hey everybody it's irene lyon here welcome to today's special topics lecture titled anger as medicine and i am uh thrilled to talk about this topic and this is being recorded on a facebook live so if you're watching this live hello uh there's a comment board so tell me uh where you are and of course um just just say hello um have you been here before are you a student are you a 21 day member spsm member let me know if you're on youtube thank you for pressing play after this video goes live sometimes it's a little tougher to get back into these things that are live after the fact i see 17 nervous systems looking at me and i'm just going to make sure so make sure all systems are running here it looks like they are and i can see a comment from janet hello from british columbia canada um and i've got notes today so notes on anger as medicine this is not a new topic for me i wrote an article on this quite a few years ago maybe over four years ago and since then i talk about this a lot i teach this in my programs it is a topic that i have studied through my my studies with dr peter levine and kathy kane and also some of the just colleagues that i am around and with um so i will no doubt reference other resources but i wanted to kind of do uh an everything today anger is medicine everything and i'm seeing more people hop on and uh it's good to see people hello katie from sweden uh terry from florida jackie from pacifica miyoki from holland let's see here another spsm sandra hello so some of you this will be old information for some of you this might be brand new so if you're brand new to me again i'm irene lyon i am a nervous system expert neuroplasticity expert i am trained in the fields of somatic experiencing somatic practice feldenkrais i have a master's in biomedical science and exercise science this has been my my work um for nearly 22 years working with the human system whether through performance through healing through health through rehabilitation healing trauma um all sorts of things so i have got some post-it notes here and uh there's our topic anger as medicine so the first thing i'm gonna do is very um specific just so that i stay on track and we have specific um kind of chapters to this and um oh another fun thing i will share um some of you already know this but i'm in the midst of starting to create and write a book a book outline a book proposal i'm also in the midst of creating a teacher training so these things interest you just wanted to give you a little note that those are happening and this is a topic that will no doubt be an entire chapter and an entire semester within our teacher training when it comes up because it's so important so the first thing is i'm just going to define anger from a real basic sense and anger is an essential emotion you could even say that out loud with me anger is an essential human emotion it's an essential animal emotion mammalian emotion um sometimes it's it's good to imagine animals in the wild think about what it would be like if an animal let's say a mother bear this is like my favorite example if her cubs were at risk from a predator do you think that she would ask herself the question internally or ask her friend you know on the the passion or you know on the field while they're grazing and foraging for berries hey do you think i should get angry at this um coyote that's trying to take my my cups i don't know if a coyote would do that but something trying to prey on our cups just curious would she question that when she feels a threat i'm gonna let that sink in hopefully you know the answer um i know there's some people watching me so feel free to put a comment in the comments i'm just going to pause here uncomfortably and wait until someone tells me what would that mama bear do will she pause and wonder if she should get angry and attack and fight what do you think or would she go into action what would it be what do you think and i know there's a delay on this video so um i'm gonna wait a little bit longer and the other thing is i wait for that answer it's like a pop quiz be sure as you're listening to this lecture while it's cerebral i have a sneaky way of getting this information into your physiology and into your cells so take care of yourselves i've got my water and some tea and even some coffee here um just because i like to keep my throat wet for so for yourself you know if you need to get up if you need to move if you need to pause if you're sensing even a little bit of extra stimulation and activation don't push through this because if this is new information for you if this is stuff that really hits close to home you don't want to override anything and just you know stomach it and power through to get all the information this is being recorded you can watch it after the fact so i see some some answers coming in here so we have got this is to the question what would a mother bear do if her baby cubs and they're so cute so of course she's going to want to protect them she'd attack without hesitation immediate action action she must do she must rage instant protection there'd be no pause automatically react action of course and so we kind of just know this naturally especially those who are parents or who who are carers of other um living creatures right we are going to protect because it is our survival mechanisms our physiology it's not just the brain it's the entire something called the autonomic nervous system i've talked a lot about that um that's pretty much everything i talk about but differing viewpoints and bandages she's going to go into full fight and with no shame no apologies no questioning it is an animal impulse instinct and so anger is a natural essential mammalian animal human emotion along with joy and sadness and disgust and surprise we need these and they're part of us and i've talked in the past about emotions being neutral by design doesn't mean that they don't have big energy but our biology and i'm setting this up for future uh post-it note notes that i have here that will remind me of what i want to talk about today these emotions are there because our biology built them in they're in our dna they're in our sensations and if we don't get them out when the rising bubbling internal pieces come up um we hide them inside and that's what makes us sick and i'm going to read uh some passages from a book in a second so anger essential it's basic right so survival stress it gets stored now here's what's interesting we as human beings are we're like world-class olympic athletes when it comes to holding this stuff inside and it's nobody's fault and it's everyone's fault i've said this before our culture our our conditioning our school system are ways in which we have thought that this is how you have to raise a human this is how we you know be good don't get mad um and there's so many side notes to that that i won't get into it but we have kind of cultura culturized that's a word and conditioned our young to uh sometimes not let out these emotions and i'm gonna give an example of how we start to hold these things in um and i've done another video about this but i'm going to give just a little snippet it's on the origins of healthy aggression and we will post all these links up as well and so when we are born when little baby comes out of mama and they are small and you know vulnerable there's a lot going on there a lot of people say oh there's nothing going on there they're just a lump of cells and they're not fun until you can play with them the amount of times i've heard parents say that is insane but that little infant is a powerhouse of nervous system wires just firing and imagine you've never seen light you've never smelled you've never heard sound cleanly you've never felt touch so much nuance and so much richness that that little infant is experiencing and then of course the communication with caregivers people etc there comes a point when that little newborn starts to feel their power right his power her power and they start to test it they