An Episode About Anger | Jacoby Ballard
Jacoby Ballard, a social justice educator and yoga teacher, discusses transforming anger into effective action. He introduces two mental skills, forgiveness and equanimity, to channel rage and foster connection.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Introduction to Anger, Forgiveness, and Equanimity
Jacoby Ballard's Journey from Anger-Fueled Activism
The Dual Nature of Anger in Activism and Relationships
Understanding What Lies Beneath Anger: Grief and Fear
Using Annoyance for Inner Investigation
Practical Ways to Work with Anger: Physical Discharge
Contemplative Inquiry: Sitting with Your Anger
The Role of a Meditation Teacher in Self-Inquiry
Breathwork Techniques for Nervous System Regulation
Tonglen Meditation for Compassion and Letting Go
The Power of Loving-Kindness and Basic Goodness
Shame as an Emergency Brake, Not a Primary Tool
Forgiveness: Releasing Resentment for Self and Others
Jacoby's Personal Story of Self-Forgiveness
Equanimity: Accepting Reality for Effective Action
Cultivating Equanimity Through Practice
Gratitude and Generosity for Well-being and Joy
The Practice of Queer Joy and Childlike Wonder
6 Key Concepts
Purity Politics
This refers to the inclination within activism to ensure every word and action is perfectly aligned with justice. It can lead to excessive self-criticism and judgment of others, making one unpleasant to be around.
Anger as a Secondary Emotion
Anger often acts as a protective mechanism, shielding more vulnerable emotions like grief or fear. It arises when one doesn't feel safe enough to fully experience the underlying vulnerability.
Good-ish
A mental model suggesting that instead of striving to be a 'good person,' embracing the idea of being 'good-ish' fosters a growth mindset. This allows for acknowledging mistakes and receiving feedback without an identity crisis.
Trauma-Informed Practice
An approach to meditation or self-inquiry that acknowledges and respects past trauma. It involves building capacity gradually and using grounding techniques to prevent re-triggering or overwhelm when working with difficult emotions.
Equanimity
A state of mental balance and steadiness that involves accepting the present reality as it is, rather than fighting what has already happened. This acceptance creates space for vision, imagination, and creativity to move forward effectively, without condoning harm or engaging in spiritual bypass.
Brahma Viharas
These are four 'divine abodes' or sublime states of mind in Buddhist practice: loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), empathetic joy, and equanimity. They are cultivated through specific meditation practices to foster positive mental states and improve relationships.
12 Questions Answered
Yes, anger can ignite adrenaline and motivate action, making one's voice land profoundly and shifting directions for policies or campaigns. However, being stuck in anger mode can fray relationships and ultimately destroy.
Anger is often a secondary, protective emotion covering up more vulnerable feelings like grief or fear, which can feel unsafe to fully experience. It acts as a shield for vulnerability.
First, discharge the energy of anger through physical activities like screaming, singing, stomping, sports, dancing, or drumming. After discharging, sit quietly and get curious about what your anger is trying to tell you, as if having a calm conversation with it.
No, it's important to first let the energy of anger move through you. Going straight to prayer, compassion, or meditation can stifle the anger, causing it to fester and emerge later in unhelpful ways.
Breathing through the nose (slower route) instead of the mouth helps ground the nervous system. Making the exhale longer than the inhale (like a yawn or sigh) also settles the nervous system, while the opposite activates it.
Tonglen is a Tibetan practice involving breathing in suffering and breathing out love, or vice versa, tied to specific phrases. It's a powerful compassion practice but should not be used immediately after a crisis or tragedy as it can be too intense; it's better to start with milder forms of suffering.
Shame can act as an 'emergency brake' to stop immediate harm when other tactics have failed, but it primarily stops things rather than clearing the way for genuine, lasting change. Connection and relationship-building are generally more effective for transformation.
Forgiveness is not condoning harm or saying what happened is okay; it's reckoning with the fact that it did happen and moving forward skillfully. It involves releasing resentment and is ultimately about one's own well-being and freedom, as harboring resentment can be detrimental to health.
Use phrases like 'May I allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes' directed towards yourself. Practice this gently and repeatedly, ideally with a teacher or spiritual community, to release shame and learn from the experience.
Use phrases like 'May I forgive you for the harm that you have caused me knowingly or unknowingly in thought, word, or deed. May I see your humanity in the midst of my pain.' It's important to acknowledge if you're not ready to forgive in the moment, but to aim for it in the future to release the burden of the past.
Equanimity means accepting 'this moment' and what has already happened, not the 'next moment.' This acceptance creates space for vision, imagination, and creativity to work towards a better future, rather than expending energy fighting the past. It's not a spiritual bypass of injustice.
