. You can see clearly how the movements build on the learnings from the effort so far and refine them. It also is an insight into how effortless a Feldenkrais movement can be if you stop “doing movements” and get into discovery.

Learning to move

Okay, so its Nisarga’s eleventh birthday, and we are all grown up and ready to work. Naturally, the very first work we will try on is work we have seen happening around us. So friends, families and well wishers, here I present, Nisarga the mountaineer:

Nisarga following in Raka's footsteps

Nisarga watching photos on my computer

The first one was taken when Raka was packing for a batch for waterfall rappelling, and Nisarga insisted on playing with him and all the equipment. Raka picked him out of the mess and put him to one side and plonked his helmet on his head and the little guy was deeeelighted. i whipped out the camera, and it became the next toy he wanted

The other one is about Nisarga’s increasing interest in the computer. He loves to watch the screen, and tap away at the keys. Mostly I open a word document and set the font to some huge size and bright color and let him bang away, or, like this one, I open a folder of photos so that he can bang at keys and make the photos change. Here are some more:

Nisarga helping me work

Love the little guy.

I haven’t posted in a long time, but I thought today was special. Nisarga is 10 months old today. I did absolutely nothing special, because Nisarga did something I’d like to remember forever as a memory of his 10 month birthday.

I woke up this morning to tiny feet kicking my chest. The guy had turned 180 degrees and was trying to nurse through my shirt We did the bed milk thing and when he nodded off, I promptly slept. Oh, but he hadn’t nodded off. He started batting at me and babbling. Desperately hoping for sleep, I clutched him to my chest and rolled over to the other side, depositing him between the husband and me.

Apparently Prince rug-rat knows which of his subjects are functional at what times of the day, because he promptly ignored me and proceeded to do the batting at face and kicking chest routine with Raka, who mumbled baby stuff at him. This delighted the little guy so much that he sarted to laugh out loud, babble and roll all and crawl over the bed. Vibrant. Loving life. Enjoying the attention, and the day was just beginning!

Charmed out of our sleep, the husband and I meekly moved to the edges of his playground watching our miracle not just welcome, but kick the day into action. His delightful mood lasted through the day, with loads of talk and laughter. It was only as he settled for his morning nap that we remembered that he was 10 months old today. Of course! The little guy knew

So, in the absence of anything special for you guys to enjoy, I’m doing something I’ve been promising for a long time. I’m uploading some of my favourite photos from the time I’ve been MIA here. Enjoy!

Nisarga and I having a good time

Nisarga and I at the Matheran train station, resigned to the train moving when it will.

Nisarga loves his chair, but after I saw what he did with his toys, I scrapped plans for letting him play with food

We had a blast playing and talking in the park (and rolling around)

Some of the best pictures to date.

Today Nisarga turned six months. And what a wonderful day it was! The day went fairly well with a morning of play and the little man just didn’t want his nap today. After his Sadhanamavshi and Manjumavshi visited him, he went off to sleep. He slept for a solid four hours and woke up in the most amazing mood. Here are some pictures.

These pictures are going to be how I remember him years from now.

These pictures are pretty much how he spends the days. The nights too…. till he absolutely can’t go on.

This guy doesn’t like to sleep. My son.

Finally, Nisarga has turned from his front to his back. He’s done it twice before, but that was more about him pushing with his legs and his bottom sticking in the air. He lost balance and toppled over.

Today, the guy very deliberately raised his arm and kept swinging his body more and more and TURNED over. I put him back on his tummy, and there he went, rolling over again, and again.

I had been worried about him not having any interest at all in rolling over, and when he finally did, he did it effortlessly! I guess he just didn’t need to or something.

Wow. I called Raka over to see, and before he reached, this little wriggler was on his back already, so I put him on his tummy again, and he happily showed off for dad.

Wow.

