In kindergarten we learned about Rosa Parks, and I couldn’t comprehend why she didn’t want to sit in the back of the bus. Wasn’t the back of the bus where the cool kids sat? The entire lesson flew right over my head. At that age, I couldn’t even comprehend what creates a consciousness of separation.
This makes me angry
I was raised in a fairly conservative Jewish community. Because of a history of persecution, displacement and immigration, the community is bonded, intimate and, in fact, quite separate. Community created in part by fear. This is not OK. This makes me angry.
I was born in the early ’80s, the offspring of the “Give Peace a Chance” and “All You Need Is Love” generation. I grew up in the New York suburbs with firsthand testimony of the crack epidemic and secondhand testimony of Vietnam veterans and heroin’s saturation of the American Dream. I’ve witnessed HIV become AIDS. I’ve seen the horrors of active addiction. This is not OK. This makes me angry.
I’m from a generation that had to make up our own rules, customs and traditions. Divorce is basically as common as marriage, and many of our parents weren’t prepared to create ritual and ceremony to blend stepchildren, adopted children and all kinds of extended family. Language in families is so sensitive. There’s no term of endearment for a stepparent that carries the same respect as “Mom” or “Dad,” and the same goes for us, the children. This territory of remarriage, blended families and mixed cultures and religions requires so much love, attention to detail and honor. Instead it gets anger, confusion and judgment. This makes us all angry!
In my own skin, when no one is looking, I rarely see age, color, gender or religion. I see beautiful people: some with battered hands, rounded shoulders, interesting clothes, round bellies, strong muscles. And I think, “Wow, look at what you created, God. Thank you!” I see people with the courage to be themselves, and it’s so touching I could cry. And then I myself fall into the illusion of separation, choosing to please family and society over God. This is not OK. This makes me angry!
The headlines that year, the fight over marriage equality and the killing of Trayvon Martin, made my heart ache. That these were still such major issues made me angry. (And it’s no surprise to me that such sensitive topics build momentum in the heat of summer, at the height of pitta season.)
Unity begins with the self
For the purposes of this piece, I am a yogi. (Really, I am a beautiful spirit soul in a human body, but that’s another article, and that identity won’t get me a vote in the primaries.) As a student of yoga, I embrace the practice of unity. For me, unity begins with the self: the ever-present effort of experiencing myself in my entirety, mind, body and spirit. As a philosophy it’s simple to embrace. As a way of life, it’s a lovely dance of dynamic equilibrium, which, I may add, is not always as pretty as the phrase itself. Here’s where irony gets a quick laugh: I always believed in unity as a movement for the human race, and I spent many, many years not even believing in myself.
Keith Sherwood, author of Chakra Therapy, observes that anger, like love, is an outward-going radiation, but that it is rarely expressed appropriately. And so we have an abundance of misdirected humans. Somewhere between coming of age and today, I gathered the courage to explore myself with the guidance of experienced teachers, a pen and pad, and my yoga mat.
Here’s what I learned: girl, you are fearful and angry!
It turns out I was driven by an enormous amount of fear and anger. Can you relate? I was always afraid of being different, not fitting in, standing out, not being noticed, wearing the wrong outfit, being too fat, looking too dark, looking too white, not looking like my family, not meeting others’ expectations. I am a by-product of elders taught to live a life of separation: from each other, and ultimately from the self. Phew, it is hard work paying attention to everyone but myself!
Once I identified my anger, with my teacher’s guidance, I had to locate its source. The catch: the source couldn’t have anything to do with anyone else but me. After much soul-searching, I understood that most of my anger sits inside of me, and when I’m out of balance, society instigates it. So I embarked on telling the truth. I get to show up every day as myself and choose how I live my truth.
Tools for the angry yogi
Here are some of the tools my teachers have gifted me for coping with anger:
- Tell the truth. If you don’t know what to say, work it out. Move your body. Practice asana. Get to class, take a risk and abandon ego. Let your body do the talking. Slow down. Notice where in your body you feel discontent or disconnected, and don’t run! Acknowledge the fiery ball of energy and let it move you closer to mastery of yourself.
- Cool down first. Sometimes moving through asanas doesn’t get me to the truth because I have so much heat. I need to cool my anger before I can sit with myself, so I eat cooling foods like cucumbers and add mint to my tea.
- Get closer to the ground. Hang out in child’s pose, down dog or a forward fold. From here, invite pranayama into the body. My breath always tells the truth right away. Where am I holding my breath? My teachers can often read my breath before I say a word. (If you’ve ever been a child irritated by your parents, remember the huffing and puffing?) Maybe you need to skip straight to savasana.
- Breathe through the left nostril. Beyond alternate-nostril breathing, we can emphasize one side. Rest your right thumb by your right nostril and your ring finger by your left. Close your eyes. Inhale through both nostrils all the way to the last sip of air, then close the right nostril and exhale fully through the left. Inhale back through the left, and keep breathing in and out through the left nostril only, until you feel yourself settle. Left-nostril breathing, traditionally called chandra bhedana, is considered cooling and calming, supporting the body’s rest-and-digest response. (If you are pregnant, skip any breath retention.)
- Meditate. My wise teachers taught me early on that prayer is us talking to the God of our understanding, and meditation is us listening. Once the tools above help us get quiet, we can develop a language beyond words with a power greater than ourselves. That power can live in the spirit of a group, a sacred poem, talk therapy, kirtan, selfless service, asana and so much more. Get still. Sometimes all I can say is, “God, help me deal with this fear and anger,” or “God, please help me practice faith where I’m choosing fear,” or “God, all this anger around me is just a mirror. Please show me love.” Sometimes I cry, letting the anger move from a fiery ball in my belly up my spine, into my heart, through my throat and toward my intuition. There I am safe, and I let the cooling, salty tears comfort me. God has never RSVP’d in meditation to tell me everything will be OK. But my prayers have always been answered in subtle ways: a random phone call from a long-lost friend, fresh herbs from someone’s garden, even my very own anger. Go figure.
- Gratitude. Gratitude is the name of the human game. Count your blessings: the device you’re reading this on, the feet that carry you from point A to point B, the breath in your body, the food in your fridge. It didn’t have to be this good.
- Do service. Seva. Take the focus off yourself and help someone else. It’s that simple. Putting our angry, fearful, fiery momentum toward helping others actually unites us, and we discover we are never alone. At last, we can arrive content in our own skin.
Case almost closed
The acute case of the angry yogi is almost closed. I’m still quite angry. But here is the hope: with all these tools to slow down, my world has become a mirror of love, attention to detail and honor. Choose wisely, and your world can become that mirror too.
If you are reading this, I am honored to pass on what my teacher always tells me: there is nothing you have experienced, felt, seen or heard that I haven’t heard before. I believe in you. If I can free myself from anger and fear, so can you.
