How do we handle anger?

I have written a few article on anger and today, I was asked by my yoga teacher how I handle my anger？ I was caught by surprise and I hesitate to answer.

When something irritates us ,  we get upset and we felt hurt and respond immediately to this incident.  We are in confusion  and who do we forgive ? Do we forgive others who irritate us or forgive ourself been not perfect. We are supposed to wise and god-like. We know anger is not good for us and to the victims. For Asians, we used to keep this anger within us and we suffer in silence. But, this  is not the ultimate solution. So, how do we release the anger or pacify it.

This subject was brought up for discussion during  my Yoga session last night. My Yoga teacher asked us how do we neutralize our anger ?

One of the member said that we just release it and let it go.  But , it is not so easy, the anger will come back again and again to haunt us and we will be fighting with the anger from time to time.

Another member said that he will just walk away from the incident. Yes, it will minimize the impact but he or she will be carrying along the anger and busy fighting with it.

I said that be aware of the anger and use our compassionate heart to melt it. Again, this solution can only be done if we have achieve a high level of self control and actualization. A gift which is gain by a few.

If you go to the internet , you will find that there are many solutions for anger control :

1) Laugh it away , either by practising the laughing Yoga
2) Watch a funny movie and it will go away
3) Go through a very tedious exercise and hope that it will go away
4) Breaking things and plates to control and reduce the anger.
5) Practicing hitting at some target to release the pressure.

Whatever actions we take , each action have different impact on us as nobody is the same.  Some actions work for some peoople and not effective on other people.   But, time is the answer and if we consistently get ourself in set movements, our anger will diminished and will be gone or hide somewhere in our body. If it is long enough, it will fade slowly and finally , it will be forgotten.

Time is the master of all emotions and anger.

Namaste.