I had been worried somewhat about nisarga not being particularly interested in rolling over, reaching for toys, or anything physical. I wasn’t really worried, since he was happy, but I used to get these bouts when his massage woman put those worry trips on me. “Oh, he isn’t taking wieght on his legs, ask the doctor” “He isn’t rolling, trying to sit, ask the doctor” and so on.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t, he doesn’t. He can suck his thumb, so he can bring his hands up, he chooses not to. Same with reaching for toys, or turning to his side. He turned from his front to his back around four months, and then nothing. Not once. That’s fine with me as long as its the two of us, but when I am with people who seem to “KNOW” how babies should be, their excessive advice and voices of doom can get me worried. What if I have missed some problem just because he looks happy and my instinct says he’s fine?

In my search to see ways I could help him do these things, I ran into the Feldenkrais method. It clicked, because of its sensitive, non-invasive, non-manipulative, non-correcting approach. More than that, it seemed very similar to what I used to do with my horses to encourage their health and recovery from any physical problems. I knew that worked. Why wouldn’t it work for babies too? I went over to YouTube and downloaded as many videos as  I could.

I contacted one of the practitioners who seemed to have done a lot of work with children, and asked for his assistance.

His suggestion was so simple. Love and touch the guy a lot, and then touching him in a certain way – a kind f touch, not touch, touch, not touch pattern, all over his body.

Been doing this for a couple of days, and the results are near miraculous.

Little guy is much more active. Its like he’s discovering his body really fast. He’s started using his hands much more, trying to catch his feet, and what not. Its incredible.

Will write more details later, but yes, if you know anyone with a child with physical problems, do tell them to try the Feldenkrais method rather than physical therapy and other potentially uncomfortable or invasive methods. If you are in India, contact me, and we can see what we can do together. I am not a teacher ,but hey, I’m a great student, and I can help you learn with what resources we have available here.

Nisarga on his tummy chasing his favourite toy.

This little guy likes being on his tummy. Here are some pictures I found on my phone of him having a good time with his toy last month.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

We had a small bornahan ceremony for Nisarga today.

For those who don’t know, a bornahan happens for small kids and they get showered with berries and other sweet things to eat. It is usually done some time after the 14th of Jan.

The evening began quite well. My parents arrived nice and early and were able to spend a good fun hour with Nisarga before he got tired and wanted to sleep.

So I put him to sleep. The rest of the guests were late, and we figured that my little man could have a nap by the time they arrived. This is when everything changed.

Nisarga was fast asleep when everyone came, and I ended up changing him as he slept. He got really cranky, but nodded off back to sleep once I was done. The ceremony began with the baby fast asleep, and he woke up startled when the shower of sweet stuff happened. He took it bravely for a while, but soon had enough and wanted to go back to sleep but was too wound up. It didn’t help that I was wearing a sari and he found me strange like that.

I changed to regular clothes, got baby out of his now sweaty, sticky clothes, we had a bath and finally called it a day. All in all, nice pics, and it wasn’t too bad, but not an experience I want to repeat.

I was going through the gazillion photos we have amassed in the recent months, and was at a loss how to begin ‘sorting them’. What struck me is that how far we have come in this short span.

Here’s the story in pictures.

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I was on the phone with a friend. She is into all this vision-mission kind of stuff, and very generous about sharing her learnings in life. It does get a little difficult to get her to see another perspective, but what I appreciate is her generosity in sharing all she has.

It was very rewarding to speak with her after many years. She is a teacher (ouch!) of the new style – more interactive, more experiential…. When she heard how involved I am with Nisarga – I’ve quit working mostly to be more with him, changed my work to what I can do while he is sleeping or otherwise engaged, I love spending time with him, I desire to support him the best I can in life, etc. She made a few very important suggestions.

One of them is what remains with me with overwhelming intensity. She asked me to have a ‘role model’ in my mind as what I would like my son to grow up into, and tell her about it. Such a person must be someone I respect and find inspiring.

For all my unschooling talk, my role model was the late Prof. Randy Pausch of the Carnegie Mellon University. A guy complete with a Ph.D. who did jobs, who taught students…. I think it thrilled her, till I described him further. I have met Dr. Randy Pausch exactly once, in a YouTube video. It is an hour long video of his lecture now famous as the last lecture.

I have never met him, and he is now dead. He died of cancer. So what is it in this man that a mother wants her child to grow into? It is his humanness. It is his passion, his determination, his generosity.

See for yourself:

Here is a link to the transcript if thus lecture that was seen by over six million people and continues to be an inspiration.

