THE SEDONA METHOD®

How to Get Rid of Your Emotional Baggage and Live the Life You Want

HALE DWOSKIN

Copyright

The publisher and author of this material make no medical claims for its use. This material is not intended to treat, diagnose, advise about, or cure any illness. If you need medical attention, please consult with your medical practitioner.

Element

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the US by The Sedona Press 2003

This edition published by Element 2005

© Hale Dwoskin 2005

The Sedona Method® is a trademarked process.

Hale Dwoskin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Praise for the sedona method®

“The Sedona Method is a wonderful contribution to the field of self-acceptance and transformation. This is like an accessible, western form of Buddhist teachings that can free our hearts and minds from our self-made limitations and the old stories we tell ourselves.”

—Lama Surya Das, author of Awakening The Buddha Within and Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be

“The Sedona Method is an effective tool for getting rid of the ‘victim’ mentality. Instead of giving away our power to others, Hale Dwoskin encourages us to look inside and take control of our own experiences of life. That’s powerful!”

—Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and Embracing Uncertainty

“Hale Dwoskin has succeeded in presenting a masterful healing system with a treasure of practical examples for bringing it to life. The Sedona Method contains many jewels of illumination that can take your life to the next level. Practicing these principles can bring you home. Here is a rare and useful manual for awakening.”

—Alan Cohen, author of Why Your Life Sucks: And What You Can Do about It

“There is no pilgrimage more important than the one we undertake to explore ourselves. The Sedona Method is a valuable tool to help make our journey of self-discovery one that leads to powerful personal breakthroughs and new beginnings. Designed with wisdom, simplicity, and compassion, it will offer you ways to live the life you’ve always dreamed of.”

—Barbara De Angelis, Ph.D., author of Real Moments and What Women Want Men To Know

“This is a powerful and profound way of achieving immediate and lasting improvements and breakthroughs in your personal and business life. Incredibly effective!”

—Brian Tracy, author of Deals!

“The Sedona Method is an extremely powerful tool for emotional freedom and wellness.”

—Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the New York Times #1 best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soul and co-author of The One-Minute Millionaire

“Just as Kabbalah teaches us the basic spiritual laws of our existence, Hale Dwoskin looks far beyond the mere symptoms of emotional negativity to emotional freedom and mastery. If you want to fundamentally change your life for the better in the shortest possible time, start using the Sedona Method today.”

—Yehuda Berg, Author of The 72 Names of God

“A breakthrough book in terms of realizing your goals and dreams and living a life that is richer, more meaningful and much more enjoyable. And all without having to work so damn hard at it!”

—Robert Kriegel, Ph.D., New York Times best-selling author of If It Ain’t Broke—Break It! and How to Succeed in Business Without Having to Work so Damn Hard

“The Sedona Method is an easy-to-use, practical guide to releasing emotional tension, one of the key steps I recommend in my medical practice for achieving resilience, vitality, and long-term health. This book is a valuable adjunct to every healthcare program.”

—Frank Lipman, M.D., author of Total Renewal

“The Sedona Method taught us to work from our strengths rather than our fears. After learning to release, we have become best-selling authors, lecturers, and spiritual counselors. These were things we could only dream about until the Sedona Method taught us to let go of the blocks we had erected to keep us from our ‘greatness.’ Releasing moved us along our spiritual path faster than any other work we have done. We were fumbling around and the Sedona Method opened the doors to our spiritual work. We believe with all our hearts that if you learn to release ANYTHING is possible.”

—Barbara Mark, and Trudy Griswold, co-authors of The Angelspeake Trilogy and Heaven and Beyond: Conversations with Souls in Transition

“As an author, international speaker, and widow of Earl Nightingale, I have given many years to the pursuit of a method that I might teach, which would enable others to ‘let go’ and live their lives without limitations. While the timeless truth that we become what we think about has revolutionized the lives of millions of people around the world, the majority of people find that old habits die hard. Changing a lifetime of restrictive thinking, more often than not, requires something more. Recently, I discovered a tried-and-true method that can and will work for everyone: the Sedona Method. Now, you can discover it, too!”

—Diana Nightingale, owner, Keys Publishing, international speaker, and author of Learning to Fly as a Nightingale

Dedication

Dedicated to Lester Levenson

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for the Sedona Method®

Dedication

Foreword By Jack Canfield

Introduction What Is the Sedona Method?

PART ONE—THE SEDONA METHOD COURSE

Chapter 1: Beyond the Suppression-Expression Cycle

Chapter 2: Your Formula for Success

Chapter 3: Your Roadmap to Emotional Freedom

Chart of the Nine Emotional States Your Roadmap to Emotional Freedom

Chapter 4: Dissolving Your Resistance

Chapter 5: Your Key to Serenity

Chapter 6: Taking Your Releasing to a Deeper Level

Chapter 7: Letting Go of the Four Basic Wants

Chapter 8: Setting and Attaining Your Goals

Chapter 9: Beyond Attachments and Aversions

Chapter 10: Power Decision-making

Chapter 11: The Cleanup Procedure

Chapter 12: Putting It All Together

PART TWO—REAL LIFE APPLICATIONS

Chapter 13: The Secret of Letting Go of Fear and Anxiety

Chapter 14: Beyond the Tyranny of Guilt and Shame

Chapter 15: Breaking those Nasty Habits

Chapter 16: Your Wealth Builder

Chapter 17: Relationship Magic

Chapter 18: Developing Radiant Health

Chapter 19: Organizational Freedom and Effectiveness

Chapter 20: Supporting Our World

The Next Steps

Guidelines for The Sedona Method Support Groups

We Are Here for You

Are You Ready For More?

About the Author

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Foreword By Jack Canfield

I have been hearing wonderful things about the Sedona Method® from clients and friends for about 20 years. Recently, I finally took the course with my wife and my 12-year-old son. I’ve been amazed at the simplicity of the Method and the powerful impact it has had on my life. Through my work with Chicken Soup for the Soul and through my Self-Esteem Seminars, I have been exposed to many self-improvement techniques and processes. This one stands head and shoulders above the rest for the ease of its use, its profound impact, and the speed with which it produces results. The Sedona Method is a vastly accelerated way of letting go of feelings like anger, frustration, jealousy, anxiety, stress, and fear, as well as many other problems—even physical pain—with which almost everybody struggles at one time or another.

One of the wonderful byproducts of taking the seminar is that I have become friends with Hale Dwoskin. He is one of the calmest, clearest, most joy-filled people I have ever met, living proof that the Sedona Method works wonders. I am ecstatic about our friendship. During the seminar, I found myself constantly in awe of Hale’s brilliant teaching style. I experienced one breakthrough after another. As a result, I’ve already referred many family members, friends, and business associates to the Sedona Method seminars, and I’ve also had the entire staff at Chicken Soup for the Soul Enterprises learn the Method through the audio programs that Hale put together.

Now I am thoroughly delighted to be able to recommend The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Well-being. Reading this book is the equivalent of taking the Sedona Method Basic Course and several Advanced Courses rolled together. Filled with practical techniques and enlightening true stories, Hale clearly and generously explains everything we need to know to master the releasing process and to continue using the Method day by day, moment by moment in real life situations, such as having more fulfilling and harmonious relationships, building financial security, developing satisfying careers, breaking nasty habits, losing weight, and enjoying good health. He reveals the Sedona Method’s powerful secret for manifesting what you want in your life, while showing you how to be at ease and comfortable with what you already have. The Method also enables you to have greater ease, enjoyment, and peace of mind with all that you experience on a daily basis.

So I highly encourage you to read The Sedona Method with an open mind and heart. Please allow the simplicity of its message and the power of this process to open you to all the wonders that life has to offer. It is one of those rare things in today’s world that delivers more than it promises … way more. I urge you to pay close attention to Hale’s message in this book. If you do, it will change your life.

Introduction What Is the Sedona Method?

You feel like your heart is warm and open, your spine is pleasantly tingling, and your body is floating on air. As you look around the room, the colors seem brighter and the sounds clearer, like you are truly experiencing your surroundings for the first time. Your mind feels profoundly quieter, yet there are many new and wonderful possibilities floating into your awareness about how you can improve your life and live happily now. You feel relaxed and at ease, knowing that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should be.

Your eyes are a little teary, because it is hard for you to believe that such simple exercises could make such a profound and immediate difference in how you feel. You are excited about the future, knowing that you can face whatever happens with a new feeling of inner strength, ease, and confidence, no matter what curves life throws your way.

Best of all, you know this is just the beginning.

You can easily have this type of experience for yourself, just like the tens of thousands of others who have been living and using the simple, yet powerful techniques that Sedona Training Associates have taught for years in our live seminars and audio programs. Now these techniques are available to you in this book!

Are you open to being truly happy? Are you willing to achieve everything that you have been wanting in your life? Are you ready to find what your heart has always been seeking? If you answered “no” to all three of these questions, then please don’t bother reading this book. If you answered “yes,” to any of them, The Sedona Method will show you a practical way to tap an inner source of boundless happiness, to achieve your wildest dreams and highest potential, and to become a spiritual “finder” instead of a seeker.

We live in a world that’s in a state of rapid change—and not all of it is positive. Most of us crave a certainty, security, and solidity that we cannot find outside of ourselves no matter how hard we try. But these qualities already exist within each of us, waiting to be revealed. It is as though we possess an inner wishing well or a fountain of joy and vitality that’s disconnected from the water supply. Yet, secretly, everyone has a tool to reconnect.

