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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › Letting it out safely
Some children's grief centres keep a padded room where a child can go in and move however they need to, with nothing to hit and nothing to break. Most adults have no such room, so improvise one: the stairs, a long walk in bad weather, the kitchen with the door shut. Nothing is being struck and nobody is being pictured. The body simply gets to do what it has wanted to do since the news arrived.
The Qur'an describes a person in trouble crying out to God 'whether lying on his side, sitting, or standing' (Quran 10:12). Whatever position the distress finds you in is a position you are allowed to express it from.
يونس
وَإِذَا مَسَّ ٱلۡإِنسَٰنَ ٱلضُّرُّ دَعَانَا لِجَنۢبِهِۦٓ أَوۡ قَاعِدًا أَوۡ قَآئِمࣰ ا فَلَمَّا كَشَفۡنَا عَنۡهُ ضُرَّهُۥ مَرَّ كَأَن لَّمۡ يَدۡعُنَآ إِلَىٰ ضُرࣲّ مَّسَّهُۥۚ كَذَٰلِكَ زُيِّنَ لِلۡمُسۡرِفِينَ مَا كَانُواْ يَعۡمَلُونَ
When trouble befalls man he cries out to Us, whether lying on his side, sitting, or standing, but as soon as We relieve him of his trouble he goes on his way as if he had never cried out to Us to remove his trouble. In this way the deeds of such heedless people are made attractive to them
Qur’an 10:12read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a randomised trial, a mindfulness based stress reduction course left people less stuck for words about their feelings and lowered their self-reported hostile and aggressive expression. That is a very different practice from moving around a room, so it is not evidence for this exercise in particular. It is a fair sign that ways of handling anger which do not involve venting it aggressively can still bring aggressive expression down.
Robins CJ, Keng SL, Ekblad AG, Brantley JG. (2012). Effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction on emotional experience and expression: a randomized controlled trial.. Journal of clinical psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The body gets the movement it is asking for without you practising an attack on anyone.
Write the exact thing you are furious about on a paper plate, tape it to the wall, and throw wet cotton balls at it. It sounds childish, and it does more than swinging at nothing.
There is motion sitting inside the word emotion. Big feelings come out through the body, so if you cannot keep still while you are grieving, that is the feeling moving rather than something going wrong with you.
Punching something to get the anger out is the piece of grief advice that gets argued over most, and the honest answer is that hitting rarely leaves a person calmer.