start to get more strength within their their muscles within their nervous system their somatic motor sensory nervous system and one of the ways that babies start to show this and you know everyone's a little different and of course it's how that little one has been nurtured environment is so key but they'll start to do things um when especially when they're not with mom nursing they'll start to pound they'll start to scratch they'll start to pull her hair they'll start to hit and and it's not because the little one is trying to be an part of my language but it's true they're doing it because their fight impulses the chemicals that that are responsible for what we call healthy aggression and pushing forward in life and saying i am here this is me this is my life for his energy it is starting to come on right and there are a few things that happen sometimes one that little one is met with that with a mother or a character it doesn't have to be a mother it could be a grandma a nanny but they're met with equal energy not fighting back but an energy of oh my goodness look at that strong hand and then the little the little one is played with you start to tug on the fingers and you start to feel oh yeah you know what's that like to feel that power right a little baby isn't going to harm a parent that's older it's just not possible you might get a little scratch because the nails are long but we want to foster that so there might be a scenario where that is being fostered that is helping that new fresh human nervous system being experience their power and get that stuff out sadly what often occurs and this again this goes back to how we've been conditioned and cultured it's seen as bad it's seen as this little and i'll never forget peter levine saying this in one of our lectures with him the mother thinks that their their precious little lovely child is a monster that that little one is trying to hurt her and if she has not worked on her own early traumas and traumas of boundaries and acceptance and her own life force energy she will not know what to do with that big energy because she herself doesn't have that big life force energy so what does she do she shuts it down by either kidding them back punishing and punishing them by putting them down i can't take this this is too much for me how dare you do that and so that my friends is the start of this healthy sympathetic fight life force energy being squashed and we don't want that and so this is when they're infants right and this is where you know and i'm not going to get into childhood development right now in relationship to the nervous system but when we don't get that at the outset it kind of sets up this cascade of that caregiver not knowing how to attune and connect to the little one true story i gotta tell the story one of my girlfriends um has a child he's older now but when he was an infant he started to scratch and hit and and do these aggressive things she's like irene what do i do with that i said well what do you what do you think and she said well i googled it and google said that if if my infant hits me hit him back and i was like what no and i think what's unfortunate is that a lot of people are going to see those things and just be like oh well google must have said it then this is this must be true right we know that's not the case um and so i said well when you do that and i explained her what i just explained to you that's their energy coming up wanting to meet you and say hey mom i am strong look at me and look at how how amazing i am and here you are and i want to share this energy with you imagine as an adult if one of your best friends or your husband or your spouse said to you i've got this exciting news i want to show you this new dance move or i want to show you something it doesn't matter what it what is and you say ah no that sucks stop it stop it go into the room shut the door i don't want to see it that is the kind of message that's coming through to that little one so what this mother did and i said when he does that take his fists in a gentle but firmware and play play drums on your chest be playful with that energy the way a mother in the wild a mama bear will rough and tumble with her kids with her cubs and so my friend did this played with him when that energy was there guess what happened they never did it again they never punched they never scratched scratched again that doesn't mean that her her actions suppress that energy it got matched the wires got built and then he moved on right and so that is one little example of um emotion the emotion anger why it's so important for us to understand it and healthy aggression they're of the same in the same spectrum the word aggression comes from the latin agree which means to push forward to move forward it isn't just about attacking and i will get into attacking and what that means soon so wanted to give you that little vignette of what healthy aggression is we have another video that my assistant crystal has just popped up if you're on the facebook live if you're on youtube it'll be in the show more section i'm going to grab some water hello everyone from coming on i see a lot of familiar names a lot of students from 21 days and sbsm um great to see everyone okay so next thing how does anger get stored right and how can it turn into disease so i'm going to read a portion from when the body says no gabor mate this is like a bible in terms of how stress held emotions not being who we are not expressing our life force energy how that can if we're not working on it actively to get that stuff out how it makes us sick and by sick i mean chronic illness cancer heart disease autoimmune all the autoimmune pieces rheumatoid ms als we know and he doesn't get so much into it in this book but other books such as bessel vander cult's book when the body keeps the score another book of his on addiction etc when we are not able to access all of the human emotions what our biology has gifted us in our dna when we suppress and stunt them and only reserve certain things for certain times that makes us sick and so this is from a chapter at the end of the book and i've quoted this many times on many quotes and instagram posts and in my articles but it's so good i got to read it so this is uh the chapter called the seven days of healing and this is the third a is anger and so he he says he's quoting the a movie where woody allen says i never get angry or maybe it's just what woody allen said i never get angry a woody allen character says in one of his movies so it was a movie i never get angry i grow a tumor instead and then he says throughout this book we have seen the truth of that dark troll remark droll remark in numerous studies of cancer patients cancer is a huge thing right now the the last i heard at least here in canada the the numbers are going up staggeringly children are getting cancers left right and center and it's just not right in my opinion and of course there's environmental pieces there's our diet there's our our food supply our relationships but a lot of it when you get into this research is about emotional repression so he says we have also seen that the repression of anger is a major risk factor for disease because it increases physiological stress on the organism so the repression of anger keeping it inside that puts stress on the organism right there's this thought that anger expressing anger puts stress but there's a distinction in here that i'm going to unpack today so not only does the repression of anger predispose to disease but the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing i'm going to say that one more time but the experience not the expression so much but the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or at least to prolong survival people with cancer who have been able to muster anger at their physicians for example have lived longer than their placid counterparts i'm going to read that one more time because it's so powerful people with cancer and we can insert