Intrigued? I hope so. Because I would love to share a simple process with you that can deliver on this promise: the Sedona Method. The technique has already helped many thousands of people to tap their natural ability to let go of uncomfortable or unwanted emotions on the spot. It is our limiting emotions that prevent us from creating and maintaining the lives that we choose. We abdicate our decision-making ability to them. We even imagine that our emotions can dictate to us who we are supposed to be. This is made apparent in our use of language. Have you ever said to someone, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad”? When we speak like this, we are saying to those around us and to ourselves, without realizing it, that we are our anger, or we are our grief. We relate to others and ourselves as though we are our feelings. In fact, we even invent whole stories of why we feel the way we feel in order to justify or explain this misperception of our identity.

It is not that feelings don’t occasionally appear to be justified. It’s just that feelings are only feelings, feelings are not who we are—and we can easily let them go. Choosing to let them go frees us to perceive what is actually here, and to act, or refrain from acting, accordingly. This translates into an ability to handle life—to make stronger, clearer choices. It allows you and me to act in ways that support us in achieving our goals and aspirations as opposed to sabotaging them. I have seen the process of letting go of the emotions grow into an ability to have more money, better relationships, more radiant health and physical well-being, and an ability to be happy, calm, and focused, no matter what is going on around us.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? I thought it did back in 1976 when I met Lester Levenson, the man who inspired the creation of the Sedona Method and would also become my mentor. Back then, I was an ardent, although confused, seeker who had gone to numerous seminars led by teachers from both the East and the West. I had studied various body-centered disciplines, including yoga, tai chi, and shiatsu. I had actively participated in numerous personal growth courses, including EST, Actualism, Theta Seminars, and Rebirthing. At these seminars, I had many nice experiences and heard and understood—at least intellectually—many useful concepts. Still, I felt incomplete. I longed for a simple and powerful answer to some important yet vexing questions like: “What is my life’s purpose?” “What is truth?” “Who am I?” and “How can I feel at home and at peace with my life?” Much of what I heard and experienced only added to my questioning. No one seemed to have truly satisfying answers or to have truly satisfied themselves about their true nature. There was also a strong, almost universal belief that growing was hard work that required baring your soul and reliving painful, unresolved issues. That all changed during my very fortunate encounter with this remarkable man.

Meeting Lester Levenson

I met Lester at a seminar led by a well-known speaker that Lester was attending as the leader’s guest. That day, a group of us went out to lunch together. Lester’s presence immediately struck me as unique. He was in total peace and equal-mindedness, very comfortable with himself. He was unassuming and easy to talk to and treated everyone as his friend—even me, a complete stranger. It was obvious that he’d ended his search by discovering the answers I’d been seeking. I knew I had to find out more.

When I asked Lester what he did, he invited me to a seminar that was being held the next weekend. All he would tell me was that “a group of people is going to sit around a table and release.” I wasn’t sure what releasing meant, but I knew if it could even point me in the direction of the qualities of which Lester was the living embodiment, I definitely wanted it. I took a leap of faith and signed up on the spot.

That weekend I was in essentially the same position you’re in right now. I was about to embark on a journey for which I felt a little bit of trepidation. I wasn’t sure exactly with what I was getting involved, and, since I had done so many seminars, I also had a healthy degree of skepticism. I found myself wondering, “Oh my God, is this going to be another one of those disappointments along the way?” As the course unfolded, however, I watched myself and other people in the class shedding long-held beliefs and limitations with amazing ease and speed, yet without having to relive or explain their life stories.

Almost overnight, I knew that I’d found what I was looking for. In fact, deep inside, I knew that this process of releasing was what I had been born to do and share with the world—and to this day I have never wavered. In the past 26 years, I’ve watched thousands of other people change their lives, radically yet gently, for the better just by learning one elegantly simple, yet powerful technique.

Origins of the Sedona Method

As my friendship with Lester developed, I discovered more about him that confirmed my initial impressions. He was a man who had mastered life’s greatest challenge. In 1952, at age 42, Lester, a physicist and successful entrepreneur, was at the pinnacle of worldly success, yet he was an unhappy, very unhealthy man. He had many health problems, including depression, an enlarged liver, kidney stones, spleen trouble, hyperacidity, and ulcers that had perforated his stomach and formed lesions. He was so unhealthy, in fact, that after having his second coronary, his doctors sent him home to his Central Park South penthouse apartment in New York City to die.

Lester was a man who loved challenges. So, instead of giving up, he decided to go back to the lab within himself and find some answers. Because of his determination and concentration, he was able to cut through his conscious mind to find what he needed. What he found was the ultimate tool for personal growth—a way of letting go of all inner limitations. He was so excited by his discovery that he used it intensively for a period of three months. By the end of that period, his body became totally healthy again. Furthermore, he entered a state of profound peace that never left him through the day he died on January 18, 1994.

What Lester discovered firsthand is that we are all unlimited beings, limited only by the concepts of limitation that we hold in our minds. These concepts of limitation are not true; furthermore, because they’re not really true, they can easily be released or discharged. Lester’s experience made him understand that not only could he practice this technique himself, he could teach others how to do it as well. As a result, he began working with people, both in small groups and individually.

Lester believed strongly that personal growth was not dependant on any external source, including a teacher, and he did not want to be anyone’s guru. But, because of how elevated people felt around him, despite his protestations and attempts to avoid it happening, many of Lester’s students insisted on seeing him as a guru. So, in 1973, Lester realized that his teachings needed to be formalized into a system that he could allow others to teach—leaving him out of the equation. A way to transform his powerful techniques for personal growth into a do-it-yourself system was devised, which is now called the Sedona Method: the topic of this book.

How Releasing Has Influenced My Life

From the beginning, my relationship with Lester felt like being with a good friend. I was immediately so drawn by him and his teaching that I rapidly took all three of the courses he offered: the Basic Course in November, the Advanced Course in January, and the Instructors Training in February. I was in a rush to learn everything I could. I also started working with Lester on sharing his teachings with the world.

Working with Lester afforded me the opportunity to spend more time with him, observe him in action, and see how he dealt with life’s inevitable challenges. I was very impressed. One of the ways we related was by sitting in coffee shops and speaking at length. He consistently enjoyed sitting and chatting over a cup of coffee, right up until shortly before his death. He frequently stated, “My office is my brief case, and the nearest place to get a good cup of coffee.” Our meetings were always a little comical, and sometimes frustrating to me, because I always thought it was important to discuss the truth, whereas Lester would invariably steer the conversation to as mundane a topic as possible. Nonetheless, every time we were together, my understanding and direct experience of truth would deepen—even if we never spoke about it. He was a living example rather than a pontificator. This helped me discover the opportunity to release and experience greater freedom in every moment, a practice that stays with me to this day.

I was so engaged that I even started holding support groups for people using the Sedona Method in the living room of my Upper West Side apartment. But it wasn’t long before I realized that I needed to mature and grow personally before I could be of much use to Lester and his budding organization. I decided to support him as a volunteer and active participant instead of as an employee while continuing to explore in different ways how releasing would affect my everyday life.

Soon after that, I started my own business selling jewelry. The success of this venture afforded me the opportunity to work part-time while exploring life and my releasing full-time. I continued this venture and my more casual involvement with Lester until around 1981. As I worked with the Method in my business and personal life, I became ever more convinced that I’d found a technique that could help anyone. In the late ‘70’s Lester moved out to Arizona. Except through his teachings, my contact with Lester during this period was occasional, but it continued to influence me profoundly.

Then, in 1981, I was invited to fly to Phoenix to participate again in an Instructors Training. This seminar began a new phase of our relationship. It also rekindled my desire to work closely with Lester on sharing the Method with the world. I started leading workshops for Sedona Method graduates on a regular basis in New York City and flew to Arizona several times a year for more training and to participate in weeklong or longer retreats called Intensives. Leading the workshops and participating in the Trainings and Intensives greatly accelerated my personal use of the Method. I noticed profound results in myself and in friends who were also participating.

During this same period, I decided to participate more actively, full-time, in the world of business. I briefly worked for my father selling industrial real estate in and around New York City, but I didn’t feel the job suited me. Then I joined a firm in Manhattan that sold co-ops and condominiums. I was quickly able to use the Method to support my sales ability and became one of their top salespeople. For a while I enjoyed doing this, but then an opportunity presented itself to join my brother in establishing an investment division back in my father’s real estate firm. I happily made the transition to selling office buildings, shopping centers, and other real estate investments.

For the first time in our lives, my brother and I became friends. I was able to release the old baggage that I had been carrying around about our earlier relationship, and we became a terrific business team. We were having a recurring problem, however, of starting many more deals than we were actually closing. Then, one day out of the blue, Lester called me up to see how I was doing. I explained what was happening. He said one sentence that totally turned around our closing ratio and the rest of my business career. He simply said, “Bank in the bank, not in your head.” Without me saying anything about it, he had picked up on a tendency that I and most other people in the sales profession have, which is “head banking.” I was so busy imagining how great it was going to be when I closed each deal that I was neglecting actually closing them. As soon as I started releasing instead of fantasizing, we started to close a lot more deals.

Another important lesson about letting go was learned when I received a listing for nine shopping centers from what was affectionately known in the industry then as a Xerox broker. A Xerox broker is someone who gets written listings on properties from other brokers, then copies and sends them to other brokers and principals without ever bothering to check the facts or get in contact with the actual owner or listing agent.

I sent a copy of the listing to one of my better customers, and he shot me back an immediate, almost full-priced offer. Of course I was excited, so I picked up the phone to call the man I thought was the principal, only to discover that the listing had come from a Xerox broker with no way of contacting the true owner.

Distraught, I realized that there was nothing I could do but let go. So I did. I cleared my mind and released all my feelings about the situation until I reached the point where it was okay whether or not I ever made the deal. The very next phone call in our office was from the actual principal of the shopping centers, responding to an ad looking for properties that we just happened to have running in the Wall Street Journal. When he offered us the listing on the very same property, I nearly fell over.

