USING THE ENERGY IN ANGER.

When asked to what she attributed the energy she found to meet her demanding schedule, Florence Nightingale snorted, "Rage!"

Although some therapists advise you to discharge anger harmlessly, bleeding it off a little at a time, like excess steam from a pressure cooker (to which end I have had great fun with clients beating up pillows, putting old grievances on bonfires, smashing plates and screaming on the pierhead in the dark of night), I prefer not to waste this energy, but to harness it productively.

The following meditation is an example of a useful technique for doing just this.

Read it through a few times first, until you are comfortable with the idea of freeing up the primal energy of anger and using it productively.

At present you waste so much energy repressing awareness of anger that you are constantly drained. You can’t afford to waste the energy on fear, denial and repression when with a little explanation you will be able to trust yourself to acknowledge it, take charge of it and convert it back into the energy you need to make your life better.

The best results can be obtained from the meditation if you read it into a tape recorder, allowing plenty of time for reaction, then sit quietly and undisturbed to listen to it and follow the directions.

THE FIREBALL MEDITATION.

Sit comfortably and relax.

Focus on breathing regularly and deeply.

Feel the breath as energy you inhale and exhale.

Say aloud, " I am about to meditate. I will relinquish my normal alertness. But if I need to repond quickly to any emergency I will do so at once and without difficulty. I am about to meditate........."

Continue to feel the breath as energy as you inhale and exhale.

Now allow yourself to focus on some little incident that recently made you uncomfortable. Did it make you angry? Or did you feel guilty? Think of guilt as a form of resentment, a selfish anger because something forces you to feel ashamed. It does not matter how irrational the thing is. We are not looking here for reason. We are looking at feelings, allowing them to surface, becoming aware that discomfort is resentment and resentment is a form of anger.

Sort through your file of petty annoyances, allowing yourself to savour the quality of each until you come to something you feel you can examine profitably.

Pause to give yourself time to think.

Now relive the experience that annoyed you, giving each little moment its full value.

Look carefully at your reactions and the way you felt. Then recognise your anger and allow yourself to feel it, feeding it and letting it grow. Allow yourself the feeling of anger.

What does it do to your breathing? Your jaw? your hands?

Allow your breathing to become deeper and more harsh.

Exhale noisily through your nose.

Clench your teeth.

Ball up your fists and think ANGER.

Say aloud, "I feel angry" then louder, "I AM ANGRY!"

Let your fists and jaw tighten.

Tense your neck.

Thrust your head forward and allow yourself to feel belligerent.

Who upset you? If you could do something about it and no-one would ever know, what would you fantasize doing? Imagine doing it. Let yourself feel what it would be like to make that person regret what they did or said. Imagine punishing them. Imagine being all-powerful and able to express your anger.

Don’t be afraid. You know you would never really do anything like this, but just allow yourself to examine the feelings that are lurking behind that feeling of sickness and tiredness.

Face it – you are sick. You are tired. You are sick and tired......You are sick and tired of letting yourself be a victim!

Picture yourself doing something by way of revenge. It does not matter what. The more unthinkable the better. This is fantasy. You are getting in touch with some really nasty feelings.

Trust yourself. It's Okay. You won’t really do any of these things. It is only a fantasy. You are playing. You are acting out. It can be fun!!! The more angry you feel, the more outrageous the retribution, the more energy you are freeing up for use.

Feel the anger. Nurse it. Let it grow. Watch yourself using it as anger. How do you feel?

Now feel the anger as a force within you. It is power. It is energy. It is controllable. Claim it. Make it work for you.

Picture the energy as a red mist behind your eyes, a red mist you are breathing in and out. Scoop it in with movements of your arms, hold it in your arms like a huge pillow of soft, red foam. Squeeze it down, smaller and smaller with your fists. Knead it. Feel its warmth and its resilience.

You now have a springy globe of energy in your hands. You can use it in any way you wish. It is yours. It is energy. It is controllable.

Now picture some task that has given you difficulty. It is probably something you keep putting off for one reason or another.

Take your ball of energy and tell yourself you will use this energy to do that task. Picture yourself going about the work cheerfully with energy, confidence and enjoyment. Picture the task finished. Imagine how you will feel. Realise that the ball of energy in your hands is growing smaller and smaller, disappearing as the task comes to an end.

You feel good. You feel happy. You feel like laughing. You feel the corners of your mouth lifting into a smile. Allow yourself to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. Allow yourself to smile. You don't feel angry any more.