As I look at this dream for my son, I am forced to see that I must begin living it myself, if I have to bring it to reality. I am a better person for going through this ‘exercise’.

Okay, all the warnings are coming true.

The last two days, Nisarga has shown a distinct preference for being held, and will nap on me, but not if I set him down on his bed. The difference is, that its not the end of the world as predicted. I’m enjoying it. What more special experience than to have my child, my beloved son be so attached to me? What better compliment could a mother get?

I’d worry that something was wrong if my child was as okay with others or left alone as he was with me.

The more Nisarga grows up, and the more advice I get, the more I wonder about what is so wrong with the world? I have lived close to animals. I’ve lived under the sky with my herd of horses, I’ve lived with dogs, I’ve lived close enough to cows to see their idea of parenting, I’ve lived with village women who work in the fields with their babies in a sling on them. Feels good. Feels natural.

In the city, I have often encountered parents who apologize for their babies when they don’t want to come to me. Why? I wonder. Its a smart baby that doesn’t want to go to strangers. Try approaching a young filly when the mare doesn’t know you, and see how quickly you get run off by the mare and how the other horses in the herd take places around the mother and child pair. You are a stranger. The child is to be protected. It is simple. I understand the baby’s instinct completely and I respect him/her for being wise enough not to want to have anything to do with me without knowing me. I wonder at the parent who sees her child’s discomfort as inappropriate.

Where, as kids grow up, does this get lost?

I do introduce myself to children I meet, but really, its fine if they simply stare at me without approaching or approving of me in any way. I am absolutely delighted if my son takes his time to get comfortable with people. Everyone tells me that at the age of 6 months or so, he will start getting fussy about whom he interacts with. I see it as him growing up and getting smarter. I see nothing wrong with that, or feel any need to ‘prepare him’ by getting him used to being handled by lots of people.

Sure, that makes it important that I am available to him all the time. Isn’t that what motherhood is all about?

I see many parents outsourcing their parenting responsibilities, and then when their child grows up, they call him or her rude for not caring about them. Fact is, they do care. They did bond. It was just with the people the parents outsourced to. They did mourn their absence when they went out of their lives. However the parents themselves are not those people.

I don’t see anything as right or wrong. I only see that it is unrealistic to expect children to take on responsibility for relationships that never were. My child will learn from life itself. My teaching him will not be a special thing. My child will survive with what is provided and get used to that whether it is a life as a beggar or prince. Parenting is not about that either. If I want my child to care about me, I must care about him in ways I see as caring.

It is totally absurd that we expect our kids to not get too attached to the parents. What is this “too”? Is it even possible to get too attached to the sole stability in our life? What is wrong with this picture that we will leave crying toddlers in day care, send unwilling children to school, make them depend on strangers for their needs and then want them to maintain respectful, intimate, emotional relationships as adults when they don’t really need us?

To me, this means respecting him, caring for his physical comfort, caring for his emotional comfort, supporting his choices. And then I *may* hope that if in my old age I am bed ridden, he will use warm water to wipe my bottom in the winter and turn my bed to face the window and not wake me up from naps to give me baths at his convenience or send me to some day care or hospice for convenience in the name of competent care. What he will do will still be his choice, but what I expect will be more fair.

Nisarga is free to do what he likes. I am here for as long as he wants me.

I had hurriedly read through Dr. Aletha Olter’s site and recommended it earlier, but now, I think I need to revise my opinion of Aware Parenting and downgrade the status from definitely recommended to take with a pinch of salt. Heck upend the entire salt shaker on it.

Here’s the reason:

Important warning

There have been reported cases of infants smothering while sleeping in their parents’ bed, and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission does not recommend sharing a bed with an infant. The danger of overlaying is highest during the first 3 months, and the danger of infants becoming wedged in a crevice is highest between 3 and 7 months. However, there are many reported deaths of infants sleeping alone in cribs. So wherever your infant sleeps, it is important to take safety precautions. If you sleep with your infant, the following bed sharing safety tips should be followed.

Bed Sharing Safety Tips

The following safety tips apply to anyone who shares a bed with an infant (not only the mother).

