Photos by Scott Foster
Rage Club is a prayer for a culture that remembers our anger is part of our dignity. Conscious anger is a doorway to aliveness and authenticity. In Rage Club, we reclaim our anger – starting by feeling it without self-shame, judgement, or limits on our expression.
We feel our sadness, fear, and joy in Rage Club too. But we start with anger. We let ourselves be messy, uncivilized, and immature. We peel back our layers of self-filtering, self-suppressing, people-pleasing, and conflict-avoiding. We say what our hearts have been longing to say.
Rage Club is about connecting to your anger and
– gaining access to your raw impulses and life force
– learning to express what you want instead of shrinking, hiding, or people-pleasing
– making boundaries that matter to you
– daring to be bigger in the world
– healing old wounds
– reclaiming your voice and personal space
Unexpressed rage weighs the soul down and comes out sideways. We examine our anger and see what it has for us. Our anger is a doorway to what we really care about. It leads us to places where we want to take a stand in our lives, to make changes, and to reclaim our dignity.
We do this together in community. We rage to be more fully human, more fully alive, and more fully honest with ourselves.
How does Rage Club work?
Every Rage Club is different, tailored to the people in the room. There’s no fixed script.
In general, we:
- Do warm-ups for getting us out of the mind and into the feeling body
- Do low and high intensity practices to unblock physiological, emotional, and energetic access to anger.
- Practice moving our anger through the body — letting it speak with volume, unblocking our throats, and reclaiming our anger from those who have shamed it in the past.
- Practice listening to low level anger and holding high level anger so we don’t get overwhelmed and explode.
- We often use physical body exercises – specific forms of group holdings, pushings, and floor processes – that are designed to let us safely access higher levels of anger. These forms make it so you can go farther than you could alone because you don’t have to hold yourself back. Other people are keeping you safe.
- We practice using our anger to set boundaries, say what we’ve needed to say, and complete incomplete emotions or wounds from the past.
There’s a big difference between thinking about your anger and feeling it fully. Rage Club is about the latter. We go out of the mind and into the body. We hold space for you to risk looking silly, wild, or irresponsible. Rage Club is a rare space where you do not have to have it together. You can let your filters come off and be in raw, honest expression. Honest expression is self-love.
Rage Club is not about catharsis or “blowing it out.” We work with anger as a neutral communication from the body. We feel it, practice holding it, and listen to it. Then, we use our anger as a force to create what we want for our lives: to make boundaries, end things, declare what we want, connect to purpose, and more. We don’t get rid of our anger. We learn to use it.
Next Rage Clubs
Day of Rage — an afternoon-long deep dive, TBD, tentatively Saturday October 3rd
Join the list to hear about the next one.
Testimonials
Through Daway’s guidance in Rage Club, I’ve connected with even deeper layers of love within me, and have clarity that comes from experiencing an embodied, more authentic knowing about what matters most to me. I’ve learned that my rage holds sacred information that I need to connect with so that I can do my work in the world. In the weeks after my mom died, I had a sense that I needed to explore rage as a part of this time of natural grief. I did a standing rage hold guided by Daway and Meredith, and being fully in rage in a safe way has been a key to freeing my voice and speaking my truth. — Andi C.
My Rage Clubs with Daway have been epic. Daway has an amazing combination of being caring but also fierce and fun. I trust Daway because I have seen him so many times being able to see clearly into what is happening in a space or in a person and then speaking that clarity with fierceness and care. He will not conform to being nice if that holds a group or person back from their potential. I know a lot of ‘nice’ people who don’t say anything that really helps someone grow or change. Daway does not do BS. He cares enough to say what is actually happening and then has the skills to hold the space in whatever big feelings come up. — Joseph G.
Through Rage Club, I’ve come to understand that anger is a neutral emotion—it’s not bad, but a signal that I care deeply about something. During the last two Rage Clubs I’ve been to, I’ve given myself the space to explore and connect to the root of my emotions. By channeling my anger, I’ve found clarity, healing, confidence, and the power to move forward authentically. — Dayane M.
