Quiet your mind and take refuge from the worries and emotional disturbances of the world

We begin to use mindfulness for some practical healing and move to the topic of anger.  The experience of anger is often felt physically as a tightness in the body, usually in the abdomen, and that can be used as an object of mindfulness, just like the sensation on the soles of the feet or the movement of the abdomen as we breathe.

Shifting Anger with Mindfulness

Participants will practice visualizing people or situations that “make them angry,” and after making angry feelings appear in their bodies, shifting to letting go, so the anger sensations disappear with mindfulness.  Then if we have time, we will take to the next level by directing kindness and warm feelings towards the person that we had harbored anger or hatred against, and in so doing appreciate that they have a mind just like ours that can “drive them crazy.”

When we harbor hatred or revenge fantasies against others, we may believe it is justified because the person we dislike is somehow harmed by our anger or that hating someone who caused what we fear the most (like supergerms) will somehow make everything right.

But actually, hatred damages our fight/flight autonomic nervous system, and hence also our health and immunity.  It does not hurt the person that we hate- but ourselves.

Taking Ownership of Feelings

Forgiving others will not solve anger, which as you may have noticed does not work.

First, anger must be “owned” and fully experienced with mindfulness before we can forgive.  In other words, before we paint a house, we must first do the difficult work of scraping and sanding off the old paint and blemishes.  If we paint over the blemishes, cracks and old peeling paint, the new coat simply won’t take hold, which is why forgiveness is almost impossible without mindfulness and taking full ownership of our feelings.