Empowered Anger

This meditation is for those of you who are angry and know that your anger is necessary. This is not a meditation to get rid of anger. This is a meditation to help you work consciously with it so that it can be a force for healing, transformation, and equality in the world rather than more destruction. I offer an embodied, feminist, trauma-informed lens and give many options for modification and support to work with this powerful emotion.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renée Sills,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker and astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of these meditations sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renée offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Welcome everyone.

Thanks for joining.

I'm acknowledging you wherever you are at whatever time you're listening to this.

I'm recording around noon on Thursday,

August 17th,

And I'm happy to be speaking to you wherever you might be sometime in the future.

I wanted to talk about anger today and to offer a meditation for working with anger.

Meditation or mindfulness and anger,

You don't often see them going together unless it's a meditation or some kind of practice to like get over your anger or somehow pacify it.

Anger,

It seems often doesn't have a place within the mindfulness community or many parts of it.

That's not true for all parts,

But in general,

As kind of an assumption that many people make yoga and meditation are things to do to be peaceful,

To have bliss,

To feel calm,

Etc.

And while they definitely do promote those states of being,

They're also tools for self-knowing and for liberation.

In fact,

The purpose I would say of both meditation and yoga or any kind of somatics or body-based mindfulness practice is liberation.

When I say liberation,

I mean freedom from the ways that we have been oppressed and have then become internally oppressed.

We live our lives,

All of us,

With some degree of oppression simply by participating in culture.

We have to adapt and we do need to behave in certain ways so that culture can function.

There's even oppression that I would say might be sometimes somewhat good,

Right?

We oppress certain tendencies in ourselves or suppress them that would have us throwing tantrums and punching each other in the face and throwing food off the table sometimes.

You certainly have had plenty of experiences in your life when you really just wanted to scream out in anger or act out in anger and yet something stopped you and that something was a certain level of decorum and politeness,

If not actual respect or compassion for whoever you are dealing with.

There is a place for modifying our instincts and behaviors.

However,

If those instincts and behaviors are kept in some kind of shadow,

If we can't acknowledge the very real instinct and then feel what that is in our bodies and allow it to somehow sequence out or be released in a healthy and nonviolent way,

Then we're left with that feeling.

Oftentimes those feelings start to build up inside and create a kind of slimy toxic residue where we're walking around with a lot of anger.

Now I'll say there are many ways that we face oppression in our lives and experience oppression that are not okay.

All of the time people are being oppressed for who they are and this goes for everybody.

This is first before all of the identity bias,

But before that simply people are creative,

They're intelligent and we live in a culture that is often very fear-based and very demeaning of creativity and intelligence.

This doesn't really matter who you are,

Where you are,

You'll deal with this where you don't feel seen in your life and this is an experience that we all have.

There's another kind of anger that I think we all have,

Which is the anger at not feeling connected.

This is kind of the original,

I'll say,

Like abandonment wound for many of us is that there's things of disconnect and this happens in our family systems and this happens in our schools and this happens with friends and it definitely happens with lovers and intimate relationships and it happens in business.

Of course it happens between identity groups where we feel unseen,

We feel unheard and oftentimes that's grounded in fact.

Then of course there are the major oppressions that really have become boiling to the surface in terms of popular awareness in the last couple of years.

For the first time in a while,

I'll say,

I think we've had surges of awareness in popular consciousness around groups of people who are mistreated and bring their anger forward into the collective dialogue and right now there are a lot of groups that are expressing a lot of anger.

I'm not going to at all,

This is not me at all repeating what Trump was talking about like many sides or something.

What we're looking at in this moment on this day that I'm recording in terms of white supremacy and the violence of white supremacy is out of fucking hand.

It's so destructive and the backlash against that groups of people and that includes white people that are sick of it and rising up with anger and violence against this force I would say needs to happen.

There is a place for anger and there are many,

Many groups who are angry and if we stay in our anger and if we let our anger rule us,

We're screwed.

However,

If we take what has maybe been more of the liberal tendency to push the anger aside and try and pretend like it's not there or somehow make nice about it,

We're also screwed because that again,

It builds into this kind of like toxic residue that then becomes destructive to ourselves as well as others in like passive aggressive ways and some kind of forced ignorance because when you're not letting yourself get angry,

It's really hard to pay attention to a lot of things in the world because they're so infuriating.

This is a meditation for feeling outraged and knowing that there's righteousness in that anger and this is not a meditation to make you feel more peaceful or better necessarily,

Although I do want to offer some tools that can help step to the side of the anger and examine it and notice,

Be mindful of the ways that anger when it's held onto very strongly can have a destructive effect within the body and I want to offer this meditation to all of us right now to continue waking up and part of what we need to wake up is to get angry.

Those are not okay and what we're looking at in terms of destructive forces that have been not only just oppressing but completely violating and decimating our bodies,

Our earth,

Our communities,

Our families is outrageous.

