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Links to topics in this class: [You can click on each heading as you pass it, and that will change the links above from blue to violet, so you can keep track of your place(s) more easily if you'd like.] This is a very long class that may seem technical, repetitive, and even "dull lecturing." The subject, however, is very important. And this information is not available widely in the literature. It is my practice here to include enough data in each part of it so that each part can be understood on its own--hence the repetitiveness of certain phrases. Each part of this class builds towards the understanding of the next part, so that a cumulative understanding of the human phenomenon of anger can be obtained as a Student goes along . . . as well, of course, as seeing where humor comes into this picture. And I like to include enough explicit description of experiential exercises, and even some variety of methods to choose from, so that--out of the whole of it--each of you Students can actually select the tools necessary to formulate your own "tailor-made" personal ways of dealing with any anger that comes up in your own life with awareness, if you would like to do so. The thrust of this class, then, is not academic, but experiential, dynamic, and practical. Anger, fear, and sadness appear to be the most commonplace human negative emotions. Actually, although their manifestations are less obvious to the casual observer, the other basic negative feelings, loneliness, jealousy, shame, anxiety, and guilt, are just as prevalent among people and bring as much behavioral reaction into the pool of the daily life of humanity over-all. Yet, anger is one of the most obvious and recognized of all the emotions in human society. The negative emotional feeling of anger comes up in a context of "things going wrong." Whenever some thing, or some one, "goes wrong," then the tensions of anger may arise in the physical body within. We "get uptight" about it. Whenever you wake up and find that you are angry, you can tie-it-in with something that has gone wrong. When things break, wear out, or run out, it's as if "life has gone wrong." When efforts fail or don't work quite right, when accidents happen, when projects falter, when people "do the wrong things," or don't do the things that "they are supposed to do," when we, or others, are being wronged, or attacked. When mistakes are being made and things are being botched up, that's when we humans tend to get angry. The body's *natural response* to the botch-ups in life, great and small, of all kinds, is to get angry and set things right. Anger comes up in situations where "something is going wrong and needs to be set right." Like all the emotional feelings, anger is natural, and serves its natural purposes in guiding us in life. It comes up naturally when "the wrong things happen," and serves as a blatant reminder of order in chaos. When there is anger on the body, the first thing to look for is a slight "grimace" on the face. The sensations of this are *feelable*, inwardly. When a person is being angry, an "angry grimace" tends to form upon their face. What is anger, technically? Anger is the *automatic* tensing up of the whole face into "an angry expression." This is the expression of being "about to growl and bite." That is "the anger." (A person may seek to hide this from others, yet it goes on automatically asserting itself powerfully in the musculature of the face, especially around the mouth, and can be picked-up-on by one who pays close attention.) (Look to people with a lot of highly visible and obvious tensions and twisting in their mouth and jaw for a potential to display a lot of anger that lies within.) Pretend that you are a lion, or some other animal, that is about to growl and bite, and *do that* with your face, please, uttering a guttural growl. *And feel all that*.
That's anger. What you can *feel* of it, I mean. Those sensations replicate the actual, living anger, that you can be in *direct touch* with when you are angry. Sometimes it is expressed as "Grrrrrr!" in cartoons. If you are good at grimacing and growling here, you have a pretty good sense of what anger feels like in your face. Of course, when you are *actually being* angry, the sensations of it are more intense, and the teeth may actually clench. The muscles at the back of the jaws can get as hard as golf balls! Sometimes there is also a feeling of heat in the face, and you can feel that, too, when you are "pretty heated up about it," that is. Otherwise, the places to look for the tensions of the negative emotional feeling of anger are in the fists and biceps. The hands may *automatically* double-up into fists when we are being angry, and the tension of this is feelable inside the arms. Taken together, these palpable tensions in the face, the fists and biceps can be called "the anger reaction." Muscular tensions in these areas of the body can occur whenever something goes wrong, or somebody is wrong about something, or doing something wrong. A tool can break. "Damn it!" The bus you are running for leaves without you. You are running out of gas and you barely have time to get where you are going. The cat has clawed up a pillow. When anger arises, there is always something that is going wrong. The child got a "bad report card," the merchant gave you a "bad deal," the boss canceled a meeting when you'd worked up the courage to ask for a raise, an elected official made a "dumb proposal" that will cost you in taxes . . . Damn it! It's wrong! Anger is there. It is very human to be angry.
And notice, please, that something can go wrong at a certain point in the day, and the anger reaction happens, and a person can carry all those tensions of anger around with them in their face, hands, and biceps for the rest of the day. Sometimes this carrying around of the anger reaction can go on into succeeding days. It is a build-up of tension that happens in there. It can even become chronic in certain people who "go around being angry all the time." A person can go around being angry when there's really nothing around to be angry at in the present anymore, even when what they were angry about before has been *fixed*. They can still be angry and still want to punish. And worst of all, they might go along in this state of pent-up anger actually dumping it out onto other people around them-- *unconsciously* pouring their angry reactions out on them in punishing ways, even though these others have nothing to do with the thing that they got angry about in the first place. This is homo sapiens, kiddees. :-) Instead of carrying around the tensions of anger and risking dumping this on others gratuitously and wounding them, it's better to just acknowledge and feel the anger--know what's going on in your body!--and then deal with it directly when it comes up in the course of one's life--that is, awarely *purge it from your body*. That's what this class is about. If you are willing, assume a "posture of anger" there before your computer, and feel it all together. Clutch up your biceps and your fists, and clutch up your face into an angry grimace. Let the mouth clench and then "jaw around" a bit.
