Dealing with Uncertainty, Anxiety, and Anger | Special Post-Election Edition | Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens, a Buddhist teacher and author of 'Love and Rage,' offers guidance on navigating post-election uncertainty, anxiety, and rage. He emphasizes self-care as self-preservation, embracing discomfort, and skillfully engaging with difficult emotions through vulnerability and mindful practice.
Deep Dive Analysis
13 Topic Outline
Introduction to Post-Election Uncertainty and Lama Rod Owens
The Role of Self-Care Amidst Overwhelming Emotions
Self-Preservation as an Act of Political Warfare
Navigating Uncertainty Through Present Moment Awareness
Choosing Discomfort and Practicing Acceptance
Adapting Meditation Practice for Trauma Sensitivity
The Practice of Allowing Versus Goal-Oriented Meditation
Addressing Individual and Collective Hurt and Division
Vulnerability as a Path to Agency and Honest Relationships
Dealing with Anger and Rage Skillfully
Tending to the Woundedness Beneath Anger
Cultivating Love and Empathy for Disagreeing Individuals
Long-Term Perspective and Preparing the Ground for the Future
6 Key Concepts
Self-Care (as self-preservation)
Lama Rod explains self-care not as self-indulgence, but as discerning when a break is needed for restoration. This allows one to return to important, long-term work, making it a sustainable and politically significant act rather than a fleeting pleasure.
Holding Space
This refers to recognizing and noticing everything arising in one's experience without reacting to it, simply allowing it to be present. This practice opens up profound mental space, offering a sense of freedom, movement, and the capacity to make conscious choices.
Choosing Discomfort
This is a mentality where one actively welcomes and turns attention towards uncomfortable feelings like anxiety or fear, rather than resisting them. This approach helps to reduce a layer of suffering, creating space around the experience and enabling acceptance and the ability to make intentional choices.
Vulnerability
Vulnerability involves opening oneself to all parts of who and what one is, especially those aspects typically avoided or run away from. While it may initially feel weak, practicing vulnerability leads to an incredible amount of agency and a powerful discovery of one's authentic self, fostering more honest relationships.
Skillful Use of Anger
Instead of reacting to anger in depleting or harmful ways, this involves noticing the underlying woundedness (fear, anxiety, sadness) that often fuels it. With this space, the energy of anger can be used to inform actions that create benefit for oneself and others, rather than escalating harm or violence.
Allowing (in practice)
In mindfulness and meditation, 'allowing' is a basic energy characterized by non-doing, openness, ease, adapting, and shifting, rather than forcing outcomes or being rigidly goal-oriented. It means tuning into and noticing discomfort without trying to conquer it, ultimately fostering gentleness, softness, and clarity.
9 Questions Answered
Self-care should focus on foundational, long-term, healthy ways of managing emotions, such as rest, reducing media consumption, and engaging in activities that produce a lasting restorative effect rather than quick, expensive pleasures like heavy drinking or binge eating.
One can deal with uncertainty by coming back into the present moment, noticing what is happening with one's breath, body, and mind, and holding space for whatever arises without reacting. This practice can open up mental spaciousness and allow for gratitude.
The first step is to choose the discomfort by welcoming it rather than resisting it. This acceptance acknowledges what is happening without condoning it, creating space around the experience and allowing one to decide what to do next.
If a practice becomes overwhelming, suspend it and shift attention to something grounded, solid, and neutral, such as the weight of the body on a seat, feet on the floor, or hands. For those triggered by breath, shift to other physical sensations or try earth grounding meditations.
Approach meditation with openness, ease, softness, and gentleness, allowing experiences to arise rather than trying to conquer them. Be sensitive to reproducing aggression by forcing things, and instead, focus on allowing and noticing.
Vulnerability, by opening to all parts of oneself typically avoided, leads to discovering one's authentic self and experiencing a profound sense of agency. This self-discovery empowers one to be more direct and honest in relationships and situations.
To deal with anger, notice and name it, then allow it to be there without reacting. Tend to the woundedness beneath the anger, which might manifest as fear, anxiety, or sadness. This creates space to use anger's energy skillfully to create benefit rather than harm.
Yes, but it's often best to start by cultivating loving kindness for people you love, then neutral people, and gradually move to those you slightly dislike, and eventually to those you might hate. The core is wanting people to be safe and have what they need to be well, even if you don't like them or agree with their views.