It's infuriating and my hope is that everybody's getting pretty pissed off right now and wanting to do something with that anger and my hope is that we can really move consciously with anger because it's a very powerful force and it is not bad but if it is used without mindfulness,

If it is used mindlessly,

It is destructive and there's a place for destruction and we want to be mindful of what we're destroying or seeking to destroy because this is energy that can destroy us from the inside out and it's energy that can destroy the people that we love and it's energy that ultimately can block us from moving into probably what we want which is what we haven't had yet which is the reason why we're angry.

So if we want peace,

If we want connection,

If we want recognition,

We also have to be able to at some point put the anger down.

So with that preamble,

I'm going to offer this meditation and I suggest that you do this meditation either alone or with a person or group of people where you agree beforehand to hold space for each other expressing anger and so this is a group of people that or any person that you know well,

You understand that there is safe space,

You understand that any kind of expression should not be taken personally and there's a lot of freedom and not worrying about hurting each other's feelings and also like rules around consent and releasing the voice,

Potentially releasing the body and if you don't have people like that at hand that you want to practice this kind of catharsis and meditation with,

Then do it at home alone and give yourself some room to move and you can also do this in your car if you want.

If you drive,

The car is a place where you again want to be mindful but especially if you can just sit somewhere parked,

It's a small capsule of aloneness where you can scream if you want and so just to let you know the lay of the land,

I'll be inviting body awareness and possibilities for movement and vocalization.

You may have other feelings come up,

Crying,

Shaking,

Laughing,

Always pausing the recording and taking deep breaths,

Looking around your space,

Noticing color,

Noticing sound,

Touching your skin,

Coming back to sensation,

Letting yourself see and acknowledge that you're safe in the moment.

These are ways to deescalate if things start to feel too intense.

So I want to put that out first that if you feel like you're getting into a space that's a little overwhelming,

Always take time to take care of yourself and then reenter into the process so you can make this as slow as you need.

All right,

So we'll start with resourcing and how we'll begin is just by taking a number of deep breaths in through the nose and as you inhale,

Let your belly and chest soften and as you exhale,

Sigh out your mouth and feel free to make any sound.

As you inhale,

Invite your breath in to relax your tummy,

Consciously relaxing the walls of your abdomen,

The muscular walls and your pelvic floor and then as you exhale,

Feel the way that the exhaling can just kind of release your brain and your body and you want to just allow for that relaxation of the exhale.

So as you breathe,

Let's just practice basic mindfulness and you can use your palms and hands to lightly caress your body,

Your arms,

Your face,

Your neck,

Your back,

Your belly,

Your legs and as you feel the touch of your hands against your skin or through your clothes,

Just tell yourself,

This is me,

This is my body,

Say hello body and sometimes I like to give little taps or like little slaps,

Nothing that's aggressive but just scratching or tingling feelings can just help the skin wake up and you're just going to be repeating,

Hello body,

This is me,

There you are and I'd like you to try and greet yourself with love and with compassion,

With respect.

So this is the basic resourcing tool right here is just deep breaths,

Conscious awareness of your breath and literally grounding in your body,

Touching your skin,

Saying hello.

If there are places that are tender,

Tight,

Achy,

You might massage them a little bit.

Our bodies are really incredible and incredibly complex and incredibly sensitive vehicles for our intelligent minds and our intelligent hearts.

They take in so much information all the time and the way that they perceive the world is not how we often think of perceiving.

It's subtle,

It's very intuitive,

It's instinctual and it's not based in words.

So as you greet your body,

Allow your body to just make itself heard and listen to your body and there might be places that need like a caring touch or padding,

Petting,

There might be places where it feels really good to scratch or again like light slaps if something feels asleep,

Massaging.

And then I'll invite you to think about like brushing energy off of your skin,

Starting at your spine and moving down your arms and hands.

So you could start with one hand to kind of your neck,

That portion of your spine and then just brush out your skin towards your hands.

And as you brush off your arm and arms,

You're just kind of like moving,

Releasing energy that anything that's accumulating around your throat and your heart and your higher spine and just releasing it out from your skin,

Anything that's accumulated there,

Any kind of tension.

And then you can continue kind of brushing down your belly and your chest and over your back and if you're moving in the world at all,

If you're watching the news at all,

If you're having any conversations,

There's energy on you that's not yours.

So brush it off,

You know,

Just brush off anything that feels like,

I don't know,

Just it doesn't even have to be bad.

It's just not you.

You're just brushing your skin and then you're going to go down your legs and from your spine,

From your sacrum,

Across your bum,

Over your groins,

Thighs,

Knees,

All the way over your ankles and your feet.

And if you're not able to do this movement with your hands,

Brushing all the way down or even over your arms,

You can imagine it.

