Learning To Roar: An essential life skill

“Reality is largely Negotiable” — Tim Ferris

I like this quote as it reminds me that I am free to discover the things that work and do them. It also means that I am free to discover what does not work and choose to not do that. One thing that I have discovered that works for me is learning to consciously feel my anger.

I sense that I could create endless drawings, write poems, prose, record conversations, build gardens, build community, travel, take photographs and dance without judgement. I could do all that and part of the story would still go untold.

The bones of the story, the skeleton upon which everything else takes hold, would still lay in shadow beneath it all. I want to go there because there are deep lessons I learnt in the construction of this skeleton. The ossification of which is endless — however it still holds wisdom and I want to share this. To shed light on doorways not often spoken of in crowded places. I want to travel into the underbelly, to share insights. To reach down below like the spreading roots of a tree and perhaps reach you down there. Down in the underworld where we are not all that different. Where the light that reflects off the ocean is the same as the sparkle in your eyes, where the shadows of a moon-light night shift in the same shades of our collective unseen. Where consciousness can rise like the dawn and rest like a depleted cycle of breath. That place where I find you by going deeper into myself.

I want to introduce you to this skeleton by telling the story of how I learnt to consciously feel and express my anger. Everything I write is from my own personal experience. It was not taught to me in school, or from a book — although there are books and websites that have given my experience context and let me know that I am not crazy. Let me know that others have experienced similar things also. I also did not do it all totally alone, I was sat with and had little pieces explained to me. I watched others, then tried out my own experiments. I recorded the results on my phone, in my notebook and tried out the practises again. I spoke with people who have been doing similar things for longer and asked them endless questions, then went and refined my practice.

What Is Anger?

Anger is a type of energy that rises up through the world and humans have access to it. Humans have the capacity to feel anger to 100% intensity and thrive off this. We also have the capacity to feel fear, sadness and joy to 100% intensity and use these forces to navigate life. To learn to feel and navigate these feelings at lower levels of intensity (1–2%) has its usefulness also*.

*Please note that these percentages are helpful for each individual to discover for themselves, the use of them helps in providing a reference point for the exploration of feelings work. I have noticed the domains of feelings can become overwhelming at first without a roadmap, compass, or guide therefore I have found it useful to communicate to myself “this feels bigger so must be about 30% whereas before it was probably about 17%”. This is a similar method used by athletes to describe exertion/intensity of an effort.

Having feelings fully turned on means having access to the archetypal domains, here the laws of reality play out differently and there is more wind in the sails to take extraordinary action with unknown outcomes, which provides access to unimagined possibilities.

The Practice

It takes practice to unlearn Silence. Silence of voice, Silence of being in the world, silence of existence, the stifling silence of energy in my body. I had learnt to still my life force for fear of being too much. Too loud, too big, too much movement, too bossy, too eager, too good, too weird, too Angry.

I learnt to not feel my anger as it was too much for the people around me to handle. I have since learnt that perhaps one of the main reasons anger was shut down in my system is that it is an innately creative force. It has the capacity to bring crystal clear clarity to the moment with a Yes or a No and to bring attention to what is or is not working. The moment something is deemed to be not working the door is flung wide open for something new to come in. This is dangerous to the status quo, especially if the people maintaining the status quo did not consciously choose it but have accepted it to just be the way things are done. If this is questioned then the bedrock their life is built on is called into question also — Hello freefall, goodbye the illusion of security. More excitingly is the “hello Life and goodbye reactive zombieism”.

Meeting my Dragon

To start with I had great resistance to practising getting angry for no reason. My first experience triggered a flurry of stories to come alive in my mind — ‘careful, don’t rock the boat, this is stupid, this is pointless, be quiet, who do you think you are…’

I went slowly at first and no noise came out of me. I did not tell anyone in my immediate life what I was doing — only the people holding the space for me to practise knew. It was my own quiet exploration. All I did was practise rising the energy I labelled as anger in my body and let it circulate with less judgment and more curiosity.

I did my first loud, messy expression of anger out on an isolated stretch of beach one stormy evening. The first sensation was a cold fear, so I watched the ocean, letting its force guide me to my own internal oceanic place. I asked for more from myself, gently opening up, pushing deeper, digging around, moving sounds up and out of me from my belly. Letting go of preconceived ideas of how it ‘should go’. Slowly I found my roar. I snarled and yelled coughed and spluttered for almost 45mins until my voice rasped and it felt fucking great. I remember showing up to work the next day and relating to people differently. It felt like I had discovered a spine I did not know I had, a voice that was foreign to me and a dawning realisation of a new terrain in which to play in.

It takes practise to recondition the movement of anger energy through the body. Over the course of the next few months I took almost weekly trips out to that lonely stretch of beach just to roar, just to yell, just to feel my anger without reason or story. This practice opened up my creative life like nothing before. I began writing daily on a blog, drawing and sleeping much better. I had more stamina and could get more things done during the day. Most importantly for me though was the unleashing of an ability to take action before I even knew why or how. This served me tremendously at work where I was a theatre nurse assisting with surgeries involving many instruments — I found an almost uncanny force at play while the tools flowed through my hands to the surgeons and I could hold a clarity of presence throughout the operation.

That was 8 months ago. Presently I am developing a new terrain to play in with my anger. I am learning its subtleties and am practising becoming more conscious of what it has for me at lower intensities. For now, I am experimenting with rising my anger for 3mins every morning just to feel the sensation in me, to not judge it. Rather, to let it flow freely through me. At the start of this practise, I lost my voice for a week.

Most excitingly and interesting to me is that I have opened a whole new part of me that creates unreasonable amount of poetry, ideas, I follow through on impulses and a well spring of creativity energy, more than I thought possible. Anger serves me in taking action before I know how, it gets things down and is rocket fuel for direction, transformation and creation. There is also a growing curiosity in me about the conscious use of anger is the space holder for deep intimacy and love to flow into existence. This is precious, it holds my attention and keeps me experimenting and digging deeper.

Anger is not for banishing to the dark side. Without the stories we attach to it, it is a neutral force that has wisdom and is an essential agent in the process of change.

Anger Practice Spaces Happening Now:

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