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As humans, it’s common to feel a wide spectrum of emotions — including happiness, excitement, boredom, sadness, or anger. These feelings are a part of the human experience. What’s most important is allowing yourself to feel and express them in a healthy way.
While positive emotions often flow freely, feelings like anger can be harder to express, according to Bustle. When you’re angry, it might stem from an inconvenience or lead to disagreement with a loved one. Sometimes, what brings on the emotion is less clear. While anger can impact your life in powerful ways, it doesn’t have to stay that way. That’s where a rage ritual comes in — a healthy way to let go of what you’ve been holding onto.
The Benefits of a Rage Ritual
If you’ve caught yourself slamming a door, crying, or honking more than usual in traffic, it may be a sign that anger has built up in your body. A “rage ritual” could provide a safe space to release that energy. Taking time to release anger can help you acknowledge and express negative emotions. “Some of us have never been able to stand up for ourselves, or say what we need, or tell someone how we feel,” Mia Magik, an intuitive advisor, tells Bustle.
Instead of bottling up emotion, the goal is to move it out of your body so it doesn’t get stuck and shape how you think and feel. Magik says while it's called a rage ritual, it’s really a “release” ritual — a way to let go of grief, sadness, or any other suppressed emotion. The rewards of letting it all out are feeling more grounded, relaxed, and able to take on any challenges you might encounter.
How to Do the Ritual
Begin with a short 20-minute meditation to reflect on moments when it wasn’t safe for you to express how you felt or when your boundaries weren’t honored. Breathe deeply and, if it helps, grab a journal to write everything down.
Somatic exercises can then help you fully be in your body, instead of shutting down, running away from, or suppressing anger. Ways to do this include pushing against a wall while saying “Get away from me!” or slamming a pillow down with intention. However, what you do after the ritual is also important. Set aside time for self-care, whether it’s taking a warm bath, reaching out to a friend, walking in nature, or simply listening to the birds.
Magik recommends doing the ritual for another 20 minutes — or until you feel tired. She also says it's best to do the practice every day for one week, but after that, once every four months is effective.
The Power of a Release Ritual
The ritual can be deeply transformational. “This was a place where you were, probably for the first time in a really, really long time, if ever, able to scream out loud things about how you felt,” Kimberly Helmus, who took part in one of Magik’s rage rituals, tells USA TODAY.
“When people do this and give themselves permission to release their anger, their capacity for joy actually expands,” Magik says. “They go home to their families with more gratitude and ease and peace,” she adds.
However, Magik isn’t the only one who is making a positive difference in people’s lives through the practice — with sacred rage ceremonies and retreats taking place across the world. The practice seems to especially resonate with women. Psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis says this isn’t surprising, since women have been discouraged from embracing their right to feel angry throughout history.
While rage rituals can be life-changing, they aren’t for everyone. For some, outlets like hitting a punching bag or doing an intense workout are a great way to handle the emotion. For others, gentler strategies like deep breathing, walks, or soothing music, may be more effective.
Sarkis emphasizes that when it comes to the ritual, it’s best to understand how you process anger before choosing to participate. “When you do something like that, it's important to know, does it exacerbate your anger or does it decrease it?” she adds. “That's something that's on an individual basis. It depends on past experiences. It depends on your own makeup. It depends on just brain chemistry.”
The Importance of Sacred Rage
Anger is more than an emotion — it holds spiritual significance. Sacred rage is the divine, purposeful anger that arises in the face of oppression, violation, and injustice, according to a blog from the Urban Institute of Mental Health. It comes from an awareness of the truth, and is the voice of the inner warrior, protector, and soul declaring, “No more.” It can carry powerful messages such as, “I will not shrink myself to be loved” and “I will not let this legacy of harm continue through me.”
Rooted in love for the self, the collective, the Earth, sacred rage seeks to protect what has been harmed. It’s also ancestral and spiritual and can carry echoes of the unspoken cries of ancestors, and the rage of those who had their power taken away or were silenced. Importantly, it demands truth. When expressed consciously, it can be a force of liberation and healing, and help you reclaim your voice.
Don’t be afraid to embrace anger. When channeled consciously and in a healthy way, it can help you release what is no longer meant for you to carry — clearing the path for healing and inner freedom.
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