Like imagine a little psychic broom sweeping off your skin,

Just and when I do this,

I like to make noises like whatever it feels like is getting out like,

You might kind of like do some lip rolls and continue to sigh and let your voice out and you're just releasing energy here.

You're releasing anything that's not you,

Just letting it go.

So and then when you're done with that and when you're done with that,

Then what I'm going to suggest is just some really light,

Really gentle shaking and you can create a rhythm in your feet if that feels helpful.

You can also just kind of irhythmically shake and these are little,

Little shakes and you could feel them potentially originating very deep in your body,

Close to your spine or close to your joints and let your head shake and again,

Just continue to inhale and exhale out sound,

Allowing whatever sounds want to come out just to come out and you're just little shakes through your whole body.

Deep breaths and exhales and letting it out.

Little tiny shakes.

Okay.

And then let's pause for a moment and let the shaking get smaller and smaller and smaller and let your breaths keep being deep.

Exhales keep lengthening and then I just want you to pause for a moment in some place of stillness and check in with how you feel right now.

So we haven't done anything to activate.

All we've been doing or my intention has not been to activate.

My intention has only been to kind of just do some basic hellos and relaxing and releasing of energy.

Okay.

So if any of the exercises that we just did felt supportive and grounding to you,

You can come back to them at any time.

Okay.

So I find that these again,

Just touching the skin,

Really deep breaths,

Kind of very gentle shaking,

Letting things get released,

Okay,

Self massage,

Very helpful.

Inhaling through the nose,

Exhaling out the mouth,

Letting the sounds come out.

And for those of you that have dissociative patterns,

When you start to feel anger or any kind of strong emotions,

This is many of us,

I'm just going to offer that you can pay attention through your sense organs,

So eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Mouth.

And right now you can open your eyes if they're not really taking the colors of the space that you're in.

See the textures.

Hear the sound of my voice,

The sounds of whatever space you're in.

Notice any smells,

Any flavors in your mouth,

Any qualities,

My mouth dry,

My thirsty.

Okay.

And so if you,

Again,

If you start to feel overwhelmed,

If you dissociate,

This is a place where you can come back.

This has to do with all the time,

Life in general,

Not just this meditation,

All these exercises,

Okay.

Just ground yourself.

There's a lot to get activated with in your life,

I'm sure.

Okay.

So now we'll begin bringing our attention into the lower body.

And I want you to feel from your belly down into your spine,

Your hip joints,

Your leg bones,

Your knees,

Shins,

Calves,

Heels,

Ankles,

Your feet,

Your toes.

Okay.

If you're in a space and if you're in a position or ability to move around a little bit,

You might widen your stance,

Lower your center of gravity,

Knees bent and just start like you can do squats.

You can kind of take big wide stomping,

Not quite stomping yet,

But really penetrating steps like you're rooting each foot down through the ground and into the earth with every step and knees stay bent and your center of gravity just stays low.

And feel weight passing from your head and your spine into your pelvis and into your legs.

If you're not moving around space,

If you're sitting or standing or lying down,

Then the invitation is still the same to feel your inner body relaxing from your waistline and your tummy.

You want to feel the walls of your abdomen relax.

Really allow your pelvic floor and the muscles around your bottom to relax.

This is kind of the base chakra of the body where a lot of fear gets held and a lot of anger gets held.

So as you move,

You can think about releasing and relaxing your butt,

Your tailbone.

And if you think of like what animals do when they're scared or when they're ready to attack,

The tail tucks and the spine gets rigid.

And so right now I want you to relax that.

Relax your pelvic floor and let your inner body.

It's almost like a fluid movement from your inner body,

Belly,

Lower spine,

Pelvis,

Hips,

Wash out through your legs all the way down into your feet to meet whatever form of support is coming up into your body.

You're just releasing into that support.

And then you can continue to take breaths and sounds and allow your sounds to be a lower register.

So can you initiate sounding from your pelvis and like let your voice out a lot.

And I'm not doing it because I don't want to bust your speakers or your eardrums.

So that this is what your invitation is,

Is to breathe deep into your belly,

Relax the pelvic floor and then let your deep voice come out,

Whatever register that sounds like.

And you might want to relax your jaw and stick out your tongue and let your belly and pelvis kind of initiate the flow of noise and sound out of your body and continue to let your awareness move low from your low spine into your legs.

And continue taking deep breaths.

And then if you want to now start to move anything in your upper body,

You might feel like you want to stretch out your arms.

You might want to start twisting from your waist and just let your arms flop.

Okay.

So whatever movement needs to happen now in your upper body so that your lower body can get even more weighty,

Even more heavy.

And you're really just connecting down into the base of your body.

And now I'm going to invite you,

If you're moving around to start to stomp and please do this in a way that honors the needs of your body.