This is only one of many events that have led me to understand that a statement I’d heard repeatedly from Lester is absolutely true: “Even the impossible becomes completely possible when you are fully released on it.”

I also got to practice using the Method right while closing deals, sometimes when people were renegotiating multimillion dollar contracts and trying to cheat me or each other by making up a whole new story of what we’d agreed on, instead of simply signing the papers and exchanging checks. These were tense occasions, as a lot of money was at stake. Nonetheless, because I was releasing, I knew when to be quiet—which is very difficult for a broker. I also knew when to stand up for what was correct. The financial rewards were beyond my expectations.

By early 1987, I’d saved enough money to move to Arizona to rejoin Lester and support him in sharing his wonderful technique with the world. Much to the consternation of my brother and father, I relocated to Phoenix and became a full-time volunteer for his non-profit organization, the Sedona Institute, doing whatever was needed to get the word out. I spent most of the remaining years of Lester’s life working closely with him on his mission, almost entirely without monetary compensation. The reason I didn’t mind working for free was that I could see how much good I was doing, and how much I was personally changing for the better.

In 1989, Lester asked me to move to Sedona to help him sell some of the organization’s real estate holdings to graduates in order to raise money. It was there that I met my wife Amy. I saw her in a karate class and immediately recognized who she was to me, so the next day I asked her out. She was dating another man at the time, however, and asked for my card in case her situation changed. A few months later, I got a call from her and we went out on a date. That was a Wednesday. By that Saturday she was taking the Sedona Method Course.

Today, Amy and I have a beautiful, loving relationship, but it wasn’t always that way. It was tough in the beginning. Honestly, Amy was interested in other men at the time we met, so I had to do a lot of releasing for her finally to pick me. Once we married, we still had our disagreements—which of course still happens, that’s only natural. But because we both use the Sedona Method, when something happens that causes an upset, we let it go. From my perspective, our relationship is very unusual in that it just keeps getting better and more loving.

By the early ‘90’s, my relationship with Lester had grown to a place of such mutual trust and respect that he decided to turn over the copyrights of his teachings to me and asked me to continue his work. I maintained the organization that he’d established towards this end until two years after his death. Then, in 1996, I decided it would be much more effective for Amy and me to start a new company, Sedona Training Associates, to convey the Method to the world in an even bigger way.

One of the things that impresses me most about the process of releasing is that it has resulted in a sense of unshakable peace, happiness, joy, and calmness that is always with me, no matter what’s going on around me. Not that there still aren’t ups and downs, but, as Lester used to say, this is really the “bottoms-up method.” I know from my own direct experience that what I used to think was a peak experience, or something really terrific, is now normal, and my peaks just keeping getting higher and higher. I have no idea how far “up” is, and I’m looking forward to finding out.

The good news is that the good I have experienced using the Method isn’t unique. People around the world have been able to produce the same kind of phenomenal results in their lives. Years ago, a study of the effectiveness of the Sedona Method was done with an insurance company called Mutual of New York. A group of field underwriters were trained in the Method, and their sales results were compared with as close a control group as possible over six months. Over the study period, the group that learned the Method outperformed the control group by 33 percent. The study was also broken down into two three-month segments, and the results in the second three months were better than the first three months. The Method’s efficacy increased over time.

How to Use this Book

In this book, you’ll be learning the Sedona Method, a technique that you can use every day for the rest of your life. As you begin letting go of all the emotional baggage that has been getting in the way of you doing what you already know you should be doing, and want to be doing, you’ll find yourself becoming increasingly successful at everything you do. This book will not give you a whole new list of “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts,” or new behaviors you “must” try to implement in your life. We are already “shoulding” on ourselves enough. Instead, you’ll be learning how to change yourself from the inside out. When you change yourself from the inside out, the changes are permanent.

In addition, as you experiment with this simple system in your life, you’ll keep discovering more ways that you can apply it. Whatever initial insights you gain from reading this book and working with the Method are only the tip of the iceberg. This single technique can affect every part of your life, because it is built on the fact that we are already unlimited beings. If you think back over your life, you’ve probably had glimpses of this unlimited state, which is natural to us all. You’ve probably also had glimpses or periods where you felt like you were in a state of flow, moments in which everything seemed to “click” and work effortlessly. Through using the Sedona Method, it is possible for you to experience the flow as part of your everyday life from now on.

I don’t know what kind of a reader you are. You may be the type who participates fully in what you read, or you may just collect useful ideas that you can call on later as you choose. I recommend you participate fully and do all the exercises presented in this book. In my experience, the only way that you can effectively learn how to let go is by doing it yourself. Direct experience. Additional benefits will be gained from reading this book repeatedly, as that’s how you’ll learn and integrate the practical skill of tapping your natural ability to let go of limitation.

This book is divided into two parts. In Part One, we’ll explore the basics of the letting go process and the underlying motivations for inner limitation. You’ll be introduced to various techniques that can accelerate you on the path to freedom, such as ways for coping with resistance, being “present,” resolving your feelings about past conflicts, achieving your goals, and balancing the positive and negative sides of emotional equations. In Part Two, we’ll explore some of the specific areas of your life where the Sedona Method can have a strong, positive impact. These include finding freedom from guilt, shame, fear, and anxiety; breaking habits; building wealth; operating a business; improving relationships; developing radiant health; and contributing to the creation of a harmonious and peaceful world.

Please work with the material in order. Each chapter builds a solid foundation for the ones that follow. You will not have learned all that you can from this book until you’ve worked with the chapters in order and done your best to apply what you’re learning in your daily life. Each chapter contains at least a few gems that can enrich your life. Allow yourself to be as open as you can to what is being communicated in this book and look at it as an opportunity to change your consciousness and your life.

If you want to go still further after you complete this book, Sedona Training Associates offers an audiotape version of this course, as well as live seminars in many major cities throughout the United States and the rest of the world.

Don’t Believe Anything I Say

Please don’t believe anything in this book unless you can prove it for yourself. Just because something is said in writing does not make it so. Especially with authorities of any kind, there is a tendency simply to accept what is said on hearsay or belief. Lester strongly believed that we should avoid doing this with our teachers. Instead, we should allow ourselves to stay open to a teacher’s message as an experiment in growing. We should only accept what he or she teaches once we can verify it through our own direct experience. He called this “taking it for checking.”

I suggest that you take for checking everything you’re exposed to in this book. Give yourself permission to be as open to the message as you can be without accepting it on blind faith. The material will have much more value for you once you’ve explored and applied it, or checked it, under real life conditions.

The ideas in The Sedona Method may appear to contradict what you’ve learned from other methods and modalities. But there’s no need to throw out the other material that you’ve learned. Merely set it aside, as best you can, while you explore this book. I highly recommend that you suspend comparison and judgment, if only for the moment. Once you’ve had time to draw your own conclusions, you can then go back and compare this material to everything else you’ve learned and see where it fits. People usually find releasing a wonderful adjunct to the other techniques and therapies they already use.

Contradiction is inevitable when you compare different paths or traditions of growth. This does not necessarily invalidate the different points of view. When it comes to self-discovery, if you can embrace multiple possibilities, you’ll find yourself understanding and applying the insights you gain on a deeper, more heartfelt, and much more useful level. There are many rays that lead to the one sun.

It’s a Matter of Resonance

From my perspective, everything in the world has its own vibration, or resonance, including you and everyone you meet. Have you ever noticed that some people tend to pull you up when you’re with them while others seem to pull you down, and that they often don’t need to say or do anything to have this effect on you? As we let go and grow in understanding, our resonance, or frequency, tends to go up. But it’s not just a matter of “higher” or “lower.” We all relate better to some people than others, even if they’re on the same level of vibration as us. Of course, the same thing is true for teachers and ideas.

As you read The Sedona Method, you may find that you resonate intensely with certain chapters while others leave you feeling a little confused or unmoved. Sections of this book will have more value to you on different occasions. Over time, as you work with releasing, other sections will stand out more than they did initially. That is because you’ll have changed and become ready to see things from a new perspective. When this happens, allow yourself to honor the change and shift your focus accordingly.

Adopt a Gentle, Playful Attitude

Above all, nurture yourself as you engage in the processes in this book. Be your best friend and supporter, rather than a drill sergeant or taskmaster. Transform yourself through the experience of joy. Soon you’ll be making many interesting and inspiring discoveries about ways that you’ve been limiting yourself. Then, as these limitations drop away one by one, you’ll be lighter, happier, more relaxed, and at ease.

The Sedona Method reminds us of what our spirits already recognize intuitively. We can have freedom and happiness now. We don’t have to wait for it to arrive some far off day in the future when we’ve worked hard enough to deserve it, or when we’ve succeeded somehow in making ourselves ready. We have reason for joy, and to delight, now!

PART 1 THE SEDONA METHOD COURSE

Part One covers most of the material that’s usually covered in both the live and audio versions of the Sedona Method Basic Course. It also covers material from the Advanced Courses, and some altogether new material, so that you can take all these tools, turn your life around, and keep it on track from here on. Although these techniques are extremely simple—as you’ll soon discover—they are also much more powerful than you can probably imagine at this stage. As you continue to apply these techniques and principles in your life, however, their ease and power will grow on you exponentially.

Over a quarter of a century after first learning these processes myself, I am still seeing them each day through newly-amazed eyes. When I watch how easily people can make positive changes in their lives, I am always filled with wonder and gratitude at being given the chance to share this elegantly powerful process with the world.

