"Your anger can be the best part of you, sweetheart."
That's what my therapist said to me.

It hit strong. I knew immediately what she said was true. I started to cry.

"It's possible to love your anger. Your anger shows you where your boundary is."

It always seemed to me that emotions are a lot like fashion trends. Some people can really pull it off. Others, only a few people could away wearing. Happy is a good pair of jeans. Confident, a white t-shirt. They never go out of style. Angry is a suit  appropriate for very limited settings, and not right for most others - definitely not me.

When I took my therapist's suggestion to love my anger, and explore it rather than ignore it I naturally used my Yoga practices to aide in the process.

So if you've been working with anger lately here are some practices I have found helpful.

Embracing anger the inner fire it stokes feels in contrast to Yoga on the service. Vairagya, after all is a practice in itself.  However, vairagya, which is often considered dispassion or non-attachment, doesn't mean things won't piss me off, or righteously fire me up. I am human after all. 

Instead, I've come to understand that suppression is not non-attachment. In fact, it's ultimate attachment. Suppression means I am keeping something with me way down deep and never actually facing it because it becomes too painful or feels too shameful.   Yoga practices can help move through the immediate sting and bring some mastery over the emotion and experience that I'm feeling, so that a more beautiful inner state is possible.

1. Use the Heat Through Movement
If you're really feeling angry this probably won't be hard to do. Building and using heat in the body through movement can be a great way to shift the fire from sitting in your belly, your heart, or your throat, and allow dilute throughout the body where it can be put to proper use.  Movement requires energy. So use your fire as fuel, and don't hold back until you feel like you've shifted from a concentrated heat, to an evenly metabolized heat.

2. Tell Yourself What You're Angry About Using Your Voice 
In Yoga we have a practice of Satya. Sat is the root of this word, and it means truth.  We also have a practice known as Svadhyaya, which is the practice of studying ourselves or knowing ourselves.  When we are willing to acknowledge to ourselves the belief about the anger it doesn't mean we need to voice it anyone around us (or the person that perhaps influenced our heat.) Rather, it's a practice of being honest with ourselves and then getting to know more about ourselves in that process. 

3. Control Your Breathing
In Yoga we call this pranayama. Prana is vital life force, and yama is a control, boundary, or restraint. Two great pranayama practices for anger include Lions Breath (inhale through the nose, tougue out, exhale out the mouth). Lion's Breath will help you let some heat out and similar to movement shift from feeling concentrated and bubbling over, to a more balanced space.  Then follow it up with 3 part breath, which is a deep diaphragmatic breath filling belly, ribs, and chest, then exhales that releases chest, ribs, and finally belly. 3 Part Breath soothes the nervous system shifting from a state of high arousal to a place of calm.

In this process don't struggle for angers, or try and put a goal to the practice.  Instead just witness and observe. See what comes up. No matter what, taking practices like this puts space between the feeling and the next action. If there is action that needs to be taken you can use your practice to do it from a place where you feel empowered, centered, and clear. 

I call them the usual suspects.

Those places in my body that get very tight when I'm thinking too hard, worried, working long hours, or just letting my brain spin.  

For me it's the chest, neck, and jaw.

This area of our body is ultra complex.  The shoulder and neck joints are incredibly mobile and play ball with the upper back and the chest. It is easy to understand why we cramp up in our face, jaw, and chest especially if we are locked into a very cerebral experiences.
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In this personal practice we do very, very simple shoulder motions, neck stretches, and breathwork to zap tension in the shoulders, chest, neck, and face. What's great about these complex and integrated parts of the body is that one or two simple moves can positively impact the whole system. After light movement we head into intentional pranyama practice drawing from Lion's breath.

Replace stress, worry, and tension, with peace, softness, and clarity

Want to take this practice further?
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This breath is also used in a Kriya practice inspired by the Goddess Kali the goddess of destruction, and thank goodness for her. How can we ever rebuild if we are still clinging to what's broken and no longer working? In that Kriya practice you take Goddess pose and make either the shape of a sword with arms overhead, or goal post with chest open wide. Then, engage with lion's breath, or I suppose we could consider it lioness breath too. 
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I hope you enjoy this practice as much as I enjoyed recording it for you.

​XO,
Julia

While taking 2-5 minutes to breath deeply, or connect to a mantra throughout the day is beneficial. A formal seated meditation is important in gleaning the full benefits of the practice. However, for a lot of people the prospect of sitting still in meditation for 20 minutes a day feels fruitless when dealing with many competing priorities.

Take heart. Your effort to carve out dedicated time to meditation is not done in vain. 

Increasing the duration of meditation, like tacking on mileage to a run, has real benefits. 

20 minutes of daily meditation is known to improve task accuracy, and fewer mistakes at work.  Additionally research finds that adhering to longer meditation practices encourages greater more mindful responding. 

That's the juice. Mindful responding is the secret sauce of relationships building, conflict management, and leading yourself and others compassionately and confidently through an obstacle.
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Yes. Wrestling through the first few days of a 20+ minute meditation practice can be uncomfortable. But, don't give up. Not only does it get easier to do, it becomes more comfortable over time as well.  

If you only practice 20 minutes one time a month the benefits won't stick, and you would be better off practicing 2 minutes per day everyday.

Consistency is where most people encounter difficulty. Developing discipline around a habit that has delayed gratification is tricky.  Finding ways to enjoy the practice can make habit formation easier.  Bundle your meditation with a positive activity can be a great mind trick. Or, try a different style that you enjoy more!

​When it comes to meditation there are many different styles to try, and it just takes a little bit of effort to experiment in search of the best option for you. Research shows that adherence to a practice may be more important that the technique that is chosen. 