• Do not take any drugs that can affect your sleep (alcohol, tranquillizers, antidepressants, illegal drugs, etc.)
• Never smoke in the room where your infant sleeps.
• Use a firm mattress. Do not sleep with your infant on a soft mattress, or on a water bed, bean bag chair, or couch.
• Take precautions so your infant will not fall out of bed.
• Avoid crevices between your mattress and the wall or headboard.
• Never place your infant on a pillow.
• Always lay your infant on its back to sleep.
• Do not use a feather bed (duvet).
• Do not place any stuffed animals in the bed (or live ones!).
• Do not sleep with your infant if you are obese.
• Tie your hair back if it is very long.
• Do not let your infant share a bed with another child.
• Do not place your infant near curtains with dangling strings.
• Never leave your infant alone in an adult bed.

Huh? What’s that all about? Are we talking about a person or a product? I almost expected a disclaimer “No refunds will be provided if…..” US Comsumer Product Safety Commission now has an opinion on where you put your baby to sleep? And what is their authority on the subject?

Regardless, since I’m not a citizen of US, I’ll leave that battle to someone else, and instead take a look at what seems to be working just fine for us.

We sleep together – this baby and I. We are lucky to live in a culture that supports mother and child closeness in its early life so much, that if someone is to be kicked out of a mother’s bed, its more likely to be the husband than the child. There is no surprise what so ever that Nisarga and I cuddle together every night. And that’s exactly how we like it.

I have always thought that its a rather inconvenient (not to mention emotionally distant) practice to put infants to sleep away from their mothers. I feel its better for the peace of mind of everyone to be in ready access to each other, and I include the father in this. I can’t imagine Raka sleeping peacefully in bed with me with the baby elsewhere. We need that little guy right there as much as he needs to fidget and touch his mother or father if he wakes up. And we have lovely nights. He sleeps late (like us), but once he does, we are all out like a light – straight until morning.

In fact we all sleep so well, that the early recommendation of feeding every two hours was followed really badly by all concerned till we finally gave up on it – all the three of us. I can’t imagine the chaos of a baby coming fully awake from hunger and then getting all wound up with crying by the time I leave my room and go to his and attend him. Now, I just sleepily pull him closer, feed him, and we’re both out.

The recommendations on this list read really alien and grating to the instinct. Where would a baby be, if not in my bed? And if I don’t leave him alone in bed at all, what do I do? Sleep all day, or drag him along? And what is the age when I stop “sterilizing” him from life?

Tie your hair back if its very long? How in the world is it the business of anyone to recommend this as a safety tip? You think I wouldn’t notice if it strangles him or something? More so, that Nisarga wouldn’t notice it? He’s more likely to pull it off my head, which is a good reason to tie it up, but not really a safety thing surely….

The idea that a culture would allow a product related function to make recommendations on how to treat your baby says it all as far as I’m concerned.

It only gets worse when its endorsed by a website titled Aware Parenting!

With a baby, I’m re-discovering what I thought I was done with after the marriage – how difficult it is to come to a meeting of ways with people with different belief and value systems.

The new mother’s generosity and eagerness to share her magic with the world often leads to unwise choices where we make decisions that take things beyond out control. No one is to blame, yet everything goes wrong.

This cancelled celebration is a classic example. Its easy to sit here with “if onlys”. If only we had decided on a venue where a woman’s periods were irrelevant. If only I’d imagined that periods were a possibility. If only others had not found out, and I could simply get away with not telling anyone.

When deciding the venue, there were many choices, yet it was my choice to do it in the temple. I can’t blame anyone. I wanted his grandparents to share in the celebratory food as well, which they will not unless its cooked in a certain religious manner. I lost sight of the fact that the purpose was the celebration, and the rest were peripherals. I wanted it all.

So now, nothing.

The sad part of this is that both my husband and I are utterly allergic to religion. Raka believes that some vague God may exist, and I’m certain that there is no such thing. For us, the value in the temple was in the in-laws being able to eat.

Yet, in hindsight, we see that they are used to attending celebrations and coming home for meals, since they have accepted that the world doesn’t operate this way. They would have had the same joy in celebrating their grandson no matter where we did it.