Make joy and play a daily objective. Deliberately engage in activities you love, even small ones, and practice 'taking in the goodness' by pausing to notice and appreciate the small, brilliant things around you, cultivating a childlike sense of wonder.
45 Actionable Insights
1. Release Resentment for Health
Understand that harboring resentment is detrimental to your physical and mental health, increasing stress and health risks. Practice forgiveness to shed the burden of resentment, allowing you to move forward with wisdom rather than the heavy energy of the past.
2. Focus on What You Love
Instead of solely focusing on what you are against, shift your attention to what you are for and what you truly care about. This allows you to act from a place of love and connection, drawing people together rather than pushing them away.
3. Physically Discharge Anger
Recognize that anger builds up physical energy in the body (heat in gut/throat, activated nervous system) and needs to move through you. Discharge this energy through activities like screaming, singing, stomping, sports, dancing, or drumming to allow for settling and intentional conversation later.
4. Contemplate Anger’s Wisdom
After discharging anger’s physical energy, sit quietly and ask your anger what it has to tell you, as if having a calm cup of tea (or beer) with it. This contemplation allows profound insights to emerge about what is under threat or being dismissed.
5. Process Rage Before Forgiveness
Before attempting forgiveness, ensure you have processed any underlying rage and grief, as these emotions are inevitably present when harm has occurred. Addressing them first creates the necessary space for forgiveness.
6. Settle with Breath Work
Incorporate breath work to settle your nervous system before engaging in deeper inquiry or difficult conversations. Simple techniques like breathing through your nose or making your exhale longer than your inhale can help ground you.
7. Lengthen Exhale to Settle
To settle your nervous system, intentionally make your exhales longer than your inhales, similar to a yawn or a sigh. This manipulation of breath length promotes grounding and calmness.
8. Nose Breathing for Grounding
To ground your nervous system, consciously breathe through your nose instead of your mouth. Nasal breathing is slower and associated with a settled state, helping to preemptively calm your system.
9. Investigate Annoyance’s Roots
When you feel annoyed, use it as an opportunity for inner investigation to understand what deeper emotions or unmet needs might be beneath the surface. This helps uncover what is truly bothering you beyond the superficial irritation.
10. Understand Anger’s Protective Role
Understand that anger often serves as a protective device, covering up deeper, more vulnerable emotions like grief or fear. This awareness can help you approach your anger with curiosity rather than immediate judgment.
11. Adopt ‘Good-ish’ Mindset
Adopt a ‘good-ish’ mindset, acknowledging that you are imperfect and always have room to grow, rather than believing you are a perfectly ‘good person.’ This fosters a growth mindset, allowing you to receive feedback and learn without an identity crisis.
12. Abandon Purity Politics
Depart from ‘purity politics’ and allow yourself and others room for imperfection and negotiation in ethical choices. This enables connection and solidarity with a wider range of people, fostering collective growth rather than isolation.
13. Honor Efforts, Accept Imperfection
Acknowledge the good things you and others are doing to uphold moral codes and stand for justice. Simultaneously, accept that as imperfect beings, there will always be more to do, fostering a continuous path of growth rather than striving for unattainable purity.
14. Don’t Stay in Anger Mode
Recognize that anger, while clarifying and motivating, has a fiery, destructive energy if you stay with it for too long. Prolonged anger can fray relationships and destroy connection.
15. Ground Before Hard Conversations
Before engaging in hard conversations, ensure you are in a grounded place; if not, postpone the discussion to calm down. This prevents the ferocity of anger from scaring someone away and ensures the wisdom of your anger can land effectively.
16. Connect Before Confronting
When having difficult conversations, approach them through a lens of connection by considering what the other person cares about and gearing the conversation through that doorway. This prevents their nervous system from shutting down and allows for genuine engagement.
17. Cultivate Curiosity, Not Shame
Practice loving kindness, Karuna, or Tonglen to shift your approach from shaming and judging to slowing down and getting curious about the underlying conditions that lead to harmful behaviors. This fosters better relationships and more effective social change.
18. Prioritize Connection Over Shame
When seeking to bring about change, prioritize sitting down, being vulnerable, connecting, and getting curious about what moves others, rather than resorting to shaming or humiliation. This approach fosters greater progress and deeper transformation.
19. Shaming as Emergency Brake
Consider public shaming only as an ’emergency brake’ to stop immediate harm when all other attempts at connection and relationship-building have failed. Recognize that while it can halt harm, it is unlikely to foster genuine long-term change.