Don't hurt yourself,

But you can think about like stomping and moving energetically through your foot all the way through the fucking floor,

Like stomp it and send your energy all the way down into the ground and continue to take deep breaths and let your voice move out and you're just stomping your feet,

Stomping your feet.

And you might want to find a rhythm in it and just stomp your feet.

Let your exhale here be like,

Mm,

Forceful.

And now you might want to let your arms and your hands and your spine express big.

If it feels okay,

You can allow them to express big.

Okay.

So for those of you who are not moving around,

Okay.

And you need a deep breath into your belly.

And then as you exhale,

Let your voice out and imagine your voice is pushing energy through your legs,

All the way out your feet and into your toes.

And then as you inhale,

I want you to feel your inhaling breath rapidly expand into your chest and like kind of like fill you up and then exhale and push all of your breath out of your legs.

Okay.

Out through the backside of your body.

If you're lying down,

Continue to relax your jaw,

Continue to relax your tongue,

Continue to let the deep register of your voice come out.

Okay.

So now I'm going to invite sounds to continue to happen,

But I'm also going to invite specific words to start to come out.

And the first word that I want to invite is no.

And so if this is something you want to try,

Just start saying it.

No,

And say it loud and say it really clear and you can yell it.

You can shout it.

You can growl it.

No.

And as you say,

No,

Let that emphatic,

No,

That rejection come out through your feet and stomp them down into the ground and let it come out through your arms and slice through whatever layers of crap you're needing to slice through and say,

No,

You can imagine that this is something of a cord cutting as well.

If you're dealing with anger in your relationships and you just,

You're like,

No,

That's a boundary.

No,

You cannot.

You use your body language,

Use your breath,

Create boundary.

No.

Okay.

And so you want to let this get as big or as little as it needs to be.

And sometimes there's a very subtle nose.

There's a very deep nose right in the core of your body really can be very important just as much as the big cathartic expressive fucking,

Oh,

And you can yell it as loud as you need to.

Okay.

And then we're just going to continue to resource with deep breaths and exhales and allow your register to keep moving in through this low part of your body.

Okay.

So I'm going to talk for a minute and you just do whatever kind of movement or breathing you need.

And what I want to say is that oftentimes when we get angry and when we're dealing with anger and how it manifests for each of us individually,

And sometimes that can look like fear and sometimes that can also look like sadness or anxiety or depression.

What can happen is that when we do not own our anger,

When we don't allow ourselves to really feel it because anger lives in the root of the body around the pelvic floor,

In the tailbone,

In the legs.

If we're shutting ourselves off from anger,

What happens is those feelings often start to well up and move into the high heart and move into the throat and move into the jaw and the face and the brain.

And when we're in that kind of anger,

It can feel really like energy getting frazzled and upwards and hysterics and that's not helpful anger.

It's not productive anger.

Another thing that can happen is we shut off around our midsection and we get divorced from our life energy.

And so just as anger is in the root of the body,

So is our connection to the earth and so is our righteousness in being and our empowerment in being of this earth.

So if we're shutting off,

Sometimes it can just feel inertia and depression and asleepness and despair.

So as you breathe into these lower parts of your body,

What I want you to start to feel is a relationship from the low body to the upper body and feelings might arise.

So again,

At any point,

Feel free to pause this recording,

Allow whatever needs to come out to come out,

Continue to resource yourself,

But then come back.

So we can finish our process.

So as you're feeling the low body and the relationship to the upper body,

You're still breathing and with these,

This no energy,

I want you to let it bring you into the center of your being.

So I want you to just take a minute and feel where your right and left sides are and imagine kind of reaching out infinitely into the right and the left,

Grabbing onto the infinite right and left and pulling it closer,

Closer,

Closer to your center,

Pulling them all the way into your midline,

Right into the center.

Okay.

And from that center line,

From that place,

I want you to feel how your energy can descend deeply into the core of the earth and all the way up into the heavens.

Okay.

And so from this vertical empowered access,

Say no and feel how,

How that resonates in your body.

Saying no from this very central part and whatever you need to say no to in your life,

Okay,

Whatever is pissing you off,

Whatever you need to resist,

Whatever you want to reject,

Whatever is unacceptable anymore.

Okay.

Whatever boundaries you need to make,

Whatever actions you need to take,

This is the feeling of it coming right into the center and from this very clear,

Very strong place,

No.

Okay.

So I want to offer that you can pause at this point as well and continue with the no exercise as long as you need to.

Okay.

And definitely can come back to it at any point.

You can make it a five second practice that you do in wherever,

Whenever.

Okay.

But I'm going to move on in the meditation now to,

To continue to work with and release this.

Okay.

So feel free to pause if you need,

But now we're just going to maintain awareness at the center.

And for those of you who are not moving around spaces,

Okay.

So if you're needing to attend to your body because it's really tired,

If you're in a body that doesn't have capacity to move in terms of big stomping steps or full body movements,

What I want you to do now is allow your breath to start to get a little shaky.