chronic illness also to that who have been able to muster anger at their physicians for example have lived longer than their more placid counterparts in animal experiments the expression of anger has been found to be less physiological stressful than the suppression of it in rats who fight others when caged together so rats who fight others when caged together cage together they slow the growth of tumors and they then the more docile rats so the rats that are being like that bear who's fighting their their you know fighting to protect the cubs those rats are are not getting as sick right they're they're they're staving away the cancer growth all that research is in this book if you want to dig it up get the book it's a great book so what this is saying is that this concept that we've kind of been raised with to not be angry to button it up the stiff british upper lip which has you know transferred to so many places throughout the entire world even though it originated you know with that high level of aristocracy it's making us sick and we need to stop this we need to learn the importance of these emotions and not explode and go around killing everyone which sadly is kind of what we've seen happen in our human society and harming others and destroying our world and all these things i know it's really morbid isn't it um we've kind of gone to the other end of this we've got this stored anger inside and rather than working with it in a way that is healing we express it and act it out in a way that is harmful right so instead of working with it in a way that is healing we express it in a way that is harmful not only to us but to others now the reason why i think i'm just making sure i'm on track with my notes so again that was gabor mate's book when the body says no i'm going to read one more thing and then we'll move on the reason why i think it's so tricky to work with is because we've been brainwashed by so from so little so again that example of that baby who is not cognitively online yet you have to understand when that little infant starts to feel that healthy aggression the burgeoning of that emotion anger they're not questioning it it's just full you know fifth gear let it out and then it gets stopped right and so it starts to come out we need to be able to honor it now of course the question might be well irene how do i work with that when i know that that's probably what happened or maybe i don't even know that that happened um but i'm pretty sure it happened and it comes down to first of all learning this education which you're doing right now um and then starting to really learn how to listen to all emotions not just anger so if we suppress tears if we suppress joy if we don't allow ourselves to feel grossed out or disgusted at things disgust is another primal emotion mammalian emotion when we stop any of the emotions when we stop ourselves from being who we truly are it's hard to get that anger out and often you'll see these workshops and these very cathartic you know weekend intensives where it's like come get your anger out and you're given a bat and you're given a pillow and you have to hit or you're you go into some kind of boxing situation and you're just getting all that frustration out the trouble with that is that if we just go in to the heading if we go into the screaming but we don't do it organically and with context the system isn't going to know how to process it so the goal is to eventually get to this point where we're so tuned to our biology and our body and we build its capacity to feel safe to feel feel connected to feel supported then when we get those pieces on board these anger healthy aggression emotions and all the other emotions they start to visit and bubble up naturally on their own and then when they do come up because we've done the prep work and the groundwork there isn't this confusion or fear most people that i work with they stay away from working with anger and expressing it because they're afraid that they're going to kill someone or hurt themselves or cause more damage and that's possible it's possible that if we don't do this in a titrated it's a very somatic experiencing term in a step-by-step slow way that is what might occur and so i'll get to that in a little bit the other reason why i think it's so tricky and confusing is that we just haven't seen it used for the most part successfully in society and we see it in ways that are harmful or we see it in ways that actually harm some people meaning we get a person might get walked all over you know not usually literally but emotionally because they don't know how to set boundaries they don't know how to say no and if we think about um abuse and people being attacked and harmed there's an interesting play in there and so i'm going to speak to that real quickly right now someone is being harmed say physically attacked and they know that they are not going to be able to fight because the person is too skilled is too big this is very common with children who are being either physically or sexually attacked and abused by people bigger than them their physiology knows i can't fight this and i can't get out so i'm going to shut down right this is kind of like nervous system basics 101 we have fight we have flight we have freeze if we can't flee first of all if we can't connect and engage and de-escalate the situation which usually with little ones it's pretty hard because the big person is trying to overpower the little person if we can't fight if we can't flee we will shut down however in that shutdown what is under that shutdown is all the fight and fight and flight survival stress it gets stored in the physiology and that gets stored in our tissues and we keep it there forever unless we actively work with it this is a very important part because a lot of times there's this misunderstanding is like oh i feel fine yeah i feel great yeah everything's great i'm kind of acting right now oh yeah i'm totally i'm really calm yep just this like but it's this it's a frozen calm we call this functional freeze i did another video about that very important video to follow up with this one so be sure to watch that afterwards if you haven't already or review it if you already have so under that i'm great i'm calm i'm really okay you can tell you can almost see the tension in a person's face in the bracing of their body you can even see this in body types in terms of armoring barreled chest right this we see this in a lot of men and women these chests and shoulders that are like literal armor right they might as well just be wearing a suit of armor because their muscles and their structure is so armored there's no flow and usually it's there for good reason because they've had to protect all the crappy stuff that they have seen and witnessed and not known how to stomach and not know how to fight and flee and so it's trapped inside this goes back to what matte talked about in this book in regards to how basically when we have this it's not just chronic stress it's survival stress right right now as i'm talking to you there's a little bit of stress in my system i'm i'm looking at my notes i'm making sure this is still going i see there's 104 people that's a lot of people so this is stressful for me but it's not dysregulating hope that makes sense there's a little bit of stress if i was so calm you wouldn't hang around because i'd be absolutely boring to listen to you know it just would be monotone so the person the people the way society is when we've had all these hurts and harms and it doesn't have to be just big physical abuse and sexual abuse and that kind of thing it can be micro traumas of you know hearing mom and dad fight every night at the dinner table maybe they're not directing it to us but they hate each other and they're not splitting up because that's not what you do but that energy that little one inside their blood is boiling wanting to leave wanting to scream at them say stop it get divorced what are you doing you're hurting me but