Rage Club was a unique space for me to access my anger and learn ways to work with it consciously. I was amazed how connective it felt to feel anger with a group of strangers. Daway and Meredith led us through powerful exercises to build our capacity to feel anger and co-facilitated a deeply held container that allowed space for more of each of us. — Monica C.
In Rage Club, I discovered that I could tap into my authentic anger, even at a very low intensity. It’s empowering to realize that this conscious anger is necessary and always available. With it, I become clear about what I want. With it, I have the energy to create. Being in a space with a group of people learning to feel, and to allow themselves to sense the energy of authentic anger, is enlivening. When I embody my anger, my entire Being is clear that this is MY life. — Leslie G.
FAQ
Is Rage Club a “safe space”?
We ask participants not to hurt themselves in Rage Club. This means physically, emotionally, and energetically. But there is distinction between productive pains — feeling pain about the past instead of numbing it or feeling ego pain that comes with genuine transformation — and less productive pains that we call “hurting yourself.” Ultimately, you have to find that distinction for yourself.
We are there as spaceholders to be with your intense triggers, traumas, or reactivities that come up. We want to go there in fact, so we can examine what’s there and learn to heal, complete, or hold it. So Rage Club is not “safe” because we are not looking to avoid these places in ourselves. But it is a loving space. We are all here to be with each other on our healing and evolutionary paths.
As spaceholders, we will be creating the circumstances and holding exercises where you can dive into real blockages. Everything is optional and negotiable. You can sit exercises out or choose what level you want to engage at, but know that there is a lot of intense feeling and expressing that happens in Rage Club.
What if I’m not feeling Rage that day? What if I don’t want to force my anger?
One of the core premises of Rage Club is don’t do anything you don’t want to do. If something feels forced or inauthentic, it’s welcome for you to stay exactly as you are. There’s no required intensity, and no “right” way for anger to look.
That said, it’s rare for someone to feel no anger or even only low anger. We do warm-ups and physical exercises that help open your body’s physiological access to anger, even when you feel calm or disconnected. Yes, feeling your anger will require practicing fighting the inner urge to look good, stay in control, or be put together. That’s normal. With intention and permission, your anger will move. The body already knows what it’s been trying to communicate. Rage Club is a safe space for it to do so.
Rage Club is unique because it’s one of the few places where anger isn’t judged or shamed. Simply being in a space where others see anger as valuable lets it flow so much more than you might expect.
If specific fears or blocks to your anger come up, that’s part of the work too. We have practices for:
- Working with fear or other feelings that block your expression
- Healing experiences of being shamed for your anger (including self-shaming)
- Unblocking the throat chakra
The last thing is this: Even if you were completely silent, you’d still gain something new in your relationship to anger simply by being around others who are practicing with it and witnessing their breakthroughs.
How can there be love in anger?
Our bodies have not evolved by mistake. Our anger – and all our feelings – are useful. They are direct sources of energy and information for us.
At some point in all our lives, people do things that are not okay with us. To suppress your anger about these things — to ignore it, numb it out, or overly intellectualize it — is cutting yourself off from your body’s wisdom. Your body’s anger means “This is not okay with me” or “I want something else.” In Rage Club, we complete this communication from our bodies. We get to say the things we wish we had said. We make the boundaries we need. We use our anger to commit to what we care about.
In this way, listening to our anger is self-love. It is being with ourselves. It is love for others, too, because they get to know where we really are. Then, the process of being in relationship — not in a fake, people-pleasing, pretending way — can really begin. You get to be vulnerable and stand by what you want. Letting others see that is love.
I’m angry but it’s pointless because this person or situation can’t change. Why feel angry about it?
Feeling your anger is for you. It’s not for changing the other person.
