G’day to you and welcome! How’s it
going for you so far today? Got any hidden frustrations you’d like to get rid
of? Well... as soon as you fill your coffee mug and gulp down a virtual treat or
two, I’ll tell you about Rage Rooms...
As an alternative to meditation, The
Rage Room at Battle Sports facility in Toronto will let you rent protective
gear and break things in peace.
When everything is going wrong, and
stress is piling high, the Rage Room in a Toronto sports facility might be just
what you need: a safe space to let out your anger and smash things into pieces.
For $20, you’ll get half an hour in a
room armed with a baseball bat, a full-body protective suit and mask, and
breakable items. A standard room comes with a set of five plates, but you can
order things to break à la carte.
Here’s what else you can break: a vase
($5), a wine glass ($3), or a picture frame (you can even bring a picture of
the person/thing you hate), wooden chair ($20), and other surprise, specialty
items. If you’re tired of swinging at things you have to pay for, the room also
features an “indestructible block of mysterious material.”
All kinds of people are drawn to the
room, and usually, their response to the experience is enthusiastic. According
to Tim:
The ones who use the Rage Room after
Archery Dodgeball find that it’s a great way to end a serious and thorough
workout. The ones who come for the novelty have a lot of fun because it IS
novel, and they get an experience which goes against most of what they’ve been
taught growing up—that is, keeping things intact and not breaking stuff.
Those who come to surprise their
friends/spouses succeed, because nobody expects to be brought to a Rage Room.
The ones who just love to break things get to do exactly what they came to do.
And finally, the people who come to actually let off steam find the whole
experience oddly therapeutic.
How therapeutic is breaking things
really, though, in a society where meditation and calm is usually emphasized as
a way to manage things? Tim thinks that both have a place.
Tim from Battle Sports facility tells
PSFK that Rage Room began as an unused room after the company finished
renovations. “We were brainstorming what we could do with the room, and I
remembered hearing about a pair of Serbians who started a similar concept in
Serbia back in 2013. I thought that it would work well in Toronto because it’s
such a high-stress city, so I asked a couple of friends about it and they loved
the idea. I decided to make it happen.”
The Rage Room (and any other
aggressive sport) is a cathartic experience, whereas meditation is the opposite
of that. I have no doubt meditation is a great prescription for stress relief,
but I believe the Rage Room is as well, and the two can probably be used
conjointly to tackle the problem of stress.
Was that not the source of martial
arts? Or was that wedding cake? I forget...
See ya, eh!
Bob
PS: They even have rage rooms in Russia...not that
they’d have anything to be stressed out about over there, eh...
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