Thank you. When people are being angry, their teeth may tend to clench. Bursts of tensions in the lower face can put a "pug nose" on their face, and get the jaw working against that clenching up. They are "biting into it and *chewing* on it." -- Try this "dance" described here out for a few seconds, if you'd like to get a vivid experiential picture of what this angry facial activity feels like.
In life situations, when people get angry they "jaw a lot." It fits right in with the context. Something has gone wrong or is being done wrong. That brings an attitude of "judgment." Deciding anything is wrong is a negative judgment of course. And when humans decide that something is wrong, they may "become angry," as we commonly look at that term--that is, they may voice a lot of judgments and become argumentative in the obvious display of their overt behavior. Mostly, it is their jaw that goes into action. "Angry talk" is judgmental talk. It is talk about what is wrong with things, what is wrong with people, what is wrong with life, what is wrong in the situation now . . . what is wrong with you. So the automatic posture of the growling mouth described above prepares the body suitably for a lot of angry talk like this to come pouring out. Because all people don't agree on what is right and what is wrong, a lot of angry talk that is put out into the world meets up with a lot of arguments. An argument (whatever it may be about) is when an angry person is trying to hurt the other person into agreeing with whatever they are saying. That behavior, in itself, may be seen as "wrong" to the other person, who may then start doing this wounding behavior right back on them! That's an argument. When people go around being very angry (that is, carrying the tensions of anger around in their body) they can be highly "disputatious" about *everything*! If there is "nothing to argue about," they will bring up something in the past that they thought was wrong, or just make up something, and put it out to get an argument going. And in the argument, they will try to hurt the other person into agreeing they are right by hitting them with *wounding* words. This can be quite "punishing" and painful. This seems like such a foolish enterprise on the face of it, yet it is another of the little-noticed habitual things that we humans just seem to go on doing among each other, whether they actually work or not. It's personality. It's one little part of the ordinary human condition--the way we are built, the way we react. If we're angry, we may try to get others to agree that we are right by hurting them. At the same time that we judge them, we punish them. It's certainly no way to be liked by other people. It's hard for others to live around them when they are doing this. And they may get a painful argument back. This ordinary commonplace human behavior seldom reaches any genuine "agreements." It is largely futile, and generates nothing but pain! That's where those tightened biceps and fists may finally come into the picture, unfortunately, because sometimes these very angry people will actually go so far as to hit the other person with their fists. That's angry! :-) Sometimes you can see the angry person sitting there with their fists clenched. They are probably completely unaware of that. It doesn't mean they are about to hit you (although it might!). But it sure does mean that they are angry. What they will probably be hitting you with--in lieu of their fists--will be the wounding words that they begin jawing forth. And there will be no doubt, if you pause in mindfulness to examine the palpable effects of this in your own body within, that the wounding words that they are saying really *do hurt*. "Ow!" It's even painful to hear others jawing about *other people*. The sheer impact of the vibrations of this kind of jawing in the space is very powerful. Anger gives rise to sarcasm, ridiculing, attempts to humiliate the other person, "find their weaknesses," hurt them in any way that one can. Anger gives rise to putting the other person on the spot and attempting to expose them or punish them for their wrong-doings or wrong ideas, or "brand them for their sins." Judging other people, blaming them, calling them ugly names, cussing at them, all of this is an attempt to hurt the other person into agreeing about what's wrong and making corrections. And it does hurt. The disadvantages to hanging around with anger on one's body are numerous. First, the pent-up tensions of anger are the fuel, the power source of the intellectual process of judgmental thinking. That collected energy of uptight muscles "drives" the thinking mind to judge. So when we are being angry we go around thinking about it a lot--thinking judgments, judgments, judgments. This can be a danged nuisance. We may fall into stewing, which is thinking through the same angry episode over and over again in exactly the same ways--seemingly unable to stop. It's hell. -- Guess I show a little anger about "angry stewing" here. :-) I've done my share of this "abominable" practice in my time. {wide grin} As my teacher Mits pointed out to us, the first thing that happens when you judge another person is that uptight uncomfortableness *takes over your own body*. Reflect on that, and you'll see what I mean. Mits suggested this pertains to Jesus' teaching to "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Experientially, it makes sense. We are literally physically punished, on the spot, when we judge other people. When we are being angry, it is an uncomfortable and unpleasant state of being. It takes the edge off of our satisfaction in life. When there is anger, it isn't fun anymore. The pleasure of life is curtailed. Something else is there instead, uptightness. And the condition of anger limits the scope of our perception and our understanding. We become drawn in behind the automatic "pre-recorded" judgments that come up in the thinking mind for us at that time, and *are unable to see any more than that*! Common sense tells us that an angry person's judgment is impaired. Specifically, there is the real danger that their judgments are wrong. And this is so often the case! Or even though they are "right" in one way of looking at the situation, they may be "wrong" from many other points of view. In anger, it is impossible to see the danger of this blind-sidedness, and sort this self-righteous ignorance out . . . unless a person who is trained to do so wakes up and takes mindful stock of what is happening. You have seen at one time or another what it is like to confront an angry person. They *know* that they are "right." Nothing can convince them otherwise. When we are caught in the throes of this powerful negative emotion, it is impossible to discover if we, ourselves, are the ones who are making the big mistake . . . unless we wake up. This is why it is so valuable to clearly recognize and understand when anger is going on in one's own body. With mindfulness, one can prevent some of the major mistakes that any ordinary humans would otherwise make. One can be reminded to be extra careful in the steps one is about to take, and extra careful in the things one is about to say to the other person. Waking up and knowing one is heated up, knowing the simple reality of "I am being angry" can potentially preclude grievous losses in a person's life, and such grievous harm to other people that later there may be no answer for. Decisions made, and activities undertaken while angry can drastically alter the course of one's life, often for the worse. Angry words that are spoken can hurt the other person so drastically that they leave wounds that take long to heal, or may never heal. Once