Embrace the understanding that current efforts are about longevity and sustainability, preparing the ground for future generations, much like ancestors did. This involves leaning into discomfort, seeking restorative relationships, and recognizing that current pain might be part of an evolution.
33 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Vulnerability for Agency
Question your addiction to control, as it prevents vulnerability. Embracing vulnerability leads to a profound sense of agency, helps you discover your authentic self, and fosters more honest relationships.
2. Respond Wisely, Not Blindly
Cultivate self-awareness to create space between yourself and your emotions, urges, and narratives. This empowers you to see them clearly and respond wisely, rather than being blindly yanked around by them.
3. Tend to Woundedness Beneath Anger
Look beyond anger to identify and admit the underlying hurt, fear, anxiety, trauma, sadness, or sorrow. Addressing this woundedness, through vulnerability, creates space and a more balanced relationship with anger.
4. Choose Discomfort to Reduce Suffering
Instead of resisting discomfort, choose to welcome and accept its presence. This creates space around the experience and drops a layer of suffering, allowing for deeper engagement with the moment.
5. Hold Space for the Present
Come back into the present, showing up as open-hearted as possible to recognize and notice everything arising in your experience without reacting. Allow it to simply be there to create mental spaciousness.
6. Practice Self-Preservation for Sustainability
Regularly check in with yourself to discern if you need a break, taking it only for restoration. This ensures you can sustainably return to important long-term work, whether political, social, or in general living.
7. Give Your Nervous System a Break
Prioritize foundational, long-term self-care by choosing simple, restorative activities like rest, watching a show, having a treat, or turning off news/media, rather than seeking short-term pleasures that deplete your system.
8. Notice and Name Anger
Allow yourself to notice and name feelings of anger, then let them be present without immediately reacting. Reacting to anger is draining and depleting, while noticing creates space.
9. Skillfully Use Anger for Benefit
Once you have space around anger by tending to underlying woundedness, use its energy skillfully to inform actions that create benefit for yourself and others, rather than escalating harm or violence.
10. Consciously Manage Overwhelming Emotions
If emotions become overwhelming, consciously choose to disengage and do something else restorative, such as tuning out, watching a comforting show, taking a bath, or going for a walk. This is a valid and effective form of emotional management.
11. Suspend Practice If Overwhelmed
If you feel overwhelmed or “in tilt” during meditation, stop the current practice and shift your attention to something grounded, solid, and neutral, such as the weight of your body on a seat, feet on the floor, or hands.
12. Adapt Practice Based on Feedback
Continuously be aware of the data you’re receiving from your practice and make immediate adjustments in the moment. Avoid aggressive forcing of outcomes, instead cultivating openness, ease, and adaptability.
13. Practice Non-Doing and Allowing
Approach mindfulness and meditation with an energy of allowing, watching, and noticing, rather than striving for goals or trying to conquer the practice. This fosters openness, ease, softness, and gentleness.
14. Get Curious About Physical Sensations
When experiencing emotions like anxiety, stop and check in to notice where they are showing up in your body (e.g., buzzing in the chest, throbbing in temples) to deepen your understanding of the experience.
15. Approach Sensations with Care
When exploring deep physical sensations, especially if you’re sensitive to trauma, develop a lot of care and ensure you have adequate support in your practice to avoid getting triggered.
16. Shift Focus from Breath
If the breath becomes a trigger or is not sufficiently grounding, shift your attention to something more solid and tangible, like other body sensations or external anchors, for greater stability.
17. Use Earth Grounding Meditation
Lie down on the floor and feel the weight of your body being held by the ground. This practice is restorative and helps you get close to the earth, providing a sense of stability.
18. Acknowledge Feelings, Then Choose
After acknowledging how you feel in the moment, you gain the capacity to choose your next action. This might include taking a break and relying on other forms of care if the current experience is too overwhelming to hold in practice.
19. Cultivate Spaciousness for Thoughts
By holding space for present experiences, you create mental spaciousness, which allows you the freedom to choose to turn your attention to restorative thoughts like gratitude instead of fixating on anxiety.
20. Embrace ‘Whatever Happens, Happens’
Acknowledge that much in life is uncertain and cultivate a mindset of acceptance, trusting yourself and your practice to meet whatever arises without getting lost in future anxiety.
21. Expect Initial Discomfort
When starting a mindfulness practice, be prepared to experience discomfort as you tune into material you’ve been avoiding. This awareness is a positive step towards understanding, not a sign of failure.
