SHADOW WORK
A six-week live online journey with psychotherapist Matt Licata
6 Consecutive Tuesdays:
September 22, 29; October 6, 13, 20, and 27
A Personal Invitation from Matt Licata
Dear Friend,
There are parts of us that do not disappear simply because we understand them.
Old patterns, grief, shame, fear, and parts of ourselves we learned to leave behind can continue to shape our lives in quiet and powerful ways. Shadow Work invites us into a different relationship with what we carry—not one of fixing or overcoming, but of curiosity, compassion, and deeper presence.
Over six weeks, we’ll explore these unfinished places from both psychological and spiritual perspectives, through teaching, reflection, experiential practice, and conversation.
My hope is to offer a space where you can slow down, listen more deeply, and meet yourself with greater intimacy and compassion. I invite you to explore the page below and see if this journey feels right for you.
With appreciation and in friendship,
Matt Licata
Many of us discover, sooner or later, that insight alone is not enough. We may understand our histories, recognize familiar patterns, and even experience moments of profound clarity, spaciousness, or awakening, and yet certain reactions remain. Shame contracts the body before we can meet it. Old relational patterns return. We lose contact with ourselves in moments of conflict, intimacy, uncertainty, or emotional overwhelm.
There are parts of us that seem to live just beyond the reach of understanding. However much we learn about ourselves, something continues asking for our attention. Not because we have failed, but because there are dimensions of our experience that long for something more than explanation. They long to be met.
This is the territory traditionally known as the shadow. Not simply the parts of ourselves we dislike or wish to overcome, but the hidden, forgotten, and often deeply protective places that have quietly shaped our lives. Alongside our fears and defenses, they may also carry grief, vitality, creativity, vulnerability, and aspects of ourselves that once felt impossible to bring fully into the world.
Over these six weeks, I’ll invite you into a different way of approaching this inner landscape. Rather than asking how we can fix, transcend, or finally overcome these parts of ourselves, we’ll become curious about what they may be asking of us. Together, we’ll explore what becomes possible when we learn to meet these places with curiosity, compassion, and presence.
More than anything, I’ve created this as a place to slow down—not simply to learn new ideas, but to enter a different atmosphere, one where nothing within us needs to be hurried, judged, or fixed before it belongs.
If this work has taught me anything, it is that healing is rarely about becoming someone new. More often, it is about learning to accompany ourselves with enough honesty, tenderness, and courage that what once felt too painful, too vulnerable, or too difficult to face no longer has to remain there alone.
Over six weeks, we’ll explore questions such as:
- Why do certain patterns continue returning, even when we understand where they came from?
- What if the parts of ourselves we’ve tried hardest to overcome are not obstacles to healing, but invitations into it?
- How do our relationships reveal the unfinished places still asking for our attention?
- How do we begin meeting shame, grief, fear, and vulnerability with compassion rather than self-abandonment?
- What becomes possible as the parts of ourselves we’ve left behind begin finding their way home?
“Matt’s understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the healing journey, and how meditation and psychological work fit together were a key for me which unlocked the door to a part of myself that I had forgotten about. The way he held my experience and contained it with such love and kindness allowed me to end the war with myself and to begin to perceive even my most challenging emotions and sensitivities as allies and just how he’s right when he says that the path really is everywhere. Spending time with him was a real fork in the road in my life, a true turning point that opened up a whole new way of being for me.”
– J.R., London
What to Expect in Each Session:
SESSION ONE:
The Shadow Is Not the Problem
What We Had to Leave Behind in Order to Belong
September 22 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Our journey begins by gently reconsidering what we mean by the shadow. Rather than approaching it as something broken, shameful, or standing in the way of healing, we’ll become curious about the hidden and often deeply protective places that have quietly shaped our lives.
Together, we’ll explore what may have been left behind in order to feel safe, loved, accepted, or connected. We’ll begin wondering whether shame, people-pleasing, perfectionism, self-doubt, and emotional withdrawal are not signs of personal failure, but expressions of a wisdom that once helped us survive.
As we slow down enough to meet these forgotten places with curiosity rather than judgment, something begins to soften. The shadow gradually reveals itself not as an obstacle to healing, but as a doorway into a more compassionate relationship with ourselves—and with the parts of us that have been waiting, often for many years, to come home.