There is no way we can do the function, since it would now offend them.

I am learning anew to make my decisions according to my objectives and stop accommodating peripherals. Yet, I don’t know. This is hindsight. Perhaps, not knowing something like this could happen, I might still make choices to accommodate the wishes of everyone?

Now I must get back to making sure all the countless people invited are asked not to come….

For those who know, the get together we had planned for introducing Nisargak to friends and family has been cancelled due to “unavoidable reasons” <— read womanly business. Since the venue was a temple, that’s a no-go.

This really is a blow, since we were all looking forward to this function.

This officially marks the end of my trying to accommodate religious wishes into my celebration plans. There’s a time for worship, and its not necessary to make everything a puja, regardless of the wishes of the in-laws. The worst part is my husband and I are not into religion at all, and are now making calls to friends and family to tell them not to come…..

If you were planning on coming, our apologies.

I haven’t posted in a while, as I was busy with all kinds of stuff. Not easy being a mom-cum-businesswoman-cum-housewife-cum-webmaster. I’m not very good with prioritizing, and tend to forget about one thing when I become engrossed with another.

Coming to the sharing in this post, it was my birthday. For Nisarga, it was his mom’s first birthday.

We celebrated in a very special way – it was just the two of us at home. My mother-in-law was in Pune and so was my husband. Aakash went out somewhere in the evening, and my baby and I spent some time celebrating.

First, we watched the jamun tree outside the window for a while. Then, we put on some songs and danced. And finally, we had a laughing session.

Yesterday, hereally laughed out loud. Till then, he used to make sounds, but they were shaky and didn’t really sound like laughs. Yesterday, we laughed a lot and they sounded like laughs, and this guy found everything I did funny.

What a wonderful birthday gift!!!

Nisarga signed milk at 2.5 months!!! What a smart baby!

Okay, this is what happened.

I was sitting at the computer, working on this site with Nisarga behind me fast asleep. I realized he was awake when I heard his usual shout “aaae”. I turned around and spoke with him, and he responded with a huge grin. I could literally see the bulb light in his mind that he can call me.

The more I spoke, the more thrilled he was. Huge grins, cooing, laughing out loud, the works. One happy excited baby. I immediately got my video camera out to record it.

Like any self-respecting baby, he chooses when to show-off, and this wasn’t it. The more I tried, the quieter he became. So I put the phone away, and took him out to the living room to his grandmother, thinking that he would once again start smiling with all the attention. His grandmother heard, and was delighted, and we spent another 10-15 minutes or so trying to get him to laugh. No go.

Finally, he started whimpering, and we realized that he was probably hungry. So I took him in, and fed him. He promptly fell asleep.

Then, as I was looking at the videos I’d shot, I realized that my lovely son had been signing milk all through, and the initial delight was not just about calling me, which he was doing quite consistently for a couple of days, but more likely because he thought he could ask for milk and mommy came to feed him. Alas, I imagine I’m teaching him, but guess who was the utter idiot in this episode?

I was so thrilled with his laughter, that I had missed the big picture staring in my face. My son was calling to me and asking for milk!!! No crying, nothing. Interaction. WOW!!!!!!

If I could just do it over, I’d pick him up and feed him immediately once our initial laughing was done so that he would indeed know that asking for milk would get him milk…..

Posting the tribute to my blindness

and…..
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaZJuhfbhWM[/youtube]

If you live in the online world, this is a fabulous time for purchasing developmental products for your child at discounted prices. Absolute money-savers – just grab what suits you below. Some of the most fantastic products to encourage early communication development in babies and toddlers are now cheaper.

I’d love to have any and all of these products (hint, hint….)

Check out these coupons below:

Belle Baby Carriers is offering a 15% discount on all their carriers till the 31st December (use coupon code “holidaybelle”)

Positively organic is offering a 15% off on all their organic fall clothing this November, though I don’t know if this is convenient for people living in Mumbai. The shipping might cost more than the clothes?

My very favourite Baby Signing Time is offering:
50% off on all purchases over $25 on the 27th November 2009

$15 off on purchases over $50 on the 28th November 2009

Free Shipping on orders over $50 on the 30th November 2009

20% off on all gift sets on the 30th November 2009

Today was a fabulous day for this mother and baby.