22. Lean into Discomfort with Curiosity
Actively lean into discomfort, showing up to it with curiosity and noticing its components. This allows for deeper understanding that is impossible if you constantly run away.
23. Hold Individual and Collective Discomfort
To move forward, individually commit to holding your own discomfort and then work collaboratively in groups and collectives to collectively process and hold shared pain and woundedness.
24. Set Boundaries to Protect Yourself
While cultivating compassion, assert your right to set boundaries and disengage from relationships with people whose views manifest as harm or violence against you or your communities.
25. Cultivate Compassion for Others
Recognize that others also struggle with their anger and hurt, trying their best, which can foster compassion and create space in your own experience of anger.
26. Ground in Shared Hurt and Empathy
When feeling rage, turn your attention to the underlying hurt within yourself and then expand that empathy to acknowledge the shared hurt and rage experienced by others, creating a sense of spaciousness.
27. Develop Capacity to Experience Anger
Put in the work to develop the capacity to truly experience anger, including its mental and physical sensations, as this full experience can take the edge off its energy.
28. Gradually Build Loving-Kindness
When practicing loving-kindness, start by extending it to people you love, then move to neutral people, and only gradually extend it to those you dislike or hate, avoiding setting the bar too high initially.
29. Extend Basic Empathy to Everyone
Apply the basic empathy you have for yourself (knowing what it’s like to suffer or be afraid) to everyone, even those you dislike, wishing them to have what they need to be well and be free from suffering.
30. Prioritize Restorative Activities
In challenging times, turn your attention to things that are restorative and supportive, focus on good relationships, and only do what is necessary, avoiding unnecessary tasks.
31. Work for Future Generations
Adopt a long-term perspective, understanding that you may not see the full results of your efforts in your lifetime, but your actions now are preparing the ground for a better future for those who come after you.
32. Embrace Longevity and Sustainability
Recognize that important work requires longevity and sustainability, so take breaks when needed to ensure you can continue contributing over the long term.
33. Approach Practice Gingerly
If you’re newer to practice, move gingerly, carefully, and wisely to avoid overwhelming yourself, allowing for gradual development of capacity.
7 Key Quotes
Self-preservation isn't self-indulgence, right? So self-indulgence is something that we do that takes us away from important work. And we get kind of wrapped up in an activity with no intent of returning back to the to the work at hand. Right. But self-care and in the form of self-preservation is really about asking ourselves, you know, and and and discerning if we actually need to take a break, you know, and taking a break only to experience some restoration, some care in order to return back to the work.
Lama Rod Owens
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but you know what, I know what's happening right now, right? I know what's happening with my breath. I know what's happening with my body. I know what's happening with my mind, right?
Lama Rod Owens
There's a layer of suffering that kind of drops when I start resisting.
Lama Rod Owens
A meditation practice isn't something we're trying to conquer. It's just something that we're trying to allow, you know, to open up into, you know.
Lama Rod Owens
I don't have to like you to love you.
Lama Rod Owens
Truly authentic people don't create that much harm in the world.
Lama Rod Owens
We're in labor, in a way, you know. And really, it's about holding your breath and pushing, you know. You have to push through this.
Lama Rod Owens
3 Protocols
Managing Overwhelming Emotions/Discomfort
Lama Rod Owens- Notice and name the discomfort (e.g., anxiety, fear, sadness).
- Allow it to be there without resistance; choose the discomfort.
- Acknowledge what's happening in the moment.
- Make a choice: either engage with the discomfort in practice or take a break.
- If taking a break, rely on other forms of care (e.g., rest, media reduction, watching a show, a bath) to regulate.
- Once more balanced, return to consider choices moving forward.
Suspending and Adapting Meditation Practice
Lama Rod Owens- If engaging with difficult feelings in practice becomes overwhelming or triggering, suspend the current practice.
- Shift attention to something really grounded, solid, and neutral (e.g., the weight of the body on a seat, feet flat on the floor, hands, or another neutral body part).
- If the breath is triggering, shift away from it.
- Consider earth grounding meditations, such as lying down on the floor and feeling the body's weight.
- Understand that this is not a complete stop but a transition to another form of practice that offers more support and restoration.
Cultivating Love and Empathy
Lama Rod Owens- Start by directing loving kindness practices towards people you love first.
- Gradually move to neutral people.
- Continue to people you slightly don't like.
- As capacity strengthens, extend it to people you hate, recognizing this is the pinnacle of the practice.
- The core intention is to want people to be safe and have what they need to be well, even if you don't like them.