Calming the Angry Ant (audio)

Maggie Dent:

Hello and welcome to Calming The Angry Ant. Have you ever been really angry? Really, really angry? Well, if you've ever seen an angry ant say, they look really angry when they're angry, and that's why we've called this exercise, Calming The Angry Ant. It's about helping us feel much less angry. So if you're keen to have a go at letting go of some anger, even if you're not feeling angry right now, I want you to get yourself really comfortable somewhere, preferably on the floor with a comfy pillow, and let's get ready to calm the angry ant.

And now to begin, I want you to take three long, slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth. And now, to help your body feel a lot more relaxed, I want you to imagine that you can breathe all the feelings inside you about feeling tense and tight in the body. So take a big breath out. Breathe out all the tightness and the tension in your body. And again, three breaths, breathing out tension and tightness.

Now, that you've breathed out all the tension and tightness in your body, I want you to breathe out all the breaths that hold fear and feeling anxious. Big breath in and Big breath out. Breathe out feeling frightened and anxious. One last, breathe out the last breath of feeling frightened and anxious. Beautiful.

Now, I want you to imagine that you can take all the worries that are in your mind and you can take them out of your mind and put them into a worry basket just beside you. I want you to do that right now. Any of the worries that seem to be in your mind right now, I want you to put them in the worry basket just beside you.

Your body should now be feeling really relaxed. Much calmer and quieter. Do you know the colour for anger? I'm sure you do, because it's kids that have taught it to me. You're right. A deep red, a fire engine red is the colour that represents anger. So as you're lying there, I want you to imagine it throughout your whole body on the inside, it's completely full of red energy. Let's pretend that this is anger that we haven't expressed safely, calmly, without hurting anyone else. We're now going to begin breathing out the red energy in our bodies, so I want you to have three big outward breaths, imagining that the red is coming from inside your head out through your mouth. Three deep big outward breaths, breathing out red from inside your head. Off you go.

Beautiful. Now, I want you to breathe three big outward breaths that take all the red from inside your chest and your arms and around your heart. Off you go. Three more big outward breaths out through your mouth. Breathe it out. And then, finally, down into our stomach and down legs. I want you to take three big breaths and bring the red right up through your chest and out through your mouth. Off you go. Really big breaths out to get the red out from inside your legs and your stomach. Big breaths out. Off you go.

Now, if you could see inside yourself right now imagine that it's kind of empty. It looks just like a glass or a mirror with nothing in it. The second part to calming the angry ant within us is to breathe in a calming, cool, gentle energy or colour and for this, I suggest to use colours like green, turquoise, like the colour of the ocean, blue or maybe even a purple. These are calming colours, so we just reverse what we've already done. I want you to take a couple of big breaths in through your nose and imagine that you can breathe in a calming colour right down your legs and into your stomach. So big breaths in breathing the calming green, calming turquoise, whatever colour you have chosen, and now fill up your stomach, big breath in calming colours into the stomach.

Keep breathing in through your nose and now, bring your calming colours into your chest area. Imagine filling up your rib cage with this beautiful calming colour. Then your shoulders, down your arms to your hands and your fingertips. And then finally, a couple of more beautiful breaths inward through your nose and fill your whole head up with your calming colour. Make sure that your whole brain is now your calming colour. Then imagine that that same beautiful calming colour can just be poured all over the outside of your body clearing away any angry thoughts or feelings that might be around your body as well as inside your body. Are you feeling really calm now? Beautiful. This is something really important to do often because lots of little things make us a little bit angry from time to time.

So now, you know how to calm your own angry ant. Remember, big red breaths out, big green breaths in. I know that you are special even if sometimes you get angry, so just spend a few moments feeling really calm, and instead of being an angry ant what sort of calm creature could you be right now?

Beautiful. So I want you to try to imagine being your calm creature more often and whenever you're feeling angry ants stirring inside you, I want you to try to change that by breathing, by going for a walk, by going and talking to someone who loves you and cares about you. I hope your calm now. I want you stretch yourself. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Come back into your body and bring that lovely calm mind, body and heart back into the now time. So until you hear from me again, cheers for now.