I never thought it was okay for me to be angry. As a woman, I learned that anger would make me shrill or annoying. As a deeply committed yoga practitioner, I believed that it was “not very yogic” of me to get mad at anyone for any reason. I swallowed my anger for a long time—until I couldn’t anymore. I got stuck in bad relationships. I let people treat me badly. I had hives and stomachaches all the time. But slowly, over time, I started to listen to my anger. I stopped avoiding it and started to say something when things didn’t feel right—even in tiny little ways like, “Hey, I don’t like it when you’re late all the time.” I no longer wanted to accept that things simply had to be the way they were. It was when I started to tune into my anger, to let it guide me towards standing up for myself and my boundaries, that my body and my relationships started to heal. Connecting to my anger helped me find my power. Anger isn’t the most popular emotion. We often get the message that we should focus on compassion and forgiveness, and that anger is somehow not a spiritual emotion. But trying to past …