they won't do it because a child has to save face they have to stay protected and they have to stay in that environment and here's the thing so we might go go through life and not realize all the times we held in what we wanted to say we wanted to cry we wanted to scream we wanted to say stop stomp our feet and and yet we didn't and so that's a little snippet into how fight and flight can get wrapped under and under that freeze response and usually within those fight flights because think fight anger there's the emotion anger and so part of us part of the tricky nature with this is everybody wants a quick fix hopefully if you're here watching you're starting to understand while this work isn't a quick fix it actually does work and so when we work at these biological physiological levels learning how to be with our physiology we start to build a different base we start to connect to these emotions not so much even from an emotional point of view through what's going on in the limbic system but how we feel it in our body right that gut sense those butterflies in our stomach the tightness in our throat that tells us we're holding back our words the blood boiling in our hands it just wants to say stop all these things are important medicine so again this idea of anger is medicine when we can learn to work with these things and understand what they are and why they're stuck it starts to become medicinal so i'm just going to look at the comments here and then i'm going to go into a little bit more and another example a story about just to make a contextual shift as to why again it's kind of this elusive topic um hey everyone hi hi hey kaley you say i feel triggered about the cancer thing as i have family members and i would never want them to blame themselves for the repressed anger i guess i feel angry about it laugh out loud you say because it's sometimes just bad freaking luck well here's here's what we really know at least from what i've learned when you start to get into the research you start to really watch and study people like gabor mate's work and he worked in palliative care he was the head of palliative care at vancouver general general hospital for a long time usually i'm going to be really bold here you guys so don't hate me unless it's like nuclear fallout or a person is living think of remember the movie erin brockovich where people were getting sick because their water supply was chemically ridden with just waste so there are certain pieces certain cancers which just doesn't make sense or there is a real environmental risk that is putting a cascade into the system but many and most of the ones we're seeing are a result of the person not taking care of themselves it's just the way it's been and i believe that we can really shift that i really believe that we can shift how people take care of themselves because we are forming these cells these bad cells in our bodies all the time right we're being bombarded by it but a human system that has balance and and good flow and good circulation and elimination and assimilation and all the things that make a healthy human just good flow in all the systems the immune system and all the systems will take care of those bad cells they will kill them through something called aptosis but when we don't have enough of that things start to shift it's just it's autoimmune right and so it does suck but it also we also know through a lot of the research um i can't stress it enough that we have more control over this than we think gabor mate has said i i love him so i quote him so much he has said and i've tried to find this this talk so if anybody knows where this talk is please let me know because his talks are all over the internet but he said something along the lines in the talk we don't need any more research when it comes to cancer and heart disease and autoimmune conditions like we do not need to research anymore because we actually know what's causing these things the a study the adverse childhood experiences study again i'm not going to get into all of that i did a soundcloud episode on that many years ago listen to that if you want to learn a bit more about the ace study without diving into all the scientific papers it has made a very strong connection between early adversity and early life stress and a whole list of ailments and diseases addiction you name it it's almost too depressing to look at that list and it can be very triggering for some when they see that list because no doubt you will know people who have many of those things you yourself might have them and so this is where we have to i believe become adults real mature responsible people for taking care of our system right just like we're supposed to take care of our environment outside we need to take care of our environment inside and sadly for the most part we haven't done a very good job at it it's why we have such a sick population right now so um elizabeth just wrote peter levine says if you don't deal with the trauma it will take 20 years off your life that's what happened to my sister yes human beings by default of just biological process we're supposed to live 120 to 140 years most animals in the kingdom animal kingdom they live 10 to 12 times longer than the age in which they can reproduce think about that we're the only human we're the only animal that dies before that mark and a lot of it has to do if not most of it to this society that we've created this culture of not really nurturing ourselves and taking care of ourselves so yes be sure to understand the a study this will test and push some buttons without a doubt because it's saying to us this is actually our responsibility it's not a fate that we are given a script even if we have a genetic marker the field of epigenetics has shown us that that does not mean that it will express it's the environment in which we live in that will facilitate the expression of that gene right so very very important to understand these connections i'm going to read one more thing i'm going to have a little sip of water here how is everyone doing jackie says i was very angry frustrated child yet was otherwise extremely shy and introverted this is helping me understand more of why yes the obvious traumas but also how things were handled in the 80s for kids yeah in the 80s for kids in the 70s and the 60s and the 50s you know you know i think when kids were you know my if i think of my parents generations in the 40s and 30s kids were left a little more alone to like you know deek it out and fight it out and play and just get into trouble in different ways and now they're there's this micromanaging that isn't allowing their true essence to come out some sometimes but a lot of the time a lot of this gets stifled and and pushed down um another person said yeah how does the baby boomers address these issues with the previous generation my mother is completely frozen yeah i would say that there's completely frozen and there's functional freeze and for the most part i have not met many individuals unless they've done a lot of this work doesn't matter what age who have a robust balanced flowing emotional physiological relationship with what is coming up and out from their bodies so one of the things is a little nugget of how to start you know if you're brand new here and this is like what you're crazy irene you're talking you're telling me that all these things like we have control over yes we do when we learn how to be with our physiology one of the more common things that um that i find is so interesting is people don't have a connection with their internal physiology specifically their digestion and specifically their excretion whether it's peeing you know urinating or defecating having a poop however you want to call it it doesn't matter um we need to start to listen to those basic physiological impulses this might seem really remedial and some of my students here might be able to back me up on this but one of the first things we learn and i really stress upon when i'm working