Exercise To Heal Childhood Anger

Think back to yesterday. Imagine that your memory is a videocassette that you can rewind to any time you choose. Right now, take it back just twenty-four hours. What were some of the things you did during the day? Did anything frighten you or make you angry? Focus on a moment of anger, becoming aware of the sensations in your body as well as the emotions in your mind.

Next, rewind the videotape back exactly one year. Do you recall being angry or worried about something? Try to feel the emotions of that time in your mind and in your body. Are the feelings the same as the feelings you remember feeling yesterday?

Rewind the tape even father back to when you were a teenager. Repeat the process. Then try to remember an incident from childhood. Notice how the anger that you experienced yesterday has been built on emotions from so long ago. Notice how the fear and anger have accumulated over the years.

Although you cannot remember it, there was a time in your life before you ever felt anger or fear, a time of total peace and tranquility. Try to imagine what that experience of utter bliss might have been like. Focus on a time before fear or anger.

Rewind that imaginary tape of your life until the screen goes back, and feel the boundaries evaporate between yourself and your surroundings. For the next minute, feel the total loss of all your accumulated anger, fear, and ego.

With that feeling of total bliss still in your awareness, begin to move that imagery videotape forward again. Visit the same points in your life that you stopped at earlier. As you envision these scenes again, introduce the experience of bliss back into the setting.

Instead of allowing one moment of anger to build upon another, begin to erase these moments one by one, from earliest childhood to just yesterday. Spend a minute or so feeling the anger and fear being erased by this memory of bliss. And as those feelings are erased, allow the toxic buildup of years of anger and fear to be erased from your spirit.

Adapted from The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, by Deepak Chopra (Three Rivers Press).

Read more: Deepak Chopra's Tips, Spirit, anger, bliss, fear, healing