Take a moment and remember the last time you got really, really angry. Where were you? What was happening? How was it for you to be this angry?
Was it fun, by any chance? If not, you might want to try something called Rage Club.
The past few months I’ve been exploring anger in a particular exercise that goes something like this: I lie down on a bed, and take a few deep breaths. I let any thoughts pass. I hear the sounds around me. I sense how my body is supported by the mattress, the points where it touches and connects to the outer world. I go inward. Some parts of my body are open and flowing, and some are tight and numb. I don’t react to any of this. I don’t judge or try to change anything. I simply notice. What’s it like to be me, right here, right now?
Then I check my emotional body. What feelings do I feel right now? If I can’t feel anything, I look a little harder, sharpen my sensitivity. I stay a moment with what is.
Then I get angry.
Just a little bit at first. I find this inward place, make this specific inward movement. Voilà, there it is: the heat and energy in my skull and jaw, my hips and legs and arms. It’s slight, but it’s there. I hold the anger at this level. From the outside, nobody would notice a thing. Just a guy on a mattress. Is he sleeping?
I relax completely, take a few deep breaths. I notice any changes in my body. A slight feeling of joy. Some fear. A little tingling circulating through me. Then I go again. This time, I get a little angrier.
The energy gets bigger in my body, and I yearn to use it somehow, to find an outlet for the rising intensity within me. I say something. It’s not particularly loud, but it’s louder than normal. And there’s something else behind my voice. It projects. It has a force that usually isn’t there. The energy is still building, and I let my right arm rise and then strike the mattress—a punch. More words come, even louder this time. Once I’ve said them, the space in the room has shifted slightly. As if there is more space. As if everything is slightly more attentive. More alive.
I relax completely. Take a few deep breaths. I almost can’t wait.
This time, I get angry. I punch the mattress hard with both hands. For a tiny fraction of a second, I am taken aback by the force of it. Is that me? I start speaking out loud. It’s nothing in particular. The words are simply a means of vocalizing the energetic charge. It’s really loud, and yet, I’m not screaming. A brilliant clarity fills the room. It’s exhilarating.
Am I allowed to do this? I stop, look around the room, listen into the house. Did somebody call the police? I get up, go upstairs to check on the dog. He’s fine. I go back down with giddy excitement. Not unlike what I might have felt as a young teenager before enjoying some ‘private time’. Like I’m doing something that is slightly forbidden, something one doesn’t talk about too much with others, perhaps even tries to hide—but something that is simply way too good not to do.
I lie down again, take my time. It’s sensual, really. I let the inward sensation get even bigger, hold the expression of it for even longer. It pulsates and courses, begging for action. Then I let it rip. I don’t punch the mattress once or twice or three times. I don’t shout something.
I go wild.
The anger courses through me, finding outlet in continuous punches and kicks, a rising and falling of the hips and the head, and arching of the back, combined with a voice that doesn’t seem like my voice at all—it’s pristine, piercing, carrying so much power and clarity that I’m in awe. The words are different now, come not from my mind. They show me what I truly care about, where I really am, what I never said.
I don’t want to stop and come back down. I keep on going. The words are replaced by sounds. I go deeper and deeper within me, touching some place that I’ve lost a long time ago. Raging, I break open. I become anger. It’s profound, almost maddening. There is so much energy it seems like I could go on forever, like I’m plugged into an electricity outlet. It doesn’t take me energy to do this—this gives me energy.
Eventually, I leave that place. I lie on the mattress, breathing heavily through my nose. There is a lot happening in my body. I’m hot, sweaty even. I have a huge grin on my face. Tingles all over. It’s as though I ran 10 kilometres. As if I just took an emotional shower and am now sparkling clean.
That was fun.
***
How could this be even more fun? Doing it together with others, of course!
Anger has had such a bad reputation for so long, it is high time to shift out of the old associations and concepts around it, and start using this force of nature for clarity, creation, and transformation. Or whatever else you might want to do with it.
Are you an explorer like myself? If so, this world might kind of suck at first glance. Born too late to explore the earth, born too young to explore the galaxy? Not fond of PhDs? Well, one field of research that is wide open is the emotional body, of which you just so happen to have one.
The common thing to do with feelings today, if you’re not repressing them, is to release them! Emotional release here, emotional release there. Think about that! You sit on rocket fuel, and you insist on either pretending it’s not there or dumping it into the ocean.
In Rage Club, you get to experiment with your anger and explore new, different ways to use it consciously in a team of others doing the same. All the while, you’re growing up emotionally, one of the most important steps I’ve found to embody my full potential as a human being and become an adult (which are preciously rare and sorely needed today). This, in turn, is one of the most important steps to actually change something on this earth.
Big stuff! All happening in Rage Club.
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