There are so many emotions we never talk about, and one of them is anger.

When I was a child I was feisty. I could get aggressive to the point I could murder. This aggression was mainly aimed at my little brother, like most kids I loved and hated him at the same time. We would play games that we know would end up in fighting and tears like the manic game of ‘torturer’. You could do anything to the other until they begged for mercy.

I can see you raise an eyebrow here, just like I am in retrospective. But I guess it’s all about finding your own boundaries. And when you get a little older, you learn how to ‘behave’, to swallow down your aggression and anger and to keep it away from other people.

Why? What’s so wrong with being angry?

A year and a half in the mountains and I have never felt so strong. And with feeling strong and safe, apparently you get angry. Because you can. There is no holding back because you need to keep people your friends, or try to please them, or make an effort to only show your good side. This is who I am and this is where I get angry. It came to me as an unexpected old acquaintance. Someone you had forgot you knew.

It is an emotion that scares me a lot. First of all because it is linked to guilt. Being angry, really angry, is something that is associated with violence and abuse. It is seen as a destructive power. And I feel it can be, but my anger feels really healthy. I am telling the world; this is not right for me. I won’t accept this. How small or big the situation can be.

This is the important message. Anger is such a powerful energy that helps you to feel how strong you are in a situations you are not happy with. And that is exactly how you should use it, as an arrow to where it hurts, to where your life needs attention. When I get angry I feel it swelling in my stomach, it gets bigger and bigger, looking for food, looking for angry thoughts, looking for angry words, it wants to get out. That’s where it can turn into violence. I am not as aggressive anymore as I was as a kid, kicking everybody’s butt, but I do tend to start yelling at someone innocent (the dog e.g.) out of the blue, or take it out on an irrelevant situation or smash a plate or two. Scaring the hell out of everybody.

I started to google on what I can do to lead your anger out in a good way. Seems that the most angry people are teenagers, feeling not understood by the world and being mocked about it because they are just silly ‘angry adolescents’. So they listen to angry music like Limp Bizkit and Tool. Or is it advised to write down what you are angry about and burn it. To talk calmly to the person that upset you. To visualize a golden heart. To go into nature and yell. To punch a pillow. To take boxing classes. Etc. I tried it all but the anger just kept coming. This dragon just wanted to come out and blow some fire into the world.

Then I found something else: the anger rock. So different from all the other options I decided to try it too.

You find any plain rock you like. You bury it in sea salt for a night. You heat it in the fire (or on the stove) for 20 min. When it is cooled you breath in with your lips on the rock and then you breath out the same way. Then it is your stone. Every time I get angry I ask it to take my anger. And it amazingly, surprisingly, unexpectedly does. It takes my anger, my stress, my grief. It just leaves me. I am so surprised, because I was sure the kickboxing would be my way.  It teaches me that most of us – like me- have no clue of how our emotions work, what they are there for and how we can release them in a healthy, peaceful way.