Who are you?

You can have the healthiest food intake, take all the nutrients, drink the best water, work out, practice yoga and meditation, do your breathing, do all those things to chemically and physically balance your body, but if your body is not emotionally understood and balanced there cannot be harmony. It's the one that matters the most. Nurturing our younger self, our shadow, past experiences, ancestral patterns, triggers and traumas, is key to awareness, balance and wholeness. 

This deep dive into self, brings attention and love to those aspects of yourself that have previously been rejected. 
These can be both positive and negative aspects.
Facing the forgotten wounds, buried emotional pain, denied parts of self, mind-ego programming/conditioning and undigested trauma.

Some aspects of ourselves are "acceptable" and others aren't. What is acceptable or unacceptable depends on the family perspective and place you've been born into.
The aspects that are seen as unacceptable (both positive and negative) are rejected by our family and the aspects seen as acceptable are not rejected.

In the way of survival we reject those aspects in ourselves that we disapproved of, while exaggerating the aspects that we approved. We disassociate from what we disapprove of. This creates a fracture. What we call the conscious (aspects you are aware of) and subconscious (aspects you are unaware of).

Consciousness has long been referred to as LIGHT.
To become aware of something you have to see it.

When something is unconscious we can't see it. We are unaware of it. The same way we are unaware of something that may be in a dark room. Because the darkness is there we cannot see it.

The shadow is any aspect of a person that is not exposed to the light of their own consciousness

We have suppressed and disowned negative parts of ourselves,
but also suppress and disown positive parts of ourselves.

The process is REOWNING these parts of ourselves. It's a process of descension. As opposed to ascension (going up and out). It's working with coming down and in. Being here, present, human and going inward.

This self exploration can be painful, that is true.
Self awareness does not come naturally to those who make a practice of avoiding pain to become aware, you must stop trying to escape the pain within you.
To acknowledge something you've suppressed and denied means you must come face to face with the pain of having had to fracture yourself and grieve the loss of yourself as you suppressed these emotions for so long. Jigsaw puzzling the pieces back together is the key to true Self love.