And this,

I'm going to give you an example at something like,

Okay.

So you're inhaling and you're allowing your breath to start to get shaky.

And it's just going to be a couple of breaths.

And those of you that are moving,

You can do this too,

But I want you to also shake your bodies,

Shaky,

Shaky,

Shaking breath and bodies.

Okay.

And anytime it feels too intense,

Just come back to a deep,

Really cyclical breath.

Okay.

Those of you that are shaking,

Okay,

You can shake in your breath.

You can allow the breath to shake your inner body,

Maybe like shaking down in your belly,

Shaking up in your lungs.

You can use your hands physically on your body to shake yourself.

Okay.

So you could,

With your hands,

Like jiggle your belly around or jiggle your chest.

You can shake out your head a little bit,

Even just the fingertips.

Okay.

And any part of your body that can shake,

Go ahead and shake it.

Those of you that are in full body movement,

Find some kind of rhythm through your feet that will support your shaking.

Okay.

And this could be even a very erratic rhythm,

But I want you to continue to feel your lower body and continue to feel the space where your lower body meets your spine.

So around your pelvis and your hips.

And I want you just to try and keep that space open and clear so that energy can continue to move down into your legs.

Okay.

No matter what you're doing.

So I'm sitting as I'm recording this and I'm just shaking my hands.

And then I'm feeling that my belly and my back and pelvic floor and legs are really relaxed,

Just trying to let energy continue to flow.

You can continue to shake,

Shake your body in whatever way that you need to allow whatever sounds need to come out to come out.

Okay.

You can yell,

You can shout,

You can use whatever words you want.

Sometimes I like to scream,

Fuck you as loud as loud as I can,

As long as I can.

And you know,

Screaming,

Fuck you,

Isn't going to hurt anybody.

If you feel like screaming it.

And if you really need to get that out,

Then do it,

Scream it,

Let it out of you.

That is rage.

Okay.

There's a lot to be angry about.

Okay.

This could be anger at the past.

This could be anger at specific people.

This could be anger at general situations.

What I want everybody to be aware of and to check in about right now is any kind of movements or feeling that directs your anger back into yourself.

So if your,

Um,

If your anger has a cutting feeling towards yourself or abusive quality towards yourself,

I want you to notice that and work to let it move out.

Okay.

So you don't want to direct your anger in.

You want to let it move out.

And if you can release it in this way,

You're not hurting anybody.

You don't need to feel scared about that.

You have nothing to be ashamed of.

This is a safe space with me.

I'm already in the past.

You're just listening to my voice.

There's zero judgment.

Okay.

So you don't want to have any kind of spaces wherever you are to just let all of the disgusting faces get made.

Yeah.

Like squinch your mouth up and your face and just be wretched.

You know,

Just be as ugly as you want.

Just fucking scream.

Whoever you're angry at,

Just let it out.

Get it out.

Get it out of your body.

Stomp your feet.

Okay.

Deep breaths and long exhales.

Shaking as much as you need.

Letting it out,

Letting it out of your voice,

Letting it out of your tongue.

Okay.

So I'm going to allow for another couple of breaths here.

And again,

Any time you need to pause,

If you want to stick with this,

If you have more shaking,

More releasing to do,

Feel free to pause and just take whatever time you need with that.

Okay.

Okay.

So how we're going to come back from this place is to start to feel the inhale again and the exhale again.

And you can keep shaking for a while.

Just invite your breath back in.

So no more shaking breaths.

But now the deep breaths in that really touch the inside of your body and the exhales that are just releasing.

Any sound that needs to come out can come out.

Any emotion that needs to come out can come out.

There can be crying.

Okay.

If there's tears,

It's totally fine.

Okay.

So you're breathing and letting that come into your shaking and start to bring some softness to it.

And again,

You can take as much time as you need here.

So if my pace doesn't work for you,

Just do your own thing.

But eventually this,

This breath can start to bring us back into more of a flow.

And what I'm going to invite you to find is a figure eight pattern in some part of your body.

Okay.

So it could be like a,

If you're moving your whole body,

You might like run around your space or move around,

Walk around your space in a figure eight.

You could stand and sway your hips around or your body around.

It doesn't have to be a perfect figure eight.

Don't get uptight about it,

But it's just kind of this swaying.

If you just want to move one part of your body,

You can move one or both of your hands and your arms and figure eight patterns.

And figure eights in whatever way you can bring them in,

Maybe bring them into your spine in different ways.

And again,

It doesn't have to be perfect,

But we're just allowing this kind of continuous circular cyclical movement to come in and let it come through your whole body in whatever way you can.

So those of you that are full body movers,

Bring it into all of your joints,

Bring it into your spine and your head,

Maybe even your eyes,

Direction of your face.

If you're moving one part of your body,

It could even be a finger,

But bring all of your attention into that figure eight.

