Yes, You're Allowed to Get Angry Even If You Practice Yoga

Published September 17, 2025 09:09AM

There’s a longtime misconception that’s still floating around in the yoga world and, let’s be honest, beyond it. And that’s if you practice enough poses, meditate enough hours, or chant om long enough, you’ll magically transcend your emotional response to things like traffic jams, annoying coworkers, and that friend who still hasn’t returned your spare yoga mat. Yogis are supposed to float through life in a bubble of eternal calm.

Yoga, at its essence, isn’t about erasing emotions. It’s about knowing yourself. Fully. That means acknowledging the entire range of what exists inside of you: peace, happiness, grief, frustration, desire, and yes…anger. Pretending anger doesn’t exist doesn’t make you “enlightened.” It just makes you repressed.

Anger has a purpose. It’s a survival response, wired into our nervous system to protect us when something feels threatening or unjust. If someone crosses a boundary, anger is often the first signal that something needs attention. It’s like your body’s internal alarm system saying, “Hey, this isn’t okay.” Without it, we’d probably tolerate a lot that we shouldn’t.

So the question isn’t, should yogis get angry? The better question is, what do we do with anger when it arrives?

Managing anger is where the practice of yoga comes in. Yoga and its inherent element of mindfulness aren’t about eliminating anger but about creating enough awareness to respond wisely. Instead of lashing out, sending the text you’ll regret, or holding onto resentment like it’s your latest fave song on repeat, you pause. You breathe. You notice, “I’m angry.” And then you get curious about what’s underneath this. Is it hurt? Fear? A violated value?

When we approach anger with awareness, it becomes information rather than destruction. Sometimes the skillful response is speaking up, setting a boundary, or saying “no.” Other times it’s realizing your irritation isn’t about the person in front of you at all—it’s about your lack of sleep or the fact that you skipped breakfast. And many times, when we pause long enough, we notice what we’re angry about is beyond our control. The emotion, when observed, can teach us about what we value and what we need, yet sometimes it’s just that—a signal, not a solution.

The real yoga isn’t about being calm 24/7. It’s about practicing discernment. Getting angry when anger is appropriate. Letting it run the show is not. And that comes back to managing anger.

So, can yogis get angry? Absolutely. In fact, I’d argue we should. Unleashing our unconscious reactions is what isn’t acceptable.

Row 2, from left: Simran Sood | Unsplash; Ann Tarazevich | Pexels; Maria Lysenko | Unsplash; Unsplash; Ann Tarazevich; Krivitskiy | Pexels