She stood against the wall, pale pink skin glistening, sweaty palms covering her ears with a petrified look on her face.
I was playing M.I.A Born Free and most of my students were running around the room stomping, jumping, yelling, kicking, and shaking out the excess energy running through their veins. Except her. In her little corner at the back of the room, she seemed frail and scared, shaking like a little caged lamb.
I made my way over to her and gently touched her arm, trying to soothe her. “Are you ok?” I asked. With determined palms still steadfastly plugging her ears and shoulders tightly constricted, she yelled with a high pitched voice “It’s too loud! It hurts.” It was all too much for her – this energy of rage and chaos. It was too much for her dear, sensitive, vatta body.
How often do you feel this way? How often does your body completely contract into a ball of tension? How often do you feel like a deer in headlights, unable to move at the sight of your anger coming RIGHT at you?
I’m seeing it EVERYWHERE. And in particular, I’m seeing women’s inability to truly EMBODY their rage from a place of alliance, understanding and raw power.
In the last few weeks, the same theme has shown her face over and over in my Embody dance students, my coaching clients and even my coach: The bypassing of anger… The denial of anger…
The inability to let anger flood
our muscles
our bones
…the space between our cells.
The inability to breathe in rage and then breathe her back out.
The inability to alchemize the fire, the passion, the heat that comes with rage and turns it into a spacious opening.
“Allowing oneself to be taught by one’s rage, thereby transforming it, disperses it. One’s energy returns to use in other areas, especially the area of creativity. Although some people claim they can create out of chronic rage, the problem is that rage confines access to the collective consciousness – so that a person creating out of rage tends to create the same thing over and over again with nothing new coming through.” – Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The way I see it, Dr. Estes is not just talking to angry artists here. This stuckness of creating the same thing over and over can be seen in your relationship patterns, your business creations and your mindset.
“So rather than trying to “behave” and not feel our rage or rather than using it to burn down every living thing in a 100 mile radius, it is better to first ask rage to take a seat with us…” she says.
Rage, if not fully-embodied, can clog up the energy pathways of your body.
Rage, if not fully felt, can seriously fight your growth.
Rage, if not fully accepted, can hide as energetic plaque and toxicity in your physical body.
It is not a coincidence that in my Embody playlists, I always throw in a loud, angsty song or chaotic soundscape as prerequisite to the playful childlike muse song that follows.
I believe that in order to access our authentic carefree childlike essence we must make space for her. We can only make space when we have cleared the channels, fatigued the muscles and dissolved our defenses. And how do we clear? We turn up the flame, we call in warrior energy – first to destroy, then to rebuild.
In pragmatic terms, this means boxing, running, shaking, jumping, shouting, kicking, stomping, contracting.
…Creating space in your life for your rage.
And then creating space after the rage for a deepening, for a sinking, for a surrendering. For connection to your truth.
Recently, I invited a client to try holding her heart in her palms after her daily run (which she is doing to an angry playlist I created for her.) Because it is much easier to hear your heart’s whispered yearnings when it’s not muffled by your angry critic. Because it is much easier to make space for your desires when your heart’s real estate isn’t being rented out by your tantrumy teenage self.
Similar to shame, as Brene Brown has so clearly shown us, the longer you avoid the elephant in the room, the bigger it gets, the more shame bubbles and the harder it is to address. Rage has a similar effect. Except instead of snowballing the way shame does, it calcifies your body. It adds a sticky film over your sensory muscles and dulls the rest of your emotions.
Whether it’s collective or individual, it is part of our DNA as women to feel rage – whether a result of collective injustices or personal offenses… and most likely a response to caging the wild woman inside all of us.
So the beautiful scared lamb in the back of the room. I invite you…..
… Let her in…
Rage with her destruction.
Let her in, desire with her allure.
Let her in, dream with her musings.
Let her in, your little girl with her giggles.
Let her in, the primal warrior with her passion.
Let her in, the wild woman with her naked truth.
When they are all here, these sisters, together gathered in one room… they are your army… rage will not take over, she will not conquer. She’s a team player. She will light a flame in the middle of a campfire and shed light to that which hides in the dark. She will create space for the wounds that need air to heal. She will love you in her special way. Trust her.
She is your teacher.
Just as they all are.