دار بيبليون
Exercises and Practical Tips for Managing Anger Outbursts / Lecture by Lwiis Saliba on Zoom, Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Spiritual psychology, yoga, and contemporary psychology recommend a number of exercises to mitigate and release anger, as well as to prevent tantrums, which we have already mentioned as a passing or temporary madness.
In Arabic, the terms Hamaqa (حماقة) and Hamaq (حمق) are used to refer to both lack of reason and foolishness, as well as anger. The Arabic language thus echoes modern psychology, which considers anger as a temporary madness.
In bilingual dictionaries, the words madness and unreason are found in both senses. In Abdelnour’s detailed Arabic-French dictionary, we read (p1/763) حماقة Hamaqah: idiocy, imbecility, foolishness, stupidity, anger, anger. In other words, Hamaqah حماقة is both stupidity, idiocy, irritability and anger, arrogance. In the trilingual Mawrid Ar/An/Fr (3rd edition: 2005, p. 725): Hamaqah حماقة means in English: stupidity, idiocy, and at the same time it means: foolishness, folly. We find the same meanings in the Arabic-French dictionary Al-Munjid (pp. 696-697): Idiotie: stupidity, imbecility, absurdity. The verb “hamoqa” (حَمُقَ): to be stupid, to be an idiot, to get angry, to become furious. To get angry over the most insignificant things.
In other words, and in a nutshell, anger in the Arabic term “hamaqah” (حماقة) is synonymous with stupidity and arrogance. Anger is also arrogance. This is exactly what yoga and spiritual psychology say. From their perspective, anger is a product of ego and megalomania.
What can we conclude from this Arabic linguistic and philological presentation? Arabs have learned through instinct and experience that anger is synonymous with stupidity, idiocy, madness, and also arrogance. Isn’t this what we experience on a daily basis? Anger takes us out of the circle of rationality and reason, making us prisoners and slaves to it. We often act stupidly, foolishly, and senselessly while angry!
A brief pause on a second Arabic expression that is also very significant: when one of us gets angry, we say, literally, “he burned with anger.” We also find the expression “s’enflammer de colère” in French, and “burns with anger” in English. This synonymy between anger, fire, and its ignition in Arabic, as well as in French and English, is found in the oldest Buddhist traditions, since Buddha is said to have said: “No one created hell. It is the fire of the mind releasing its reins to anger that ignites hell and burns its owner.” (Saliba, Lwiis, Bouddha, 10/1, p. 174).
Moving Down to the Body Level
Anger, as we experience and feel it in our bodies, is a muscular emotion, meaning that we feel a contraction in our muscles during it. This is why Muscle Release helps calm anger.
To manage our anger, it is therefore advisable not to receive its attack on a mental level, but rather to move down to the body level. Because as long as we remain at the mental level, this confrontation will continue. We should therefore not try to combat the attack of anger with the same tools that are the tools of the mind and thought, but rather absorb this attack at the body level to avoid remaining stuck at the mental level.
This is why we will complete our presentation with practical exercises that help relieve anger.
Exercise 1: Pushing the Wall:
As we have already said, anger is a very muscular emotion. So what helps to calm a tantrum, which is often called a nervous breakdown, is muscle discharge. We put one foot forward and the other back with the intention of discharging our anger into the wall. The idea is simply to discharge all this energetic charge of anger at the muscular level by pushing with all our strength into a solid surface which is the wall, and to associate breathing with it with a deep inhalation and on exhalation I push with all my strength while blowing through the mouth. We can activate the voice by what we release through vocalization: we blow or we can even growl: I push, I blow and even I shout if necessary. In this exercise we are not focused on stretching: even the feet and legs can be bent. The intention is focused on discharging the muscles. This exercise can be practiced to discharge anger, but also to unblock the mind. To guide the practice of the exercise you can follow the following advice:
feel the soles of your feet which are anchored in the ground, and in each Breathing, let your feet become more firmly anchored in contact with the earth, as if there were roots pushing the soles of your feet towards the center of the earth. Continue to breathe deeply and feel the contact between your hands and the wall. Also feel the temperature, the texture, the touch of the fingers. On the next exhalation, bring all your awareness into your muscles, into the muscles of your arms. On the exhalation, push the wall with all your strength, and with each exhalation, also forcefully push all that emotion that is blocked inside, allowing it to discharge through your hands into the wall. Continue at your own pace, on the inhale, release. You can move the posture a little or adjust it, and on the exhale, blow through your mouth with all your strength, pushing into the wall. With each exhalation, you can connect with your anger and consciously discharge this anger into the wall. Don’t hesitate to activate your vocal cords on the exhale as you blow. You can use sound to encourage this expulsion and release. Always exhale through your mouth.
