Slowing Downwards: The Call to Descend and Shadow Work

Over the past few years, I’ve felt a growing resistance to the patriarchal, Western ideal of productivity, including the relentless message that our worth lies in doing, achieving and producing more. Even within many spiritual traditions, I’ve noticed a similar pattern where there is an emphasis on ascension, reaching towards higher levels of wisdom and transcendence. I have felt an embodied resistance towards this, and instead an insistence to turn downward and inwards - toward the murkier, messier, darker aspects of the human experience, including grief, shadow, and the slow, soulful processes that we so often avoid. As Michael Mead shares through his phrase slowing downwards,

‘Slowing downwards’ refers to more than simply moving slowly; it means growing down towards the roots of one’s being. Instead of outward growth and upward climb, life at times must turn inward and downward in order to grow in other ways...Slowing downwards creates opportunities to dwell more deeply in one’s life, for the home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.’ 

The Place of Stillness

This concept of slowing downwards really emerged for me whilst working and living at a mindfulness Retreat Centre in Portugal. For ten months, I lived in the remote mountains of Serra da Estrela, surrounded by silence and the vastness of a natural park. Something in the stillness of that place, including the quiet mornings and the disconnect from the outer world, invited me deeper into this inner turning. This period of slowing down also revealed a deeper need, which was a reawakening of the forgotten feminine within myself and the collective; the wisdom of natural cycles, receptivity and surrender. Myths like that of Inanna began to speak to me, as well as other stories of descent and renewal. So, I began to question - what if the path to wholeness isn’t only about ascension, productivity and a movement towards future goals, but a descent into and through the dark and muddy waters of our shadow. Carl Jung first referred to the shadow as the part of ourselves that we have rejected, disowned or denied, and it is here that we are met with the exiled parts of ourselves and the collective that often lie hidden, longing to be returned.

What if healing isn’t this linear upward climb we’ve been taught to chase? What if it is a slow, spiral movement toward the depths and happens when we actually slow down enough to pause, surrender and allow ourselves to enter into the unfamiliar spaces? The ones that lie beyond and beneath the certainty of our day-to-day structures, routines and habits.

The Misunderstanding of The Descent & Darkness

When I speak of this concept, I’m usually met with a similar hesitation or questions: what is the purpose of turning towards our shadow, or entering what myths across cultures commonly understand as the underworld? Why would we be encouraged, or even motivated, to enter into what many others describe as a Dark Night of the Soul? Surely life is about moving forward - beyond pain, transcending our suffering, and stepping into joy, peace, gratitude, love, and happiness. Surely these are the qualities we should be cultivating and focusing on in our day-to-day lives. For many of us, there is the fear that if we were to descend or turn towards the shadow, we would become consumed and dominated by it - potentially remain there for eternity. From my experience, this is the biggest reason people don’t engage in grief, shadow or soul work. However, as Carl Jung famously said,

‘One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious’.

In my twenties and early thirties, I had little desire to turn towards my shadow or explore the deeper, darker aspects of my psyche. I was deeply committed to finding peace, cultivating compassion, and practising forgiveness for myself and the world around me. I kept gratitude journals and spent time on retreat, seeking spiritual highs and expanded states of consciousness. Through meditation, I reached states of bliss and experienced profound layers of healing that I might not have accessed otherwise. Yet, over time, I began to realise that so much of what I was seeking was an attempt to bypass my human experience - what John Welwood calls spiritual bypassing. I hadn’t fully engaged with my anger, grief, or the shadow aspects of myself that I had disowned. It’s no wonder that, for the past decade, my soul has been yearning to embrace and integrate these parts, and this is the essence of shadow work, as Carl Jung described, the process of bringing these hidden aspects into awareness and wholeness. Turning toward our pain and suffering is not easy. As Pema Chödrön said,

“To stay with shakiness - to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness - that is the path of true awakening.” Her teaching reminds us that the spiritual path is not about avoiding difficult emotions, but about learning to stay present with them and even to enter into them. 

The Practice of Descent

Two years ago, I began to embody this concept of ‘slowing downwards’ more deeply by engaging in a 6-month Grief Leadership Ritual Training with Francis Weller and, later that year, a week-long Grief Apprenticeship with Sophie Banks and other amazing facilitators. This journey through the Gates of Grief was one of the first times I truly embodied what Pema Chödrön meant. By sitting in, and with, the darkness of my own and others’ grief - the despair, the anger, the utter not knowing that defines the path of grief, my heart broke open and into a deeper understanding of what it means to be human - to be witnessed and to witness others, in our complete vulnerability. I learned that I could go into the depths and return more whole, just as Inanna does in her descent and return. So when people express hesitation about this topic, I understand. Yet, I have truly experienced that our capacity to root more deeply in the human experience and the world around us is also what gives us the capacity to fully embrace the cyclical and dualistic nature of existence, and this is the essence of the hero/heroine’s journey. One quote that speaks to me, in relation to this, is by Francis Weller, and his reference to Robert Bly is his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief,

When all we are shown is the imagery of ascent, we are left to interpret the times of descent as pathological; we feel that we are somehow failing. As poet and author Robert Bly wryly noted, “How can we get a look at the cinders side of things when the society is determined to create a world of shopping malls and entertainment complexes in which we are made to believe that there is no death, disfigurement, illness, insanity, lethargy, or misery? Disneyland means ‘no ashes.

