Health&Wellness Magazine December 2015 | Page 13

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December 2015

13

Resources
Mayo Clinic – Anger management
www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/
anger-management/basics/definition/
prc-20014603

You can learn to accept and allow
uncomfortable emotions. You can
even learn to follow the advice of
mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat
Hanh. He teaches us to embrace
and take good care of our anger and
remember our capacity for love and
peace is also present within us. He
reminds us that our anger is part of
us. It is like our screaming, crying
baby and needs our protection. He
advises us to hold our anger and all
emotions close and care for them
as we would a newborn baby, not
reject, judge or repress them.
In my experience, two of the most
useful and heartwarming mindfulness practices are forgiveness and
lovingkindness. These practices are
like a balm for most emotional difficulties, including anger. Practicing
forgiveness for oneself precedes forgiveness of other people. Practicing
lovingkindness for oneself precedes
offering lovingkindness to others.
These heart-opening practices can
have an immediate impact on difficult emotions such as anger.
If you need help with anger, you
may well find relief from mindfulness practices that have been helping people for thousands of years.

Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations
on Transforming Difficult Emotions by
Thich Nhat Hanh (2005)
The Art of Forgiveness,
Lovingkindness and Peace by Jack
Kornfield (2002)
About the Author
Dr. Patterson is past president of
the Kentucky Academy of Family
Physicians and is board certified
in family medicine and integrative
holistic medicine. He is on the family practice faculty at the University
of Kentucky College of Medicine
and the University of Louisville
School of Medicine, Saybrook
University’s College of Integrative
Medicine and Health Sciences (San
Francisco) and the Center for Mind
Body Medicine (Washington, D.C.).
He operates the Mind Body Studio
in Lexington, where he offers integrative medicine consultations. He
can be reached through his Web site
at www.mindbodystudio.org.

Lose the stress.
Love the savings.

actually be your best allies in healing your anger.
Keeping a journal of pleasant
and unpleasant events can be very
enlightening. Write down each day
a memorable pleasant event and
an unpleasant event. Write down
what caused you to label one event
pleasant and the other unpleasant.
Write down what sensations were
present in the physical body at the
time of the events. Write down
what thoughts were present. Write
down what feelings and emotions
were present.
This kind of journaling can lead
to remarkable changes in emotional awareness. You may notice your
opinions, assumptions, biases and

prejudices are wrong or outdated
and need to be altered. Such journaling can be the basis for conversations with important people in
your life. Mindful movement such
as yoga, tai chi and qigong can
enhance this journaling process
by putting you in touch with your
moment-to-moment experience of
physical sensations, thoughts and
emotions. This can gradually lead
to greater equanimity and acceptance of life just as it is.
Living more closely aware of
each moment permits you to
choose how to respond to yourself
and others and to life events. You
can learn to feel emotions without necessarily reacting to them.

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