spoken, such words can "never be taken back." Heard in childhood, they may last to the grave. These wounds can even last over generations, as we see in warring nations with a long tradition of hurting each other back and forth that is passed along in their history, sometimes for centuries. The ego motive in anger is: "I want to set things right." We want the other to agree that we are right, and change to be the way that we want them, or want things, to be. The behavioral pattern that comes out of anger is to hurt the other person into doing it our way, and to punish them for what they owe in retribution. In our families, among our friends, in our places of employment, or with those we meet along the way, this punishing behavior not only hurts other people but interferes with what would otherwise be our own happiness. After acting-out anger, one can never go "all the way back again to the way it was before." The "next morning," or the following "Monday at the office," it is a different world because of their angry acting-out--whether they perceive it or not. It cannot be undone. The effects of it will go on and on, as it regenerates one knee-jerk angry reaction after another, proliferating throughout the human race. Saying "I'm sorry," doesn't really work. The other person still feels just as much pain. All one can do is start anew, with mindfulness and more caution. However, one can *apologize*. A straight-forward example of an expression of apology might go like this: "I made a mistake, and I deeply regret it. I'm not being angry any more, and I feel sorrow now for what I have done." ("I make ass," the Hawaiians say. I like that one.) This doesn't "work" to take away the pain of the wound that was given. It may, however, help to prepare the way for starting over afresh with the other person, and for healing to begin--if one doesn't get to this point of having to apologize too often. :-) In most cases, people who have done wrong things while acting-out in anger cannot face what they have done. They cannot realize the mistake they have made. This point is valuable to understand. It makes them squirm too much to look at what they have done squarely. True apology is simply impossible for them. [It is like the "pundits," *who can never learn anything*, because everything they think and say has to be the same as what they said the last time.] Their thinking minds will go on endlessly coming up with justifications, excuses, explanations, and rationalizations for the wrong things they did, even as they are "twisting in the wind" about it. (I think, in "technical jargon," this particular agony is also called "Hell.") In some other cases, however, a person will be overcome with guilt and be flooded with self-denying attitudes by which they will become nauseous and lose appetite for life. There are other kinds of personality reactions to this predicament of having done a wrong thing in anger. In all cases, they will eventually have a sense that they'd "better not do that any more"--perhaps a function of guilt? Yet none of these reactions can change one iota of what has happened. The *only thing* that a person can do in such a situation is realize that they have made a mistake, realize it through and through in mindfulness (beyond all justifications, rationalizations, or guilt), and attempt to reach an understanding of the anger/judgment/acting-out process that has led them to make this mistake. This class is designed for this purpose. Even though we can't amend the actual effects of centuries and millennia of humans acting-out their egos and personalities back and forth on each other in angry wounding ways on the surface of this Earth . . . . . what we *can do* is reach a point *in our own individual life* where we seek to lay off going forth with more of the same old angry knee-jerk reactions. Theoretically, at least, there can be a fresh start for the human beings of this planet. Each of us as individuals can elect to make our own contributions to that, if we care to do so. Humans *do* make mistakes. We all of us do. It's a part of our natural problem-solving process of trial and error in this life. So, mistakes are not the curse!!! Mistakes are actually "the pathway to solutions" for all human people. The "curse of anger" that some of us may have is if we focus on other people's mistakes when we get angry, and lose sight of our own. This is the real "curse." Having the humility to quickly recognize one's own mistakes (without justification or guilt)--instead of becoming blindly preoccupied with the mistakes of others--is a very powerful tool for an awakening warrior. It is like "becoming free of the curse" that fore-ordains so much uptightness and misery in so many of our lives as householders, and so much inflicted pain and suffering, too, upon humanity at large. Although anger is an emotion that can and probably does occur in all humans, this is the special characteristic negative emotion of only one of the personality types--the Judge, of course. We all may get angry now and then, but Judges seem to make a habit of it. By the very nature of their lives--guided in their Player essence to balance and correct all kinds of mistakes in life by playing with the elements in the space and "getting things arranged right"--they are the type that is most prone to pick up on "all the things that aren't right." It is "their specialty," you could say. Although others may occasionally do this, too, Judges are always calling attention to the things that they are spotting as "wrong, incorrect, immoral, stupid, wasteful, impractical, dumb," etc. This is the "hallmark" of the personality of this type. It is the quintessential music of the Judge. They are routinely making adjustments in others (telling them what's wrong with them) that come from this "organizing temperament" that they have, and striving, even unconsciously, for results that are "harmonious." And they want the others around them to play along with this "balanced plan." They want others to *play by their rules* (or else they'll be blamed, criticized and punished for it). In their own opinion, they can only see themselves as "the harmonizers" in life. Big smile on their face, they can only view the things they do as "for the good." They are making things hum along in a balanced and even way! They may be overlooking the possibility that their arranging might be highly painful to certain other people. "I'm angry at you for your own good!"--that's the way they look at it. Certain others may not particularly want to be "set straight," "corrected," "put in their place," and be re-arranged in this way. Yet the Player/Judges are only seeking for it to be harmonious underneath it all. (The inclinations of their temperament to jokes, laughter, humor, fun, parties, and to the basic phenomenon of *play, itself*--the human characteristic of "being playful"--all show this propensity to create harmony very well. When it goes too far, however, and it starts to hurt, you have the Judge.) Sometimes the joke isn't funny. *Sometimes they play too hard*! Sometimes their re-arranging efforts are too vigorous and sarcastic. They may be too wounding in their remarks. Certainly, we all owe much to the members of this type for all of the laughter and fun that they provide--even at other people's expense. It "breaks the ice," "loosens things up." Yet it's not quite so merry when "the joke is on me." When score comes up on a Judge's phenomenological scoreboard, and anger is being acted-out, watch out! That's when Judges may go too far, without realizing it, and their intendedly "harmonizing" efforts at re-arranging you may only hurt, whether they know it or not.