Chapter 1 Beyond the Suppression-Expression Cycle

The rapid and positive changes that took place in Joe’s life as soon as he began using the Sedona Method are an ideal model of what can happen for us all. Persistent difficulties clear up, exciting new possibilities emerge, and serendipity smoothes the flow of events. When Joe learned the Method, he was at a low point both personally and professionally. A year and half earlier, he’d been in a plane crash that had left him wheelchair bound for seven months, his company was forcing him out of his job, and his estranged wife and he had been tied up in legal knots for three years hammering out their divorce agreement. Within a few weeks, everything turned around 180 degrees. First, Joe’s ex-wife agreed to go to mediation where they reached an amicable settlement. Then, he happened to run into the chairman of the company he was suing for wrongful termination at a charity ball. The chairman hadn’t known about Joe’s severance until then, and the next Monday Joe’s lawyer called with news of a favorable settlement that was more than the original offer.

Even better, Joe decided to take a long weekend trip to a warm island paradise to celebrate his good fortune. Sitting and reading a book on the beach in Nassau, he pursued an idle conversation with a woman who turned out to be the love of his life. He wasn’t looking for a date because he had to catch the plane home in a couple of hours. But Jean seemed familiar, and after she told him that she also lived in Toronto, he asked, “Look, this isn’t a line, but do you live at such and such a corner?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered.

“That’s funny,” said Joe. “I go to physiotherapy there. I must have seen you on the subway. Do you also go to the theater downtown?”

“Yes, once or twice a week,” Jean replied.

“I work in downtown Toronto,” Joe then mentioned, “in Scotia Plaza on the 53rd floor.”

“That’s strange … I work on the 30th floor!”

An hour went by. When Joe got up to leave, they traded phone numbers, and he didn’t give her another thought for a couple of weeks until that same slip of paper fell out of his notebook and reminded him. When he called, they connected amazingly well. They soon fell in love, and Joe asked Jean to marry him.

The more Joe applied the Sedona Method, the faster his career as an executive in the investment banking industry took off, and the higher it flew. His income grew at an exponential rate. In terms of wealth and money, the Method has been absolutely incredible for him. In addition, Joe continued using the Method to let go of his worries about his physical condition. In the plane crash, he was crippled from breaking 32 bones, including bones in his left leg, his right kneecap, his hand, and his skull. Although his doctors told him he would never walk well again, today he walks perfectly with virtually no pain. Joe uses the same Sedona Method techniques that you’ll be learning in this book—morning and night and all through the day. As a result, he is happy and successful, life is fun, and he is peacefully flowing from event to event. In his words: “I feel blessed. The Sedona Method turns big issues into small issues.”

Life as We Know It

Harmony and unqualified happiness are natural to each and every one of us, yet here’s how a typical workday looks and feels for too many people. We wake up, drag ourselves out of bed, and, even before we get to the bathroom, we begin worrying or planning what will happen during the day ahead. We are already spending what little energy we have stored up from our night’s sleep—if we were lucky enough to have had one. Many of us then commute to our jobs, which puts additional stress on us due to traffic, or mass transit crowds, or just the frustration of “wasted” time. Once we arrive, we’re not excited to be there and we are dreading the things we must get done. As we push ourselves through the day, we look ahead to lunch or the end of business. We have various interactions with coworkers—some satisfactory, many not. Since we believe there is nothing much we can do about anything that happens or how we feel about it, usually we simply stuff down our emotions and barrel on forward.

By the time we’re done for the day, we’re exhausted from bottling up our feelings. Maybe we drag ourselves to the local bar to hang out with some friends and eat, drink, and watch the news on TV—which adds its own layer of stress—hoping our feelings will just disappear. Even though we may feel a little better afterwards, in truth, the feelings have only gone underground. We are now like human pressure cookers with plugged stopcocks, and it takes us tremendous energy to keep the lid on. When we finally get home to our husbands or wives and children, and they want to talk about their days with us, we have no energy left to listen. We might try to put on a happy face only to lose our tempers over the smallest things. The family eventually zones out in front of the TV until it is time to go to bed. And the next morning we get up and start the whole scenario over again.

Kind of bleak, isn’t it? But isn’t it also kind of familiar?

Your story may be a little different; hopefully it’s brighter than this picture. Perhaps you’re a stay-at-home parent with young kids. Maybe you’re an independent contractor and handle most of your daily affairs over the telephone and/or internet. Perhaps you’re an artist. Still, the trend is probably quite similar. The ruts that we tend to find ourselves in seem to get deeper over time, until we can feel like there is no way out.

Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a way out.

Letting Go

One of the main ways that we ourselves create disappointments, unhappiness, and misjudgments is by holding on to limiting thoughts and feelings. It is not that “holding on,” in and of itself, is inappropriate. Holding on is perfectly appropriate in many situations. I wouldn’t suggest, for instance, that you not hold on to the steering wheel of a car that you were driving, or not hold on to a ladder that you were climbing. Obviously, the results of such choices could be unfortunate. But have you ever held on to a point of view even when it didn’t serve you? Have you ever held on to an emotion even though there was nothing you could do to satisfy it, make it right, or change the situation that appeared to cause it? Have you ever held on to tension or anxiety even after the initial event that triggered it was long over? This is the form of holding on that we will explore throughout this book.

What is the opposite of holding on? Well, “letting go,” of course. Both letting go and holding on are part of the natural process of life. This fundamental understanding is the basis of the Sedona Method. No matter who you are, if you’re reading these words, I can guarantee that you’ve already frequently experienced letting go, often without being aware that it was happening—and even without being taught the Method. Letting go, or releasing, is a natural ability that we’re all born with, but which we get conditioned against using as we mature into adulthood. Where so many of us frequently get stuck is that we don’t know when it is appropriate to let go and when it is appropriate to hold on. And most of us err on the side of holding on—often to our detriment.

There are a few synonyms for holding on and letting go that will probably make this point much clearer: closing and opening, for example. When you are throwing a ball, you need to hold your hand closed around the ball through much of your arm motion. But if you don’t open your hand and release the ball at the appropriate time, the ball will not go where you want it to. You could even get hurt. Other synonyms are contraction and expansion. In order for us to breathe, we contract our lungs to force the used air out, and then we expand them, filling them with air. We can’t only inhale; to complete the breathing process we must also exhale. Tensing and relaxing our muscles is another example. If we could not do both, our muscles literally would not function properly, as most muscles work in pairs of opposing partners.

“One of my big gains so far is my experience of not having to involve myself in so much unnecessary ‘thinking’ about certain destructive emotions. I can release them. The energy previously spent on anger, fear, and envy can be used very well in my already demanding projects as a professional, and for my family.”

—Per Heiberg, Norway

It is interesting to note the emotional component of holding on and releasing, and the degree to which our bodies are impacted by our feelings. Have you noticed that, when people are upset, they often hold their breath? In the process of breathing, both inhalation and exhalation can be inhibited by holding on to unresolved emotions. Most of us also hold residual tension in our muscles, which never allows us to relax fully. Again, it’s the unresolved or suppressed emotions that are the basis for these forms of constriction.

But why do we get stuck? When we suppress our emotions, rather than allowing ourselves to experience our feelings fully in the moment they arise, they linger and make us uncomfortable. Through avoidance, we are preventing our emotions from flowing through us, either transforming or dissolving, and it doesn’t feel good.

Suppression and Expression

Have you ever watched a very young child fall down and then look around to see if there is any reason to be upset? When children think no one is watching them, in an instant they just let go, brush themselves off, and act like nothing has happened. The same child in a similar situation, on seeing the opportunity to get attention, may burst into tears and run to the arms of a parent. Or have you ever watched a young child get furious with a playmate or a parent, and even say something like, “I hate you and will never speak to you again,” and then, just a few minutes later, the child feels and acts as though nothing at all has happened?

This natural ability to release our emotions was lost to most of us because, even though we did it automatically as young children, without conscious control, our parents, teachers, friends, and society as a whole trained us out of it as we got older. In fact, it is because we were unconscious of our ability to release that it was possible to train us to hold on. Every time we were told “no,” told to behave, to sit still and be quiet, to stop squirming, that “big boys don’t cry” or “big girls don’t get angry,” and to grow up and be responsible, we learned to suppress our emotions. Furthermore, we were often seen as an adult when we got to the point where we were good at suppressing our natural exuberance for life and all the feelings that others convinced us to believe were unacceptable. We became more responsible to others’ expectations of us than to the needs of our own emotional well-being.

There is a joke that aptly illustrates this point: for the first two years of a child’s life, everyone around them is trying to get them to walk and talk, and for the next eighteen years everyone’s trying to get them to sit down and shut up.

By the way, there is nothing wrong with disciplining children. Children need to learn boundaries in order to function in life, and they need to be protected at times from obvious danger. It is just that adults can unintentionally go overboard.

What we are referring to here as “suppression” is keeping a lid on our emotions, pushing them back down, denying them, repressing them, and pretending they don’t exist. Any emotion that comes into awareness that is not let go of is automatically stored in a part of our mind called the subconscious. A big part of how we suppress our emotions is by escaping them. We take our attention off them long enough so we can push them back down. You have probably heard the expression “Time heals all wounds.” It’s debatable. For most of us, what that really means is, “Give me enough time, and I can suppress anything.”

Granted, there are some times when suppression can be a better choice than expression—for instance, when you are at work, and your boss or a coworker says something that you don’t agree with, but it is not the appropriate time to give them feedback. It is habitual suppression that is unhealthy and unproductive.

We escape our emotions by watching television, going to movies, reading books, drinking, using prescription and non-prescription drugs, exercising, and a whole host of other activities designed to help us take our attention off our emotional pain long enough so we can push it back down. I’m sure you would agree that most of the items on this list are not inappropriate in and of themselves. It is just that we tend to pursue these activities or use these substances to excess, and we lose control. We use them as a compensation for our inability to deal with our inner emotional conflicts. Excessive escape is so prevalent in our culture that it has spawned many thriving industries.