20. Self-Reflect on Accusations
If you find yourself frequently pointing fingers at others, use it as a cue to look inward and examine your own behaviors and motivations. This self-reflection, a core aspect of spiritual practices, helps cultivate a better way forward.
21. Personal Roots of Outrage
Understand that what angers or grieves you in the world often has a personal connection or root within your own history. This awareness encourages self-study and a more integrated approach to addressing external issues.
22. Work with a Meditation Teacher
Seek out a meditation teacher or guide who is further along the path to help you navigate difficulties, offer tools, and provide guidance towards clarity, truthfulness, and kindness. This relationship can prevent detours and accelerate your progress.
23. Research Meditation Teachers
Before committing to a meditation teacher, do your homework to understand their background, experience, and approach. This helps ensure you find a skilled and practiced guide suitable for your needs.
24. Share Burdens with Community
Share your struggles and past harms transparently with a trusted teacher, spiritual community (sangha), or friend group. This collective holding reduces the personal weight of your burdens, preventing constriction in your body and nervous system.
25. Gradual Practice for Capacity
Approach difficult practices like forgiveness gradually, starting with minor irritations and slowly building up to greater harms. This ‘muscle-building’ approach prevents overwhelm, trauma triggers, or giving up on the practice.
26. Structured Self-Forgiveness
In meditation, hold a specific instance of harm in your awareness and offer self-forgiveness phrases like, ‘May I forgive myself for any harm I’ve caused, knowingly or unknowingly, in thought, word, or action.’ Include a phrase for future forgiveness if immediate forgiveness is not possible.
27. Self-Forgiveness Phrases
Practice self-forgiveness using gentle phrases such as, ‘May I allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes.’ This helps you reckon with past errors without shame, fostering self-compassion and growth.
28. Gentle, Repetitive Forgiveness
Approach forgiveness with gentleness and repetition, even if initial attempts evoke discomfort or disdain. Consistent practice, potentially with guidance, gradually reduces shame and allows for authentic reckoning with past events.
29. Grounding During Forgiveness
If overwhelmed during forgiveness practice, pause and ground yourself by focusing on your breath, opening your eyes to notice three unique things in your space, looking behind you, or engaging in physical self-soothing like rubbing your thighs or massaging your hands. This helps you stay present and safe.
30. Forgiveness Phrases for Others
Practice forgiveness for others using phrases like, ‘May I forgive you for the harm you have caused me, knowingly or unknowingly, in thought, word, or deed.’ Include a phrase for future forgiveness if not ready in the present moment, aiming to release the past’s burden for future spaciousness.
31. Project Equanimity’s Benefits
To cultivate equanimity, consider the long-term consequences (1, 5, 10 years) of continuing to fight or resist a difficult reality versus coming to a place of peacefulness with it. This projection can clarify the benefits of choosing equanimity.
32. Equanimity Phrases Practice
Cultivate equanimity by repeating phrases like, ‘May I accept reality as it is, rather than how I would like it to be,’ ‘May I learn to be present with the comings and goings of life,’ and ‘This is what is happening.’ These phrases help you be with the moment as it is, rather than fighting it.
33. Acknowledge Practice Feedback
Be present to and acknowledge feedback from your community about positive changes in your behavior, such as reduced reactivity or increased patience. Remind yourself that these are the results of your consistent practice, reinforcing your commitment.
34. Start Tonglen with Love
When practicing Tonglen, begin by breathing in and out phrases of love (or a similar word that resonates with you). This initial step helps settle the nervous system and fosters a sense of being cared for and supported.
35. Tonglen for Compassion
Practice Tonglen by breathing in suffering and exhaling love to cultivate compassion, but be trauma-informed and choose the ‘suffering’ wisely. If ungrounded, start with minor irritations rather than major tragedies, and avoid it immediately after a crisis.
36. Tonglen for Forgiveness
In Tonglen, practice breathing in love and breathing out suffering to cultivate forgiveness and the ability to let go of limiting beliefs or emotional armor. Ensure you feel safe and resourced before engaging in this practice.
37. End Tonglen with Gratitude
Conclude your Tonglen practice by returning to breathing in and out love, viewing the inhale as gratitude for the world’s beauty and the exhale as generosity to share your resources. This balances the experience and fosters a sense of connection and giving.
38. Humanize Difficult People
When working with difficult people, especially those in power, use Metta (loving-kindness) practice to humanize them. This helps you see them as complex human beings with families and histories, fostering openness to connection rather than just opposition.
39. Gratitude for Resilience
Practice gratitude daily to build resilience against life’s sorrows and enhance present moment awareness. Intentionally notice good things, even small ones, to prevent being overwhelmed and to appreciate the beauty around you.
