Kimberly Helmus still gets chills thinking about her first rage ritual.
Two-and-a-half years ago after her divorce, the cybersecurity engineer embarked on a retreat to Scotland with Mia Banducci − an author and self-described “Spiritual Fairy Godmother,” better known online as Mia Magik.
As part of the retreat, Banducci held a rage ritual: a ceremony in which participants scream and beat large sticks on the ground in the woods. Participants are encouraged to think of people and experiences that have wronged them and to scream and swing the sticks for at least 20 minutes, or until they can no longer move their arms.
Rage rituals have garnered attention on TikTok, where they’ve resonated, particularly with women. In comments, women describe how moving it is to see other women embody their anger − an emotion experts say society often discourages women from expressing.
“There’s no place where you can see women be able to be angry like that and it not be condemned,” Helmus says. ” ‘She’s just hormonal. She’s just unhinged. She’s just crazy. She’s just on her period. She’s just, whatever.’ This was a place where you were, probably for the first time in a really, really long time, if ever, able to scream out loud things about how you felt.”
What is a rage ritual?
Banducci has led rage rituals for several years and began doing them first for herself, then for friends and, eventually, as part of her days-long retreats, which include other activities and can range in price from…
