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Associated Press

With a gut-wrenching wail that rippled from her body, Amber Walcker joined about a dozen screaming people in Seattle, in the US state of Washington, who let their frustrations float away over the water.
It was just the start. The two group screams that followed, each one longer and more intense, released the pain from Walcker’s recent job loss. Her added stress from raising two young children dissolved, and a deep sense of calm descended upon her.
“I had such a sense of feeling grounded. In that same moment, all your senses are heightened,” Walcker says. “From then on out, I was hooked.”
That day in September was the first meeting of Seattle’s chapter of Scream Club, one of 17 chapters that have popped up in less than a year around the United States, including in Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and Michigan.












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The first chapter, in Chicago, began as a result of a couple’s rough patch.
Co-founders Manny Hernandez and Elena Soboleva had recently moved in together after dating long-distance for a year and a half. They were walking along Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, when Hernandez, a breathwork practitioner and men’s coach, suggested they let out all their frustrations with a scream at the end of a pier.
When they asked permission from the few people around, everyone decided to scream together, their raw emotion echoing over the water.
“After we did it, some people were crying, including Elena,” Hernandez says. “That’s when we looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably something that we should start.’”
Depending on the chapter, Scream Club meetings can be weekly or monthly, but they always take place in a park or near a body of water to minimise disturbance.
Sessions typically begin with participants writing down the thing they want to release on biodegradable paper.
That is followed by a series of collective deep breaths and vocal warm-ups, such as humming while breathing in and out.

“You can really strain your throat if you just do it,” says Soboleva, a personal brand and business mentor. “So it’s gradual, breathing from your diaphragm and carefully starting off slow and warming up to louder and louder.”
Everyone screams together three times, taking several deep breaths in between, and throws their paper into the water.
“That third scream, you have to feel it in your body,” says Walcker, who started the club’s Seattle chapter. “Get down, be in a primal stance, whatever it feels like to you in that moment.”
The Scream Club’s techniques are descended from primal scream therapy, a theory that psychoanalyst Arthur Janov devised in the 1960s. Janov believed childhood trauma created neuroses in adults, which could be treated by tapping into the pain and releasing it with screaming and crying under a therapist’s supervision.
Research in the decades since, however, has not found scream therapy to be an effective treatment for mental health conditions, says Ashwini Nadkarni, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School.

Still, it is a fantastic stress reliever.
Nadkarni says the scream itself engages circuits in the amygdala and the hippocampus – “the oldest part of our brain” that is responsible for processing stress and emotion. Screaming also activates the sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight stress response. Once the screaming stops, the parasympathetic system kicks in, which signals the body to rest.
“It’s the same cycle of regulation that happens when you exercise,” she says. “Your heart’s racing, you get short of breath, and then you relax and you feel that calm.”
Besides the physical release, the simple act of getting together to do something with others provides benefits.
“The idea of people getting together to enhance community in ways that help them blow off some steam is incredible,” Nadkarni says.












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Hernandez says it is not standard practice to publicly share the reasons for coming, but many people linger afterwards and talk about their problems. Some at the Chicago chapter recently lost loved ones, one person was battling cancer for a second time and many were struggling with relationships.
Walcker noted that some people even come to scream for joy. Whatever the reason, the Seattle chapter usually meets to watch the sun set afterwards.
“It’s kind of like putting everything to rest,” she says. “And that everyone knows that that’s the end of that, and we can all start fresh.”


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Health & Wellness

I scream, you scream, we all scream for… stress relief? In the US, a growing number of people are finding catharsis at Scream Clubs


I scream, you scream, we all scream for… stress relief? In the US, a growing number of people are finding catharsis at Scream Clubs.


Mental health

United States

Feeling stressed? Let it out – literally – at Scream Clubs

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}I scream, you scream, we all scream for… stress relief? In the US, a growing number of people are finding catharsis at Scream Clubs

I scream, you scream, we all scream for… stress relief? In the US, a growing number of people are finding catharsis at Scream Clubs