in my programs is something called following your impulse specifically following your biological impulse because until we can listen to those internal signals it'll be hard to trust a big violent expression that isn't going to harm us or someone else in the face of this idea of anger so while this might seem like two opposing topics one way to start to build capacity is to listen to when you have to go to the bathroom and actually go start to feel the pressure in the bladder the pressure in the rectum if there's gas in your colon is there holding back is there a shame if there is a gas that comes up from the stomach to be you know burped out belched out is there a holding back is there a there is there a shame an excuse that oh i'm sorry that kind of thing again these are how we these are these these very simple things to start to let our biology move again and move in a way that brings more flow to the system and so while that might seem like a very strong uh exit from well i just want to get rid of my anger i just want to scream actually who here watched the karate kid remember daniel wanted to learn karate and what did mr miyagi do he had him paint the fence and wax on wax off and sand the deck and all these crazy things that had nothing to do with karate but it was building up capacity it was building up foundation so that when the actual fight came and the strikes and the blocks he had that strength and tone and memory in his muscles it's kind of exactly the same thing if we can't if we can't um comfortably let out a big belch and not you know he he laugh or feel ashamed or let a big bunch of gas out of our out of our rectum and anus i mean very descriptive but if we have trouble with that it's going to be very hard to get true organic anger the anger that if we hold inside makes us sick it's going to be hard to get that stuff out and so that's why um we stay and we stick with these basics for quite a few weeks um okay gonna get back to i want to read something another another little story time this is from a book i've got so many post-it notes on this um some of you know i've been talking a lot more about a man by the name of edgar casey he's long past he died in 1945 i think he was kind of the the father of holistic medicine um lived in the united states and this is a little excerpt from his talks and this is one on anger so another example is casey's repeated admonition of just how important it is to be able to get angry anger is an emotion directly related to saying no of course he isn't saying we need to run around blowing our stacks every day but he did emphasize the need to express anger the right way he then says be angry but sin not he was a very religious man so sounds kind of like bible talk but be angry but sin not that basically means be angry but do not harm others do not harm yourself do not harm the stuff around you for that he for he that it's hard to read this kind of prose i'll say i'll start again be angry but sin not for he that never is angry is worth little that's pretty powerful for he that is never angry is worth little but then this is the author speaking but then casey adds how important it is to have a container for that anger he then goes on to say this is casey now but he that is angry and controlleth it not is worthless so in other words if our angry is being violent if it's being abusive if it's harming others then we're missing the point note here that control does not mean suppression but proper direction it is a crucial distinction we could write a whole book just on that that that small paragraph and remember how i was saying at the beginning healthy aggression the word aggression the root is agri which is latin which is to move forward to push through we need to direct the anger out the aggression out but in a way that is contained isn't violent and actually goes out in somewhere so we're gonna get into that um okay so wanted to read that again that was edgar casey he's long past he was the father of holistic medicine really really recommend looking him up if you want a fun um historical account of someone who is brilliant brilliant at his work um so i'm going to get into a few more things here i'm just going to come back to the comments just to see how we're doing here maureen says the impact of war on humans probably has been at the root of difficulties in taking care of ourselves yes oh hey elizabeth elizabeth is one of our sbsm students she said i came off thyroid medication with this work this year throughout working working on irene's program so yes it's important to understand again i wish i could tell you everything i know in one hour but i can't so if this is the first time you're here please stick around go through my videos watch things read things uh watch some more of these q and a's at the beginning of this work it's one of the toughest things to understand is that at the root of so much of our health if not all of it also our relational health we connect with the environment how we connect with everything even our soul and spirit if you believe in that it's rooted in these survival responses so if we are in survival stress and if we are holding in these old fight flight patterns with our with our very crafty freeze response our system is in not a good place i i i was thinking the other day i'm calling this con immunity you know there's pros and cons con immunity we're constantly in survival stress con immunity whereas pro immunity is something i heard the other day from a brilliant doctor named zach bush look him up if you haven't crystal can pop his website up there pro-immunity is being proactive in our healing pro-immunity proactive pro-healing pro-for ourselves right and the thing with human beings is we tend to wait until things are a disaster until something is is making us not be able to do what we need to do and then we might if we're lucky look at something um so very very important to understand the connections of the autonomic nervous system with the entire system i want to talk about the human system so this is another post-it note i had i want to bridge the gap between our mammalian cortex here or sorry our human cortex and our mammalian body so this goes back to the first example i gave you about the bear right and i know some people have have gotten on since we've started um so you'll have to go back to the beginning but again imagine that mama bear predator is trying to get her cubs no no thinking no you know worry she's just gonna act and she's just gonna she's gonna defend she's gonna hit she's gonna growl she's gonna swat et cetera that is biology right and we have that in our bodies and then this human person that we have this human system we've got this higher brain this prefrontal cortex which makes us so so complex and unique and it separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom it's why we have this technology here in the way we do right the bears didn't create these computers and planes and and and boats and everything it was us so that shows you the level of complexity we're working with when it comes to keeping our biology well we're working across purposes because this higher brain doesn't want to not be in a situation that isn't good it is going to protect us from things that aren't normal so for example if our culture has taught us anger bad or anger is only for boys sadness is only for girls it's like a common theme we used to hear we will imprint that in our higher brain and then it will influence our physiology so we're working with not just our physiology but all of the meaning and all of the historical artifact that we've stored in memory in cognitive memory that says we shouldn't do that or we should do this etc and so we're working we're working with these two systems and so this is why education is important to understand yes we want the emotion anger and listening to our physiology so that we can honor what it is and what it what it needs and what it wants i always am talking about the importance of building