Musings on Shadows

Lucid News is proud to amplify Sex & Psychedelics, a bi-annual magazine that brings two provocative themes together in a single, dynamic forum. 

Through arts, essay, and research-based curation and global events, Sex & Psychedelics showcases stories, artwork, rituals, and teachings from a diverse and eclectic community of visionaries. They create spaces for deep exploration, transformative education, and meaningful connection; uniting those resonant with this expansive intersection. The magazine’s mission is to ignite personal empowerment, strengthen community bonds, and challenge societal norms by platforming this momentous cultural movement.

In this article, first published in the publication’s second issue, a roundtable of experts considers the psychedelic dimensions of shadow tending. 

Mary Sanders, LCSW, is a politicized psychotherapist, educator, and community builder, infusing passion into both her clinical endeavors and community initiatives. With over a decade of experience in community mental health, she’s provided psychotherapy and clinical case management, trained in psychedelic-assisted therapy and served as a founding board member of the national organization, People of Color Psychedelic Collective. Mary delves into the historical roots of oppression, advocates for collective healing through an intersectional approach, and sparks dialogues on community-centric infrastructures rooted in accessibility and cultural sensitivity. Her inquiries delve deep into cultivating ecosystems where psychedelic medicine finds firm grounding within community care.

Ashley Manta is a certified sexologist, relationship coach, and educator who specializes in using cannabis and psychedelics to enhance intimacy, heal sexual shame, and deepen connection. As the creator of the Cannasexual® brand, she has spent over a decade guiding individuals and couples to mindfully integrate plant medicines and fungi into their erotic and relational lives. Passionate about the intersection of pleasure and consciousness, Ashley brings a grounded, inclusive approach to exploring altered states for personal growth and intimate transformation.

James Belle Guest is an Oregon-licensed psilocybin facilitator, somatic intimacy, pleasure & sex practitioner, and co-creator of Sex & Psychedelics Magazine. Her practice blends together the worlds of psychedelic healing, shadow-work, IFS and existential kink through a counter-normative, pleasure-focused and body-centric lens. James is passionate about the potential psilocybin has to reframe our narratives and our traumas, release what no longer serves us, and use that to fertilize our ever-expanding internal growth, compassion, and capacity for pleasure.

How do you define the shadow and what does shadow tending mean to you?

MARY SANDERS: The shadow represents the parts of ourselves that hold our traumas, shame and struggles; they might be parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, so we hide or bury these parts because they are so painful to face. They can be big and visible or more subtle and sneaky. When we tend to a garden, we assess the needs of the land and sometimes pull weeds, adjust the water or shade that the plants need, or we might set up some type of boundaries to keep out pests or even recruit helpers for bigger seasonal projects. Tending to the shadow is no different; it is a practice of becoming aware of the parts deep within us and invites us to examine how the roots of difficult past experiences continue to be alive within us and what they need to be composted into something fertile.

JAMES BELLE GUEST: Shadows are the cage that impedes desire, the tension between what we want to do but don’t, our edges, our blind spots, our misunderstood parts, trapdoors in our psyches, the bruises we love to push, and the places we always end up at and haven’t yet figured out why. Shadows are most evident in their absence. To tend to my shadow I must accept that no matter what I am feeling, pain, dislike, pleasure or nothingness, at least one part of me is getting off on it.

ASHLEY MANTA: I define the shadow as any part of you that you try to hide, ignore, sublimate, or shame for existing. These parts are typically things about yourself that you think are unacceptable, unloveable, unworthy, or undesirable. Shadow tending is holding space for these parts, not making them bad or wrong, and treating them with compassion and care.

How do sex, psychedelics, and shadow exist in your work and life?

MARY: Intentionally working with psychedelics and integrating my own shadow are lifelong practices that help me become clearer about my own desires and better understand that I am worthy of experiencing pleasure and connection. I am committed to my relationship with plant medicines, sacred mushrooms, and psychedelics. I am committed to my own therapeutic work, studying from others, and building community. This work informs my own sexuality, how I tend to my shadow, how I move in the world, how I want to be in relationship with land, how I want to connect with my ancestors, how I want to show up in the community and how I can be a more loving, kind, and expansive person. I look forward to continuing growing, expanding, evolving, and inviting possibilities that I cannot even dream of right now. 