And let's continue to take deep breaths in and exhales.

And of course,

If there are other movements you need to be making right now,

You have all of the power in the world to be wherever you are.

So any kind of other movements or releasing that you want to do,

Go ahead and do it.

And figure eights are kind of just a,

It's like a lyrical offering of understanding cycles,

Right?

So whatever we brought up,

Whatever kind of surfaced through the no,

Through the boundary,

Through the centering,

Through the shaking.

Right now I just want you to feel like,

Ah,

There's a flow.

Okay.

There's always a rising,

Receding,

Coming back into the center.

Okay.

With the figure eight,

We remember a really powerful and mystical symbol of continuity,

The dragon eating its own tail,

Right?

So your anger is useful in the world.

It's like a forest fire,

You know,

Maybe that it needs to burn up some stuff that's dead,

Burning up the underbrush.

And in doing that,

You know,

That's fertilizing the earth,

Wildflowers will grow.

Okay.

So new,

New beginnings can come when we make space for things.

Okay.

And then continue to let your breath deepen.

And now I want you to bring your attention just back into this central place.

Okay.

So where right sides,

Left sides meet,

Where front sides,

Back sides meet.

Can you imagine just a column of pure light moving through your body,

Descending infinitely into the belly,

Into the core of the earth,

Ascending infinitely into the sky.

You take however much time you need,

Be in your own process as you're ready.

Okay.

You're going to let all the external movements start to subside and hear the sound of your own breath once more.

Go ahead and start to touch your skin again or pay attention,

Bring your focus into the room,

Into the space that you're in.

See the colors that are around.

I invite you to smell,

To see,

To hear.

And then a really deep breath in and long exhale.

So noticing now,

Just noticing what your internal space is.

Continue to resource yourself with breath.

Continue to resource yourself with touch and with really basic awareness through your sense organs.

Continue to allow yourself room to make any kind of noise,

To make any kind of movement that you need to.

I'm going to offer that this might be a really good time to hold yourself physically,

If you can,

Like to hug yourself or to simply place your hand somewhere that feels like reassuring.

And the energy that you can bring into your own awareness right now is like you are your own best friend in this moment.

And I want you to really extend towards yourself like,

Hey,

You,

There you are.

I see you.

Hey,

I support you.

I've got your back.

I love you.

You belong here.

You're okay.

You are okay.

You're safe.

And then I hope that you can hear my voice telling you this,

And I hope you can internalize it as your voice.

What you're angry about has place in this world.

It's okay to be angry.

It's okay to feel rage.

What you're angry about is totally understandable.

You are allowed to be angry.

You are allowed to feel anger.

So what I'll offer right now is a chance to reflect.

And you might choose to pause and do this reflection as a writing exercise,

Or it might feel really simple and you don't need to pause and you just know what it is.

But I'm going to ask you,

What do you feel angry about?

What makes you angry?

And in whatever way you need to now acknowledge that.

What is it?

Who is it?

This is not a time for you to psychoanalyze yourself or to try and justify your anger.

I just want you to be really clear.

This is who I'm angry at.

This is what I'm angry about.

This isn't a time for you to understand your own place in the story.

This isn't a time for you to make excuses for why whatever you're angry about has happened.

Just acknowledge it.

This is my anger.

And when you feel that that has come out in a way that feels complete for now,

I want you to say thank you to yourself.

So thank yourself for that information.

Honor it.

Recognize that it's valuable information.

Now the last part of this meditation,

Which I'll begin now,

Is a practice.

And I want to state that first that this is a practice.

And if it's something that feels really challenging when I invite it the first time,

It's not a reason to get angry at yourself or to feel like a failure at all.

I just want to invite this as a practice,

Okay?

And as an ongoing path of awareness for all of us.

So when you've identified what you're angry at about who you're angry with,

What I want you to do is imagine that that anger is some kind of form.

And this isn't about the thing you're angry at.

So don't objectify it as a person or a thing.

But imagine the anger,

Just the feeling of it as a form.

And I often feel my anger as like a dark metal metallic ball of some sort,

Because that's what it feels like to me.

It feels like this kind of lead kettlebell or something that's like,

Ugh.

But you can have whatever feeling.

And imagine it as an object that's not associated to an actual person.

Okay?

Just the feeling itself.

I want you to externalize the feeling.

And then I want you to imagine taking whatever that is and just placing it in front of you so you can look at it.

You can have your anger.

This is yours.

And it's a powerful,

Powerful thing.

It can do a lot of things.

It can create a lot of force.

Anger has a lot of force to it.

As we talked about in the beginning,

Anger can put its force into harming for ourselves.

So if your anger is something that feels really hard to let out into the world,

But it's something that you hold private,

I'd like you to take a minute to recognize how hard that is and to feel in your body just the effects of letting your anger get turned back on you.

