Playing with Darketypes™
9-Week Online Course
Using Dark Archetypes to Find Connection, Power and Love in our Places of Greatest Shame
March 30th - May 25th, 2026
9 weeks on Mondays, from 4pm-6:30pm Pacific Time
Live on Zoom, taught by Light Dark Institute founders: Tani Thole & Leslie Rogers
$595 per person • $895 per couple (or for 2 family members)
“Every week had amazing gems. Tani & Leslie are very masterful yet humble and do a great job combining depth and play. I found it very engaging and connective even with being online. The workbook is a powerful resource in addition to and beyond the course too. Overall, the best personal development course I’ve ever taken.”
Why Explore Your Inner Shadows?
Whether you’re trying to connect with someone you're attracted to, navigate a difficult personal interaction, or find ways to change the world, unresolved inner shadows can hinder your progress. Despite the self-work you’ve done, your inner critic may still whisper, "You're no good," "You're unworthy," or "You're hopeless."
The key to transformation lies in the shadows — areas of ourselves that remain unseen. By creating a safe and welcoming environment, we can befriend these shadows and release the conditioning that binds us, finding the incredible gifts hidden in these untapped parts of ourselves. This process allows us to find deeper love for ourselves and extend that love to the world around us, opening us to greater freedom and empowering us to greater leadership in our lives.
What Are Darketypes™?
Darketypes™ (aka Dark Archetypes) are specific aspects of our inner selves that we usually avoid. While confronting them may seem daunting, it can be incredibly liberating.
Throughout this 9-week course, you will explore the Light Dark Institute’s 10 Core Darketypes™, such as:
The Dominating Controller
The Violent Destroyer
The Covert Manipulator
The Arrogant Disdainer
The Needy Wretch
By learning to understand and play with these Darketypes, you will transform them into sources of wisdom, creativity and connection. This journey will help you cultivate a more profound love for yourself and those around you, empowering you to live with the tremendous power of a courageously open heart.
What You’ll Learn in This Course:
Profound methods of glimpsing the deepest truth of who we really are
Get the Light Dark Institute’s “Darketypes Map” - a system of different Darketypes™, how they relate to each other, how to play with them, and the gifts they each bring
Ways to spot, identify and play with Darketypes in yourself and others
How to cultivate a sense of humor and playfulness in areas where you normally feel bound, fearful or ashamed
Begin the process of transforming your blind spots and challenging your invisible assumptions
Integrate powerful strategies for facing your fears
How to find and harness the powerful gifts hiding in your shadows
Learn how to express your Darketypes in ways that lead to connection rather than disconnection
“Highly recommend this course! Profound exploration of self. Deep content, so many insights, and an amazingly held container of tender care and so much humor that allowed me to look into the dark corners with no resistance. ”
About Your Guides
This course is taught by Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers, founders of the Light Dark Institute, who bring decades of experience exploring the depths of the human psyche with compassion and authenticity.
Tani and Leslie hold a profound sense of appreciation and honoring for the darkness, along with an unshakable belief in the beauty of the human heart. Their approach is playful, non-judgmental, and grounded in real-world experience, supporting others to befriend what often gets rejected and to cultivate a more vibrant connection with life.
Featured in The Atlantic and Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink, Tani and Leslie’s work invites participants to unlock the power within their shadows, not only for personal transformation but as a step toward a more loving, interconnected world.
“Tani and Leslie have changed my life irreversibly. I didn’t even realize how much of myself was unknown to me until I started doing this work. And I especially did not know that I could step into my WHOLE self and also be loved.”
Course Format:
9 weeks of diving deep into the Darketypes
Live Zoom Calls: Each week includes a 2.5-hour live Zoom call with Light Dark Institute founders Tani and Leslie, in which they will guide you through powerful explorations with the different Darketypes.
200+ Page Workbook: Take your learning deeper through Darketype Profiles, real-world examples, suggestions for how to work with each Darketype, contemplation questions, embodied activities, and more in our extensive workbook.
Recordings: Every live Zoom call will be recorded and available to you. We recommend trying to attend live as much as you can, but if you have to miss a class, you can always catch up.
By the end of this course, you will have the tools to transform your inner shadows into powerful sources of freedom, creativity and connection. Join us on this transformative journey to find deeper love for yourself and your world.
Timing:
All live Zoom sessions meet from 4-6:30pm Pacific Time.
9 consecutive Mondays: March 30th through May 25th, 2026
The workbook is self-paced, with chapters designed to compliment the themes of each week’s class
Price:
$595 per person
$895 per couple (or for two family members)
We are committed to keeping this course accessible. If you have a desire to join the course but need a discounted price to make that financially doable, we welcome you to apply for a scholarship by clicking here. We want you with us for this journey!
“The Darketypes course was a high-value online offering—well-organized and skillfully presented. Tani and Leslie are outstanding guides and humans. Their approach to shadow work is playful, stimulating, real, and steeped in their combined wisdom and experience. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from them.”
“Exploring Darketypes has been fundamental to my understanding of myself. I’ve let out so many voices, and my partner is delighted. Learning to play with these parts has us rolling with laughter and connecting with a wise understanding of our innermost voices, desires, and fears.”
The Journey, Week by Week
Week 1 - Introduction
The Darketypes™ Map
We introduce the core concepts and relationships between the Darketypes, and explore how going into the dark expands our capacity to bring more love to ourselves, our relationships, and the world.
