Reviews

Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger by Lama Rod Owens

lsparrow's review against another edition

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5.0

The book I needed to read right now about how we can love our feelings and listen to what they have to teach us.

amandadevoursbooks's review against another edition

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4.0

This is a really interesting read. It is written by Lama Rod Owens, and in it Owen shares how he created space for his anger and teaches how to create space for your own anger. In between the chapters and in the middle of the chapters there are invitations to practice meditation and exercises that help you practice what you are learning.

I listened and read to this and I know I'll be going back to the meditation practices on my audiobook on a regular basis. My only concern or question that I'm still wrestling with is the chapter entitled "me too." In it Owens wrestles with the impact of a teacher who harmed women in his community. It was thought provoking. I struggled with some of the messaging.

alicia_ann_reads's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring relaxing slow-paced
This book was a good read, slow paced and containing a number of breath and meditation practices to bring yourself back into your body. 

It's definitely a book you read once, and then come back to and read again. 


maritzaivette's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I picked this book at the exact right time. A beautiful, and hard reflection of the intersection and complexities of love and rage with practical practices to learn to love that rage and sit with difficult feelings. 

“If we don’t do our work, then we become work for other people.”

pangnaolin's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.25

Honestly, this was definitely a beautiful book with a lot of really important things to say, but I did feel a bit bored by it simply because it was repetitive and I knew most of the objective information he gave both from my own practices & journeys in therapy and from just having taken a year-long course on mindfulness & meditation in school.

Regardless, Lama Rad Owens did a wonderful job describing really complex emotions and ideas surrounding noticing and creating space for emotions, anger, pain, the trauma of humankind, communication, and so much more. It was all so simple to understand, though definitely hard to listen to at times because of how open and vulnerable it could be.

His guided meditations and practice were really wonderful and helpful, especially in audiobook form (as I read and listened to it simultaneously), and including those was such a great call on his part.

I think the biggest takeaways from this are absolutely that anger is an emotion that tries to protect our wounds and that marginalized people do significant amounts more of emotional labor in the United States just by existing, so we must work to reduce this suffering in our communities. Relatedly, he also talks a lot about creating space for our emotions and allowing them to exist, noticing what wounds they're pointing to and how we can address them and grow.

I think I gained the most from when he talked more personally and from his suggested practices and when he talked about how it intertwined with activism [it was affirming to see someone make the same connections I did], again just because I already knew a lot of what he talked about, and they were often my favorite parts. If you're interested in learning more about mindfulness and meditation and want to connect it back to marginalization and activism in the US, this is absolutely the book for you! It's a really good intro.

beccabees's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

jgwhatever's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

cully9's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

cebolla's review against another edition

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5.0

I've read and reviewed this book three times now, but every time I re-read it Goodreads erases my previous records.

It's a great book. My bible.

cloudqt's review against another edition

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Just not for me.