Transforming Anger:

Harmony Speaks with Thea Elijah, M.Ac.

Harmony: Can you speak about anger from the perspective of Chinese medicine? 

Thea Elijah: In speaking about anger I think that the first, most important thing is to make a distinction between anger and violence. Many people are afraid of anger because they equate it with violence—understandably, because they may have been exposed to anger that was expressed through violence or they may have themselves been a target for violence, or because within themselves they may have violent thoughts or feelings when they are angry. Violence is a part of nature—hurricanes, tsunamis, lightening strikes—and so part of health is being able to face violence and live in a world where violence does occur. I'm defining violence here as anything which causes potentially irreparable damage to another thing or being—the way a hurricane or tsunami might destroy a building. And it's important to make the point right from the start that it is possible to be angry without causing irreparable damage or even any damage at all to any other thing or being. In fact, it can be an opportunity to come even more alive together and engage in a more intimate and creative dance. We think, in the West, that the nature of anger is to tend toward violence, but that is actually unhealthy anger, that is the manifestation of an unhealthy Wood element.

Harmony: Describe a healthy Wood element. . . .

Elijah: It's called springtime!  There's a healthy time of erupting force. There's a healthy, vibrant surging forward into the world, and it is creative, not destructive. There are times in our lives when there is awareness of potential (Water, winter) not yet being manifest (Fire, summer) and Wood is that conduit. Wood is that moment of saying, "Hey, what's happening around here . . . you know, it could be better!"  And there's a deep surging upward inside of us when we recognize, "Hey! We've got a problem!"  And inherent in the recognition of the problem is the recognition that it doesn't have to be like this. That's what buried in the anger, that's the virtuous aspect that's within it. Anger, by its nature is progressive. In fact, it demands progress. It says, "We need progress. We need to make a change. This is not alright. I can clearly envision that this could get better."  Unfortunately, this can often happen with such blinding urgency that we don't stop to consider skillful means. Or it can happen with such personal sense of victimization that all we want to do is lash back. It can happen with so much impatience that we're not aware of how to accord with the flow of things—or any number of other patterns of disharmony. All of the patterns of disharmony in Chinese medicine represent a particular way in which the healthy movement of springtime is not happening.

Harmony: So in some sense, latent in anger is the universal principle of change. Can you say that anger is a motivating force for change at its very core?

Elijah: The Confucian transformation of virtue for the Wood element is the transformation from anger to constructiveness. It says that inherent in anger is the sense of visionary benevolence that we turn into constructiveness. The urge to get out there and make things change and do things differently, and make the world a better place. King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, you could say, are a triumph of the Wood element, taking all that war energy and using that to right wrongs. Martin Luther King is another example of a sagely use of the Wood element: seeing something that is not right and saying, "We're not going to stand for it," and getting up and doing something about it. Looking at pathology in the Wood element is looking at where in the person's being they are derailing from the natural process of a healthy springtime, from the natural process of a deep surging forward into life to bring potential outward and upward into future growth.

Harmony: Are there specific ways you help people work with that energy, that anger? 

Elijah: Well, I like to work with the patterns of disharmony in Chinese medicine. And depending on what pattern of disharmony is predominating, we'll work differently. For instance, with the Liver blood–deficient anger, the person is not able to take up their own rightful space. They have low self-esteem. They don't have the ability to come forward. Many women suffer from Liver blood deficiency, and it gives them this feeling that in a one-on-one confrontation they feel outnumbered. Even though it's just one-on-one, they feel small on the inside. When we feel smaller than, when we are not filled—like a tree—with our own sap, then we react very differently to the normal push and shove in life. And if somebody jostles us, we're much more likely to feel like a victim and be angry, and blame the other for how they hurt us as opposed to being able to take up our own space. It's really coming from feeling small and powerless on the inside that a backlash happens. So treating Liver blood deficiency either with needles and herbs or with wu xing shi yao (medicine without form) is very important.

Harmony: Can you talk more about wu xing shi yao?

Elijah: I'm talking about the entire Chinese category of everything that you do to energetically support the client's health, whether it's counseling, Qigong, role modeling or coming right out and saying to them, "Do you notice how defensive you are? What do you think that's about?"  Or in this case, giving them a copy of Marshall Rosenberg's book Nonviolent Communication to read, which has everything to do with framing things in the following way: When you do this, I feel that; therefore, I request such and such.

Harmony: What is another example of a Liver disharmony pattern? 

