Sit With Anger

We're often taught to ignore our anger, but ignoring anger doesn't make it go away. In fact, it can make anger worse. This meditation will allow you to sit with your anger in a safe environment, exploring the feeling and getting to know it so you can let it go more easily.

Transcript

Anger is a complex emotion.

It's one we all feel but are conditioned to believe we should not feel.

We're also taught not to act on our anger,

To wait until we are no longer angry to respond.

Because of these teachings,

We often shove our anger down,

Bury it deep,

Rather than truly feeling and working through it.

This meditation is designed to help you sit with your anger,

To feel it and observe it so you can let it go.

Start by sitting comfortably on a chair or the floor.

Close your eyes and breathe normally.

Don't try to think logically about the reasons you feel angry right now.

It doesn't matter why you feel angry.

It doesn't matter if you have valid reasons.

It doesn't matter if your anger is an overreaction.

You're angry.

Just feel it.

Feel the anger.

How does your anger feel physically?

Is your stomach churning?

Do your hands shake?

Does your chest feel tight and painful?

Is your head throbbing?

Do a body scan and note all the places that you can feel the anger in your body and how that feels.

How does your anger feel mentally?

Are you focused on the reasons for your anger?

Are your thoughts jumbled and confused?

Do you get half finished with a thought only to jump to another?

Are you replaying the reason for your anger over and over?

Is the anger bleeding over to thoughts about other things that you aren't angry about?

How does your anger feel mentally?

Meditation is a safe place to be angry.

You can feel the full depth and range of your anger in meditation without causing any harm to yourself,

Someone else,

Or a physical property.

Take a deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take another deep breath.

Step away from your anger.

Observe it as you would observe a scene in a movie.

Imagine your anger has a physical presence.

What does your anger look like?

What color is it?

What shape is it?

How big is it?

Does it move or is it still?

Does it have a sound,

A smell,

A taste?

Think of all the ways you can to describe your anger's physical presence.

Take a deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take another deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take another deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take another deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take another deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take a deep breath.

Inhale slowly through your nose,

Hold,

And exhale slowly through your mouth.

Take a deep breath.

Start by sitting in silence with your anger.

Now ask your anger some questions.

The questions you ask will vary depending on why you're angry.

But you might ask questions like,

Why am I angry?

Who or what am I angry at?

Is some of this anger coming from somewhere else?

If I'm angry at someone else,

Should some of my anger be directed at me?

If I'm angry at someone else?

Listen carefully to the answers that come up to the questions you ask.

Come back to your mind.

How does your anger feel mentally now?

Do you feel more defined?

Are you thinking more deeply?

Now move back into your body.

Do another body scan.

How does your anger feel physically now?

If you find that you're still holding tension or having other physical feelings that you want to let go of,

Take a few more deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Imagine the tension or other physical feelings seeping out of your body.

Take one last deep breath in through your nose and out through your nose.

Wiggle your fingers and toes as you come back to the space you're in.

Open your eyes slowly and stretch a little.

By sitting with our anger and allowing ourselves to fully feel it without guilt or attempting to repress it,

We enable ourselves to move past it more quickly.

After this meditation,

If you are not yet ready to let go of your anger,

You should at least feel closer to being ready.

You should also feel as if you're in a better position to explain your anger to someone else,

If that's necessary.

Reviews

great resource for when youre feeling too overwhelmed with anger to know how to support yourself! even better if you smoke weed and listen ⭐️🤎 very thankful for your share! 🫶🏼

This meditation really helped me feel my anger and look at my anger as an entity outside of my body. It was nice to sit with that entity and question reasons that I’m angry. This meditation helped give me clarity to move forward. I’m glad I listed to this and I feel more grounded and at peace now then before.

This was helpful for me this evening as I sit with anger. I got some good clarification and a plan to move forward. Thank you so much, Wendy. 🙏🏻💚

Very helpful. I was looking for a track that would help with experiencing it and letting it move through rather than pushing it aside or stuffing it. This was it! Thank you.

Thank you Wendy, this meditation was helpful in processing through this difficult emotion. Visualizing articulated & got to root of my anger. 🙏🙏

Thank you so much! You helped me to process the anger in a healthy way for the first time <3
I now understand much more how it manifests in my body and where it comes from.

I pictured my anger as me as a kid. I imagined talking calmly to my little self with a soothing voice and hugging her. I’m one of those kids that their parents didn’t say sorry or do anything to soothe them when angry 😢You could say that Im in a process of reparenting myself. Thank you

This was incredibly helpful. I'm feeling so much better now.

Wonderful pace. I felt directly led to pinnacle moments I need to revisit from another perspective. Thank you

A great meditation and exercise to get in touch with our anger and what our anger is communicating to us. Thank you for the guide on allowing my anger to move through me!

This is amazing! It's definitely going into my tool kit! Highly recommend! Thank you! 🙏

I feel so much freedom and lightness now. Thank you for helping me process my anger.

This really helped me tap into my body and helped me release some very strong emotions.

Very helpful strategy, it helped to frame the different parts of anger.

First find on reaching in to experience the anger, hurt. Good session.

Excellent practice. I’ll be coming back to this again. Thank you ❤️

This was amazingly respectful and honoring the way you acknowledged the experience of anger without judging it. Thank you. I also appreciated that you kept your cues minimal but specific and clear. Just what I needed. Great spaces of silence too. I had a beautiful and needed experience honoring my anger instead of shaming or condemning myself for it. I actually liked my anger in a safe space, which allowed it to eventually tame. Interesting.

My anger usually fades too quickly to be very useful. This meditation was very helpful in harnessing the energy of my anger, letting my calmer side steer and plan ahead. My anger is now gone, but I still know my course.

Wow. I had no idea how my anger was connected to sadness (death of friend). Thank you for helping me get there. ❤️

Wonderful! Very helpful. One of my favourite topics.