REIKI WORLD MAGAZINE - WINTER 2021
Emotional Techniques: Into the Anger by Hilary de Vries
Anger is a natural emotion. It can be the fire that fuels us. It can give us the impetus we need to instigate change and react to injustices. It can give us strength and see us through adversity, but it can also consume us and cause havoc.
stored within the body.’ They also recognise that ‘it is worth considering anger as a valuable and positive emotion’, and Walter Lubeck in ‘The Spirit of Reiki’ says ‘Anger can be a tremendously positive source of power’.
Tadao Yamaguchi in ‘Light on the Origins of Reiki’ says’ Anger hurts you and others’. Reading this may lead us to jump to the conclusion that anger is indeed a bad thing and encourage us to batten such feelings down. After all, who would want to do something that could lead to pain for both ourselves and others? Is suppression the only way?
Yamaguchi says how ‘very strong anger can be soothed with Reiki.’ He also doesn’t invite us to ignore anger or wish it away but indeed to work with it. Reiki and Chinese medicine may describe the release of emotion in terms of flow, whereas Autogenics refers more to it as something to be discharged, but all treat it as energy. They all also look to achieving balance.
Qi Gong and Chinese Medicine practitioner Daverick Legget In his book ‘Recipes For Self Healing’ says ‘Turned inwards, anger frequently attacks the joints and disrupts the body’s rhythms or turns to depression or self-destructive behaviour’. In Autogenics it has been observed that clients presenting with various health issues often carry repressed anger. Clearly suppression is not without its dangers.
Looking at how other techniques and methodologies approach anger puts anger in a wider context and is useful in returning to how we can look at it in a Reiki context. Viewing anger as something positive may not be what initially comes to mind when reading the first Reiki principle ‘Do not be angry’ or ‘Do not anger’. It seems to offer no way of dealing with the anger we all naturally feel. But when we come from a place of accepting anger as part of life, as part of our experience, it opens up this principle.
Also, as already outlined, anger is a natural emotion. If we deny anger we deny part of ourselves, invite different health issues and lose access to its strengths and potential. If anger is natural then it is part of life, and must be worked with. Legget describes anger thus ‘This natural assertive and creative force becomes damaging when it is chronically obstructed’. This statement reflects both anger’s positive and negative aspects, and the need to work with this emotion rather than try to deny it. In Autogenic Therapy- Self-help for Mind and Body’ authors Jane Bird and Christine Pinch say ‘if never allow ourselves to express anger, the impulses are not discharged, but are
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We can interpret it as not allowing ourselves to become our anger. Do not be angry,but try to reach a state where we accept the anger, acknowledge it, but we are not the anger. Anger is a feeling, an emotion, not who we are; it is a temporary state. When we identify ourselves as anger, it becomes all-consuming and offers us no way out, no opportunity of achieving balance. When we take that step back, view it as an energy flowing through us, it becomes something we can work with and harness.
