Processing Anger

Hello, it's Eve here with you. Welcome to this guided walking meditation, intended to help you process anger and any other difficult emotions you might be experiencing. There is so much going on in the world right now. It can be hard at times to process the ongoing onslaughts of challenging news, continued gun violence, legal decisions that are impacting millions of people's reproductive rights. And in many parts of the world, there is a lot of uncertainty economically. Even just saying all of these things feels quite overwhelming, and honestly, it can leave us feeling quite angry and hopeless. So if you're experiencing any anger or that sense of feeling hopeless, I feel you. I hear you. Anger, though, is not a bad emotion. It's a perfectly healthy and normal emotion to experience, and it can be helpful to remind ourselves that often our anger might be coming from a place of wishing and hoping that things could be improved, or that injustices are addressed. It's also really useful to express our feelings, especially anger. If we keep it bottled up inside, it can sometimes lead us to take harmful actions, or actions that we might regret, and it can have a big impact on our mental health. Because anger can feel very intense physically, it can be hard to know what to do with that energy in the body. So in today's exercise, we're going to do a walking meditation. When we're angry, there are often a lot of thoughts associated with the anger, and we can get stuck in a loop of negative thinking. We might lash out at someone without thinking about the consequences of what we've said. You know that feeling of seeing red? Well, it's a real feeling and we've all been there. So sitting still when we're angry can sometimes intensify the emotion. So it can be a good idea to move the body and to give the mind a little time out. So let's get ready for this exercise. If you can, I would try to go outside for this walk. So if you need to pause the exercise and head on outside, that is totally fine. Or if you can't get outside, you can do this in your home. Just find a spot where you can walk back and forth easily. All right, let's get going. So, either continue to walk or start walking at your normal pace, just walking naturally at a pace that's comfortable for you. And begin to acknowledge the space around you. Notice what you can see. What can you hear? Even, what can you smell? Notice the temperature in the air. The sensation, perhaps, of a cool breeze against the skin or the clothes against the body. Really checking in with the different senses and starting to become aware of your environment. Maybe shaking out the hands and the arms as you walk, almost as if you're shaking out any energy or anger that might be...