About 25 years ago, I participated on a 3-day woman’s empowerment weekend retreat. In the middle of the retreat was an anger exercise that was, to this day, one of the top transformational and empowering experiences I had ever had. I finally gave voice to feelings I had repressed throughout my young life. Because I had not known how to handle those feelings, or what to do with them, I stuffed them down and became disconnected from myself. Allowing my anger to flow was a reclamation of my personal power and my mattering, and I have not been the same since.
I continued to attend these retreats, learning how to empower other women, and then eventually began leading the anger section myself. Anger Gym is the term I came up years back while leading a group of women through that same exercise. Anger gym represents a judgement-free container to own and express our repressed hurt, pain, and anger. In doing so we connect with our truth, set boundaries, stand up for ourselves, and physiologically release pent-up emotions to bring about more flow and aliveness.
context behind ANGER GYM
why the name Anger GYM?
As we use a fitness gym to lift weights and exercise so that our bodies get stronger for better functioning in our lives, we go to the Anger Gym to learn and practice effective strategies to release and channel our anger in healthy, safe ways. We don’t carry around 25 pound weight daily, but doing the workouts at the gym make us stronger; likewise, you’re not going to want to rage and fully express your anger on all the people in your life, but having an embodied experience of that can help you flow more in your every day life when you do encounter things that really p*ss you off!
Together with other women, and with the support of facilitators, you’ll learn to use bioenergetic exercises to feel more open and alive in your life, freeing yourself from the burden of resentments and breaking down the walls you may use to protect yourself from hurt and pain.
why focus on ANGER?
As children we adapt to our environment and learn to suppress our feelings - we hold in our fear, muffle our tears, quiet our joy, and stifle our anger because we think our parents can’t cope with these feelings. We begin to develop beliefs about which feelings are okay, and which ones are not okay for us to have and express. We learn patterns of coping from early childhood to deal with our feelings: isolating ourselves from others, eating certain foods to bring us comfort, watching television or getting lost in books, rebelling as a way to express our anger, developing a strong inner critic that pushes us to strive so that we can be loved, and so many more. All these coping patterns become a mask and a shell we then present to the world that unfortunately hides our true self. While there is a benefit to get in touch with all repressed parts of ourselves, getting in touch with our anger, I’ve found, offers a powerful way to use our body’s energy to help us to break us out of that shell and into true expression of ourselves.
what are Bioenergetics and Somatic expression?
The Anger Gym uses a handful of bioenergetic techniques to help us express and release pent up emotions of anger in the body. You will be able to use some of these on your own at home. Bioenergetics is a way of understanding personality in terms of the body and its energetic processes. Alexander Lowen, M.D. developed Bioenergetics over 75 years ago as a therapeutic technique to help people get back together with the body and enjoy the life of the body to the fullest degree possible. (See: What is Bioenergetics? | Lowen Foundation)
More commonly known these days is the term somatic expression. Simply put, the term somatic means of the body, as apart from the mind. There has been an explosion of research, therapies and practices that have emerged out of the idea, or fact, that our body holds and expresses experiences and emotions, and that traumatic events or unresolved emotional issues can become 'trapped' within the cells of our bodies. It makes sense, then, that focusing on the body (somatic) through the use of mindfulness, breathing, touch, movement and emoting can help us release what has been trapped.
the HOPE
What I hope Anger Gym does is give women a space and experience to be in awe of the power that our anger holds for us! When expressed in healthy, safe ways, we can transform our bitterness, passive aggression and internal voices of self-blame and criticism. We can become ourselves, empowered to communicate clearly and effectively, and live from a place of intention. Holistically and globally speaking, there is a massive amount of grief, pain and suffering that anyone with a smart phone or internet connection is likely to experience with a mere scrolling through current news. I believe we have needed to numb ourselves to all this pain and in doing so, we have also squelched our lifeforce; expressing our feelings (including anger) loudly and proudly is a way to take back our humanity.
The Woman’s Essential Experience weekend retreat was designed by Dr. Judith Wright circa 1995 and was offered for over 25 years. Special acknowledgement goes to her, and to my partners in Anger: Angela Kezon, Edda Coscioni, Beryl Stromsta, and to Barbara Burgess for her contributions.