40. Maintain a Gratitude Journal
Keep a gratitude journal by writing down one to three good things at the end of each day for at least a month. Regularly re-read your entries to reinforce awareness of life’s goodness and prevent missing the little things that bring joy.
41. Prioritize Daily Joy & Play
Make joy and play a daily objective, intentionally scheduling or choosing activities that fill you up, even small ones like riding a bike instead of driving. This deliberate practice helps balance the necessary tasks that may not bring joy.
42. Cultivate Childlike Wonder
Cultivate a childlike sense of wonder by pausing to ’take in the goodness’ and deliberately noticing the small, fascinating details around you. This practice enhances present moment awareness and brings joy.
43. Support Others’ Joy
Cultivate your own practice of joy, as it compels you to support the joy and resilience of other targeted communities. This can involve uplifting one another and actively supporting efforts like reclaiming cultural practices.
44. Practice Financial Generosity
Practice generosity, such as committing to giving a portion of your income to community-run organizations, to share goodness with more people. This act can bring unexpected joy and meaning to mundane tasks, like doing taxes.
45. Examine Consumption’s Impact
When considering purchases, investigate the entire production process, from raw materials to manufacturing, and its impact on communities and the environment. Reflect on whether the personal desire for an item is worth the potential harm to others.
9 Key Quotes
Anger can be clarifying and motivating, but it can also make me extremely stupid.
Dan Harris
Punishment, judgment, isolation doesn't work to transform behavior.
Jacoby Ballard
Instead of considering what are you against, what are you for? What do you stand for? What is most important to you?
Jacoby Ballard
If I allow the ferocity of anger to scare someone away, then I don't actually get to connect with that person. I don't, there's no change that happens. The wisdom of the anger doesn't land anywhere.
Jacoby Ballard
If you just stay with anger for too long, it's going to destroy.
Jacoby Ballard
If you put a teaspoon of salt into a glass of water, it's really, really salty. But if you put a teaspoon of salt into a lake, you can barely taste the salt at all.
Jacoby Ballard
Forgiveness is really about you and your own well-being and your own freedom.
Jacoby Ballard
The scriptures say nothing about the next moment. It's all about what's already happened and this moment. That's all you have to accept.
Larry Yang (quoted by Jacoby Ballard)
This is what is happening.
Jacoby Ballard
5 Protocols
Working with Anger
Jacoby Ballard- Recognize the energy of anger (e.g., heat in gut/throat, activated nervous system).
- Discharge the energy through physical movement (e.g., screaming, singing, stomping, sports, dancing, drumming, running).
- Settle the nervous system (e.g., with breath work).
- Sit quietly and get curious about the anger, asking 'What do you have to tell me?' as if having a calm conversation.
Tonglen Meditation
Jacoby Ballard- Start by breathing in love and breathing out love (or a similar word that resonates).
- Breathe in suffering (start with something mild like irritation if ungrounded) and breathe out love (the work of compassion).
- Breathe in love and breathe out suffering (the work of letting go/forgiveness), drawing on resources around you to set down armor and limiting beliefs.
- Return to breathing in love and breathing out love (practice of gratitude and generosity).
- If overwhelmed, drop phrases, focus on breath, open eyes, look around, or use grounding techniques like rubbing thighs.
Self-Forgiveness Practice
Jacoby Ballard- Cultivate focus (e.g., through other meditation practices).
- Hold a specific instance of harm or a specific relationship in your awareness.
- Offer phrases towards yourself, such as: 'May I forgive myself for any harm that I've caused knowingly or unknowingly in thought, word, or action.' 'May I forgive myself and allow myself to be a student of life and to make mistakes.' 'If I cannot forgive myself in this moment, may I be able to forgive myself in the future.'
- Repeat gently and consistently.
- If overwhelmed, drop phrases, focus on breath, or use grounding techniques.
Forgiving Others Practice
Jacoby Ballard- Cultivate focus and hold the person or situation in awareness.
- Offer phrases towards the other person, such as: 'May I forgive you for the harm that you have caused me knowingly or unknowingly in thought, word, or deed.' 'May I see your humanity in the midst of my pain.' 'May my forgiveness soften any difficulties between us.' 'May I allow you to be a student of life and to make mistakes.' 'If I'm not able to forgive you in this moment, may I be able to forgive you in the future.'
- Repeat gently and consistently.
- If overwhelmed, drop phrases, focus on breath, or use grounding techniques.
Gratitude Journal
Jacoby Ballard- At the end of each day, write down one, two, or three things you are grateful for.
- Continue this practice for a set period of time, usually a month or more.
- After the set period, go back and read your entries regularly to remind yourself of goodness and not miss the little things that make life wonderful.