Question your addiction to control, as it prevents vulnerability. Embracing vulnerability leads to a profound sense of agency, helps you discover your authentic self, and fosters more honest relationships.
Cultivate self-awareness to create space between yourself and your emotions, urges, and narratives. This empowers you to see them clearly and respond wisely, rather than being blindly yanked around by them.
Look beyond anger to identify and admit the underlying hurt, fear, anxiety, trauma, sadness, or sorrow. Addressing this woundedness, through vulnerability, creates space and a more balanced relationship with anger.
Instead of resisting discomfort, choose to welcome and accept its presence. This creates space around the experience and drops a layer of suffering, allowing for deeper engagement with the moment.
Come back into the present, showing up as open-hearted as possible to recognize and notice everything arising in your experience without reacting. Allow it to simply be there to create mental spaciousness.
Regularly check in with yourself to discern if you need a break, taking it only for restoration. This ensures you can sustainably return to important long-term work, whether political, social, or in general living.
Prioritize foundational, long-term self-care by choosing simple, restorative activities like rest, watching a show, having a treat, or turning off news/media, rather than seeking short-term pleasures that deplete your system.
Allow yourself to notice and name feelings of anger, then let them be present without immediately reacting. Reacting to anger is draining and depleting, while noticing creates space.
Once you have space around anger by tending to underlying woundedness, use its energy skillfully to inform actions that create benefit for yourself and others, rather than escalating harm or violence.
If emotions become overwhelming, consciously choose to disengage and do something else restorative, such as tuning out, watching a comforting show, taking a bath, or going for a walk. This is a valid and effective form of emotional management.
If you feel overwhelmed or “in tilt” during meditation, stop the current practice and shift your attention to something grounded, solid, and neutral, such as the weight of your body on a seat, feet on the floor, or hands.
Continuously be aware of the data you’re receiving from your practice and make immediate adjustments in the moment. Avoid aggressive forcing of outcomes, instead cultivating openness, ease, and adaptability.
Approach mindfulness and meditation with an energy of allowing, watching, and noticing, rather than striving for goals or trying to conquer the practice. This fosters openness, ease, softness, and gentleness.
When experiencing emotions like anxiety, stop and check in to notice where they are showing up in your body (e.g., buzzing in the chest, throbbing in temples) to deepen your understanding of the experience.
When exploring deep physical sensations, especially if you’re sensitive to trauma, develop a lot of care and ensure you have adequate support in your practice to avoid getting triggered.
If the breath becomes a trigger or is not sufficiently grounding, shift your attention to something more solid and tangible, like other body sensations or external anchors, for greater stability.
Lie down on the floor and feel the weight of your body being held by the ground. This practice is restorative and helps you get close to the earth, providing a sense of stability.
After acknowledging how you feel in the moment, you gain the capacity to choose your next action. This might include taking a break and relying on other forms of care if the current experience is too overwhelming to hold in practice.
By holding space for present experiences, you create mental spaciousness, which allows you the freedom to choose to turn your attention to restorative thoughts like gratitude instead of fixating on anxiety.
Acknowledge that much in life is uncertain and cultivate a mindset of acceptance, trusting yourself and your practice to meet whatever arises without getting lost in future anxiety.
When starting a mindfulness practice, be prepared to experience discomfort as you tune into material you’ve been avoiding. This awareness is a positive step towards understanding, not a sign of failure.
Actively lean into discomfort, showing up to it with curiosity and noticing its components. This allows for deeper understanding that is impossible if you constantly run away.
To move forward, individually commit to holding your own discomfort and then work collaboratively in groups and collectives to collectively process and hold shared pain and woundedness.
While cultivating compassion, assert your right to set boundaries and disengage from relationships with people whose views manifest as harm or violence against you or your communities.
Recognize that others also struggle with their anger and hurt, trying their best, which can foster compassion and create space in your own experience of anger.
When feeling rage, turn your attention to the underlying hurt within yourself and then expand that empathy to acknowledge the shared hurt and rage experienced by others, creating a sense of spaciousness.
Put in the work to develop the capacity to truly experience anger, including its mental and physical sensations, as this full experience can take the edge off its energy.
When practicing loving-kindness, start by extending it to people you love, then move to neutral people, and only gradually extend it to those you dislike or hate, avoiding setting the bar too high initially.
Apply the basic empathy you have for yourself (knowing what it’s like to suffer or be afraid) to everyone, even those you dislike, wishing them to have what they need to be well and be free from suffering.
In challenging times, turn your attention to things that are restorative and supportive, focus on good relationships, and only do what is necessary, avoiding unnecessary tasks.
Adopt a long-term perspective, understanding that you may not see the full results of your efforts in your lifetime, but your actions now are preparing the ground for a better future for those who come after you.
Recognize that important work requires longevity and sustainability, so take breaks when needed to ensure you can continue contributing over the long term.
If you’re newer to practice, move gingerly, carefully, and wisely to avoid overwhelming yourself, allowing for gradual development of capacity.