capacity and titrating so um if you have a few questions at all on building this let me know but i'll do a quick sweep so if we know if you know that there has been stored anger within your system i'm going to make a very wide generalizing guess that everybody here depending on where we're at either used to have a lot of anger in their system or there's a lot in there and we just don't know how to get it out so somewhere along the spectrum we want to start to again as i said education understanding what this is so you're doing that here with me today the second thing is to start to listen to these biological impulses to start to really tune in to all of these basic elements of our body and i mentioned going to the bathroom but also when you're hungry when you're full when you're thirsty even working with those basic pieces will build your capacity to be with all the other elements the emotional elements so be very cauti cautious be very interested and connected to hunger cues cues of fullness because that is being driven also by parts of our nervous system thirst fatigue um impulses of i think i'm going to walk down this street today i don't know why i always walk to the grocery store that way but something's telling me to just go this other way go with that impulse same if you're driving listen to the impulses being able to listen to those impulses and act with them granted of course that there's they're safe to do so it starts to build that capacity that muscle to listen to our biology another key one and i i teach this in my drop-in classes i've got one coming up on saturday also my programs and i've got some articles and videos on the importance of orienting so crystal can pop up one of those again on the comments or youtube in the show more section when we are living in a lot of survival stress if we were that kiddo that had a very scary environment bad things happen to us we're going to disconnect from our or orientation to the world one of the key pieces to rebuild capacity and rebuild back the ability to have these emotions like anger come up and out is to reorient to the here and now and really know where we are see where we are and connect with our body in to that space if we don't do these pieces at the beginning what happens is if we have an anger piece come out and i'm going to use one example so definitely somewhere in history a parent has screamed at their child a parent has hit their child right we know this is true i've seen it happen myself at the end of the day i i think we can vouch no one wants to hurt their their their children they don't but there is a survival element coming up where that adult loses focus on the here and now they come out of their social engagement brain they go into their autonomic nervous system fight brain and before they know it they're smacking their kid they're smacking their smouth spouse they're smacking their dog they're yelling at the child whatever whatever whatever they're going into this behavior without even realizing it's happening so part of us working with this explosive violent expression of anger is to learn how to be connected to the here and out and pause one could say this is why mindfulness is important in meditation but the problem with that just classic mindfulness meditation practice is if there's a lot of that survival energy inside and the body the brain doesn't know how to deal with it you might go into that practice and it's going to feel terrible so this is why some of these basic practices again listening to the biology being able to feel things like thirst hunger the need to rest etc following our impulses walking down the street when we're driving and then also being able to connect to the environment and you can even do it right now while i'm talking right and babbling a lot um what's it like to feel your pelvis on the chair that you're on or your feet on the ground and really look away see look away from the screen move the head consciously actively ask the movements to come and you might notice and some of you can comment if you feel this if you just do a little experiment right now you may notice a breath that comes you may notice a sigh that comes you may notice that you're sitting in a funny way so these are ways that we can build capacity so that we can form and lay the groundwork so that we can start to work on these emotions that have been stored these physiological sensations that were there for a reason at some point but then they got stamped on and basically got sucked inside and suppressed um all right so next thing i wanted to talk about the importance of knowing that when we get to higher levels of this work when we built that capacity when we're in the here and now when we're being formed more mindful with our environment when we're listening to our physiology things that start to bubble up might surprise us we might start to be frustrated so frustration irritation ah that's pissing me off those are baby steps to being able to work with the bigger bigger pieces of stored anger energy so again sometimes people will feel a frustration and that we've been trained we've been conditioned like dogs just take a deep breath just calm it down go to the happy place don't act up don't stomp your fists whatever again granted it's safe you're not around your kiddos you're not somewhere where you're going to harm someone if you're feeling a little frustration connect with the here and now feel that frustration inside and then move with it let it come out it might come might might need to come out in a sound maybe a stomp of the feet maybe a squeezing of the of the wrists maybe there is a hitting of a pillow don't punch any walls right that's the classic thing that people do in movies that's an example of catharsis i'm i'm mad and from zero to ten poof right but there's no nuance there's no connection here i am i feel this energy i feel this anger holy cow this is big this could kill someone and i'm not gonna kill anyone but i'm gonna feel it i'm gonna feel the energy i'm gonna work at getting it out in small doses now very important to understand what i just told you for some people it might take months to get to that point of feeling comfortable going right and having it be this organic response when i've worked with people in my private practice i can't say to someone i want you to just take your fists and start pounding them many people will be like that's not safe i'm not going to do that i feel embarrassed there's no way i'm going to do that no or okay okay i'm gonna do it and you can see that they don't want to do it when we are starting to work with the emotion anger and it and it and it comes out in a way that it will be healing that it will be pro-immunity kind of what i what gabor mate said when i read that passage in the book the human being will have no hesitation just like that mama bear i mentioned the very beginning at the top of the hour right there will be no hesitation there will be no oh i don't know if i should do this in front of my therapist oh what if what if my neighbor hears or what if i hurt my wrists if we have any of that this is again this comes back to the complexity of this higher brain that higher brain is saying whoa that means that your system isn't quite ready to get those big anger impulses out and that's okay trust me it's there and it will come out spontaneously kind of like when you plant a a seed in the ground you're not going to get an oak tree in a day it's going to take time but if it's given the right soil water sun worms microbes all the things that make you know a seed start to do the things that a seed does to hatch and and start to grow and sprout it will happen right and so anger is medicine this concept it's about restoring regulation back to the nervous system that's kind of what we're at right now restoring regulation back to the nervous system so that these impulses start to come up and we like them right when i've worked with again my clients my students and it starts to bubble up and it's done