⏆Emotion Toolkit: ANGER

I am a huge advocate for the healthy expression of anger as a self-stewarding practice. Much of modern culture has conditioned us to repress anger and rage, to smooth it over, apologize for it, or swallow it down before it ever surfaces. But these emotions are natural and healthy responses to the trials and wrongdoings we experience as human beings, whether from visible or invisible forces. Anger often acts as a purifying fire, revealing information and deep truths.

In my ancestry there is the Haka, the ceremonial dance of the Maori people, historically performed before battle to summon collective power, honor ancestors, and channel righteous fury into something unified and sacred. To watch a Haka is to understand that anger, when given form and witness, becomes something powerful. I've always welled up watching it, and I've found it interesting that people of entirely different ancestry often have the same response. It makes people cry. Is there something in all of us wanting to feel and give voice to the anger we repress?

Anger and rage, which are so often rooted in grief, can be extremely cathartic experiences when given a place and time in your story. I don't think we were meant to float above our emotions like enlightened spectators. We are meant to move through them. Hate, too, deserves its moment. Feeling it fully is not the same as becoming it. It moves through you like weather, and what remains is cleaner than what came before. Joseph Campbell believed that 'every fully felt emotion is bliss,' meaning we find a deeper sense of being alive when we stop fighting our feelings and simply let ourselves experience them.

Below is a toolkit of somatic practices to explore. Make sure you are alone and in a safe space to let it all out. Anger leaks out in so many ways (arguments, passive aggression, and more) when we don't steward it intentionally, so don't hold back. Watch, observe, and see what follows on the other side of your somatic practice.

SOMATIC TOOLS TO MOVE THE ENERGY OF ANGER

Remember, don't hold back and don't judge yourself for whatever comes out during these practices. Self-stewardship practices like these are some of the most meaningful acts of love we can do for ourselves and others.

⧴ Scream into a pillow, let it be ugly. Tip: I once screamed into a pillow leaning forward and got petechiae around my eyes (tiny broken blood vessels that went away in a few days), so maybe bring the pillow up to your face so the pressure isn't too much. :)

⧴ Wring a damp towel with everything you've got, twist it, pull it, make it feel the fury.

⧴ Lion's Breath: inhale through the nose, exhale everything out through a wide open mouth with tongue extended and eyes rolled up. Do it loud.

⧴ Take a rag and whip it against the ground, the floor, the wall, repeat until something shifts.

⧴ In the privacy of your car: scream, shout, say every horrible thing you've been swallowing.

⧴ Put on death metal in a language you don't speak so your mind stays on what's burning inside, not the words. Pair this with throwing a soft-shell medicine ball, or similar, on the floor.

⧴ Stomp, hard. Barefoot on earth if you can. If not, in your room while making fists with your hands.

⧴ Write the letter you will never send. Use the words you'd never say out loud. Then burn it.

⧴ Shake your whole body, start with your hands and let it travel up, animals do this to discharge threat responses and so can we.

⧴ Beat a bed or couch cushion with both fists, no rhythm, no restraint, until your arms actually tire.

⧴ Tear something up: old magazines, cardboard, scrap paper. Use both hands, rip with intention.

⧴ Sprint to metabolize the charge that's sitting in your chest.

⧴ Hold a sustained low growl from your belly, vibrate the anger out through your throat rather than suppressing it down.

⧴ Make an absolutely crazy face in the mirror (seriously, your face has one of the densest concentrations of nerve endings in your body): brow down, jaw open, tongue out, eyes wide. Hold it. Let it be feral. Make Willem Dafoe proud.

⧴ Jaw circles, open as wide as you can, roll slowly, feel where the tension lives.

⧴ Isometric pushing: stand in a doorframe and push against both sides as hard as you can for 30 to 60 seconds. Let your face do what it wants. Or regular push-ups can work too.

⧴ Drag your feet through thick resistance, sand, long grass, mud, anything that makes you work to move forward.

Traditional Chinese Medicine: The Liver + Anger

In TCM, the Liver is the organ most closely associated with anger, frustration, and repressed emotion. Its job is to keep qi moving freely through the body. When we hold anger in, when we suppress, override, or intellectualize it rather than feel it, the Liver qi stagnates. That stagnation can show up as a tight chest, irritability without a clear cause, headaches behind the eyes, irregular digestion, or a simmering sense of being on edge.

Supporting the Liver, both through movement and through food, is one of the ways we resource the body to actually process anger rather than store it.

Foods that support Liver qi & anger discharge:

⟜ Dandelion greens

⟜ Milk thistle tea

⟜ Dark leafy greens

⟜ Beets

⟜ Lemon water (morning)

⟜ Turmeric

⟜ Artichoke

⟜ Goji berries

⟜ Peppermint tea

⟜ Walnuts

⟜ Mung beans

The sour flavor is the taste associated with the Liver in TCM. Small amounts of sour foods, think vinegar, citrus, fermented things, are considered gently activating for Liver function and qi flow. My Mars in Aries runs hot in my chart, so it tracks that I am always reaching for sour foods and fermenting things on my kitchen counter.

In Human Design, the Manifestor type carries the Not-Self Signature of Anger, but I've also witnessed the Projector's Bitterness and the Generator's Frustration signatures present themselves in a similar manner. Regardless of your Type or astrological configuration, just listening to your Inner Authority is enough to gage whether these practices will be helpful. Unfelt anger leaks, into our relationships, our words, our silences, and the people closest to us pay the price. At the end of the day, it's just an emotion asking to be felt, witnessed, and released. Step through it and see what is waiting for you on the other side.