SESSION TWO:
Why Insight Isn’t Enough
When Understanding and Healing Move at Different Speeds
September 29 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Many of us come to understand ourselves remarkably well. We recognize familiar patterns, trace our fears back through the years, and sometimes even watch old reactions unfolding in real time. Yet we may still find ourselves asking, If I can see what’s happening so clearly, why does it still have such a hold on me?
This question marks an important turning point in the healing journey. Together, we’ll explore why understanding and transformation, while deeply related, do not always move at the same pace, and why some parts of us seem to ask for something more than insight alone.
As we become curious about the places where we still feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or caught in familiar patterns, we’ll begin discovering that healing has its own rhythm. Rather than forcing change or accumulating more understanding, we’ll explore what becomes possible as we learn to remain in compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves still waiting to be met.
SESSION THREE:
When Relationships Touch Old Wounds
How the Shadow Comes Alive Between Us
October 6 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Relationships have a way of revealing places within us that we cannot always reach on our own. A moment of distance, a misunderstanding, an unexpected disappointment, or the feeling of not being seen can awaken reactions that seem far larger than the circumstances themselves. It is often here, in the ordinary moments of intimacy and conflict, that the shadow quietly begins to reveal itself.
Rather than approaching these moments as evidence that something has gone wrong, we’ll become curious about what they may be inviting us to discover. Together, we’ll explore how love, conflict, closeness, and loss often illuminate the unfinished places still asking for our attention.
Again and again, we’ll return to the possibility that relationship itself can become part of the healing path. Not because another person can heal us, but because our relationships so often reveal the parts of ourselves that most long to be seen, understood, and gently welcomed home.
SESSION FOUR:
The Grief Beneath Shame and Self-Abandonment
What We Lost While Trying to Belong
October 13 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Shame can be one of the most convincing experiences we carry. It quietly persuades us that something is wrong with us, that our sensitivity is too much, our needs are too great, or that some essential part of us has made us unworthy of love.
In this session, we’ll gently look beneath shame itself. I’ve found that beneath many experiences of shame lies something even more tender: the grief of what was hidden, silenced, or left behind in order to belong. The shame tells us we are the problem. The grief quietly remembers what was lost.
Together, we’ll explore what becomes possible as we begin making room for this forgotten grief with compassion rather than judgment. We may discover that the parts of ourselves we’ve long experienced as broken are carrying not only pain, but an unfinished story of love, belonging, and survival—one that has been waiting, perhaps for many years, to be met in a different way.
SESSION FIVE:
Integration Is Not Resolution
Healing Without Fixing Ourselves
October 20 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Many of us begin the work of healing with an understandable hope: that one day we’ll finally resolve our struggles, leave our difficult emotions behind, and become the person we’ve always imagined we were meant to be. Beneath that hope often lives the quiet assumption that healing will eventually free us from vulnerability, uncertainty, conflict, or sorrow.
Over time, however, another possibility begins to emerge. Rather than asking us to become someone else, healing may be inviting us into a more honest, compassionate, and spacious relationship with the fullness of who we already are.
Together, we’ll explore how even spirituality, meditation, and profound moments of insight can quietly become forms of self-improvement or escape when they’re asked to protect us from our humanity rather than deepen our intimacy with it. We’ll begin considering what genuine integration might look like—not as the resolution of our humanity, but as a more wholehearted way of inhabiting it.
SESSION SIX:
The Shadow as Ally
The Parts of Us Waiting to Come Home
October 27 • 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm London
Our final session is less a conclusion than a homecoming. By now, we’ve spent time with the protective wisdom of the shadow, the slow rhythm of healing, and the ways relationship so often reveals what remains unfinished. Together, these explorations open a different possibility: that the very places we once feared may also carry the seeds of our deepest vitality.
The shadow is not composed only of pain. It also holds creativity, tenderness, instinct, authenticity, and ways of being that may once have felt impossible to inhabit. What was hidden or set aside in order to belong has never stopped longing to participate in our lives. It has simply been waiting for the conditions in which it could safely return.
As we bring our time together to a close, we’ll reflect on what it means to welcome these forgotten parts of ourselves with patience, compassion, and faithful attention. Not as something to conquer or finally resolve, but as the beginning of a different relationship with ourselves—one marked by curiosity rather than certainty, hospitality rather than judgment, and companionship rather than self-abandonment.