"Processing anger" simply means purging the tensions of the emotion of anger from within one's own body by the direct application of mindfulness. Otherwise, in proportion to the amount of tension that is being "stored up" in there, that anger is going to rule one's life, in disregard of all of one's other interests. Whenever things, bodies, or words enter our space and impact our body in such a way that our body reacts to this with the anger reaction at what we perceive as "wrong". . . judgments ensue in the thinking mind, desires to "make it right" arise from the ego, and manipulations to re-arrange the field, even by punishing means, may not be far behind. So, by working on our own feelings of anger in awareness when they do come up, each of us is taking a hand directly "on the ground floor," so to speak, in this normal, automatic, sequential reactive process of the human self, feeling - thinking - wanting - acting-out--and becoming *freed* from some of the most adverse consequences of our common human Fate--the effects of anger. Many Buddhist schools regard this as so important that they address nearly all of their work on emotional feelings upon this one emotion, anger. Working with anger is "nipping violence in the bud." There are many ways to approach the processing of anger. We are talking about the deliberate expediting of these tensions on through and out of one's body with awareness. The basis of this kind of work on anger is first to be aware of anger when it is in your body--to experience the perceptible sensations of it, through and through, with mindful attention, and *know* that anger is present. This may seem very strange to most people, who suppose that the best thing that one can do with negative feelings is to *not feel them*, suppress them, deny them, avoid them, ignore them. Some people will try to "mask" or "over-ride" their negative feelings with "mood elevators," or depressants like alcohol. But the idea of just facing one's feelings, awarely, and feeling them as they are, is somehow foreign to the vast majority of people in society. It seems *illogical*. Nevertheless, for those who practice mindfulness, and have access to the wisdom of beginner's mind, aware processing of negative feelings is a technique which has emerged in many approaches to healing the emotional pains of the human condition. A person can just try it out, and see on their own if it works for them. The form that I use in these classes is derived from the methods applied by Humanist psychotherapists at mid-20th-century. And the teachings of my own principle teacher, Mitsuo Aoki, have deeply influenced the approach that I am offering to you Students here. Experiencing human emotional feelings was one of Mits' favorite areas of focus in his classes at the University of Hawaii . . . right up there with Love. When you have reason to suspect that you are being angry: Be centered and remain awake. Feel your face and especially any tensions around the jaw and mouth with mindfulness. Feel the inward sensations of it. Feel your biceps and hands. Are you so angry that you're even clutching up in these areas, too?
Focus your attention especially in what goes on in the lower half of your face. Keep your mindful focus on this, in the specific places where you can feel it. Feel whatever you do feel of these tensions, and keep feeling this for one minute, two minutes, five minutes, or as you feel appropriate. By "bathing these tense places in the light of your awareness," your body will begin to respond by letting go of these tensions. You ought to be able to feel this. Your body will begin to calm down, and your face will relax.
Fritz Perls invented many strategies for working with anger in gestalt therapy--such as hitting a pillow with a tennis racket. Later, a soft, canvas-covered commercial product, the Bataca, was developed for doing this. Some of these techniques have become legendary, and may even be ridiculed in some circles, and yet *they work*. Perls taught a two-phase approach to working with emotional feelings. The first phase of it, as described above, was in being thoroughly aware of the perceptible physical sensations of it, and processing it (he probably coined this term "processing") by remaining aware of it and keeping one's awareness focused directly on the sensations of it, until the block of tensions begins to dissemble. This is a purely passive process, intendedly so--just experiencing it and letting it be. It is not trying to push the tensions out. The body, itself, does the work of "letting down," "letting go." The second phase of Perls' approach to working on feelings was in "mobilizing" the feeling, "getting it moving on out of the body," you could say. This is an active process. It is like "picking the feeling up in your awareness and physically 'escorting it' on through the body." To do this, a person who is already aware of the presence of the characteristic feeling of a certain emotion in their body, begins by "exaggerating" the feeling. This is done by tensing it up even more. This brings the sensations of the feeling into even higher relief on purpose so it can be *thoroughly experienced*. Perls called this "cranking it up." For a contrasting example, with the emotion sadness, once perceived in the heart area, throat, or face, Perls suggested vocalizing a moan, or a sob, to "crank it up"--to "coax" the crying to get going. Crying is the body's natural way of mobilizing sadness on out of the body. So "coaxing crying to happen" is a *valid* way of getting the process going of moving those tensions of sadness on out. In the case of anger, that we are studying in this class, coaxing the anger to move on through the body can take a variety of forms. Needless to say, we are not talking about blindly "thrashing about" and acting-out the anger in an uncontrolled or harmful fashion, but about observing what actually happens within the body in anger--paying close attention in a controlled exercise that emulates "the whole dance" that the body normally does when gripped with anger. If you'd like to try this out, here's how: First of all, in the face, when you are cognizant of the tensions of a little bit of anger in there, "crank it up." Bring an exaggerated angry growl to your face, while feeling the sensations of this mindfully at the same time. -- Go ahead and try this now, if you will please, paying close attention with awareness. Even though you're not actually being angry at this time, you can "demonstrate" this. Bring an exaggerated angry grimace to your face, with a pug nose, let the face move around some in the grips of all this tension, and let the jaw work around a bit.