Elijah: Let's do the opposite—Liver Fire. Liver blood is low self-esteem, but Liver Fire is excessive self-esteem. In Chinese medicine the Liver and anger are connected with the eyes and vision. If you close one eye and look straight ahead and see what you see, and then you switch to the other eye and do the same thing, but don't move your head and go back and forth between your two eyes, what you see is a little bit different, right? It's a different perspective. You can see with one eye, but it takes two eyes to have vision. It gives perspective, it gives dimensionality, and this is a healthy Wood element—one that is seeing with more than just one eye. When "I" have so much self-esteem that "I" only see things "my" way, and "my" point of view is the only point of view in the universe, that is the blazing Liver Fire way of seeing. Liver Fire is basically the willingness to go to war to forward "my" agenda because it is the only agenda that "I" recognize. This is a person who is quite prone to violence, and the wu xing shi yao, aside from the herbs and the acupuncture, has to do with training them to be aware of the other "eye" and also the other "I."

This is something that I think is too often neglected in child raising—that people tend to go over the line one way or the other, either not teaching their children that there is another "I" and setting limits, not based on domination but based on healthy negotiation, or they suppress the "I" of the child and then the child grows up feeling like "I don't count; I don't have rights" and they become more of the victim.

To give one more example, Liver Qi constraint is the sense of being blocked, opposed and overshadowed at every turn. Liver Qi constraint, which is another important aspect in anger, comes from two places: voluntary or involuntary. Involuntary Qi constraint is when you're trying to move forward and something's stopping you, like you're in traffic and it's stuck! It's that feeling of trying to press forward but being suppressed. It's different than the injured victim feeling of Liver blood deficiency. The feeling of Liver Qi constraint either comes involuntarily, when somebody outside of us stops our movement, or it also can build up inside from our own self-suppression of movement, which is not an entirely unhealthy thing. It's part of the whole issue of learning about this other eye, this dual perspective.

Harmony: There's a moderating or regulating force to the Liver?

Elijah: Right! Stoplights! Traffic lights are a perfect example of how everybody needs to curtail their freedom. Why? In order to allow for other people's freedom. A person with Liver Fire doesn't get that balance. And a person with Liver Qi constraint feels like they're the ones who are always at the red light and it's unfair. And the ones with Liver blood deficiency feel like they don't have any strength or rights. They're the ones at the stop sign, and they hold back as long as someone else comes to the stop sign.

You know, a lot of working with anger is being really clear about our anger: Are we angry because there's something that could bear some improvement, and we need to put our vision out into the world and share it, or are we angry because we're not getting what we want? (In which case, frankly, we're the problem.) There's nothing wrong in wanting what we want and having an agenda. It's just that the next step is not to be "one-eyed" about it. The next step is to bring that out creatively and assertively, and see if you can find some "dance partners."

Harmony: In your experience is this approach something people can readily accept? 

Elijah: I think the whole language of "Is this my problem?" is really dicey. It's got to be used really, really carefully, and can only be used after the person is in touch with their dignity, which I think a lot of people aren't. So in working with people around anger, I feel like my first job—one hundred percent—is to help them establish their dignity and their self-esteem, that it's o.k. to have anger, that this is natural and healthy. And it's only after that self-esteem is really established in someone's body, in someone's being, that they're going to be able to question themselves without defensiveness or the need to go to war. This can happen fairly quickly. Sometimes it takes only ten or fifteen minutes of standing in the presence of a practitioner who is according them dignity.

Harmony: How would you frame this subject for Chinese medicine professionals who are just starting to discover this whole area of medicine?

Elijah: I would say that anger is an opportunity for growth. That's what springtime is—an opportunity for rapid growth. And so when clients come in angry, it's time for some rapid growth, and to help them identify what are the constructive aspects of their anger. Where is the evolutionary vision in their anger? What are they seeing that could be better and what are the constructive action steps they can take to fulfill that vision? Simultaneous with this, if anything feels like a blockage or an obstacle it is something exerting evolutionary pressure on the person. Sometimes the solution to the problem is YOU change. So looking at or helping clients look at their situations of anger, especially repeated situations of anger, as something saying, "Hey, is there some potential—not out in the world—but is there some potential in YOU that needs to be developed and brought out? Who else could you be? What else can you bring out of yourself? How else can you learn and grow?"

Thea Elijah, M.Ac., has studied Chinese herbal medicine for over twenty years. A graduate of Traditional Acupuncture Institute, she has studied with Ted Kaptchuk, Leon Hammer and Lonny Jarrett. Elisabeth Rochat de la Vallee and J.R. Worsley have been equally influential in shaping her understanding of the depth of Chinese medicine. The former director of Chinese Herbal Studies at the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture and Tai Sophia Institute, Thea currently practices at the Great Turning Healing Center in Putney, Vermont. For more information on herb seminars in Southern Vermont as well as a complimentary CD, Perennial Medicine, a discussion of the deeper paradigm of how Chinese medicine actually works, contact Thea Elijah at spiritoftheherbs@acupuncturist.edu.