What’s Included
#1: Six Live Online Sessions with Matt Licata
On six consecutive Tuesdays, we’ll meet for 90+ minutes of teaching, guided practices, experiential exercises, and conversation. Each session will include time for questions and interaction with Matt as we explore the themes and practices of Shadow Work together.
You do not need to attend live to participate fully in the program.
#2: Video and Audio Recordings of Every Session
Shortly after each live session, you’ll have access to the video and audio recordings to watch, listen to, or download at your convenience. You’ll have lifetime access to the complete library, so you can return to the sessions whenever you wish.
#3: A Private Member Portal
All program materials will be housed in a private member portal, accessible from your computer, phone, or tablet, so you can easily return to the sessions, teachings, and practices whenever you wish.
#4: Optional Private Facebook Group
You’ll also have the option to join a private Facebook group to connect with fellow participants, share reflections, and offer support throughout our six weeks together. The group will be a participant space rather than a teaching forum with Matt, and all teaching and program materials will be provided outside the group. Participation is entirely optional.
Plus These Three Gifts:
Holding the Inner Child
Tending the Orphans of Psyche and Soma in Liminal Times
Video Webinar + eBook
Staying Close to What Hurts
This beautifully designed guided journal is a companion for the deeper work of healing—a quiet place to slow down, listen inwardly, and stay close to your own experience with kindness and curiosity.
Blending depth psychology, somatic awareness, and contemplative practice, The Courage to Heal offers short teachings, gentle guided reflections, and spacious writing invitations that support the slow integration of what has been hurt or left unseen. Rather than offering techniques to master or problems to solve, this journal invites a different orientation—learning how to remain present with your inner life as it unfolds.
You can use the journal alongside Shadow Work, returning to its reflections and practices between sessions as a way of staying close to what is emerging and giving further space to the places within you asking for attention. It is not a journal to rush through, but a companion you can return to again and again, across many seasons of your life.
True spiritual transformation cannot be separated from our unresolved wounds. Trauma, attachment insecurity, and shadow material all live in the body and nervous system, shaping how we show up in the world.
In this webinar, Matt explores how spirituality and psychology weave together — and why meeting our vulnerability, grief, and rage with compassion is essential for an authentic spiritual life. You’ll discover what an embodied, integral spirituality looks like: one that honors both our radiant depths and our tender human wounds.
1. Six Live Online Sessions with Matt Licata
2. Video and Audio Recordings of Every Session
3. Private Member Portal
4. Optional Private Facebook Group
Bonus #1: Holding the Inner Child: Tending the Orphans of Psyche and Soma in Liminal Times · Video Webinar + eBook
Bonus #2: The Courage to Heal: Staying Close to What Hurts · Guided Journal eBook
Bonus #3: An Integral Spirituality · Video Webinar
REGULAR PRICE
$397
INTRODUCTORY OFFER
$197
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I created Shadow Work as a space to explore healing with greater compassion, curiosity, and depth. It draws upon more than 35 years of personal and professional experience, and my hope is that our time together will be meaningful, supportive, and useful to you.
If you participate and find that the program isn’t right for you, simply email us before September 26 at midnight U.S. Pacific Time and we’ll provide a full refund. No refunds will be available after that time.
Matt Licata PhD
“A Healing Space is a brilliant weave of Jungian and Eastern contemplative wisdom. In this powerful new offering, Matt Licata guides us to a place of sacred refuge, where we can meet even our greatest moments of confusion and suffering with compassion and grace.”
– Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Compassion
“Matt Licata pinpoints a space within us where healing, awakening, and a vibrant reckoning of who we actually are can be realized. The wisdom hidden deep within our darkest experiences comes from not turning away from these, but by directly tending to them with gentleness, love, and compassion. This book depicts a way of genuine freedom.”
– Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness
“In A Healing Space, Matt Licata serves as a compassionate and insightful guide to the transformative task we all must face: how to forge our pain and sorrow into remedies of Spirit that can illuminate our way. With the soft clarity of a magnifying glass, Matt brings into view the many things that inhabit our nature, though they are seldom easily seen. Stay in conversation with this book and you will be a better friend to yourself, those you travel with, and to life itself”
– Mark Nepo, author of The Book of Soul and Drinking from the River of Light
“Weaving the wisdom of reflective practices, the insights from Carl Jung and the alchemists, and the relational truths of attachment research and psychotherapy practice, Matt Licata offers us a beautiful tapestry of truths to transform trauma into healing and strength. Adversity can constrain us, but with this wonderful book, we can find the perspectives and courage to embrace the reality of life’s innate uncertainty to guide us on a journey of growth and discovery—moving from post-traumatic imprisonment to liberation.”
– Dan Siegel, MD, clinical professor at UCLA School of Medicine, director of Mindsight Institute, and author of Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence and Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
“If you are looking for a book to be a companion to you during this extraordinary time, it’s this one. A Healing Space is a robust guidebook into the inner territory of yourself, assisting you in the exploration of deep and rich personal and life questions that lead, always, to wondrous realizations and growth. What a treasure to find in these times of great change.”
– Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Intimate Conversations with the Divine
“Tender, profound, and deeply useful, this book is gem. Remarkably, Matt Licata weaves together self-compassion, depth psychology, and radical acceptance into a beautiful, passionate, soaring exploration of all that it means to be human.”
– Rick Hanson, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness
“A Healing Space is a beautiful, insightful, and moving contemplation of the journey of healing we all undertake as human beings. It illuminates how self-compassion—holding our own pain with love—transforms our experience in a profound way so that we can learn the lessons life offers us moment by moment.”
– Kristin Neff, PhD, associate professor, University of Texas, and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
“A Healing Space is a beautifully written book exploring how walking through the darkness ultimately brings blessings, wisdom, and beauty to your life, and moves you onto a path of evolution that you simply cannot perceive during difficult times. Matt Licata is a perfect guide as evidenced through his life experience and work as psychotherapist. This book is so timely and filled with helpful tools to guide you from the darkness into your own divine light.
– Sandra Ingerman, MA, award-winning author of twelve books, including Walking in Light and The Book of Ceremony: Shamanic Wisdom for Invoking the Sacred in Everyday Life
Matt Licata, PhD is a psychotherapist, author, and teacher whose work explores the meeting place of psychological healing, contemplative spirituality, and the inner life. For more than 35 years, he has been immersed in the dialogue between psychological, contemplative, and meditative approaches to emotional healing and spiritual transformation, with a particular interest in the ways our most difficult and vulnerable experiences can become part of a deeper path of belonging.
He is the author of A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times (Sounds True, 2020) and The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You (Wandering Yogi Press, 2017). His new book, The Unfinished Work of Love, will be published in 2027.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been with a teacher or therapist who saw me so transparently and so lovingly. At first it was uncomfortable, scary, and I wasn’t sure if this was for me. But the kindness that came from Matt and his insight and presence into my wounding and vulnerability melted something within me. It was like years of conditioning came crashing down and I felt real love for myself and compassion for the little girl that was raging alive inside me. There is a way that I finally felt safe, to unravel and fall apart and be fully empowered, with him there next to me. After all the healing I had “thought” that I had done, Matt helped me to see that there were always deeper realms of the body and heart to excavate and open to the light. Also, just how human and real and authentic he is meant so much to me. He wasn’t “trying” to be someone he wasn’t, honest about his own biases and brokenness, and that just made it so much more natural for me to open.”
– J.P., New York
Are the sessions live or prerecorded?
All six sessions will be held live and uploaded to the private member portal within 24 hours (usually much sooner). You can watch, listen to, or download the recordings whenever it’s convenient for you.
What are the dates and times of the live sessions?
Live sessions are held at 9am U.S. Pacific Time / 12pm U.S. Eastern Time / 5pm London time on six consecutive Tuesdays: September 22, 29; October 6, 13, 20, and 27. Sessions last approximately 90 minutes, sometimes a little longer. If you’re unable to attend live, recordings will be available in the private member portal within 24 hours.
How can I get support?
Our support team is happy to help with any questions about accessing your materials or participating in the program. Please email us at support@mattlicataphd.com rather than contacting Matt directly. We typically respond within 24 hours.
I signed up, but I haven’t heard anything.
Sometimes our emails may end up in your spam, junk, or promotions folder, so please check there first. If you still can’t find anything, email our support team and we’ll be happy to help.
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