Often, when angry, we have this activation of fighting, but we can do it with any other part of the body, with our feet against a wall, and pushing with our legs is also possible.
There are four dimensions to this exercise:
1-The muscular dimension of pushing.
2-Combine the action of pushing with the breath, and especially with the exhalation, which can be vocalized.
3-Combine all of the above with the intention of releasing tension and emotion.
4-Connect with bodily sensations.
The basic principle, as mentioned, is to go down one level: go from the mental level to the physical level, as if you were in a house and wanted to go down one level to the ground floor. Exercise 2: Checking Body or the Wet Dog
This involves moving your body like a soda bottle, or like in Qigong. You move up and down on your knees. You do it like a dog coming out of water. You need to feel the entire skin of your body moving: your shoulders, wrists, etc. You need to release the emotional charge into the earth and let your body tell you where movement is needed. Let your body guide you.
Then, you need to do this exercise until exhaustion: not just for one or two minutes, but until you’re sweating and really tired. And when you reach this state, you can stretch with a longer rhythm, put on some meditative music, or dance: just move as you do to music, conscious movement, letting your body move to the music.
Exercise 3: The Lumberjack
This is as if you were chopping wood with both hands. Let them fall downward, exhaling deeply through your mouth to release anger, or any other negative emotion.
Exercise 4: Head Push
This involves pushing your head with your hand, while simultaneously closing your anus to release the anger through your hand and forehead.
Exercise 5: Yawning
This is very effective in cases of anger and also for reducing any other tension released through the wide opening of your mouth. It is recommended to practice yawning simultaneously with stretching your arms and hands to intensify its effect. Exercise 6: Relaxation of tense organs and limbs
Scan the body to identify tense areas and limbs, such as the lower jaw, which is often clenched during negative emotions, the space between the eyebrows, the knees, and others… and release everything that is tense. Finally, through restraint, we release anger or any other negative emotion; practicing Yoga Nidra is an excellent example of relaxation.
Exercise 7: Walking
Walking is an effective regulator of the nervous system in general, and of emotions in particular. Its effect can be intensified by repeating a verbal formula in which we ask each tense limb or organ to relax. It is often recommended to speak to our organs, or to speak internally, or out loud to ourselves, asking ourselves to calm down, and this internal dialogue has often proven effective.
Exercise 8: The Mourner’s Movement
In the East, what the mourner instinctively does when mourning their deceased is a spontaneous movement that releases anger or any other negative emotion: She raises both hands until they touch her forehead, palms facing forward, then, in a quick and powerful movement, drops them to strike her thighs. It is recommended to accompany this movement with a breath or a sigh out loud and a strong exhalation through the mouth, thus releasing the negative emotion.
This is a simple and effective exercise, and can be repeated several times several times a day.
Playing with our anger
Thus, by practicing one or more of these exercises, we clear our anger bowl every morning. And when we feel we’re too much in the mental realm, we move down to the physical realm. Each person self-regulates in their own way by choosing the exercises that seem most appropriate.
The benevolent idea of anger, as well as the spirit of these exercises, is that we seek to give substance to anger, to embody it. The intention is for me to embrace my anger and allow it to express itself through my body.
At all costs, we must avoid addiction to anger, which is as harmful as drug addiction. For the same purpose, it is also advisable to work on our past relationships with anger, as well as to probe and discover more and more what makes us angry, in order to probe and discover the emotion underlying anger: anger often expresses a certain fear, or it is a protective response against shame, and in this case, we resort to anger to protect ourselves. To tame our anger, we must discover what underlies this anger. It is generally good to befriend our anger and to dialogue with it to discover what it hides and what excites it.
Let’s not forget that with all emotions, the more we try to push an emotion away, the more it invites itself.
So we try to play with anger because the more we play with it, the more it is released. We often even speak of embracing the fire to express judicious work to tame our rage and anger.