organically it feels good and there's a connection with the sensation it's not just emotion sensation that bubbling in the stomach that heat and then it comes out there's a here i am i'm not i'm not disconnecting i'm not dissociating i'm staying in the present moment it's september whatever it is today 2020 and oh i feel this and this is getting out and this is exciting and this is exhilarating it's like that little baby that i mentioned who all of a sudden discovers they have fists and they want to punch right you've got to meet yourself the way that that that secure safe caregiver would when the baby starts to express the healthy aggression that's how you have to meet yourself so it's a in a way it is parenting yourself in the way that maybe you never got the final thing i'm going to say um is some of the things that i've heard in the past where people are like this is a common thing i hear i don't think i could do that because i actually might kill someone right my trauma was so big i'm afraid that if i actually started to process this anger i will harm i will kill that person right and here's the thing yes that energy is in there just like that mama bear wants to kill that predator trying to get her cute little baby cubs that she's just gestated and cared for that kill energy is real and there's this thing that's been happening in the mind body world and the self-help you know non-violent communication world which is that's not nice you don't want to have that that image that that that expression so here's what i'm going to be very clear no killing of anybody do not kill anyone for real okay i hope that's again but the energy the it's called annihilation energy the desire to see your perpetrator die and be harmed and hurt the way they hurt you that is a hundred percent valid this is more advanced work this is work that i do with people that i do with clients that i've done myself imagining the person that hurt you or the group of people that have hurt you it doesn't have to be one person allowing yourself to get to the point working on yourself building capacity so you get to the point where this annihilation kill fight energy can come out and up right and this isn't just something i'm making up i've learned this through peter levine through my mentors and peers and and working with it with people it is so freeing when that desire to get that really sadistic energy out comes out now there are two articles that i'm going to mention right now if you want to dive into this of course we work with anger and healthy aggression in my program smart body smart mind but if you want to start to learn a bit more of course i can only say so much in an hour there are two articles written by my husband seth crystal can pop them up and we'll also pop them up down in the show more section one is called how to unfrustrate frustration and the other one is on annihilation energy and and i think even has it's like i want to kill that rabbit it's like a cartoon reference and in those articles especially the one in annihilation he states very clearly this is advanced work right so if you haven't done the groundwork to start to climb up the everest mountain i'm making a metaphor here guys then don't plop yourself at the top and go for a jog right to work with this big big annihilation kill energy means doing the groundwork doing the primary work getting those emotions back in the body learning how to listen to your bladder listen to that impulse take care of yourselves so um that's all i wanted to say today i know it's kind of like i've got a little bit of bits of things going all over the place um the kill energy is is so important and i know that this is going to be controversial in some lines of of study and mind-body work but trust me when i say i've watched the top notches of my world like peter levine guide people who have been harmed so badly into imagining stabbing their perpetrator over and over again obliterating them until they're like superman has taken them into the universe and poofed them in as stardust and so when we do that level of work it isn't about vengeance necessarily it's about completion okay i'm gonna go into the comments here and um there's some construction happening outside of my door so you can hear this crystal let me know and i'll probably uh uh end pretty quickly here so you don't hear these that that uh that drill we just opened them up so one of them is called healthy aggression how to uns unfrustrate frustration and the other one is this is okay this is when it is okay to annihilate someone those are the two articles i kind of just gave you a rundown bullet point thesis of it um tina says i'm just going to read some of your comments thanks for your comments you guys i'm so proud of i am where i am right now and continuing to grow into this new phase um can you please recommend a word or phrase i can use to help my partner's nervous system as i learn this as a process as i process anger near him or my son i'm tina i wish i could give you a word um i kind of don't understand your question if you want to pop that question into our healthy nervous system revolution facebook group i forgot to mention that um we have a facebook group not this facebook page it's called healthy nervous system revolution in that there is a general question thread so maybe pop that in there because i i don't i'm not exactly sure what you mean by a word or a phrase um i'm not someone that tends to give people prescriptive things to say or do because it changes based on circumstance environment etc i'm going to look through a few more comments hey jackie uh oh thanks so when i asked you to start to orient you said that your breathing started to get deeper and slower a hundred percent very very very good um you also share thanks for your share um i recently got out of a very toxic living situation and i would sing songs about toxic masculinity when trying to deal with anger surrounding the situation and people involved but there's so but there was so much that it was not enough yeah so you know we will do what we can in the circumstance we are in to basically stay as safe as we can but here's the thing when we are living in an environment that is not safe if our partner is functionally frozen and doesn't know how to burp and fart and let their expressions out and cry in a movie when they're afraid you know teary it's going to be hard to work at this level because you need to have someone just like i'll go back to that mother fostering healthy aggression with her newborn there needs to be that fostering so if you're angry and stomping around the house if you have a partner that says stop doing that like that's not nice i don't like it when you do that there's going to be a problem because then that throws us back into that early conditioning of oh it's not okay to show and express myself so um working with anger the reason i say we need to titrate and build capacity and foundation is it needs to occur and it only will occur it will only come out in in pure organic form when there is a hundred percent safety around us it will be stifled and stunted if not okay thanks for your comment there morgan says i just went through psych med withdrawal and i definitely have the kill energy in me i bet you do morgan so let that kill energy go through read some of these articles get into my resources if you haven't yet consider taking my 21 day nervous system tune up to build these foundations because it's also very important you know it can be really attractive to be like oh i'm just going to go and do that annihilation work right now but my example don't you would never want to be plopped onto the top of everest to go for a jog right that will heart like you will go hypoxic you might not survive i'm not saying that that's going to happen if you do annihilation work too soon but be treat it like real medicine right there's a reason why i call this anger as medicine sometimes when we're taking a medicine we need to just take a little bit to make sure