Nisarga had been suffering from bouts of inconsolable crying for the last couple of days, which had made him pretty miserable. Would have been funny if it weren’t so heart breaking. He used to look really puzzled by his own crying….

Anyway, that is in the past. Another doctor’s visit revealed that He had put on another 150 grams in 5 days. Not bad. I’m proud of my darling son. His weight is now 4.350kg and climbing.

After many days, he woke up cheerful and bright rather than quiet and unhappy. The highlight of today was that my parents visited, and for once, Nisarga woke up when they came, and spent quite a bit of time cooing to them. My parents were rather hesitant with him, seeing as how they don’t handle him all that often, and he is quite young. Nisarga had no such hesitations and talked to them to his heart’s content. Delighted, delighted grandparents. Till today, they hadn’t had any interaction as such with him.

They were quite thrilled with how much he’s grown and how easily he was talking. He did other stuff too. Smiled a lot, signed milk, which unfortunately wasn’t much understood by my parents for how special it was…

Here’s a pic of mom holding Nisarga today.

This post explores my thoughts around our own unconscious processes and desires, and looks at their impact on children, who are literally absorbing everything we say as the whole truth. It is based on an earlier email to a group forum I no longer haunt, so some of it may seem a little “context specific”. I think this subject is an extremely important one for parents to explore, so do bear with me, and read on to the end.

Want to share something I have learned endlessly from, and was recently reminded about by a post from Rahul.

Its the “shadow aspect”. Its a Jungian funda.

The formal descriptions and theories can be found  all over the net. That is, if anyone is obsessed with psychology.

Otherwise, to make a long story short, “we cannot comprehend what we don’t have a mental scale for”. So, if you think I’m mean, its basically because there is meanness in you. If you think I’m a grnius, its because there is a genius in you. And so on.

How is this relevant to our lives?

There are aspects of ourselves we are aware of, and others we are not. The ones we are not are our shadow, and it contains the baggage of a whole load of “shoulds” (among other things). So, if I’m told, I shouldn’t be dishonest, I don’t “register” my dishonest behaviour, and think of myself as honest. However, there is unconscious unease around this as the unacknowledged in us piles up, and to relieve it I see dishonesty in the world and criticize it. Similarly, if I’ve been taught to be modest, I will see the genius or glamour in others without being able to acknowledge it in myself.

What disturbs, awes, or in any other way impacts us the most is what we suppress the most in ourselves. This process of seeing disowned aspects of ourselves in others is referred to as projection. Essentially everything we perceive is a projection. Every quality we understand exists within us. Violence existed in the Mahatma. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have understood it and had such a strong response to it. So its not always bad either.

Ooookay, I’m really skimming over a lot and maybe I’ll elaborate later when I have more time, but I want to bring up its significance in parenting/schooling, which is something few people realize.

We project a lot of things on people all the time. For example, someone may simply be stating a perspective, but when I speak like that, I’m usually avoiding something, so I see that person as avoiding something, while taking pride in myself (indeed feeling quite superior) that I am very direct. Usually, when something like this happens, there arises conflict on a conscious or unconscious level. End result, mutual dislike. If we are projecting all the time, we just become unpopular. However, when we do it with kids, the kid can’t afford to hate you, and the kid doesn’t have more “power than you” to win….

We project on our children, when we see them as naughty, rebellious, lazy, etc. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of two adults, the balance of power in an adult-child relationship is quite unequal. An adult can easily override a child’s defenses. This can and does result in unintentional “emotional abuse” if we are not sensitive to our impact, if we end up holding the child responsible for something s/he never intended, for example:

Many of us use entertainment for procrastination. There is this child who loves cartoons, and when we see him engrossed watching them, we unconsciously search for “work” he should be doing (since that is our method), and see him as using the cartoons to avoid that work. This goes to extents where we may even assume he is avoiding work, without even knowing what duties he has left incomplete; or get irritated if we find he has done everything he is supposed to, so that we don’t find the “evidence of his laziness” we are unconsciously searching for. So far, so good.