If you're someone that has this pattern,

What I'd invite for you to do right now is offer yourself so much compassion and not to get angry at yourself or feel ashamed or feel guilty for doing this to just see like,

Oh,

Okay,

This is a habit.

Okay,

That's it.

It's just a habit.

And what I'd like you to do is offer yourself to yourself as your ally,

As your advocate.

And this is like your own big sibling,

Your own best friend,

Your own teacher.

And let the part of you that's like bigger and wiser and cooler like come in and just hold the part of you that's really angry and doesn't know what to do with it.

And let that part of you tell the other part of you,

I'm going to say let the bigger part of you tell the smaller part of you,

You don't need to harm yourself with your anger.

There is a place for it.

We can figure out how to move this out in ways that don't hurt me,

Don't hurt yourself and don't hurt anybody else.

Now if you're somebody who's dealing with the destructive force of your anger,

That you have a temper and sometimes that temper can get out of control or you feel that your anger might come out in really passive or cutting kind of undermining or manipulative ways.

It's something many of us do with our anger if we feel like it doesn't have a place.

If you are feeling or have felt like remorse about the ways that you've expressed your anger because you've realized that maybe it was a little bit out of context or bigger than it needed to be.

What I want you to do is see this object and feel yourself and feel yourself as a person who is worthy of love,

Of being loved and of giving love and of receiving love.

And I just want you to take a minute to acknowledge the force that your anger can have.

And again,

Without blaming yourself,

Without getting caught up in guilt,

Without getting angry at yourself,

Can you allow yourself to feel the effect of your anger maybe upon your relationships,

Your environment or in any other ways that you felt that it's been expressed in ways that have been harmful.

And again,

Can you call in some part of yourself that's bigger?

You might think of this as your spiritual best friend,

The part of yourself that is really objective and gets the big picture and is infinitely compassionate for you,

For everybody.

It's not judgmental.

And I'd like you to acknowledge that,

Yeah,

Sometimes things get out of hand and you've been given examples in your life that have been something to work through.

And you're learning,

You're in a space of learning how to be responsible with your anger.

And acknowledge that when you hurt somebody else,

That it hurts yourself and just kind of feel what that is.

And then let's everybody take a minute to just check in with ourselves and wish ourselves happiness,

Wellbeing,

Health.

And can you feel that in that intent,

In that wanting of health and happiness and safety for yourself,

That if you feel resourced in that way,

That you will have the capacity to be more responsible with your anger.

And this of course means not smearing it on people when they're undeserving,

Not letting it get out of hand and harmful in ways that you don't intend.

But this also means that you have to speak about your boundaries,

That if you really want the best for yourself and if you want to feel happy,

That it's really okay to say no to certain things,

To stand up for certain things.

And can you feel right now the difference in sensation between what I'm going to call righteous anger and destructive anger.

And righteous anger,

Empowered anger,

It feels very centering.

It probably feels deep in your body and it probably feels grounding.

This kind of anger is a really important message,

Something is wrong.

We have got to get angry about the things that are wrong.

And if somebody is mistreating you,

If somebody is mistreating someone you love,

If a whole group of people are acting arrogant and violent towards the earth,

It's okay to be angry.

And I want you to feel this deep,

Righteous,

It's okay to feel this anger.

I can act from this place.

But what this place is has consciousness to it.

And the intent here is for health,

Happiness and safety for yourself,

For other people and for the earth.

This is not about destroying anything.

The other kind of anger,

Destructive anger,

Registers for many of us,

For a lot of us higher in the body and we feel it kind of as a gripping from the solar plexus up into the throat,

Heart,

Jaw,

Tongue and it creates a tension in the front of the body that pulls the tailbone underneath and in that pulling of the tailbone underneath we tend to lose connection to our legs.

When we are in this body state and getting angry it can be very fast and forceful and it can get out of control fairly fast.

And what that out of control looks like could range from total shutdown,

Fear,

Inertia,

Anxiety,

Anger at the self,

Feelings of unworthiness,

Hysteria,

Panic,

Abandonment.

It can also be outwardly expressed rage that is overblown for the context that you're in,

Getting pissed off about small things.

Any kind of violence,

Any abuse,

Physical violence,

Verbal violence,

Psychological violence when your intention is to hurt someone else comes from this kind of body state.

So I want you to feel the difference and then I'd like you to resource back into your belly,

Into your pelvic floor,

Into your center.

Again right and left sides coming together,

You're aligning at your center.

Deep breaths and long exhales,

You can feel your legs,

You can feel your mouth.

Let the sounds out.

I often,

Doing this kind of work,

Have a lot of tension come up in my throat.

So when I stop this recording,

I'm going to take some time and you might even hear in my voice some huskiness because I was doing my own work earlier this morning and yelling.

And I do want to offer that you want to be caring towards your body.

We can hurt ourselves trying to express in ways and cathartic release can sometimes blow out your voice.