By the time we are labeled adults, we are so good at suppressing that most of the time it is totally second nature. We become as good or better at suppressing as we originally were at letting go. In fact, we have suppressed so much of our emotional energy that we are all a little like walking time bombs. Often, we don’t even know that we have suppressed our true emotional reactions until it is too late: our body shows signs of stress-related illnesses, our shoulders are stuck in our ears, our stomach is in knots, or we have exploded and said or done something that we now regret.

Suppression is one side of the pendulum swing of what we are usually doing with our emotions. The other side of the pendulum swing is expression. If we are angry, we yell; if we are sad, we cry. We put our emotion into action. We have let off a little steam from the inner emotional pressure cooker, but we have not put out the fire. This often feels better than suppression, particularly if we have blocked our ability to express. We often feel better afterwards; nonetheless, expression also has its drawbacks.

Good therapy is generally based on helping us get in touch with and express our emotions. And healthy, lasting relationships certainly could not survive without us clearly expressing how we feel. But what about when we express ourselves inappropriately outside of a therapeutic situation? What about the feelings of the person to whom we have just expressed? Inappropriate expression can often lead to greater disagreement and conflict and a mutual escalation of emotion that can get out of control.

Neither suppression nor expression is a problem in and of itself. They are merely two different ends of the same spectrum of how we usually handle our emotions. A problem arises when we don’t feel in control over which one is happening, and many times we find ourselves doing the opposite of what we intended. Very often we get stuck on one side of the spectrum or the other. These are the moments when we need to find the freedom to let go.

The Third Alternative: Releasing

The balancing point and natural alternative to inappropriate suppression and expression is releasing, or letting go—what we call the Sedona Method. It is the equivalent of turning down the heat and safely beginning to empty the contents of your inner pressure cooker. Because every feeling that has been suppressed is trying to vent itself, releasing is merely a momentary stopping of the inner action of holding these feelings in so you can allow them to leave, which you will find they do easily under their own steam. As you use the Sedona Method, you will discover that you will be able to be free to both suppress and express when it is appropriate, and you will find that you will more often opt for the point of balance, the third choice of letting go. This is something you already know how to do.

Though you have probably become an expert at suppression and/or expression, even so, you are still letting go. True laughter, for instance, is one of the ways that you let go spontaneously, and the benefits of laughter in the area of health and stress elimination are well documented. Think of the last time you had a really good belly laugh. You may have been watching a funny program on TV or having a conversation with a friend and, all of a sudden, something struck you as funny. You felt a tickle inside, heard a guffaw come up from deep in your middle, and your whole body started to bounce up and down. As you laughed, you probably felt lighter and lighter inside and progressively happier and more relaxed, almost warm and euphoric. This is also a good description of what you may experience at times as you use the process described in this book. Although most of the time you won’t laugh out loud as you let go, you will often smile and feel the same sense of inner relief that comes from true laughter.

Have you ever lost you keys or your glasses and turned the whole house upside down only to find them in your pocket? Think back to the last time that happened. You probably felt more and more tense as you turned over the contents of your house, maybe even emptying garbage cans if you were desperate enough. You kept going over and over in your mind where you could possibly have put the keys. And then, almost as an afterthought, you reached into your pocket and let out a sigh of relief—Aahhh—as your tension and anxiety melted away when you discovered you already had the keys, or the glasses, all along. After calling yourself a couple of names, your mind probably got quiet, your shoulders relaxed, and you may have felt a wave of relief pass through your body. This is another example of how you release right now.

As you perfect your use of the Method, you will find yourself able to go right to this point of realization and relaxation, even on longstanding issues that you were tearing your life apart trying to resolve. You will discover that the answers have been right inside you all along.

“At work, I am more energetic, proactive, and positive. I am in sales, and rejection does not have the same effect on me. In fact, I am now finding I get much less rejection.”

—David Fordham, London, England

Sometimes a spontaneous release takes place in the middle of an argument. Picture a time that you were in a heated discussion with someone that you care about when the following happened: You were really into it, absolutely sure you were right and justified in your position, when all of a sudden you caught the other person’s eyes and, without trying looked deeply into their being, you connected with them at the level that makes them as special to you as they are. In that instant, something relaxed inside and your position no longer felt as justified. You may even have glimpsed the conflict from their point of view. Perhaps you paused for a moment and reconsidered the situation, and then found an easy, mutually beneficial solution.

As you master the ideas in this book, you will learn how to see more than just your own point of view, which will free you from all sorts of conflicts, some that you may even have forgotten you have.

The Continuum of Letting Go

If you review your life, you will probably recall many instances that you have let go. We generally let go either by accident or when our backs are against the wall, and we have no other choice. As you focus on reawakening and strengthening this natural ability within yourself by practicing the Sedona Method, you will be able to bring releasing under your conscious control and to make it a viable option throughout your everyday life—even when you have days like the one described earlier.

The chart below will give you a better understanding of the process of releasing, whether it’s the spontaneous releasing you already do or the conscious releasing you will be doing as you explore this book. It will also help you to better distinguish between letting go, suppressing, and expressing. Each category represents a continuum that everyone is moving through in all moments.

As you practice releasing, you’ll see that you tend to move from the left-hand side to the right-hand side of this chart. Sometimes you may find a difference in only a single category as you let go, and other times you will see a difference in many.

You can, and probably already do, force yourself at times to move to the right-hand side. For instance, you may force yourself to make a decision in order to stop thinking about a particular problem. But that’s not real releasing. If you do force a decision, you may grow uncomfortable inside and increase your tension. When you are forcing yourself to change a behavior without changing how you feel, you will find some categories moving to the right while others move to the left. When you have consciously released, the whole continuum moves to the right.

But what do we mean by consciously releasing, letting go? How can we put releasing into practice?

Practical Releasing

There are three ways to approach the process of releasing, and they all lead to the same result: liberating your natural ability to let go of any unwanted emotion on the spot and allowing some of the suppressed energy in your subconscious to dissipate. The first way is by choosing to let go of the unwanted feeling. The second way is to welcome the feeling, to allow the emotion just to be. The third way is to dive into the very core of the emotion.

Let me explain by asking you to participate in a simple exercise. Pick up a pen, a pencil, or some small object that you would be willing to drop without giving it a second thought. Now, hold it in front of you and really grip it tightly. Pretend this is one of your limiting feelings and that your hand represents your gut or your consciousness. If you held the object long enough, this would start to feel uncomfortable yet familiar.

Now, open your hand and roll the object around in it. Notice that you are the one holding on to it; it is not attached to your hand. The same is true with your feelings, too. Your feelings are as attached to you as this object is attached to your hand.

We hold on to our feelings and forget that we are holding on to them. As I stated in the Introduction, it’s even in our language. When we feel angry or sad, we don’t usually say, “I feel angry,” or, “I feel sad.” We say, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad.” Without realizing it, we are misidentifying that we are the feeling. Often, we believe a feeling is holding on to us. This is not true … we are always in control and just don’t know it.

Now, let the object go.

What happened? You let go of the object, and it dropped to the floor. Was that hard? Of course not. That’s what we mean when we say “let go.”

You can do the same thing with any emotion—choose to let it go.

Sticking with this same analogy: If you walked around with your hand open, wouldn’t it be very difficult to hold on to the pen or other object you’re holding? Likewise, when you allow or welcome a feeling, you are opening your consciousness, and this enables the feeling to drop away all by itself—like the clouds passing in the sky or smoke passing up a chimney with the flue open. It is as though you are removing the lid from a pressure cooker.

Now, if you took the same object—a pencil, pen, or pebble—and magnified it large enough, it would appear more and more like empty space. You would be looking into the gaps between the molecules and atoms. When you dive into the very core of a feeling, you will observe a comparable phenomenon: Nothing is really there.

As you master the process of releasing, you will discover that even your deepest feelings are just on the surface. At the core you are empty, silent, and at peace, not in the pain and darkness that most of us would assume. In fact, even our most extreme feelings have only as much substance as a soap bubble. And you know what happens when you poke your finger into a soap bubble—it pops. That’s exactly what happens when you dive into the core of a feeling.

Please keep these three analogies in mind as we go through the releasing process together. Releasing will help you to free yourself from all of your unwanted patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling. All that is required from you is being as open as you can be to the process. Releasing will free you to access clearer thinking, yet it is not a thinking process. Although it will help you to access heightened creativity, you don’t need to be particularly creative to be effective at doing it.

You will get the most out of the process of releasing the more you allow yourself to see, hear, and feel it working, rather than by thinking about how and why it works. Lead, as best you can, with your heart, not your head. If you find yourself getting a little stuck in trying to figure it out, you can use the identical process to let go of “wanting to figure it out.” Guaranteed, as you work with this process, you will understand it more fully by having the direct experience of doing it.

So here we go.

Choosing to Let Go

Make yourself comfortable and focus inwardly. Your eyes may be open or closed.

Step 1: Focus on an issue that you would like to feel better about, and then allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling in this moment. This doesn’t have to be a strong feeling. In fact, you can even check on how you feel about this book and what you want to get from it. Just welcome the feeling and allow it to be as fully or as best you can.

This instruction may seem simplistic, but it needs to be. Most of us live in our thoughts, pictures, and stories about the past and the future, rather than being aware of how we actually feel in this moment. The only time that we can actually do anything about the way we feel (and, for that matter, about our businesses or our lives) is NOW. You don’t need to wait for a feeling to be strong before you let it go. In fact, if you are feeling numb, flat, blank, cut off, or empty inside, those are feelings that can be let go of just as easily as the more recognizable ones. Simply do the best you can. The more you work with this process, the easier it will be for you to identify what you are feeling.

