Do you ever experience a “sudden” outburst of anger or frustration?

Well, that “sudden” outburst isn’t so sudden. It’s actually accumulated over time and been held back until it explodes. Maybe you can’t even pinpoint what it is you’re even mad at.

I get it. I’ve been there, too. Before taking your anger out on someone else – or worse, yourself! – check out how doing meditation daily can help relieve and help you release your anger.

It can sometimes seem like the world is getting angrier. Whether it is Trumpian politics, keyboard warriors or the deluge of bad news we’re presented with on a daily basis, so much of our modern discourse seems to be fueled by animosity.

While anger is sometimes a valid and necessary response to injustice, and a driver of change, the majority of the time it fosters division and hampers our empathy. This raises an important question: are there ways we can lessen this often destructive and limiting emotion?

Anger in the Everyday

It’s in the larger themes of life – from politics to religion – that anger and annoyance are at their most obvious. Anger is deliberately fueled to entrench certain worldviews, stop people from discussing issues from a point of understanding, and obfuscate our common humanity. The people who try to stymie the freedoms of others (whether through terrorism, violence, or more subtle rhetoric and government reform) rely on their own anger at the way things are – and stoking the anger of others – to force their ideas through.

It is anger that allows immigrants to be treated badly, inspires people to picket gay rights marches, and reduces intelligent debate to shouting matches. But it isn’t only here that we see the problems resentment and outrage cause.

In our day-to-day lives and personal relationships, anger can be a significant barrier to happiness and good will. When we become irritable with our partners, children or family, we find it harder to appreciate them as a full human being – with flaws and motivations of their own – and instead accredit them with attributes and intentions that can be quite far from the truth.

When we’re irritable, a thoughtless action can suddenly be misconstrued as a deliberately provocative one. The person in question may be cast in our minds as inherently “lazy” or “annoying” or “selfish,” instead of a good person that we love who happens to have done a lazy, annoying or selfish thing. It throws up a wall which stops us from truly relating to others, and is an impediment to us actually solving the problem or communicating our point of view.

Angry emotions can also feel like something we have little conscious control over. Everyone has experienced a time where they’ve become more incensed than they need to be, snapping or shouting at someone and feeling instantly guilty afterwards – especially if we’ve managed to really hurt their feelings. If this happens too often, our loved ones can even become wary of us, walking on eggshells when really, we’re the one who is being unfair, which is a deeply problematic situation to find ourselves in.

We can find ourselves in the grips of wasted anger over things we can’t control. The deep frustration of being stuck in a long queue, filling out pointless finicky forms, the car in front driving very, very slowly when we need to be somewhere. It can all make us want to scream and cast a cloud over the rest of our day. But ultimately, these feelings get us nowhere, because we can’t change the situation even if we wanted to.

Meditation and a Sense of Calm

Anger and stress are closely related emotions that both complement and feed off each other. We are far more likely to become wound up when we feel under pressure, and much more inclined to let little things go when we feel relaxed. Similar to stress, anger is a physiological response to a perceived threat to you, your loved ones, your property, your self-image, your emotional safety or some part of your identity.

When a cat swipes at another feline intruder in their territory, they are experiencing a similar thing we do when we raise our voice at someone who has just overstepped some sort of personal boundary. Of course the major difference is that we can intellectualize and mull over our anger, even becoming angry at imagined scenarios. But the ancient “flight or fight” mechanism we share with so many other forms of life is essentially the same.

It’s this hair-trigger, lizard-brain response that practices like yoga and meditation can help to regulate. We may be influenced by similar instinctive drivers as other animals, but as humans we have the capacity to think and make steps to change our behavior, and even change the way our mind works.

Brain scans have demonstrated that regular meditation can physically reduce the size of our amygdala, which is the part of our brains which governs our flight or fight response. It also has been shown to calm our autonomic nervous system, the bodily structure through which our stress hormones – such as cortisol and adrenaline – are flooded into the body. It’s through these processes that we feel tense and unable to think clearly, but meditation appears to significantly reduce their hold over us.

Meditation also makes us more aware of our feelings and more empathetic to the feelings of others, building up the emotional bandwidth to deal with the rising tension in any given moment and put a lid on any hostility we feel towards the world. We experience the world from a far less pressured and stressed place, being able to feel anger when it arises without falling into the habitual irritations of an angry person.