And just,

You know,

Always the intent is towards healing.

Okay.

So if sometimes it comes out and it's more aggressive or it's scratchy in a way that wasn't so great,

You know that for next time.

But always coming back to self compassion,

Always coming back to the desire for yourself to be healthy,

To be happy,

To be free from all forms of oppression,

Free from all kinds of suffering,

Self imposed,

Imposed by others,

Et cetera.

Always the intention is towards safety.

Okay.

Creating safety in ourselves,

In our own internal environments and creating safety for the people around us.

We have to care for ourselves.

We have to care for one another.

Right.

To finish this meditation,

What I'd like you to do is again,

Use your palms and your hands to stroke your body and touch your face and touch your throat and touch your heart.

You might want to touch over your chest and your belly and even over your low belly and genital area if you are working with anger that felt connected to your sexuality.

Acknowledge your body and with your hands and with your own touch right now,

Create a sense of container and safety.

And just as we started,

Just greet your body.

Say hello.

Hi body.

You're my body.

I love you.

I'm here.

We're safe.

And see the space around you.

See the colors.

See the shapes.

Feel your breath.

And if it feels comfortable,

If it feels appropriate for you to end with the gesture of prayer,

Of bringing your hands together and allowing your head to bow towards your heart where your hands are meeting.

Can you take a minute in whatever way is authentic for you,

Give thanks,

Thank yourself,

Thank your highest intelligence,

Your spiritual self,

Thank the part of you that knows how to grow,

The biological intelligence that grew your body to this place,

The part of you that knows how to breathe,

Inhale and exhale.

Thank your heart,

The part of you that knows how to feel,

To have empathy,

To reach out and to connect.

Thank your organs,

Your stomach and your intestines for digesting your food,

For doing a great job,

Your kidneys,

Your spleen for helping to clean your blood,

Your liver for doing all the detoxification work it does,

Your lungs for their beautiful,

Bountiful breath.

Thank your mind,

Your brain for its compassionate discernment and ability to self-reflect,

To notice habits and to change.

Thank whatever gods or goddesses or spirits,

Guides you understand who are around you,

Who are inside you.

And then finally thanking the earth and thanking the sky,

Thanking your environment for holding the space for you.

So thank you for practicing with this meditation and for doing this work.

I want to acknowledge that it's uncomfortable to work with anger and that it can be really scary and bring up a lot of different things.

I also want to say that if you felt a lot of energy come up and it's still circulating,

I would really love to advocate for you getting external support and care,

Reaching out to any kind of care providers that can help you integrate this kind of work.

Somatic practitioners,

Somatic therapists are a go-to.

People who do body work,

Cranial sacral work,

More holistic forms of massage,

My abdominal work,

Releasing organs,

Also great.

Of course,

Well-trained therapists,

Thank you again.

And if you get something out of the work that I offer,

Please consider leaving a donation.

A one-time or recurring donation helps support me to continue to offer these guided meditations and podcasts for free,

Which is what I'd like to do.

I think that this is important work for all of us to be doing and it helps me to be able to formalize it for you.

So thanks for helping me do it.

Much love,

Please take care of yourselves.

This is a really dynamic time.

There's a lot of things that are happening.

There's a lot of beautiful and positive change and awakening that's happening,

As well as the unearthing of some pretty intense stuff.

Please resource yourself by focusing on the positive growth that is around right now and promoting it,

As well as staying attuned to what we need to keep getting angry about and making boundaries with.

Thank you.

Much love and until the next time.

Bye for now.

Reviews

This is one of the best things I have allowed myself to do in a long time… thank you deeply for your help in making it possible 🪷✨

This is a powerful practice, especially for releasing repressed anger. I had a huge release of anger from a situation in my childhood. As I continue to investigate and practice sacred anger, I will be returning to this practice as often as I need to. Thank you so much for this offering🙏💜

Thank you. 🙏 I desperately needed this today - one day after the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Feeling more grounded and ready to take my empowered/righteous anger and turn it into action.💓

This was a extremely helpful. Maybe the best anger meditation I’ve ever experienced. Thank you. 💜

Awesome! Powerful!! Unique!!! Honest!!!! Authentic!!!!! Thank you and Namaste’ sister

Very powerful

Amazing! Thank you!

Wow. Super refreshing. Great instruction and some helpful take aways. Highly recommend.

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I needed this morning. It helped me understand better my righteous indignation at the harm being caused by government and big business around COVID. I am powerful and strong !!
Michael

This was such an important and impactful practice and so divinely timed. It takes a lot of courage to show up fully with a practice like this and the reward for doing so is immense. Thank you for such a powerful gift 🙏🏻

This was very powerful work for me. I will do it again. This was one of the most powerful meditation sessions I have ever done on Insight Timer. I look forward to doing more of your meditations. Thank you! 🙏❤️