our body responds okay right so be very very cautious and curious about this work uh jean says what about stretching tight muscles and anger when i stretch after a walk i get angry and then a headache how do i reduce this so gene the great question so here's the thing stretching is not my favorite thing because movement is functional movement right range of motion where we're moving and getting our skeleton aligned but when there is tension stored in the muscles because it's emotional repression we can't stretch those out we actually have to allow the system to move the stored traumatic memories that are in those muscle tensions out there's something called procedural memory i'm not going to get into this right now i teach this in my programs like the 21 day nervous system tune-up but um basically if we have been wronged if we couldn't fight back if we were held down during a surgery when we were young if we didn't get to scream at our parents stop being so stupid or take care of me and we've got all this frustration or if we have a spouse or a partner who's just not listening who isn't connecting to us that fight energy that flight energy it's going to get stored in our hips in our arms because we want to like maybe ring someone's neck or we want to just strike them but we don't because we're not supposed to do that and we shouldn't but then there's this tension right and so if we try to stretch as you said and then the anger is there chances are there's some energy in there coupled into the muscles and then the headache is can be a sign that the energy hasn't moved out right so again i talked about catharsis and just hitting a pillow with a baseball bat for the sake of hitting it that anger actually isn't going to organically process and heal it's going to get stuck and so if we have something like tight muscles and we're trying to move that energy out but we're doing it with a movement like stretching that isn't organic that's forcing we're stopping the flow in the physiology and it's getting it's like a dam and then that's how we can get things like pressure headaches because the the system wants it to flow out but you're not allowing it to flow out in the way that it wants to flow out ah yeah stretching is a is a very controversial thing too um my training in feldenkrais work and movement and of course this is the work i teach when i'm doing my in-person work in-person workshops we really do want to learn how to move our body properly so that our muscles aren't over working and underworking unless that's a whole other conversation um okay so terry asks procedural what so procedural memories so again these are these are topics that are so important to get into in a deeper way um but quickly i'll explain it in one example if somebody again i use the example of a child being struck at being hit they if they're old enough they will want to fight back they will want to hit back but they maybe won't because they're too small or they're afraid their nervous system is wanting to hit and some children will they'll start to hit and then they'll get smacked even more and it's just this terrible situation procedural memory is the body the nervous system the physiology the muscles writing the procedure hit back hit back or run get the way or cover the eyes or cover the ears it's this automatic autonomic nervous system procedure to protect and if we can't get that out that procedure goes back into our body and it's stored forever until we start to work at this level this is why i often say um this work doesn't trauma does not heal with time it's a misnomer a cut might will heal with time right when you get a cut on your hand or i burned myself the other day on something um lightly like it's better it's completely healed now that heals with time right these things these traumatic events these survival stresses they don't heal with time because it goes back to that post-it note that i had bridging the gap between the mammalian body and the higher brain human cortex our human cortex is what keeps these things stored inside our culture we've been caged essentially as human adults to not express to not be who we want to be and that's what keeps these traumas stuck and stuck inside of us all right i'm going to end it for today we've been going for about an hour and 15. again remember topic today was anger as medicine i wanted to hit a few key points these are key points that i've written about extensively over the last four years i have um will post some of those articles if you're on youtube that i've just mentioned if you're here on facebook obviously they're all beneath this video if you have follow-up questions please ask them in our healthy nervous system revolution facebook group um that is where my team are in there almost almost every day but definitely every few days answering questions there's a general question thread i will post this video once it's processed in that group so if you have follow-up questions to this video please ask them do not be shy oh morgan has one quick question i'm not going to answer the question morgan but there's an article for you does trey help heal it um my kind of overall arching answer to that is it will not completely because again it's enforcing something into the system that is not arising organically my husband has written an article on that called why exercise does not heal trauma so crystal can pop that up um cool thank you you're welcome glad this was illuminating um so final housekeeping notes again i'm irene i do these once a month um we have a drop-in class coming up this saturday it's an hour-long class where i guide you through the basics and we're also going to focus on uh breath as a theme today this theme on saturday not today saturday uh breath we're going to focus on breath but it's not breath work so again breath work is a is an example of something that's trying to control and in some ways manipulate the physiology we're not going to do that we're going to follow it we're going to track it we're going to work with intention and breath as opposed to trying to force it into a certain way um another thing that's happening is not this saturday but the next on the 26th i am doing a up and down virtual class co-teaching with my friend and teaching partner elia marach if you don't know what up and down is it quick note it's a movement qigong feldenkrais tai chi dance social engagement beautiful experience that we normally teach in person if in another universe parallel to this one we are currently in sweden in stockholm teaching that workshop we were supposed to be there right now this year but of course we had to cancel so we're doing a virtual class next saturday the 26th will not be a replica of the in-person because that's impossible but if you'd like to do a little more work with me get a little bit more into movement i will be teaching some feldenkrais lessons in that specific class on the 26th if you haven't yet checked out my programs my website irenelyon.com if you haven't started the 21 day tune-up nervous system tune-up please do so we need education but we need to practice this is not stuff that we we were born with this capacity but then conditioning bleached it out of us so what we're having to do right now is relearn and unlearn a lot of the things we were taught around human healing health and how to be with our bodies um super grateful for all of you who have showed up today and i'm going to sign off now thank you to crystal my assistant for popping in links as we go along thanks crystal and thanks to all my students also who have showed up today to keep learning and keep reviewing i think that's a sign that this work is kind of a a love affair when we get into it it's a way of life to everyone new if you're here for the first time thanks again and don't be a stranger and start getting into those impulses and following them and orienting and learning and just getting those emotions up and out so they can be medicine as opposed to toxins to your body all right lots of