All you ladies who feel like your anger and irritation have no place to go, good news: You can go into the woods and hit the ground with logs!
[In 'rage rituals,' participants] are encouraged to think of people and experiences that have wronged them and to scream and swing the sticks for at least 20 minutes, or until they can no longer move their arms.
It might be hard to picture a "rage ritual" in your head, so it's worth seeing actual footage of one from out there in the hinterlands:
[Strong language warning]
Our sacred rage is what has incited so many movements, created so much change on our planet. It is imperative that we allow our self safe places to release this fiery hot emotion from within us, so that it can no longer poison or toxify our emotional reality.
Which is it? Is a woman's "sacred rage" so special that it's the driving force for all the good in the world? Or is it so dangerous that we have to go into the woods and smack sticks on the ground, exercising the emotional stability of a spoiled toddler to safely release it into the wild?
There's no doubt about it: the whole thing is pretty gnomic. I mean these ladies have to go and gather their own rage twigs. No twig Uber out there in the woods!
Afterward, they go through like a little mini-training sequence, to get all limbered up for the stick-bashing.
And then...man, then they just go to town:
Imagine being out in the woods and hearing that horrific shrieking cacophony and having no idea what it is!
After the stick-beating is done, the converts have a brief winding-down moment, as is customary in all transformative experiences:
As appealing as these events might seem to some ladies, one psychotherapist cautions that it might not be for you:
When you do something like that, it's important to know, does it exacerbate your anger or does it decrease it? That's something that's on an individual basis. It depends on past experiences. It depends on your own make-up. It depends on just brain chemistry.
And it's worth stressing that the events can be both personally and environmentally damaging as well:
By the end of her first rage ritual, Helmus says, participants were covered in dirt and mud with bruises and cuts on their hands. Sticks were broken everywhere.
I guess it might be better than screaming at the sky?
You know, we go through years of parenting to try to teach children that this is NOT the way to handle your emotions.
Ladies: Instead of heading into the woods to beat sticks, maybe just try a walk or a cup of tea first, yeah?
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