This is "cranking up" the anger. At least you can see, awarely, what that feels like here, angry or not. In a future time, when more appropriate, you may remember it. And when you *are* angry, and you become aware of it, this simple exercise of "cranking it up" is a great "first-aid" treatment on the spot, to "leak off" some of the inner tensions of anger in a hurry with awareness. And, you might be surprised to see how much anger may come up in your body over the hours--at work, for instance--and pass unnoticed-that is, without awareness-thus becoming "stored up." (This exercise would fit right in with those other good "work-station exercises" that we studied in the third semester of Classroom Talk.) The faster you can let off those tensions that anger brings up in your face, biceps, and hands, the better off for you. Cranking it up and being fully aware of it gives a burst of efficacy to the processing of it on through. The way things are in human society--if you would work this little exercise into your regular practice a few times a day briefly, there would probably be a little collected anger in there to let go of some of those times. It's human! Did you hear or read any news today, for instance? That ought to be enough impact from human "botch-ups" to get a little anger going in there. {Grrrr.} This kind of suggested "maintenance" for the body, "cleans house," so to speak--even if there's only a little anger in there when you do it. In an extremely angry episode, do this "cranking it up" exercise for ten or fifteen seconds at a time, several times, if you feel it is helpful--or more, as necessary. As you "get good at doing this," you ought to be able to feel the "leaking off" of angry tensions on out of the muscles in your face. You can do this until you feel a "glow" of relief in your face, and a smile forms. At any point where a smile forms on your face, or a grin happens, or laughter may begin to spill out, this specifically shows alleviation of the pent-up tensions of anger that were in there. All experiential work with anger leads from the *inward* tensings of the grimacing and growling of anger to the *outward* experience of smiling and laughing--from uptightness to looseness. The human curse actually becomes transformed into the human comedy, in this process. The human body goes from a clenched-up growling face, with tight biceps and fists . . . . . to the open-mouthed peelings of laughter, while the clenched-up fists of the hands are being pounded and stretched out flat with applause, shaking the biceps loose. Anger and humor are compatibles with each other in the same muscles of the face and arms. [Remember that the *direction* of human emotional feelings is inward and outward. Inward, the body becomes more contracted, uptight, and tense within. Outward the body becomes more loose, expanded, and open--more free. When we are in the clenching mode, it is the negative form of the emotion that is happening. When we are in the mode of opening outwards, the positive form of the emotion occurs.] When you are being really angry, this same experiential exercise can be embellished in several ways. You can also growl out loud, while you are doing this exercise, keeping your center within. And it is *very worthwhile*, if you will say (in a tone that shows you *really* mean it), "I am angry." This is a perfect "mantra" for a mindful exercise designed to process anger, because it helps your thinking mind to connect up with what is *really going on* experientially in your body. (You could say that your "feeling center" is educating your "thinking center" in doing this.) So many of us have such a tough time admitting, even to ourselves, that we *do* get angry. People who get angry the most may be the least likely to admit it at all. They try to seal themselves off from the realization of it. You've probably seen a profound example of this happening a few times in your life, where you've approached a person to ask them what they are being so obviously angry about, and they respond with something like: "Me??? Angry? I'm not angry, damn it!!!" In general, people unconsciously avoid confronting the reality of all of their emotions, even when they are obvious and apparent to other people. And with anger, it is no different. Even when a person is shouting judgments and swinging their fists, they are unlikely to know they are being angry. And they may deny they are angry *vehemently* and angrily, if asked at such a time. So, in work on one's own anger, saying "I am angry," from time to time, like a conscious "mantra" while doing a period of mindful exercises for processing your anger is a helpful phenomenological connection with reality. This is a heightened acknowledgment of it. It helps bring the anger out of the realm of shadows and into the light. Moreover, "I am angry," is a true statement of reality when it is so. So, "I am angry" can be a fair statement to make to another person. If you know it is true because you have *experienced it*, it is honest. If it is *solely to inform* then it is a non-manipulative communication. In contrast, "Why don't you get your act together, dummy?" would be a manipulative statement. Yet, it's okay to say "I am angry" to inform the other person of that!--if you have an understanding about this, that is. If you communicate this (and *only this*, without all of the other judging and cussing that might automatically follow along behind it), it tells them what's really going on with you. It is a sharing of your true self--a communication that can be valuable in the furtherance of companionship. It can honestly let your companion know exactly what it is that is really going on with you so they can understand and compose themself about it. This sort of thing can be done in the spirit of companionship. And it can show them that you are aware of being angry too--which can sometimes be comforting to know, if you get what I mean. [If it is "I am angry," and the undoubted implication is ".and I am going to punish you later," then this peaceful communication won't work. But where it states, "I'm angry and I have a handle on it," it can be reassuring of a quick return to peace.] If you are being awake, all that cussing doesn't have to come pouring out when you simply say "I am being angry." Instead of punishing the other person, you *take responsibility* in this way for your own honest emotion. If you state it out-front, objectively and truthfully, it is like saying to the other person: "Oh-oh. Let's both watch out and see if we can be *aware enough* not to get into an argument about this anger of mine together." Both parties can be "in on the game" if they are *companions*. The other can make certain allowances for it, and be careful not to make things worse. Both can be intentionally playing, as best they each can, for peace. (A husband and wife can have this as a convention to practice among their promised ways of relating peacefully with each other. Managers and their teams can do this together, too. Being honest about anger that is present among us in this way can be a step towards achieving peace, if people understand there is a convention to be out front about it. Please note that "I'm not angry any more," is a *wonderful communication* to make to the other person, when that later becomes true--ESPECIALLY IF YOU WERE BEING ANGRY AT OR AROUND A CHILD. Whether you told the child you were angry or not, they know! After you have gotten through it and processed the tensions of anger on out of your body, so that you are not being so angry any more, it is a *wonderful loving gesture to let others know the truth of this*. Children are many times more sensitive and vulnerable to the impacts of angry statements by adults in their space than other adults are. And they can carry their reactions to some angry statements by adults throughout their lives. This is why it is so important to let our children know when we have gotten through being angry at them. Let them know that it is *over*. Being angry is natural. It can happen to anyone. No one (except perhaps a "perfect master") can help having this natural reaction to the things that go wrong in life. When one is angry and says so, and then says so when they aren't being angry any more, they get a chance to see what effect this mindful honesty has on the state of their relations with others. If they find improvement, this may encourage them to try out the honest expression of all of their emotions more often.