Step 2: Ask yourself one of the following three questions:

• Could I let this feeling go?

• Could I allow this feeling to be here?

• Could I welcome this feeling?

These questions are merely asking you if it is possible to take this action. “Yes” or “no” are both acceptable answers. You will often let go even if you say “no.” As best you can, answer the question that you choose with a minimum of thought, staying away from second-guessing yourself or getting into an internal debate about the merits of that action or its consequences.

All the questions used in this process are deliberately simple. They are not important in and of themselves but are designed to point you to the experience of letting go, to the experience of stopping holding on. Go on to Step 3 no matter how you answered the first question.

Step 3: No matter which question you started with, ask yourself this simple question: Would I? In other words: Am I willing to let go?

Again, stay away from debate as best you can. Also remember that you are always doing this process for yourself—for the purpose of gaining your own freedom and clarity. It doesn’t matter whether the feeling is justified, longstanding, or right.

If the answer is “no,” or if you are not sure, ask yourself: Would I rather have this feeling, or would I rather be free? Even if the answer is still “no,” go on to Step 4.

Step 4: Ask yourself this simpler question: When?

This is an invitation to just let it go NOW. You may find yourself easily letting go. Remember that letting go is a decision you can make any time you choose.

Step 5: Repeat the preceding four steps as often as needed until you feel free of that particular feeling.

You will probably find yourself letting go a little more on each step of the process. The results at first may be quite subtle. Very quickly, if you are persistent, the results will get more and more noticeable. You may find that you have layers of feelings about a particular topic. However, what you let go of is gone for good.

Welcoming an Emotion

You may have noticed that when you focused on your feelings in Step 2 of the releasing process above, you let them go. They simply dissipated. Because we spend so much time resisting and suppressing our emotions, rather than letting them flow freely through us, welcoming or allowing an emotion to be is often all that is necessary to allow it to release.

My student Natalie learned to release effortlessly by acknowledging her feelings in the moment. As a daily commuter, she often used to have trouble passing trucks on the highway because she was anxious. Noisy thoughts and gruesome images of accidents would rush into her mind and she’d panic. Then, she began listening to a guided releasing tape from one of our audio programs while traveling to and from work on the interstate. She would dialogue with herself. “So, you’re anxious?” “Yes, I’m anxious.” “Could you allow yourself to feel as anxious as you do?” “Yes.” She discovered that, in a short time, she’d be over it. Just by allowing her panic rather than resisting it, her physical sensations of rapid breathing and shakiness would evaporate, and her mind would become quiet.

Diving In

Your experience of letting go through diving in may be quite different from the processes described above. First of all, it is not recommended that you try diving in while doing anything else. It works much better when you take time out, by yourself, to focus inside. It also works best when you are in touch with a stronger feeling.

Here is what you may experience: You receive some news that gets you upset. You start to feel a strong feeling of fear or grief, and you have the time to take a few minutes to release. You sit down, close your eyes, and relax into the feeling as best you can. Then you ask yourself questions like:

• What is at the core of this feeling?

• Could I allow myself to go in consciousness to the core of this feeling?

• Could I allow myself to dive into this feeling?

You will probably come up with your own versions of these questions as you work with them over time. You may picture yourself actually diving into the center of the feeling and/or you may find yourself merely feeling what is at the core.

Once you start to go deeper, you may experience various pictures and sensations. You may also notice a temporary intensification of the emotion. So, keep asking yourself: Could I go even deeper? Cajole yourself to go even deeper beyond whatever picture, feeling, or story you may be telling yourself about the emotion.

As you persist in this direction, you will reach a point where something pops inside, or you may find that you can go no deeper. You will know you have reached the core when you mind is calm and you feel peaceful inside. You may even see yourself bathed in an inner light or surrounded by a warm, welcoming emptiness and silence.

If you are not sure, or you get stuck and feel like you can go no further at any point in this process, or you do not feel complete and free of the original feeling, then switch to one of the other forms of releasing.

Remember, if the feeling still feels strong or has even intensified, you are not at the core. All feelings except peace are on the surface. This may be very different from what you have been told before about going deeply into a feeling. Many of us avoid diving into a feeling, because we are afraid we will get lost or it will get worse. However, if you really let yourself go past the surface and get to the actual core, you’ll discover that this could not be further from the truth, as my student Margie found out.

Margie came to class with a deep sense of grief that she had been carrying around for over ten years, ever since she had felt betrayed by the staff of another self-help organization. Without getting involved in the elements of her story, we mutually decided that diving in to the grief would be the best way for her to let go of it. I asked her the questions from above, and at first her grief intensified. As she began to cry, I simply encouraged her to go even deeper than the sensations and the story, and we kept going. To Margie’s surprise, in just a few minutes, she entered a state of profound peace. She said afterwards that she’d avoided the grief because she felt like she was drowning in an ocean of it. After she released, she realized that the grief was always just on the surface. What she’d actually been avoiding inside, without knowing it, was an ocean of love.

As most people work with this way of letting go, they find that it gets easier and easier to drop into the core of any emotion and allow it to dissolve. They notice that every feeling, no matter how traumatic, has little substance and is much ado about nothing.

Feelings Only Lie

When you catch yourself rationalizing a specific emotion, telling yourself what a useful function it serves and justifying why you’re absolutely right to hold on to it, it is a signal that you’re being handed a pack of lies. As you move further into the exploration of letting go, one of the things that you’ll notice is that the feelings you’re releasing tend to argue for their own preservation. Feelings lie and make empty promises, such as: “Fear keeps you safe,” “If I feel guilty, I won’t do it again,” “If I hold on to my anger, I’m getting back at another person (rather than only hurting myself).” All that’s happening is that a particular feeling is perpetuating the problem it appears to be preventing. It’s a lie.

Two simple sentences that I use in my classes sum this up. You may find them a little like a Zen Buddhist koan that cannot be understood unless you just let go. So, here we go: “Feelings only lie. They tell us we are going to get from letting go of them what we already have from holding on to them.”

The Mind Is Like a Computer

To put the Sedona Method in perspective, let’s take a look at the many ways in which the human mind functions similarly to a computer. Computer functioning, of course, is partly based on the model of the human mind, so this shouldn’t seem like too much of a stretch. You are probably aware that a computer needs both hardware and software to operate. For the sake of this analogy, consider the hardware the equivalent to the brain and nervous system, and consider the software the equivalent of our thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs, as well as our basic, inborn intelligence.

What does the human operating system consist of? Software programs that run the body and the mind are the underlying intelligence that allows the system to function and accumulate knowledge. Almost everything we need in order to function well in life is innate. The only exceptions are the specific skills we acquire, which can vary widely. These range from playing a musical instrument to performing brain surgery.

In the same way that a computer functions faster and more efficiently the more memory, or space, it has available, so do we. As we go through life, we have experiences and accumulate data until our resident memory fills up and our processing capabilities become burdened and slow down. In computers, you can free up space by deleting or compressing files. Likewise, experiences that have a neutral emotional content and feel complete are highly compressed. Conversely, emotionally charged or incomplete experiences are like programs and files that have been left open and are running in the background of our lives. They use too much of our available memory and processing capability.

“My gains include freedom from disabling sensations of anxiety at my job, increased success and enjoyment in my work, and much less fear of the future.”

—Bonnie Jones, Olympia, WA

Open programs are not a big problem for most of us when we are younger, but as we age, there is less memory available even for bodily functions like respiration and digestion. As a result, the entire system gets overloaded and starts to break down. Then open programs and files take a toll on our basic ability to function effectively in life and to learn new, useful skills. They create mental confusion and conflict, because they’re often sending us messages that contradict and interfere with each other and with our conscious intentions.

As we apply the Sedona Method, we let go of the emotional charges that are keeping old programs and files running in the background of our lives. We therefore increase our available memory and speed up our processing capability. Releasing enables us to retain the wisdom gained from experience without having our energy and memory drained by an emotional sense of incompletion. In other words, the more we use the Method, the better the human system functions.

Written Releasing: What Do You Want in Your Life?

Upon occasion, throughout The Sedona Method you’ll be invited to explore your feelings on paper in self-created worksheets. At Sedona Training Associates, we call this type of process “written releasing.” I recommend that you purchase a spiral-bound notebook or a simple journal to devote to this purpose for the duration of your reading. Once you’ve finished the book, for privacy, shred the parts you used for written releasing. There is no reason to save your releasing notes.

So, before you read on, please get out your new releasing journal, and make a list of anything and everything you would like to change or improve in your life. This list will serve as a declaration of your intentions for this self-study course on the Sedona Method. We will refer back to it as we move through the process together, so take as much time as you need and be as complete as possible.

As you write down your intentions, remember not to limit yourself to what you think is “possible” to achieve from reading a book. You are learning a tool that will be with you for the rest of your life. Have fun. This book is designed to help you begin a process that can lead to you having, being, and doing it all. The process is so powerful, in fact, and works at such a basic level, that many of the intentions on your list will come to fruition even without you working on them directly.

Write Down Your Gains

As you let go, I highly recommend that you write down your gains, as they occur, to spur you on to even greater self-discovery. Keep track of these positive outcomes in your releasing journal, or purchase a second notebook small enough to carry around in your breast pocket or handbag in which to jot down your thoughts.

The following is a short list of the type of gains you can expect as you work with the material in this book.