Reclaiming the Feminine

On my quest to make sense of what was stirring within myself, I turned to the wisdom of Depth and Jungian Psychology, to Myth and archetypal themes that speak of the importance of this descent. Out of this arose a connection to the principle of the feminine and the myth of Inanna. The feminine principle is not gendered - but it’s a way of being that we all can and do embody regardless of gender. The emphasis on the ascent and on productivity, of ‘moving towards future goals’, is the energy of the masculine, which needs to be honoured and respected as deeply as the feminine. However, patriarchal and capitalist cultures have caused this pull towards materialism and productivity to become so lopsided that we have denied and rejected the importance of the qualities which are directly related to the more ethereal aspects of reality, such as the world of our dreams, creativity, imagination and soul.

One particular myth that mirrors this topic closely is the Sumerian myth of Inanna. She is the goddess of love, fertility, and war and undertakes a profound descent into the underworld. Leaving behind her throne and symbols of power, she passes through seven gates and at each gate, an aspect of her status and self-image is stripped away. These seven gates symbolise the stages of surrender: letting go of ego, status, control, and the illusions of separateness. By the time she reaches the final gate, Inanna arrives naked and humbled before her dark sister, Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld. Inanna is judged, struck down, and hung upon a hook, suspended between life and death for three days. Her descent is an initiation and a confrontation with what has been forgotten, including the unloved aspects of the self and of the world. Each of the gates marks a surrender and a letting go of the illusions that keep us from true wholeness. When Inanna finally returns to the upper world, she is transformed as she now carries within her the wisdom of the depths, including the knowing that life and death, ascent and descent, are inseparable. The myth speaks to the necessity of facing darkness, grief, and the parts of ourselves we often exile as a path to greater wholeness. Through surrendering what no longer serves us, we make space for renewal, emerging with a deeper, more embodied wisdom. The myth also speaks closely to the concept of rebirth and renewal - we must shed what no longer serves us in order to awaken into who we truly are. In order to shed, we must be willing to surrender to the darkness of the unknown and the depth of the shadows.

It’s also my experience that this focus on the patriarchal ideas of success and productivity has disconnected us from knowing who we really are - a disembodiment of ourselves and of Earth, resulting in the climate crisis that we’re currently in. When we are so disconnected from our intuition, from the felt sense of what it is to be alive and to be in connection with life and the world around us, it is no wonder we are causing so much damage and destruction. It has led us to disregard the wisdom that speaks through our bodies and that comes to us through our dreams - something which indigenous tribes and cultures all around the world have deeply respected and honoured since the beginning of humanity. My engagement with shamanic journeying over the past few years has led to a deep, visceral knowing that we are indeed intricately connected and interdependent, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, ‘To be is to inter-be’, meaning that nothing exists in isolation, and all things are interconnected and mutually dependent.

So, when we slow downwards, we come into deeper relationship with our senses, our intuition, and other ways of knowing. This invites us to meet the full range of our humanity - not only ease and clarity, but also the sorrow, despair, and grief that have been pushed into our individual and collective shadow. These darker places are also where, counterintuitively, we encounter moments of profound beauty, awe, and connection. In a world that emphasises productivity and constant ascent, choosing to slow downwards can feel contradictory to what we’ve always been taught - but it helps us to return to the wisdom of cycles, renewal, the feminine and the Earth. Descent is an inevitable part of the human experience, and we can engage with it by tending to practices in our everyday lives by slowing down, breathing, and coming home to our bodies. Through this, we can embrace the wholeness that exists in both the light and the dark and in the doing and being.

About the Author

With a strong foundation in transpersonal approaches, Jules draws on integrative methods that honour the intersection of psychology, consciousness, and spiritual growth. She has completed Michael Harner’s Shamanic Practitioner Training through the Foundation of Shamanic Studies, as well as a Grief Ritual Leadership Training with Francis Weller. Her work is rooted in years of personal and professional engagement with transformative healing modalities.

Jules is also a published author, contributing to the Resilience book series with her title Navigating Loss in a Time of Crisis. Her writing has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Transpersonal Coaching Psychology Journal and the Journal of Consciousness, Spirituality, and Transpersonal Psychology, and via platforms including SAND (Science and Nonduality) and Highly Sensitive Refuge. She has been invited to speak on numerous podcasts and events on topics including transpersonal coaching, spiritual development, and emotional transformation.

In addition to her writing and coaching, Jules works on the Alef Trust Faculty as part of the 1-year certificate in Transpersonal Coaching Psychology and is the senior editor of the Transpersonal Coaching Psychology Journal and continues to contribute to the field through teaching and writing.