The technique of "harmless hitting" is a valid parody of what the human body is intensely spring-loaded to do when being angry. In other words, shouting and hitting a cushion, when done mindfully in a prescribed exercise, can facilitate the letting-off of collected anger from the body with no harm. Although such a technique is regarded with much skepticism by some Buddhist teachers, harmless hitting with mindfulness can have a valid part to play in the speedy mobilization of the tensions of anger from the human body. It is like a "healing game." Even if it isn't your cup of tea as a practice, it can be worthwhile for understanding the nature of anger for you to know about this way. To explain this, I'd like to share a few recollections of gestalt group work from the 1970's. When a gestalt group facilitator asked the members of the group if anybody had anything they would like to work on, and one of the participants got into sharing, for example, about the tumultuous relationship he or she had with their father (maybe yesterday, maybe years ago) the facilitator could use the (ta-dah!) famous two-chair exercise. The person sits opposite an empty chair, supplying both what the other person says to them, and what they say to the other person, actually moving back and forth between the two chairs. "Now be your father." . . . "Now move over here and be you responding to your father." One of the several advantages of this technique is that now one actually gets to say out loud, perhaps for the first time, what one *actually has to say* to one's father (mother, spouse, friend, business partner, etc., etc. as the case may be). Anyway, if the nature of the conversation that ensued showed-up the person's intense anger towards their father in high-relief, the facilitator would remind them to get into contact with the clenching teeth, the angry grimace on their face, point out to them that their fists were clenched. The facilitator would get them to be very keenly in touch, experientially with all that. The facilitator might encourage them to voice a guttural growl, and to "crank it up." Then, the facilitator might use the famous, or infamous :-) hitting the cushion with the bataca exercise. The bataca is a soft canvas-covered baton, with a slightly spongy handle to get a good tight grip on for pounding with it. In early days, they used tennis rackets, which became awesomely and humorously warped from the collective power of all the anger that was poured through them by gestalt groups over time. Around in the group rooms, there were always plenty of cushions, as participants sat and reclined on the carpeted floor. One of these cushions would be pulled over for receiving the "ritual" pounding that was about to take place. Here, the person, on their knees, would take hold of the bataca and grip it, raising it above their head, and, with a grimace on their face and a growl . . . say, "I'm angry at you, Father!" . . . and smack the cushion with a loud whack. The instruction would be to be very inwardly aware of the sensations in their body throughout the doing of this. This might be repeated several times, until the point where the person expressed or demonstrated much relief. In other words, they reached the point where--after checking it out awarely inside-- they realized that they no longer *felt angry* at their father. What is it that's going on here? It is a "processing of a dance." It is an awareness of the whole basic natural dance that the body feels impelled to do, when anger is on the body. It is denying none of that, only experiencing it. In squeezing the rubbery hand-grip of the bataca, one is cranking up the squeezing of the fists. Raising up the bataca, one is tightening up the biceps. Vocalizing, one is expressing the "truth of it," merely expressing what one "had to say" to one's father on that angry occasion--by saying it now, *knowing* it. "I am angry at you, Father." Later, the person might realize, "Yeah, I really was angry at my Father when I was a boy. And I didn't know that. And I've carried it around with me until now-so I've gone on being angry with him all this time, in the same old ways. I don't feel caught in that any more. Now I can talk to him . . . and love him." (Often work of this kind in gestalt groups led to personal reconciliations with others in one's life, because it purged them of the anger that they were carrying around. Sometimes this technique allowed for peace and settlement of unfinished issues after the other person had died. For instance, it is not uncommon when a dear person dies, to experience among other emotional reactions, a strong tendency to anger. "Damn you for dying on me," so to speak. This is not so rare as one might suppose among us all. And it usually goes unrecognized because of the "illogicality" of it. One may go on carrying around such anger over a loved-one's death unknowingly, unable to see how they could *possibly* be angry at the one who died. Yet, it happens. Such is the make-up of sleeping homo sapiens.) Sometimes the participant in a gestalt group was a little timid, and the "I'm angry" would come out in a little voice. The facilitator might say, "That doesn't sound like you're very angry." The person would get into it again, until the angry tone of it was clear. "I'm ANGRY!" Whack! "I'm VERY ANGRY!" Whack!! You might think that the facilitator was "influencing" the person to be angry when they really weren't angry, but when the person actually got into expressing it, there was no doubt about it whatsoever that they *were* indeed angry at their father. They knew it in their own experience, through and through. They *understood*! Oftentimes this gut-level existential understanding, in the purging of this anger, enabled them to have tears of love for a person that they had never been able to really love before, because of all that anger. It's good to "get this anger out" this way. It brings it into the open. It let's it go. It helps in the letting-go of enmity. The purpose is not, of course, to be hateful to the father or the other person in the exercise, but to express the true reality of one's honest emotional feelings, and *to help* in the passing on through one's body of the powerful tensions of anger--to be through with it, and rid of it as much as one can. When anger is completely gone from the body, this leaves a space in there for joy to enter the body again. Please note that this process is not "denying" the feeling. The feeling of anger is brought up into high relief in the direct experience of the sensations of it, the opposite of denial! Nor is this "confronting the feeling head-on" and trying to force the feeling of it to stop. It is actually "escorting" the negative feeling along its natural route--escorting it all the way on through the body with mindfulness. It is more like "dancing" with the feeling, and "giving it play" until it leaves. The natural course of anger through our bodies is through clutching up the face and jaws, the biceps and the fists, and then striking out by "jawing" at the person and possibly punching them. This whole human anger dance is "given play" by this technique. It merely presents a format, a context, for observing this whole natural process in awareness, and escorting it all on through. Such an exercise may not be your cup of tea. And that is perfectly okay. If you will simply become aware of anger when it is there in your face, arms, and hands, and know what it is when it is happening there, that is already a great step forward towards peace. If you will practice processing your negative emotional feelings, including anger by any of the techniques like those described above, this can greatly accelerate the transition of your body from being up-tight, bent-out-of-shape, and spring-loaded for trouble . . . . . to being relaxed again, feeling better, and ready to deal mindfully and skillfully with the situation at hand. Gestalt group participants often reported afterwards experiencing less anger in general in their daily lives in situations that typically "made them angry," and experiencing less reactive anger in the people around them than usual through regularly paying attention to this practice.