• Positive changes in behavior and/or attitude

• Greater ease, effectiveness, and joy in daily activities

• More open and effective communications

• Increased problem-solving ability

• Greater flexibility

• Being more relaxed and confident in action

• Accomplishments

• Completions

• New beginnings

• To acquire new abilities or skills

• An increase in positive feelings

• A decrease in negative feelings

• More love towards others

In addition to gains, as you explore the material in this book, you’ll discover your patterns of limitation and the specific ways that you could change your life for the better. I highly recommend that you write these realizations down whenever they occur.

Coming Back to Life

In these pages, it’s my goal to help you learn everything you need in order to have, be, and do whatever you will or desire. I promise that if you work faithfully with the Sedona Method, it will transform every part of your life for the better. You will feel as though you are coming back to life. You’ll catch yourself with a smile on your face and laughing out loud as your inner stress and tension easily melt away.

Between now and when you read the next chapter, play around a little bit with what we just did together and see what you can discover for yourself. Practice releasing throughout the day and also notice ways you already release on your own. The more you focus on this way of dealing with your emotions, the more the benefits and ease of letting go will grow on you. Be persistent. The more you explore letting go, the more natural it will become as an alternative to suppression and expression—and it will set you free.

The Basic Releasing Questions from this Chapter

What is your NOW feeling?

Could you welcome/allow it?

Could you let it go?

Would you let it go?

When?

Chapter 2 Your Formula for Success

Throughout this book, my purpose is to guide you, in an experiential way, in learning how to let go of the reactions or feelings that are holding you back from performing at your best, achieving your full potential, and living a life filled with happiness, joy, and well-being. Since you’ve now had the opportunity to explore the releasing questions at least a little bit, this chapter will provide you with some more detailed guidelines for using the Sedona Method effectively. These suggestions are based on over a quarter of a century’s experience in facilitating seminars and retreats about the Method, as well as training other Sedona Method instructors and exploring the most supportive ways to gain the maximum value from releasing.

As you move forward, please be aware that the releasing process is completely internal. That is, it has nothing to do with anything or anyone else except you yourself. It only pertains to your internal reactions or feelings toward the people and circumstances in your life. When you let go of these, the process is so simple and so enjoyable that it may even make you laugh. People do tend to laugh a lot in my workshops. Because the releasing process works on a very basic, internal level, even when you practice the Method with a partner—as you’ll learn how to do presently—you’ll find that you never need to share details of a personal nature in order to get the maximum results from this work. You can release with a partner and still maintain your privacy.

While participating in the explorations within this book, simply allow yourself to let go of your feelings as best you can. “As best you can” means “to the extent of your ability at that exact moment.” You never have to push for a feeling or a release that isn’t honestly there. You are also letting go only of what you are feeling in this moment. If you are working on anger, for instance, the releasing questions are not referring to all anger for all time. They are merely an invitation to let go of the anger you are feeling NOW. Please note that because of the relaxing nature of this process, as well as human nature in general, you may not always experience your feelings strongly. This doesn’t mean that you are not doing great work. In general, letting go is just as effective for light or strong feelings. In fact, if you make it a habit to let go as you go about your daily life—even of the “small stuff”—eventually everything will feel like small stuff. As you begin to let go of your internal tension and other stressful feelings, you’ll notice that you experience a sense of relief and heightened alertness. This is only one of the many benefits you can achieve through the Sedona Method.

I guarantee that you’ll make tremendous—and rapid—progress and experience many powerful, positive effects from releasing when you apply what you’ve learned. As we have already mentioned, at Sedona Training Associates we call these changes “gains.” Be aware, however, that there are sometimes surprises. These are pleasant ones, to be sure, but nonetheless unexpected outcomes. For instance, the specific

“As a Toastmaster, I had succeeded in giving prepared speeches but was never good at speaking impromptu. I felt tense and nervous whenever I was called up to speak without preparation. Since I started using the Sedona techniques, I’ve become much more relaxed and at ease when I speak impromptu. As a result, I’ve become a much more effective speaker. I have managed to let go of my stage fright.”

—Charles Stark, New York, NY

area of your life that you would like to change by applying the Sedona Method may not transform as quickly as you would like, while another area begins to shift right away. Your target area may actually be one of the last areas of your life to turn around. But it is more likely that changes will happen much faster than you’d ever have dreamed possible.

To explain another way, let’s imagine that a particular individual turns to the Sedona Method specifically to open herself to greater financial success. She reads the book attentively, dutifully works with the material it contains, and yet finds no immediate financial gain. Instead, she may initially find herself gaining superior health, and then perhaps discover improvements in her personal relationships. After that, she might develop heightened abilities in the workplace. And only then she may finally allow herself to achieve the financial success that she was originally seeking.

Please don’t misunderstand me. The Sedona Method will definitely bring about important changes in your life. It is only that on occasion those changes may not arrive in exactly the order you hoped for, or predicted. Change may also be gradual. Your friends, co-workers, and employees might notice the changes in you before you do.

“I’m able to have a good night’s sleep after many years of having difficulty sleeping all night. It feels great.”

—Rosella Schroeder

As you incorporate releasing into your life on a regular basis, you’ll soon notice that you are becoming more sensitized to your feelings. This is a sign of progress. It means that you are ready to become aware of, and let go of, many of the emotions that you have either been suppressing or avoiding. In my experience, people usually don’t experience feelings they’re not ready to face—although I’ve had a few students who experienced a restless night or two of sleep as their resistance to certain feelings began to dissipate. But they kept releasing and quickly let go of everything that was troubling them. Most people absolutely do not have their sleep affected, except in a positive way. The good news is that the more you use the releasing process, the easier you’ll find it to let go. And this is what creates the safety for you to experience all your feelings—both the painful and pleasurable ones—more deeply. By feeling all your feelings more fully, you’ll gain even more enjoyment and aliveness out of everything you do.

The following analogy is a little like using the Sedona Method. Have you ever eaten from a salad bar or at a cafeteria where they had plate or tray dispensers? If so, you probably noticed that after you took your plate or tray out of the dispenser another one popped up to take its place. The same is true of our emotions as we let them go. If there are more feelings related to a topic than the ones we began releasing, more will keep coming up until they are all gone about that particular topic, until the “dispenser” is empty. Unlike a plate dispenser, however, every feeling that you take out and release is gone for good. When exploring the processes in this book, most likely you will start by letting go of one feeling at a time, then groups of feelings, until you become so good at releasing that you are ultimately working at the deepest levels—on whole “stacks” of feelings at the same time about any given issue.

Often, it is when we are not looking for, or trying to accomplish, anything that the mind relaxes enough to allow for releases and realizations. While you’ll definitely experience releases, realizations, and gains as you consciously work with the Method, you may find that they come when you least expect them. So make room throughout your day for the possibility of gains, and stay open to the unexpected. As best you can, relax and accept that the timing of your greatest breakthroughs and realizations, including the ultimate realization of your true nature, may be totally out of your control.

Frequently Asked Questions

When people attend Sedona Method courses, they often ask the following questions. Review the answers as often as you need to as you work with the releasing process.

• How often should I release? Releasing is one good thing you can’t overdo. The more often you apply the Method throughout your day, the more benefits you’ll receive from it. Releasing can be done anywhere and at any time to immediately feel better, clearer, more confident, and alive. Simply allow yourself to remain open inside, while your feelings come up and move through you. Look at each upset in your life as an opportunity for greater freedom. Also remember to have fun. Avoid turning releasing into another “should.” As you get into the habit of letting go in the moment as feelings arise, you’ll develop a wonderful momentum that will support you when deeper feelings surface. You will find it easier to let them go as well.

• How long does it take to learn how to let go? That’s up to you. In Chapter 1, you learned some of the basics of the releasing technique. How quickly you’ll see results you can measure depends on how much you apply what you learned in your everyday life. Letting go gets easier to do the more you do it. Also, you may or may not feel big shifts right away. The results may start out subtly, or they may be extremely profound.

• How could something so simple be so powerful? The most powerful and useable tools in life are often the simplest. When processes are allowed to remain simple, they are easy to remember and duplicate. No one has to convince you how critical breathing is, for instance. Still, if I wanted to give you instructions about the procedure to follow for breathing, it would be: “Breathe in, breathe out … and repeat as needed.” What could be simpler? Yet there is little of more central importance to your life.

As you use the Method over time, you’ll discover that it is easy and can become second nature, requiring as little thought from you as the act of breathing does now. Do you recall how suppressed feelings were likened in Chapter 1 to an emotional pressure cooker? When you release often, you’ll also discover that keeping the lid off your feelings and allowing them to release is more natural than trying to keep them crammed inside.

• What does it feel like to let go? The experience of letting go is highly individual. Most people feel an immediate sense of lightness or relaxation as they use the process. Others feel energy moving through their bodies as though they are coming back to life. Changes can become more pronounced over time. In addition to physical sensations, you’ll notice that your mind is getting progressively quieter and your remaining thoughts are clearer. You will start to perceive more solutions rather than problems. Over time, your experience of releasing may even feel positively blissful.

• How do I know that I’m doing it right? If you notice any positive shifts in feeling, attitude, or behavior when you’re releasing, then you are doing it right. However, each issue that you work on could require different amounts of letting go. If at first it doesn’t shift completely, let go and then let go again. Continue releasing until you have achieved your desired result.

• What should I do if I find myself getting caught up again in old patterns of behavior, or if I just plain forget to release? First, it’s important to understand that this is to be expected—and it’s okay. Your ability to release spontaneously and in the moment that it’s necessary will increase over time. Soon, you’ll be able to release in “real time.” Meanwhile, you can always release once you do recognize that there has been a problem. Soon, when you catch yourself in the middle of an old behavior pattern, you’ll be able to release as the pattern is happening and interrupt it. By doing so, you’ll find that you’re able to change the pattern. After a while, you’ll learn to catch yourself before you get caught up in the old pattern, and then you’ll release and not do it. Ultimately, you won’t need to release about that particular tendency anymore, because you’ll have let it go entirely. If you allow yourself to be persistent, your attitude and effectiveness will eventually change for the better, even with longstanding problems. You may even get to the point where the only time you’ll remember that you even had a particular problem is when someone else reminds you of it.