With less anger and more understanding in our worldview, it becomes easier to respond appropriately to any annoyances we encounter in life, becoming calmer and (perhaps most importantly) kinder people.

Credit Goes To Daily Cup Of Yoga

I hope that this article has helped you put anger and meditation into perspective. If you are someone who experiences anger or frustration regularly, I really hope that you’ve decided to give this a try.

For great Yoga & Meditation videos, visit my Youtube channel.

Speaking with other Yogis, I realized that most Yogis don’t realize how meditation could benefit them. Yoga has a rich, spiritual history and it’s more than just a pose or an exercise to tighten up your muscles.

Many of the Yogis who don’t meditate, often are dismissive of the impact meditation can make in your life. If this is you, here are 3 signs that you would benefit from meditation in your life… Even if only for 2 minutes.

1. You are tired more often than not

Feeling exhausted all the time is a common issue for us modern humans. So many of us drag ourselves out of bed, power ourselves through the day with caffeine and then – despite feeling tired all day – find it difficult to sleep at night. Every month in the USA, people type “tired all the time” 18,100 times into Google, a small hint of just how many of us feel dogged by fatigue. 

This kind of weariness seems to be a symptom of our increasingly demanding lives, and many of us wish for more motivation and energy. With more energy, we wouldn’t spend our work days in a waking doze, banking up unfinished tasks and creating stress. It would also be easier to achieve our goals in other areas of life – it’s not unusual to find ourselves crashed out on the sofa when we do have any spare time, rather than doing any of the stuff we aimed to do. 

Meditation gives us some of the rest we need in life. By focusing our mind on a mantra, practicing yoga or embracing mindfulness, we soothe our mind and body into a state of deep relaxation, allowing ourselves to switch off in a way that’s otherwise hard to achieve. This, in turn, gives us the energy boost we need, and generally makes us feel that little bit more awesome throughout the day. 

2. It feels like you have no time 

Time is something of a preoccupation in today’s culture. Our whole lives are defined by the almost arbitrary whims of the clock, in a way it would probably be difficult for our distant ancestors to imagine. Instead of following the cyclical, seasonal and celestial-based timekeeping of early humans, whose major concern was keeping the tribe fed and safe, we sacrifice much of our time to earning money and squeeze everything else in whatever time we have left. 

The result is a feeling that we simply don’t have enough time to pursue our own hobbies, build our relationships, or to just laze about if we fancy it. The speed at which the world zips by imbues us all with a false sense of urgency, where any delays or mishaps feel like an absolute disaster. Amongst the rush, we can forget about what’s actually important. 

While meditation can’t stop the clock, it can slow the pace of life a little through a change in our perception. Meditating every day provides us with a sense of calm, increasing our focus so we can appreciate the small things in life. Furthermore, because meditation can make us more productive, we tend to work through tasks with more speed and accuracy, giving us more time to simply enjoy ourselves.  

3. ‘Stressed’ is your default state 

It’s pretty normal to get stressed out every now and then, but being stressed all the time is a completely different matter. Unfortunately, like tiredness, the feeling of being constantly under pressure is something an awful lot of us can relate to. Chronic stress can make life feel far less enjoyable, as we are rarely “in the moment” but always thinking about whatever’s nagging away at us. Too much of this, and life begins to feel like it’s nothing but a meaningless list of chores and worries.  

One of meditation’s most famous and well-research benefits is reduced stress. With stress causing havoc for our health, sleep and mental wellbeing, it’s this benefit which is perhaps the most far-reaching of all. 

In many respects, meditation (in all its forms and throughout the ages) has been developed to direct the mind away from the mundane and everyday, in order to experience glimpses of the deeper truths in life. It may well be this which helps us rise above persistent worries and daily frustrations, making stress something we can manage without becoming overwhelmed. 

Credit goes to Daily Cup of Yoga Click here

If any of the above describes  you, I hope that you start taking the time to meditate. Start small, begin with 2-5 minutes and as you see the benefits in your life, you will eventually increase to a little longer each time.

For great Yoga & Meditation videos, visit my Youtube channel.