YOGA Liaison

05/03/2026

On Anger

For sensitive, empathic, spiritually oriented people, there is often a deep wound around anger.

Early on, the nervous system learned that our fire—our “no,” our intensity, our needs—disrupted connection. Someone turned away. Froze. Shamed us. And the body made an intelligent but costly decision: this energy is dangerous.

The anger didn’t disappear. It went underground.

Anger was a vital, embodied force that many of us were never allowed to feel safely.

It became caretaking. Being “easy.” Chronic empathy. Spiritual language that avoids conflict, assertion of needs, and enactment of boundary. Compassion that is actually fear wearing soft clothing.

And when anger finally breaks through, it often appears distorted—as resentment, bitterness, or sudden explosions that feel out of character.

None of this is pathology. It is attachment history stored in the body. From a somatic perspective, anger is simply activation seeking direction. It is life force rising to protect what matters.

Heat gathers. The belly engages. The spine wants to lengthen. The body says, something is not okay here. But without safety, that activation is confused with danger—and we shut down.

This is why anger is so misunderstood on the spiritual path.

But anger is not the problem. A disembodied, unconscious, avoidant relationship with anger is a potential problem. Conscious anger is one of the foundations of mature spiritual life. Without it, meditation becomes dissociation, compassion becomes appeasement, and forgiveness becomes self-erasure.

Many of the contemplative lineages understand this in their own way: anger, when refined and met with awareness, becomes clarity, protection, and fierce love. It is not a weapon. It is a guardian.

Anger is the part of the psyche that says: I matter. This boundary matters. Something sacred is being crossed.

The work, then, is not to suppress anger or explode with it—but to tend it. To create the internal safety that was missing early on.

Safety in the body. Safety in relationship. Safety enough for the nervous system to feel without collapse or shame.

When anger is met this way, it often reveals grief—grief for crossed boundaries, for the self that had to disappear in order to be loved.

Anger work is grief work. And grief work is love work.

04/19/2026

There is a beautiful complexity of growth within the human soul. In order to glimpse this, it is helpful to visualize the mind as a tower of windows. Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await your gaze. Through these different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity. Complacency, habit, and blindness often prevent you from feeling your life. So much depends on the frame of vision -- the window through which you look.

JOHN O'DONOHUE

Excerpt from his book, Anam Cara,
25th Anniversary Edition.
Ordering Info: https://www.johnodonohue.com/anam-cara

County Clare, Ireland
Photo: © Ann Cahill

04/19/2026

Hard work but why live if we do not want to become free.

Every dark thing one falls into can be called an initiation. To be initiated into a thing means to go into it. The first step is generally falling into the dark place and usually appears in a dubious or negative form - falling into something or being possessed by something . . . . You can take every psychological illness as an initiation. Even the worst things you fall into are an effort at initiation, for you are in something which belongs to you, and now you must get out of it.

Dr Marie-Louise von Franz
Artwork by Thomas Dodd

04/16/2026

“When the time comes for the heart to open fully again, the old fears will awaken and the inner walls will tighten up. Although fear can become terrifying and paralyzing, what we most fear is where we must go. “Fear is the guide for the true direction of the heart,” they used to say when considering the courage required to become oneself. Our way of loving and healing is seeded within us, yet it takes more than one breakthrough to reach the inner treasure. A long road made of longing and self-discovery is required in order to re-open the heart and reveal the gold within it. Another old proverb states that “what the heart loves is the cure.” Life is the ailment and what we love provides the cure for what ails us.”
- Michael Meade

04/14/2026

04/12/2026

🙏🌻🌻🌻

04/12/2026

PENSÉE DE LA SEMAINE / THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Veuillez partager / Please share

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03/28/2026

Suffering is not there as a punishment, it’s there to teach you where you are still clinging, it’s there to teach you where to shine your love and compassion, it’s there as a doorway to freedom. When we try to run from our suffering, to bury it beneath our business or brush it beneath the rug of trying to feel good—we lose out on the opportunity to feel, let go, transmute, and heal. When we realize suffering is not a mistake, we finally begin to take our next steps on the road home to freedom.