JAMES: Having worked in the underbelly for most of my life, in the shadowy spaces of sex and psychedelics, I have worn what many people would call their shadows out in public. This becomes kinky when I imagine some of my shadows being worn so comfortably by others; consistency, order, repetition, obedience. I notice that the more I ‘legitimize’ myself, the more I feel as though I am letting the collective shadow win.

ASHLEY: Psychedelics help to bring my shadow parts into the light so they can be observed and witnessed. In a sexual context, that might look like parts that hold the memories of or result from sexual trauma; taboo desires; or intense attraction to people who may be toxic. Psychedelics allow me to create space to mindfully engage with these parts or aspects and integrate them, rather than avoiding them or simply trying to resist them through sheer force of will.

Could you walk us through a session that made an impact on you? 

MARY: Over months of somatic experiencing therapy with one of my clients, I developed an understanding of their somatic patterns which included tension, pain, and constriction in specific areas of their body. After cultivating a deep and trusting relationship with them, we started working together with medicine, where I witnessed their body reenact many of these familiar somatic responses. I maintained curiosity and a steady caring presence. During our integration session, they reported unearthing a repressed traumatic memory that often caused significant tension and pain in their body, some of which was released during the medicine session as they integrated the source of the pain. I am always amazed to see what’s possible when I develop trust with my clients, create space for the messages held within their bodies to emerge, and work with the wisdom of the medicine to uncover the source of the trauma and move towards healing. 

JAMES: I facilitated a psilocybin session with a client recently who wanted to face her fear of death and gain clarity around some early sexual trauma. Her session unfolded like a seductive mystery; seemingly abstract pieces and loose threads, arising from the shadows, cycled through her consciousness over and over, weaving together, forming suspicion, then truth, and finally released in a climactic reveal. A vivid reminder that in order to liberate ourselves from our shadows, we must first invite them in, to understand how they might leave. 

How does your work affect the collective?

MARY: I am inspired by the work of Cara Page and Erica Woodland in their book, Healing Justice Lineages. They state, “collective trauma is transformed collectively.” I believe this 100%. I have engaged in ancestral healing work in Black medicine circles where we witness the darkness, help each other to see the light, and share unconditional love and care. These collective healing experiences have helped me access strength and courage to name and challenge systems of oppression that are the source of so much of our trauma. 

JAMES: One of the things that thrills me about working with sex, shame and intimacy alongside psychedelics is bearing witness to the collective reverberation of individual transformation. I think a lot of mental health modalities teach us ways in which we can personally adapt to the challenging parts of a society we’ve collectively inherited, whereas psychedelics empower us to reject complacency and impact radical change that feeds the collective. 

I feel we are in a time of unific unveiling, stripping away the illusion of perfection and exposing our truth; and beyond that? Nakedness? Where will the shadow hide then? Psychedelic addiction? Excessive authenticity? Invasive Messiahs?

ASHLEY: I see myself as a combination of sexual cheerleader, permission-giver, and reclamation coach. My role is to hold space for folks who are navigating conflict around their sexual needs and desires, who hold shame or resentments about their body or eroticism, or who want to more fully embrace pleasure despite being socialized to feel like pleasure is superfluous. Each person who works on growing and healing these aspects has a ripple effect in the world on an energetic, social, and societal level. Learning how to be compassionate to themselves allows them to be more compassionate to others, especially around vulnerable topics like shame and sexuality, and that helps raise the collective vibration around pleasure and self-actualization.

What guidance/advice do you have for people engaging with these powerful forces?

MARY: Psychedelics help reveal our own shadows as well as the intergenerational and ancestral traumas we all carry from living in a culture dominated by white supremacy, capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy. We must remember that healing and justice are intertwined and these powerful forces should be used to move the entire collective towards liberation, not just a privileged few.

JAMES: Embrace the parts (of you) that make you cringe. Make a commitment with a specific other to be more honest with each other. Enjoy the textures of your displeasure. Go towards the pain. Jerk off to your shadows or become bored of them. Do not hide from yourself. Find unusual parts of yourself to grow into.

ASHLEY: Be gentle with yourself! As my colleague Monique Darling loves to say, “explore your edges without impaling yourself on them.” This work is ongoing, so take your time, check in with yourself regularly, make sure you have support from trained and trustworthy professionals, and don’t take on too much at once. It has taken your whole life to get to where you are now, so it’s going to take longer than you think to do this work. Be patient. For many of us, it’s life-long work.

This story’s illustration was produced by Sean Smith aka Pariahinthesky.