Overtime the ability to stay consistent will become easier. But don't take my word for it. This isn't just positive lip-service. Rather this is because the practice itself is changes the brain.

Long-term meditation practices increase areas of the brain that contribute to emotional regulation and impulse control. Thus, the more consistent a practitioner is, the stronger they are at dealing with discomfort (like refusing the snooze button to ensure you can get your meditation and exercise done for the day) and overriding the desire to quit when things get tough (like giving into a wandering mind and ending the practice early out of frustration.)

But we don't have the ability to simply sit and meditate all day long. And, most of us don't walk through our lives blissed-out all day long. Life happens, and stress is inevitable. 

The ability to accurately respond to stress is important.
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A formal seated meditation practice is useless if the benefits don't carry forward off the cushion. Studies show that mindfulness techniques can work wonders to combat stress when implemented informally throughout the day. One way to think about informal meditation is to reframe it as 'applied meditation'. This is the aspects of meditation that happen off the cushion.

Consider these scenario of 'applied meditation'. Someone cuts you off in traffic. Rather than speeding up to flip them the bird and jeopardizing your safety and the safety of those in cars around you, you instead take 10 deep breaths. Or perhaps your boss is rude to you during a business meeting.  In that moment you decide to unclench your jaw, and wait for the right time to bring up the issue rather than immediately shooting off an angry email or meeting their negative energy with an outburst of your own. 

If stress reduction is all you're after then informal techniques may be all you need. The more you practice regulation through mindfulness during our day the better you will be at responding appropriately.

It's great to know how to stay calm.

It is even better to respond accurately, with the right intensity, and also have the ability to return to a neutral state once the stimulus has stopped without long-term worry, self-doubt, or rumination. This is very similar, and in many ways related, to the concept of heart-rate recovery in cardiovascular fitness. 

Stress response is physical. We are put into action with an increased heart-rate that enables the body to move quickly.  Once the stress has passed by, the body begins the process of recovery. The faster the heart rate can recover after a big effort the better. Quick and efficient heart-rate recovery is a true marker for cardiovascular health because it means the organ is strong enough to respond, and isn't being unnecessarily burdened after the fact. It is helpful to remember that the nervous system is integral in this, and that the body responds to psychological stress much the same way. 

Nervous system training is key. 

Formal meditation is much like training for the game, and keeping skills sharp so that they are effective and applied in real life scenarios. 

​Often, after we have begun to apply regulation skills in everyday life, we begin to also seek out a greater capacity for resilience. Bouncing back quickly while also incorporating the lessons learned is like the holy grail of meditation benefits.

This is where maintaining formal meditation practices can really come through.

Uncomfortable, boring, stiff, achy, or restless meditation sessions happen. Those aren't 'bad' formal meditations. In fact they can be very good and helpful. Encountering obstacles inside the meditation practice, and returning to it with compassion and commitment hones skills of discipline, perspective, appropriate response, self-care, and self-confidence. These are the ingredients baked into resilience. 

Two important aspects resiliency that influence our ability to bounce back is our assessment of the event after the fact and the perspective we take when considering ourselves within the circumstance.  Long-term meditators are known to have an easier time accessing empathy and viewing things in new and novel ways.  Seeing things from other points of view is crucial for undoing false narratives that we hold about ourselves, others, and circumstances, and it invites an openness to authoring new stories that are kinder, more generous, and, in general, optimistic. We can create new options for ourselves, through resiliency, in which we identify warmly with ourselves and identify less with the circumstances that happen to us. 

This comes with practice, and it is totally worth the time and effort.

• Try a manageable, but stretching challenge like meditating at 6 AM for 5 days in a row
• Start with a 5 minute meditation and add 1 additional minute to your meditations each week until you achieve 20 minutes
• Embrace guided meditations on days when you feel you need more support in order to stay disciplined
• Bundle your meditation habit with something else that you enjoy such as your morning cup of coffee, or lighting a lovely scented candle. Your brain will start to associate meditation as the positive thing that it is much quicker.
• Keep a post-meditation journal and revisit your journal anytime you need to remind yourself of how far you've come.

Finally, let me know! How are you optimizing your meditation practice? How does meditation improve your life? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. 

Would you like to come hang out with me and one of my good friends?
It is so special to share a conversation I had with Kathryn Austin. Kat is a LCSW who resides in Austin, Tx with her beautiful family, and she's my former neighbor. We talk about the 5AM origin story of our meeting. How I forced her to be my friend. And the laughter we share.  
In this conversation we also discuss her powerful life experience of witnessing her sister's unexpected final week in hospice while also staying present with the joy of caring for her bubbly and vibrant new baby. Holding both grief and joy at the very same time is a skill that Kat attributes to her personal practice of Grace.
We also dive into topics that are central to Kat's practice as a therapist, inner dialogue and radical responsibility. 
Questions like these become important.

• How can we be both compassionate and accountable with ourselves?
  
• What happens when we start taking responsibility not only for the hard things but also for everything good in our life?
  
• And how would life be different if we learned to keep ourselves open during the moments when we'd rather close in and shut down?

All of this is on deck in this sweet conversation between friends.
I hope you enjoy this episode. I'd love to hear from you after you listen.
If you want to learn more about Kathryn and her practice visit therapybykathryn.com  or follow @revivedreverance on Instagram.
XO, 
Julia


Everything in this episode is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only, and is not intended as a diagnosis or recommendation for anyone. We simple are sharing our own personal opinions, experiences, and practices. If you feel you would benefit from professional support please know that resources are available! Visit NAMI.org to learn more about mental health resources in your area.