The Charge We've Learned to Fear
Connecting with anger, particularly in adult life, is a crucial part of healing.
I'm seeing so many heightened emotions in clinic, and almost always the instinct is to calm down, relax and want to make it go away.
But so often, what's actually needed is understanding, not suppression.
Our nervous system moves between a few main states. Parasympathetic is often described as rest and digest, but it also holds the shut-down, immobile and freeze state, the place where depression can live.
Sympathetic is the one we usually associate with stress, fight or flight. But it's also where charge lives, where inspiration, action, and responsive movement come from. It's the same system that gives us productivity and drive.
We tend to want some emotions and not others. Joy and ease are welcome whereas anger, frustration, grief, no thank you. But the full range of what we feel is what gives us the human experience. Our capacity to feel widely is our capacity to connect with life, and to feel its poignancy. If we don't allow grief or frustration, pleasure too becomes harder to find.
When I started to connect with the intense emotions I felt as an adult, the charge became exhilarating. I had good mentoring around how and when to express it. I was kept safe, and I had the resources to meet what came up.
Titration matters, meeting ourselves in small enough doses enables trust.
Emotions are energy, and energy needs to move. But that movement is nuanced, it shouldn't just fly up and out. We don't want to get rid of the charge.
We want to meet it in a way that allows it to be redistributed, redirected, transformed, rather than either left to stagnate, or thrown away.
Stagnation shows up in the body in all kinds of ways: inflammation, irritable bowels, headaches, skin irritations. The body will always find a way to express what hasn't moved.
It is possible to transform the stuck troubling emotions into inspiration.
It's a big energy and when there's more space for it to move and trust in the body, the inspiration on the other side is just as powerful.
Yin needs yang
In Chinese medicine, yin and yang are polarities that depend on each other. Yin is the passive, receptive, cool and quiet state, the one we usually associate with rest. But yin can't simply be dropped into.
To truly surrender into restful yin, without it becoming collapse or numbing, we need to be in relationship with yang, the active, charged part of the system. One doesn't work without the other.
Our culture asks us to live in constant summer. It's just not possible. Let the night fall, let winter arise, let the autumn leaves drop. This is the intelligence of life.
If something here speaks to you, you can work with me in person at my clinic in Preston and at The Yin Palace gatherings in Melbourne, or online through my qigong community and Rage Rising. The Three Treasures Pathway is offered both in person and online.
With Love,
Anny 🌹