Week 2 – Integrated Power
Holding Power and Love Together
This week we look at how easy it can be in relationship to fall into the twin traps of either abandoning ourselves or pushing others away, and we introduce Integrated Power as a framework for holding both our love and our power at the same time.
Week 3 – Denial
The Lying Hider
We begin our explorations of the individual Darketypes with the Lying Hider, which acts as a cap over all the other Darketypes. Here we explore the deep human longing to know ourselves as good, how the feeling of shame pulls us out of connection with our own innocence, and how denial becomes a way of coping with the shame.
Week 4 – Control
The Dominating Controller & the Covert Manipulator
This week we explore the deep yearning to feel safe enough to surrender, and how the perceived threat of danger can knock us out of surrender and send us instead grasping for control.
Week 5 – Contempt
The Arrogant Disdainer & the Spiteful Self-Pitier
In this week, we explore the longing to be respected, how experiences of degradation or rejection wound that longing, and how contempt becomes a strategy to protect ourselves from feeling diminished.
Week 6 – Possession
The Taking Violator & the Entitled Possessor
Here we explore the desire to live in reciprocity – the ability to be in a natural flow of giving and receiving with life. We look at how the fear of scarcity disrupts our trust in enoughness, and how possession becomes a way of trying to make sure we “have”.
Week 7 – Annihilation
The Violent Destroyer & the Unfeeling Disconnector
In this section we turn toward the depth of devotion – our capacity to care so deeply about whom and what we love. We look at how devastating the threat of loss feels in the context of our devotion, and how annihilation — whether pointed outward or inward — emerges as a way to survive that pain.
Week 8 – Desperation
The Needy Wretch
This week brings us to the heart of the Darketypes Map: the deep fundamental longing for Love. We look at how the fear of abandonment shapes our experience of connection, and how the desperation to find love and avoid pain quietly fuels so many of our patterns.
Week 9 – Final Integration
Pulling It All Together
In the final week of the course, we look at how to engage with other people’s Darketypes when they’re coming towards you in an unconscious or triggered way. And we weave all the threads from the previous 8 weeks to complete the course.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes! Everyone is welcome. While this course does delve deep into the shadows, it is structured to enter that territory in a way that makes it safe and accessible for people no matter what level of experience they have.
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Yes! This course makes an amazing compliment to other forms of shadow work and Light Dark work. Because we have 9 whole weeks—and a 200+ page workbook—to dive into this material, we get to go deeper with the Darketypes here than we do in any of our other courses. We have had many people join us for Playing with Darketypes after doing other courses with us, even including our most advanced offerings, and they still get a ton out of this course. No matter what work you’ve done before with us or elsewhere, we recommend this course as a deep and potent way to build intimate nuanced understanding of—and powerful love for—the full spectrum of the human shadow.
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This course offers a lot, and the more time you can give it, the more riches it has to offer. Expect to spend 2.5-3 hours for the live classes each week, plus a few hours or more for reading the workbook and doing exercises each week. The reading averages around 20-25 pages per week, give or take a bit. You can take this course even if you don’t have time to fully keep up in the workbook, but it is definitely true that the more time you can give it, the more you will get.
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No worries! Every class session is recorded and recordings are sent out within 24 hours, so you have plenty of time to catch up on your own before the following week.
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While we do recommend attending the classes live if you possibly can, many students have opted to do the course on their own timing and have reported getting a lot out of it. The course is designed to have frequent interactive activities in breakout rooms, but these can be done on your own through journaling or acting/speaking out loud in your own space. If you choose to take the course on your own timing, the key is to stay committed all the way through, as the course is designed to build toward the most important content in the final two weeks.
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If you have taken other courses with us, such as Light Dark Foundations or Advanced Dark Play, the Darketypes Map and some of the ways we introduce the content will already be familiar to you. However, in this course we have a whole week to focus on each Darketype or “Pole” (a pair of Darketypes), allowing us to go much deeper with understanding what drives each of these parts and how to work with them. In addition, the 200+ page workbook has a wealth of information that is currently not available through any of our other courses.
“The Light Dark Institute offers some of the most powerful personal transformation work out in the world right now. Tani Thole and Leslie Rogers have created genuine, powerful methods to pierce through the layers of shame and artificiality that keep us from truly connecting with ourselves and with each other. I've never felt more seen or more held in all my parts.”
— L. Campbell, Oakland, CAWhat people are saying about the Light Dark Institute
“This work is about waking up to fully embrace the truth of all of who we are, it’s about celebrating and loving the parts we have disapproval for and hide. I’ve attended dozens of workshops over the years and nothing has been as deep and penetrating as what LDI offers. It's transformative and liberating on level 10. You owe it to yourself to be curious enough to attend a workshop. . .”
— Eros Papasideris, Maui, HI“The discovery of the Light Dark Institute has expanded my capacity for connection, authenticity and play. . . awakened in me a deep longing to experience my darkness with ease and complete acceptance. Leslie and Tani hold a remarkable, safe container that allows you to explore places inside yourself that have been unseen and untouched. . . If you are ready to take a deep dive into a life transformational experience, then this work is for you.”
— Udaya Bryce, Maui, Hawaii“If you are nervous, scared and still curious, just do this. Leslie and Tani bring a style of work that is utterly unique. . . The highlight has been eradicating elements of shame and embracing the darkness.”
— Jennifer Pennell, San Diego, CA“When you're ready to release shame and step fully into your power, get yourself to an experience with the Light Dark Institute. ”
— Dr. Jane Guyn, Bend, OR