Thoroughly "non-violent" people sometimes do get angry. Even Jesus "acted-out" and kicked over the tables of the merchants on the Temple grounds to make his point about that. That was some re-arranging of a few things that were wrong!!! I dare say Jesus must have been really pissed off that day! And sometimes "non-violent" people carry these tensions of anger around with them in their body after the fact, too. Even though their history may show that they are very unlikely to chew people out with wounding words, let alone punch them out with their fists, these tensions of anger may still accrue in their body--perhaps even, unnoticed. If nothing else, bearing the tensions of anger in their face can diminish the humor and joy that they may otherwise experience more frequently in life. Even "not acting-out," as monks and nuns are trained to do, is not "the whole cleansing," if they wouldn't also attend mindfully to the palpable turmoil of angry tensions within (if that is actually there in their bodies, of course). Even in the lives of overtly passive people, there can be a value in watching out for the passages of anger in their body, and attending to these tensions awarely by processing them on through, so as not to store them up. It is the awareness of anger that counts, first of all. And then, it is the continuing focused awareness in the feelable bodily sensations of it that contributes to its *intentional* release. In such awareness exercises for processing anger, "the whole dance" of anger in the human body can be "given play"--the grimace, the fists, the growl, the "I am angry," the hitting with the bataca (one can also kneel and pound a pillow with their fists)--all done and experienced in the light of awareness. One may *see* afterwards if the body appears objectively to be purged of these angry tensions by these kinds of exercises. And moreover, in the light of the interests of the awareness game, one may *see* if one appears to be "steadied," and "calm," and no longer so spring-loaded to be acting-out the patterns of behavior that anger ordinarily generates, like judging and wounding with words, if not, indeed, actually hitting. In a controlled and guided fashion, one can *be the very anger* *consciously*, by grimacing, growling, and hitting, and thus, without harm, purge the anger from one's body with awareness. In mindfulness, it is "like a fire that leaves no smoke." Because the resolution of anger is humor, we can also use humor to loosen the grip of anger on our face and arms. (When this grip is loosened, other possibilities besides judging and wounding appear.) As a "general treatment," watching comedy shows on television, or going out to comedy theaters where there are live comedians, or funny movies, and *laughing copiously*, is very beneficial in "leaking out" some of the tensions of anger that we may store up in our bodies, especially if done in mindfulness. Simply be awake to the internal experience of laughing. The contribution that comedians make in human culture stems from their expertise in converting anger into humor in the populace at large. (This is the essence of the Player/Judge.) Perhaps you may never have noticed this, but all the things that we humans laugh about are the very same things that make us angry. Humor is always about "things that go wrong." Look at political cartoons, for instance. They are always about things that are wrong with the politicians. Humorists call attention to all the things that go wrong in life and they make us laugh and laugh about it. They turn human "wrongness" (I would say "natural human mistakes!") into "the Human Comedy." How many of us may tend to laugh out loud if someone slips on a banana peel? Hit them in the face with a pie, and we roar with laughter. Let them try on a coat that doesn't fit, and we're rolling in the aisles. If you doubt that humor is always based on things that go wrong, check out a few of the "America's Funniest Videos" programs that are on t.v. One viewer-submitted video after another shows one ridiculous thing after another going wrong. And the audience roars with laughter again and again. My favorite example that I've seen of this genre was a clip of a very elderly and obviously rickety couple, in quaint old-fashioned country garb, hand-in-hand, sitting down together on their brand new porch swing, and immediately up-ended, feet over their heads, and thrown backwards with a complete flip through the air into a large bush off the end of their porch. It was *sobering* for me to see that I roared and roared with laughter at that clip. "Laughter is the best medicine," they say, and this is especially true for angry people. Unfortunately, we often get this laughter at other people's expense. Maybe we can learn to just laugh at life itself--the human condition, all that "funny stuff," the human predicament . . . not just that we make mistakes, but that we go around being angry a lot and judging and punishing because of the many kinds of human mistakes that we All do go on making with each other. When I was a psychotherapist years ago, it wasn't unusual to see an intensive period of "work on anger" with a client come down to peeling laughter. Laughter-finally-laughter at the whole situation, at the ridiculous part one had played in it, at the human comedy of it all. Better to discover this laughter *before* the outburst of angry acting-out, I say. I had a homework assignment I used to give to couples who were being angry at each other a lot, frequently getting into typical "hang-up arguments" and fights. Typically, this involved two severe Judges living together. [I only did this if I was convinced that both of them really wished to stop this fighting that they were doing, and find peace together--because otherwise this exercise won't work.] I asked them to stop in a store on the way home from their session with me, and each buy a baseball cap of their own selection. I said to put these caps in a drawer in the living room or someplace easy to get to in their house. And whenever either of them woke up and realized they were getting into one of their typical hang-up arguments again, I asked that person to make the time-out sign that referees make (with one palm straight up and the other palm making a "T"). I asked them to agree to have a convention together that they were bound to, that whenever either of them made the time-out sign, they would both stop the arguing cold. They would go right away to that drawer where the baseball caps were kept, and put them on. And *then* they were to go right on with the argument they were having! Many of these people came back the next week to tell me that when they did this the first time, and subsequent times, as soon as they put their baseball caps on, they would both burst into laughing. And they found it was practically impossible to go on arguing about whatever it was they were arguing about. This exercise confronted their belief that angry fighting was inevitable. Many of these clients began seriously learning how to stop fighting with each other with this exercise. It's secret lies in the transformation of anger into humor. That's the first step in learning how to communicate in other ways than judging and wounding.
