Ask me about the last time I had a full-on temper tantrum, and my answer will no longer be, “My 8th birthday party.” It was actually a couple of weekends ago at a “rage ritual” in Los Angeles’ Topanga Canyon. These sessions—which involve beating the ground with sticks as you rage, scream, and (in my case) cry—have become a viral sensation on TikTok and beyond. And so has their creator, Mia Banducci, known as Mia Magik, aka the “Spiritual Fairy Godmother.”
My experience was a sliver of the longer retreats Magik holds in destinations around the globe. These immersive experiences feature activities such as one-on-one coaching, daily rituals, and sustainable agriculture info sessions. The next one will take place in the Redwoods and costs up to $4,444 for five days. Magik has drawn people from across the world, including participants from the USA, Germany, Lithuania, Estonia, France, Portugal, Spain, and more, according to one of Magik’s spokespeople.
Online, Magik’s rage rituals have drawn support and scrutiny in equal measure. While some commenters have expressed relief in just watching women express their anger, others have questioned the basic legitimacy of the practice.
“People will do anything but therapy,” wrote one Reddit commenter in response to a video of a rage ritual.
Another commented that rage rituals “will give these women the thought that the only way to ‘healthily’ ‘treat’ these feelings is to lash out and hit things, screaming and attacking.”
Still others have called them “powerful,” noting, “I literally cried seeing this. I NEED this.”
California-based therapist Audrey Schoen says that rage rituals are really nothing more than an emotional regulation technique. These practices—which involve interacting with our emotions so that we can safely manage them—are a cornerstone of many therapeutic treatments. “We’re trying to uncover what’s under the anger. What is the hurt, the disappointment, the frustration, the letdown? Anger tends to be a secondary emotion, and sometimes anger is warranted,” says Schoen.
Because women have historically been taught to hide and mask their anger, the invitation to do the opposite can be a huge relief, she adds. “Women are seeking to experience the part of the human experience that they’ve been divorced of through cultural conditioning,” she says. “Culture has said ‘you’re not allowed to be in this space.’ And we’re saying, ‘No, we are. We all are humans, and we’re allowed to have all of the human experience.’”
What rage rituals are actually like—and who’s behind them
I attended a miniature, one-hour version of this larger experience with other members of the press and some of Magik’s friends. We started by breaking into small groups and taking a minute each to answer the questions Magik had given us. We talked about how our parents taught us to process rage and the last time we were angry. Our walls came down quickly; there seemed to be an agreement between our small group that we would be honest with one another, and that alone felt good. How often do you get to skip past the small talk and dive into conversations that make you realize how truly not alone you are?
Fostering this feeling is intentional for Magik, who says that humanitarianism has been essential to her life since a young age. “I grew up in the Redwoods in Northern California, a very beautiful, enchanted magical type of upbringing,” she tells Fortune. “My parents were conscious entrepreneurs, so they were always interested in being philanthropic and making the world a better place by creating things that would support and empower people. I grew up with that as the lens of what was important and what was valuable.”
At 16, Magik was involved in an accident that nearly led her to become an amputee. She found that she needed not only physical but mental and spiritual healing. The accident left her without the ability to use her left hand, and that suddenly meant asking for a lot of help, all the time. “That was really challenging for a very independent young person. And so over the next several years, I really sought spiritual healing. I wanted to figure out how to not be angry about what had happened to me and to feel empowered by something that had, quote-unquote, ‘victimized me.’ I had been a victim of this trauma, and I didn’t want to feel like a victim,” says Magik.
Alexis Dowling
She became a student of emotional catharsis, “sitting at the feet of masters” and pursuing various certification programs. Then, one of these teachers offered her a simple assignment: Scream. She did, and beneath her anger, Magik found a deeper well of emotions. “There was old grief and old sadness and old frustration and old disappointment and all of these different pieces. Once I found how much freer I felt on the other side of actually letting those emotions out, I started sharing it with others.”
After the sharing portion, our small group neared this emotional release. We moved on to a quiet meditation led by Magik that lasted for maybe ten minutes, and then we grabbed our sticks and commenced the rage rituals that have become internet-famous. We had 15 minutes.
Magik and her team had gathered a pile of sticks waiting to be cracked open by the earth, and we got to it, spreading out and smashing the sticks on the ground with wails and screams. Some participants yelled directly at people who had wronged them, saying “No!” and other things that are far too personal to share on the internet. At first, I was too embarrassed to give myself over to the assignment. I hit my stick on the ground and grunted, thinking about the self-doubt I wanted to confront on this mini-retreat. But to my surprise, that was only part of what came up as I was swallowed by my anger. I thought of times in high school when I’d been bullied and felt like I didn’t belong. I thought of job opportunities I didn’t get or didn’t succeed at. Then something changed.
One of the sticks I picked up was a piece of bamboo that shattered into hundreds of pieces as it met the dirt. The crack was so intensely satisfying that I did scream, and so did all of the other women, all at once. There was something so intimate and fulfilling about letting out our rage—almost like we were all screaming for both our individual and collective injustices.
The 15 minutes ended quickly. Afterward, I felt wrung out, the way you do after spending a day in the sun. A calm wrapped around everyone, and we shared our experiences, nodding and snapping to express the mutuality of the experience. My hands were sliced open; tears fell down my cheeks. I found truth in what Magik told me before the retreat: “There is rage, certainly. But there’s also so much grief and so much pain and so much sadness. And I believe that all of those challenging emotions need a safe space, they need permission to be released.”
Interacting with your rage, in retreat and beyond
Something both Magik and Schoen agree upon is this: Raging needs to end when the ritual is over.
“We all are humans, and we’re allowed to have all of the human experience. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t still responsible for self-regulation, right? Like, if I’m angry, I have no right to take that out on somebody,” Schoen says. The reflection that comes afterward—via journaling, talking, or meditating—is what allows you to put that anger behind you. At least for that moment.
You don’t need to have access to a secluded wooded area (or thousands of dollars) to participate in these rituals. Magik recommends shutting your door and screaming into your pillow. Schoen has a slightly simpler prescription: stillness. “We busy ourselves out of how we’re feeling often,” she says. “That’s why a lot of people say that it’s not until they got to bed that all of the anxious thoughts flood in.” She adds that showers, long car rides, and listening to music can coax our brains into bringing latent emotions to the surface. And when we offer ourselves specific time to deal with our emotions—be it with stillness or with rage—we can keep anger from ruling our lives and souring our relationships.
Of course, the $4,500 question remains: Who gets to access these rituals? And while the answer is those with money to burn (and lucky journalists)—the impact of a small minority’s rage has been wide-reaching. Videos of angry women have ignited a conversation about whose anger is acceptable and why. When we look into the funhouse mirror of the internet and see these videos, our reactions to basic and “primitive” expressions of anger may be just as interesting as the rituals themselves.
As one TikTok user wrote on a rage ritual video, “Damn. This is powerful. I believe we, collectively, as women have so much ancestral and personal rage built up overall we’ve had to endure.”
