How do I relax when I am angry?

If you have some trouble controlling your anger, you are normal. Anger has enormous power that over shadows our clear thinking and our desire to do good. Academic studies identify it as the hardest of emotions to master. Most adults do not master anger until after age 50 – if ever. Anger can lead to heart disease and cancer.

We typically get angry when someone blocks us from our goals, lies to us, or unjustly hurts someone. Fear is an emotional signal that danger is near. Anger is a signal someone is crossing into our territory – physically or psychologically. Yet there is an upside to anger, because anger gets us moving. Anger and depression are incompatible states.

Play is the natural way we let go of our unpleasant emotions and heal. Children naturally play through a conflict they experience. Play is the natural way we let go of tension and heal. During authentic play, we are spontaneous, unselfconscious, and non-competitive as well as lose track of time. Playing is part of what it means to be human. Schiller writes, (woman or) “man is completely human only when (she or) he is at play.”

Using simple movements, natural to us as children that we have been taught to suppress as grown-ups, Laura Lund. offers us ways to cope with anger. Laura Lund is certified as a Somatic Counselor and Educator with Zapchen Somatics. In this video, Laura Lund demonstrates technique to change our emotional state with childlike body movements and sounds – raspberries, horse lips, and stomping.