In no case is it to be inferred from this class that it is *ever* recommended that a suitable way for "dealing with anger" is by acting-out angry behavior on another person. This happens sometimes, of course, in our sleep and inattention. And we can be aware that this has happened when we wake up on it. Usually--except perhaps for saying "I am angry."--it is better to get off by one's self as much as possible when processing anger that has come up suddenly, or has been building up in one's body to a state of high tension. If there are others around who might hear some of the vocalizations of this processing practice, or the thumping of a pillow, it would be good to explain the purpose of the exercise to them. And, in such a case, it is very good to mention later that "I'm not feeling so angry now," if that is true afterwards. It's best not to be impacting into their space with this exercise. If possible find a closed room, where you can crank it up just a little bit without bothering others, feel it, and say what you've got to say about it softly, so that others won't hear. One can patiently do all the healing and releasing of it that is necessary in this more restrained way. A person might feel a kind of "sense of relief" for a little while, after dumping a lot of anger on another person. This is probably because this aggressive behavior *does* "leak" some of those angry tensions out of the body in a short time--just like cranking it up and swinging the bataca. This is probably why we humans do this kind of aggressive behavior, in fact. We want some relief from our anger, and acting-it out on others seems to give us some of the relief that we are craving. But this relief is not "in depth." It is "asleep." As this acting-out is not done awarely, it is *not processing*. It is not fullsomely and sensitively "escorting the tensions on through the body with mindfulness." It doesn't dissolve the roots of the tensions that are underneath in there that are regenerating this angry behavior over and over again in the person's life. This apparently can only be accomplished with awareness. So acting-out is not healing. On the contrary, the more that any of us go on blindly acting-out anger in our lives, the more we *add impetus to the conditioned pattern* that gives rise to this form of behavior again and again. This is how this behavior became "conditioned" in the first place. And, going around acting angry puts it's own *impact* into the space in the present moment. It is a *disturbance*. Shouting "Damn you!" to another person, not only impacts upon the other's body and causes them to react, it also resounds in your own space and puts impact on your own body, causing it to react. It resounds in every body's space. So acting-out anger in the space only provokes and stimulates every body to become angrier and angrier. The more we do of this, the angrier and more uptight we all become. This is why Mits warned us, back in those good ol' days when I was in Hawaii, that the first thing that happens when we make angry judgments of another person is that a state of uncomfortableness and even pain comes over our own body. We humans don't really have to live in as much of this kind of self-created pain as we do. Yet, lacking mindfulness, and specialized training, we don't know what else we can do about it. This class is attempting to share something else that can be done. Being aware of your anger, when it is in there, feeling it mindfully, can be both a steadying and a cleansing process for your body at the same time. It can help preclude at least some of the angry acting-out that you may do. This in turn can preclude the equally intense re-acting that other people around might otherwise be putting back on you because of it. And, in general, a mellower and more humorous time can be had by one and all together, midst all those darned mistakes that *do keep going on* that we naturally fallible homo sapiens so often make . . . . . if we all pay attention to and process our anger in any of these ways. You may not be one of those who have anger in your body regularly, or very often. Even so, for a rounded understanding of all the human emotional feelings it is still very worthwhile for you to "keep on the watch" for anger in your life. And any time you think you may be able to find the spontaneous reactions of anger in there--from the nature of the situation that is going on--check it out with the clues that are provided here. And see if by "stalking" anger in this way, you can eventually manage to spot it, and know it first hand in your own experience. In a similar fashion, you can stalk humor in your life, and experience as much of the nature of it in your body as you can. Anger is just another phenomenon in the wide spectrum of human phenomena. It is a natural phenomenon in the make-up of human beings. It has its appropriate message, to bring disorder to attention and remind us of order. Applied in sleep, anger can give rise to behavior that is painful and punishing. And if we can recognize this, in mindfulness, we can learn to laugh about it sometimes before it's too late. Thanks for your attention in this long and complicated class. I hope that out of all the data and examples that are presented here, you may find a few things that you can resonate with comfortably, to try out in your own personal mindful practice of relating with any anger that you may encounter in your day-to-day life. Coach
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