This Rage is Yoga, Too

A practice in Madhya—the sacred middle.

The headlines are relentless.

Measles outbreaks caused by disinformation. Tariffs used as political theater. Deportations — kidnappings, really — used to instill fear. Each news alert carries more violence, more harm.

I’ve spent the last decade learning the nervous system—how to soothe it, how to listen to it, how to help others come home to theirs. I teach breathwork. I teach stillness. I guide people toward softness.

But in this moment? I am pissed off. This is full-body, nervous system in overdrive kind of anger. I can feel it in my shoulders. In the sinus infection I can’t seem to kick. In my broken sleep. I’ve felt anger before, of course. But as someone who likes to be agreeable—to keep the peace, to smile through discomfort—I’ve learned how to bury it deep. But this? This isn’t the kind of anger you can spiritualize. This is not the filtered kind. Not the kind you can tuck into a cute Hola Yoga tote bag and take to the studio, allowing it to rear its ugly head only once on the the safety of your yoga mat. This is the kind that hums under the surface, sharp and steady, refusing to be softened. And still—my nervous system isn’t in fight or flight. It’s in freeze. You won’t find me at the Hands Off protests. I haven’t booked a one-way ticket out of here for my family (not yet, anyway). Like many of you, I’m moving through my days, doing what needs to be done. Rocking my baby to sleep with a quiet and crushing rage riding just beneath it all. Watching. Holding. Waiting for what comes next.

So what do I do with this rage? Bypassing it won’t work (believe me I’ve tried). But I also won’t force it into softness. That feels performative, drenched in privilege. Even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to. At the same time, I don’t want to be owned by it.
I don’t want it simmering just beneath the surface, waiting to spill out unexpectedly—especially in moments meant to be tender, present, or full of joy. How do I stay in relationship to myself and with the world around me? When I feel untethered, I return to my practice. Not for clarity or control, but for connection. For a place to land.

That’s what I can offer you, too.

Madhya—not as a solution, but as a place to be. A middle space to hold the tension without collapsing under it. A space to feel, to breathe, to remember that you’re still here.

Madhya is the sacred center.
The space between extremes.
The pause between inhale and exhale.
The moment between reactivity and response.
The place between silence and scream.

It’s not comfortable here. It’s not clear. But it is sacred. Yoga asks us to meet ourselves in this place—not to bypass it, not to rush through it—but to stay. To breathe, if we can. To notice what lives here. To let the tension itself be a teacher.

And it’s here I remember that Madhya, the paradoxical in-between, is a place I know well. As a yoga therapist, a mother, a small business owner, and a daughter of immigrants, I live in this space of in-between.

Between home and career.
Between cultures.
Between languages.
Between wanting to burn it all down and still hoping it can get better.

And so I return to breath—not to erase the fire in me, but to give it shape.

To sit in the Madhya.
To let my rage teach me without consuming me.
To hold my child with one hand and my heartbreak with the other.

This rage is yoga, too.