We proceed to give the poor child a lecture about laziness and getting his work done first. Then dad comes home. Finds said kid watching cartoons and asked if he’s finished homework. Then some random relative sees kid watching cartoons and comments on how kids waste time in front of TV and ignore studies. And so on. Poor kid is unable to verbalize something as complex and simple as – I find the cartoons interesting. The rest of my villainy exists in your head, not mine. Various reasons – kids find it difficult to express such stuff, contradicting adults already not happy with you, adults not willing to acknowledge that all that bad stuff belongs to them….. kids are dependent on adults and quite powerless in front of them and unable to “prove their innocence”.

This conflict can’t last long with such unequal power.

Eventually they “figure out” that they indeed did it purposely and that they are bad when they do it.

This is happening all the time with kids. Its part of being a kid and somewhat functional too. In fact, positive reinforcement is another way projections create an image in a child. “He is so clever” leads to a child believing he really is clever and leads to being like that, which is desirable, though too much of it can result in severe damage (and it does, with suicides after exam results, for example) when those beliefs are shattered. Sometimes, kids told that they are clever could also feel like frauds “They all think I’m smart, and I’m going to flunk this exam” and feel tremendous pressure to “live up” to people’s beliefs about them to maintain being loved, as they start associating all their value as a person with this incongruence they experience. This is also why its important to acknowledge and appreciate children freely for their emotional well-being.

All this is natural. We all went through this, and it is not possible to separate it from childhood (or indeed, life). However, being aware of these things helps us understand our own impact and moderate it if we think it distresses our child.

So, now what?

Firstly, its important to remember that no one exists without a shadow. So, you are not evil for having one. The objective of shadow work is not about eliminating it, but understanding its impact and working to decrease the power of some of the most dysfunctional aspects. Second is working to become aware of “hot spots” in our shadow and bring them to consciousness. Often, this is plenty to change behaviour, since the minute you are conscious, its not unconscious.

Some “tools”/exercises:

• Split a page vertically in half and make lists – “I am” and “I am not”. I’ve described this exercise in detail elsewhere, so simply pasting the link and saving myself a lot of typing. Here
• Make a list of “I am” show it around to people and ask for suggestions as to what you could add to your list – their contributions is literally a list of your shadow aspects.
• Using language that helps you own your projections. Percept language “I see my goodness/cruelty/stylishness/impatience/etc in you” or “I see the cruelty (etc) in me, in you” or “I think you are being very graceful, because I think I’m graceful when I act like this”
• Recognizing that we generate our responses to situations and acknowledging that: “I make myself angry when I see you watching cartoons.” in the place of “You make me so angry when you do this” or “I make myself delighted when I watch my son play”
• Examining and embracing in ourselves what we criticize the most “I hate injustice” – I do ignore myself being unjust.
• Examining and accepting in ourselves what we would like to deny the loudest “I am NOT angry” – I am angry.
• Examining strong labels we bring into a conversation. Who was the first person to bring in the word “insensitive” in this discussion? What were the strong labels I contributed to this conversation? etc
• When there is an observation about ourselves “I think you felt defensive when he said….” that we would like to reject “No, I didn’t feel defensive”. Leave a possibility open that others may be providing an insight into our shadow “I’m not aware of feeling defensive, but I accept that you perceived me as that”. Often simply leaving that possibility open widens the doors of our awareness.
• Shadow is essentially a phenomenon of our unconscious mind. Thus, forget it if you think you can discover your shadow through self-examination, meditation, reflection, etc. You can’t yourself access what you are unconscious of – you don’t know what to access and it will NEVER stand out to you. You will not be able to work easily with your shadow without feedback. The more you invite, seek, observe perceptions about yourself, the more of your shadow will be revealed.

I would like to invite insights from others, what do you think, how have you experienced the impact of shadow in your life, what are the ways you use to work with expanding awareness of previously unknown areas of self….

Unconscious processes are an area of psychology I have tremendous respect for, as it is impossible to bullshit what you don’t even know exists. I have found these insights into myself the most difficult to cope with (who likes reaching an acceptance that they are cruel?)

Thank you for listening to something this close to my heart about self-development, discovery and acceptance.