Now imagine you are going for a shower. Allow the warm, soapy water to sluice over you, washing away any traces of the red mist, softening and relaxing your whole body. Then feel your feet against the floor, the back of your legs against the chair, your buttocks in the seat, the pressure against your back.

Feel your hands and arms and be aware of your breathing. Be aware of any sounds around you.

Pause for a while to feel yourself in the here and now.

Then count down slowly from nine to one. When you reach one, open your eyes and say aloud, " I am wide awake. I am fully alert."

When you are ready, stand up and move around.

Ground yourself by stamping your feet on the ground, feeling its solidity. If you still feel a little insecure, go out for a walk, being aware of the sounds, scents, colours and the movements of your own body. Hug a tree or potter in the garden. If this is not possible, take a shower. Listen to the water. Feel it coursing over your body. Use scented oil, gel or lotion. Smell the aroma, feel the texture. Love and pamper yourself.

If none of this is possible, do the washing up. Listen to the sounds. Feel the heat of the water. Enjoy the iridescence and butterfly kiss of the bubbles, the dry, stiff cleanliness of the tea towel. Whatever you do, from cuddling a baby to stroking a cat, from cutting the grass to making love, do it in full awareness and enjoyment of every sense and allow yourself to feel every emotion.

Transformation of the energy previously repressed as anger will enable you to experience everything more intensely for a little while.

Then start your designated task, aware that the pulsing globe of warm red energy you isolated and held in your hands is available to feed you and to help you work at peak efficiency. You will be able to think clearly, act decisively and achieve your goals

Once you are familiar with this technique and confident of your ability to tap into anger to fuel your activities, you will be able to look at more frightening areas where greater amounts of energy are repressed.

I began by looking at childhood resentment that I had to do the housework whilst my brother did nothing. I imagined myself shouting at my mother and father for the unfairness of the Cinderella script which dictated that I should go cheerfully in rags and drudgery, the destined wife of a working-class man who must not be allowed to get ideas above her station. whilst my brother was the Prince, the rescuer, to whom the whole world was available and for whom there must be nothing but the best.

As I learned to recognise, access and use this anger, I became able to handle more intense and frightening sources until one day, blocked on the production of a key project for my degree and tempted to acknowledge that I was simply incapable of work at that level and might as well give up, I found myself contacting a huge awareness of resentment of the woman who had seduced my husband from me, leaving me to battle alone against myself and the system, without a failsafe, without the status of a happily married wife and without his friendship and his physical presence.

My observer self sat back, watching with dispassionate interest as a berserker me appeared in fantasy, grabbed her by the throat, throttled her with her own hair, slit her open from belly to chest and rubbed bloodied hands in glee as she screamed, writhed and died on the floor of the shop where she had worked.

I had thought I had been quite civilised about it all, offerring to befriend them both, acknowledging that he had changed, that I was a burden, an ageing, sick woman, no longer beautiful and desireable. I hoped they would be happy.

But I had been aware of a conviction, never admitting it was a burning desire, that he would see through her surface attraction, realise that she could not love him as I did and regret his perfidy, possibly hit the bottle, vent his disillusion on her, his anger for what his obsession had cost him and the ruin of his life. I had seen him down and out: lonely and defeated, ravaged and broken, swimming out to sea until his great strength gave out.

Now I was finally aware of the towering inferno of my anger, of the power I had repressed, afraid even to look at it. I had been so terrified of the consequences of expressing my rage that I had repressed it totally and in so doing had reduced myself to an enervated shell of a woman who was using almost her entire life-force to deny the existence of an anger I had every right to feel.

I acknowledged my right to feel angry. I looked at the pictures of revenge, aware now that they were only symbols of my pain, that I had no intention of actually doing anything so destructive. Once subjected to reason the impulses were defused. Only as primitive, irrational responses repressed at deep limbic levels did they exist in visceral reality. Once lifted into consciousness and available for dispassionate inspection, they felt shocking, ...but irrelevant... and even faintly amusing.

So I took hold of the anger, experienced it, revelled in it, held it in my arms and embraced it, gradually crushing it down and down until it formed a warm, glowing ball, like red wool in my hands. It was mine. I could make anything of it I wanted. I saw myself using it to focus on the project, working with confident brilliance, untiring, deftly marshallling arguments and facts into an elegant, reasoned whole.

And so it was.

Now I know how angry I was. I know how to use that anger. I know how I had turned it destructively against myself. I know how to relate to others in that same dilemma and how to help them to find their own way out of the trap.

Like most experiences, seen creatively, it has changed from a devastating negative to a positive opportunity for growth. It has focussed and empowered me, because someone took the trouble to teach me how.