As of late, I feel angry when meditating. Is this common? Do I try to figure out where it is coming from or should I scream and punch things like I feel like doing? I don’t know what to do.
[QUOTE=EbonyYogi;84352]As of late, I feel angry when meditating. Is this common? Do I try to figure out where it is coming from or should I scream and punch things like I feel like doing? I don’t know what to do.[/QUOTE]
Detoxify yourself. 
How do I do that?
Contrary to how it is taught or recommended by many Western teachers, meditation is not an “act”; it is a state achieved through practice. To be able to achieve the inward, in-bound attention, it is required to tame the forces that are naturally out-bound. The forces can be tamed only by following certain behavior elaborated as yama-niyama in ashtanga yoga.
In simple words, one cannot force oneself to get into meditate state in the midst of noise, conflicts, stress. And when one tries with effort, the rest of the unwilling body rebels. Anger could be one such reaction. Meditation is not merely sitting cross-legged and closing eyes.
Discipline of yoga requires one to understand from such difficulties overcome them, and eventually succeed in consciously controlling it. Punching bags is slavery of the instincts and not yoga.
Find out what’s making you angry, maybe you are forcing yourself to meditate and you don’t actually want to do it? Or maybe during meditation you are becoming aware of your feelings?
Don’t use meditation to suppress your emotions, to force yourself into a “peaceful” mold, it will make you even angrier and give no benefits.
Make as much commotion as you want, just don’t hurt anyone. Telling people you feel angry is in no way the same as taking your anger out on them.
Anger arises, acknowledge it, don’t try and suppress it, don’t focus on it, and let it go
Anger can come up during meditation.
It may be unresolved anger from events in your past, even your childhood.
It’s coming up for review and you need to become aware of it.
You’ll also find that the anger is located in your phyical body and if you focus on that area you’ll be able to almost pin-point it.
If you keep focusing on it, the feeling will start to shrink.
You can also use the same method in daily life wherever you are.
If you find yourself getting angry, try to locate the place in your body where you feel the anger and it will diminish.
[QUOTE=EbonyYogi;84352]As of late, I feel angry when meditating. Is this common? Do I try to figure out where it is coming from or should I scream and punch things like I feel like doing? I don’t know what to do.[/QUOTE]
Yes, this is common. Especially to those who sit a lot. But it differs a lot what students are told to do or not do about it. It happens because you become aware of what is stored in your subconscious mind.
What to do about it? Do you have a teacher whom you are working with or do you practice alone? If you have a teacher, ask him/her. That is better assuming that the teacher is well trained. If you don’t have a teacher, find one who you can trust and whose teaching makes sense to you.
That being said there are two (or more) ways to go about this. If you do not start bursting your anger outwards smashing things there are two ways: to not react to anger or to look at it right into it’s eye. Usually it is said that one should not confront (eye to eye) strong impulses like fear and anger if one is not calm and stable. That is because if one is not calm, already nervous and restless, then the anger or whatever the strong impulse is will drive the person into a greater psychological mess. On the other hand if one is calm then confronting these inner “demons” eye to eye will transform them for good. It might take a few or many times to be able to transform a strong negativity like this bt eventually it will happen that you will see the anger or whatever it is as transparent, just as awareness itself is. Then the anger is no more.
In the beginning its nothing wrong with venting the anger, after a while the anger will have less and less impact on you when it arises.
I have periods of time when strong anger comes up in my meditation practice, too. Sometimes I’m able to pinpoint its source, and sometimes I’m not. If I know where the anger is coming from I will consciously focus on the root of the problem and try to find something good in the situation causing the anger. Once I’ve acknowledged that, I’m usually able to do a loving-kindness meditation on the topic in gratitude of whatever the lesson may be.
Even if I’m not sure where the anger is coming from, simply acknowledging (to myself) that anger is just one of our emotions and is part of the human experience helps. I then give myself permission to feel the anger. That act alone often helps it dissipate.
Sometimes we just need to allow ourselves to experience the full spectrum of our feelings.