Your body will hold onto your anger until you acknowledge it. Even if the other person won’t ever hear what you have to say, saying it out loud can complete it for yourself. When we listen to our bodies, our bodies can relax. When we express our anger, we can get to the feelings that lie under it. Often this is grief, fear, or even joy. Bottle up your anger, and those other emotions won’t ever get to come up.
I often say Rage Club is about dignity. Even if you were the last human on Earth, it would be part of reclaiming your dignity to feel what you’ve been angry about. Because that means you want something, or you care about something. Acknowledging that, hearing that, even if just for yourself, creates dignity and wholeness.
I get too angry. Should I come?
Yes! Ultimately, Rage Club is about practicing having access to anger in a precise and powerful way. You feel your anger, but you’re not overrun by it.
Many people who explode or cannot control their anger are not sensitive to low level anger. They ignore it or numb it, and then when the anger is too much, it explodes out. Rage Club is about getting sensitive to low levels of anger. You do that by valuing it.
On a physiological level, we train our bodies to hold and flow our anger rather than suppress and get rid of it. We experience high level of anger, and we just let it be in our bodies. Then we can learn to stay conscious and use it while being in connection.
I have deep wounds and trauma around other people’s anger. Should I come?
It’s up to you. The first rule of Rage Club is don’t hurt yourself. If you need to sit out a practice or have earplugs, great. See “Is Rage Club a ‘safe space’?”
A lot of participants have told me they’ve gotten a lot out of Rage Club because they’ve gotten to be around other people’s expressions of anger. They’ve practiced staying grounded and centered in those moments.
Many find that what makes others’ expressions of anger scary is that they have no access to their own. Once they learn to be with their own anger, then they can be with others’. Rage Club is a space to practice that. It is also a space where we practice centering and grounding ourselves, and not taking on other people’s energy.
We will be watching for signs where people are not okay and dissociating, and we will never be perfect at it. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide what level of practice you want to take on. If you have questions about the intensity of Rage Club, or if you think you might prefer to explore 1:1 or small group anger work, please write to us.
If you have more questions, get in touch.
Spaceholder
Rage Club SF is held by Daway Chou-Ren.
~
For most of my childhood, I lived in a state of silent panic. People kept talking about “finding your passion,” and all I could sense was that I wasn’t living my life. I realized later it was because I was totally disconnected from my feelings. Feeling and expressing meant I was “out of control.” So I stopped feeling.
Eventually, I ran into beautiful souls who were willing to hold space for that to change. As I learned to rage, I learned to cry. As I became comfortable with my messy, imperfect wholeness, I learned to feel joy. And then I started tapping into life force and direction I could not ignore. I couldn’t numb my feelings anymore and that meant I couldn’t numb the pain of working jobs I didn’t care about. I stopped adapting to the life others wanted for me. My sensitivity gave me real motivation to love better, to access deeper human archetypes, and to build the kinds of culture I want for the world.
The wellspring of my creativity, aliveness, and authentic life path began when I learned to let myself feel fully and without judgement. Now I hold Rage Club as a doorway to that aliveness for others.
I hold deep gratitude for the founder of Rage Club, a brilliantly fierce woman named Anne-Chloé Destremau, who trained me to hold Rage Club. I have since trained about 50 others who are called to hold Rage Clubs for their communities around the world.
What others have experienced
on anger: i have spent 6 years searching
The first thing I want to tell you: I’ve lived most of my adult life in a porous state with people I love. I let everything they feel pass through me. Your emotions are my emotions. My emotions are your emotions. Where do you end, where do I begin? If you are wondering how this feels, imagine you have a cloud for a heart. Imagine you have no hard edges.
Pigeon Dignity, Human Potential, and the Power of Rage Club
Where on earth can a person go to learn to step into their authority about who they are? To stand for what they care about? To stop giving their days and years to jobs or relationships that have nothing to do with what or who they could be? Where on earth can a person reclaim the dignity of being a human in alignment with their potential?
What are you so mad about? – Sebastopol Times
Rage Club helps channel anger into aliveness – New Hampshire Gazette