It can also be helpful to schedule short releasing breaks throughout the day to remind yourself to release.

• Do I have to change my beliefs or believe something new to do the Sedona Method? Absolutely not. As I mentioned in the Introduction, please don’t believe anything in this book unless you can prove it for yourself. Just because something is said in writing does not make it so. Knowledge is not useful unless or until you can verify it for yourself experientially. Simply be as available as you can to what is being communicated in this book and look at it as an opportunity to change your consciousness and your life. Remain open to discovery and prove or disprove it for yourself. Whatever your religious beliefs or affiliations, they will only be supported by the process of letting go. People who have used the Sedona Method report that it helps them to be more in tune with and open to uncovering their true spiritual experience and conviction.

• What should I do if I am already involved in therapy or some other system for personal growth? Since letting go is the essence of any good therapy and every effective tool for personal growth, you’ll find that using the Sedona Method is an ideal support for other systems. This includes those you are already doing and those you may do in the future. As you combine releasing with other forms of self-exploration, results will come more quickly and easily. The Method will make it easier to stick with whatever process is working in your life, because you’ll be able to understand and apply the concepts that you’re learning on a more consistent basis. People who learn the Method frequently comment that it is the missing piece they’ve been looking for in everything else they’ve done to help themselves.

Note: If you are presently involved in any form of psychological or medical treatment, please do not change your treatment regimen without first consulting your healthcare professional.

Harness the Strength of Your Different Modes of Sensing

Most of us have a predominant form of physical sensing: visual (sight), kinesthetic (physical feeling), or auditory (sound). If you’re not sure which one is your leading mode of sensing, then, in addition to asking yourself the releasing questions, try incorporating all three of these modes into the process. Later, use the one that works best for you.

Visual Sensing

If you lead with your visual sense, or you simply like working with it, allow yourself to come up with visual images while you go through the releasing questions. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Visualize a knot where you feel tension or another sensation in your body, and see it unraveling as you let it go.

• Picture that there’s a lid with hinges on your internal pressure cooker, and accept that all you need to do is open the lid and the feeling will leave. See yourself opening the lid and the hinge becoming looser. If you use this image frequently, after a while, you’ll be able to keep this lid open and easily allow your feelings to come up and out.

• Picture yourself tightly gripping a feeling in your hand, and then see your hand opening and the feeling leaving. As you’ll see in the kinesthetic sensing section, you can reinforce this image physically by making an actual fist as you hold on to a feeling and then opening it as you let go.

• Imagine that your feelings are pockets of unwanted energy trapped in your body. See yourself poking holes in these pockets and watch negative energy drain out.

• You may also experience your limiting feelings as a sense of darkness. As you use this process, picture the darkness being washed away, illuminated by the light.

Kinesthetic Sensing

If you are predominantly kinesthetic, you lead with your physical sensations. Therefore, allow yourself to experience a feeling as fully as you can in your body first, and then relax, open, and feel the feeling leaving as you let go. You may especially enjoy reinforcing the experience of releasing with touch and movement. Try the following:

• Place both hands face down touching each other on your solar plexus. As you let go a feeling, simply tilt your hands up, creating an imaginary space through which it can pass up and out.

• Make a fist with one hand, holding it to your solar plexus, and then open your hand as you let go of a feeling.

• Combine the physical action of opening your arms with the same inner sense that you have when you’re about to hug someone whom you care about deeply. First, place your hands together in front of you in a prayerful position and simply allow yourself to become aware of whatever you’re feeling in the moment. Then, slowly open your arms wide and, at the same time, let yourself feel welcoming. Keep opening inwardly as best you can while moving your hands slowly outward until they are as far apart as they can go without straining. Afterwards, notice how you feel. If you did this with as little thought as possible, you would probably feel lighter.

• Here is another simple way to reinforce your releasing process physically and help yourself lead more with your heart than your head. Simply place your hand on the spot in your body where you are feeling a feeling—often this place is around the solar plexus or gut. Use this action as a reminder to focus on the feeling itself rather than your thoughts about the feeling.

Auditory Sensing

If you lead with your auditory sense, the basic releasing questions outlined in Chapter 1 and explored throughout this book may be more than enough to induce you to release. You might also engage in a positive, encouraging internal conversation to reassure yourself that it’s okay to let go as you ask the questions. However, if you use conversation, please keep it to a minimum and avoid debate. It is always better just to say “yes” or “no” to the releasing questions, rather than debating the merits of letting go or anticipating the potential consequences. As you become more experienced in releasing, you may be surprised at what you hear, such as my student who was welcoming a feeling of judgment and heard the words “bad, bad, bad” repeated in her own voice in her mind as though she were a naughty dog. This made her giggle, and so she released.

People who lead with any one of the three modes of sensing can benefit from using any of the suggestions above at different times. Think back to the brief exercise in the last chapter in which you held on to and then dropped a pen, pencil, or other small object. Why not use that technique if it helps? Just hold on to an object as you ask yourself the releasing questions. When you are ready to release, let the object go as a tangible reinforcement of your internal experience.

In order to bring your natural ability to release into focus, allow yourself to play a little game as you go about your day. The goal is to practice both holding on to your feelings and letting them go. But keep the pressure low by playing only with your petty annoyances and casual feelings. Notice when you’re holding on and when you’re letting go. Whenever you’re holding on, give yourself permission to continue. Then check in with yourself to determine if you’re willing to give the releasing process a try. If you are, ask the releasing questions: “What am I feeling? Could I allow myself to have this feeling? Could I let it go? Would I let it go? When? Now how am I feeling? Could I let this feeling go? Would I? When?” and so on. This game enhances emotional fluidity.

When Two or More Are Focused on a Goal

You may have heard the following story told many different ways. This one is my favorite. A man goes to heaven and meets God at the Pearly Gates. God welcomes him and then asks, “Is there any last wish, my son, before you spend the rest of eternity in heaven?” “Yes,” the man replies. “I would like to see what hell is like so I can more thoroughly appreciate my good fortune.” God says, “Fine,” snaps his fingers, and instantly they enter hell. Before them, as far as the eye can see, is a table piled high with the most wonderful delicacies that anyone’s heart could desire, and on both sides of the table, also as far as the eye can see, are millions of unhappy people starving to death.

The man asks God, “Why are these people starving?” God replies, “Everyone must eat from the table with 11-foot long chopsticks.” “That’s terribly harsh,” the man says compassionately. God snaps his fingers again, and they’re transported to heaven.

On entering heaven, the man is surprised to see an almost identical scene—a bountiful table stretching as far as the eye can see—except that everyone is happy and well-fed. He turns and asks God, “What do the people eat with here? They must have different utensils.” “No, my son,” says God, “everyone here eats with 11-foot long chopsticks, too.” The man is confused. “I don’t understand. How is this possible?”

God replies, “In heaven, we feed each other.”

The processes explored throughout this book are taken from the Sedona Method audio programs, as well as from the Basic and Advanced Courses we teach at Sedona Training Associates. They are purposefully designed so that you can do them on your own or share them with a friend, relative, or loved one. An awesome power is unleashed when people gather together to focus on freedom. That is why Sedona Training Associates host live seminars to explore the topic, and why you can benefit from sharing this material with others. On earth, as in heaven, when we take care of each other’s needs, no one goes “unfed.”

If you choose to do the exercises throughout this book with someone else, you can ask each other the questions or lead each other through the explorations. All you need to do is be as present as you can with your partner and read from the book. Grant your partner the authority of his or her self-knowledge by allowing your partner to have his/her own experience.

When you are facilitating your partner in letting go, do your best to let go, too. This will happen naturally if you are open to it. Allow your partner to go as deeply into the process as he or she chooses. Refrain from leading, judging your partner’s responses, or giving him/her advice. It is not your job to “fix” your partner.

Refrain from discussing the explorations until you and your partner have both completed them during that sitting and you mutually agree to discuss them. Be sure to validate your partner’s point of view, even if it does not agree with your own. Your partner may say, “I’m sad,” when you believe he/she actually feels angry, for instance. Therefore, help them release on sadness. Honor your partner by accepting what he/she tells you at face value. A common disagreement between partners is whether there has or has not been a full release. You may believe your partner needs to continue releasing on a topic, even though he/she is telling you, “I feel good. I’m done.” Again, as tempting as it may be, it is inappropriate to impose your feelings and interpretations on a partner.

Please refrain from playing the role of counselor or therapist unless you’re a trained counselor or therapist and your partner has specifically asked you to play this role with him or her. Also, if your partner brings up a medical condition that would ordinarily require treatment from a trained health care professional, suggest that he/she gets whatever support is needed in this area. If you’re not sure whether or not your partner truly needs medical support, you can suggest it anyhow, just to be sure.

Kenneth: Letting Go of His Attachment to a Story

Kenneth was a direct witness of the World Trade Center attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. In spite of daily releasing ever since, he’d been in a continuous state of high anxiety for almost a month when he arrived for a Seven-day Retreat in Sedona that October. He told our group this dramatic story: “I was running late for a 9 A.M. appointment with a client across the street from Ground Zero. Coming out of the subway, the escalator was clogged up with people who were New York-style aggravated. When I reached street level, I turned to the right and saw a number of bystanders looking up at the North Tower, which was burning then. At that moment, none of us knew what had happened. It just looked like there was a fire on two floors. My only thought, as I continued hurrying along, was, ‘Wow! The Fire Department had better show up soon.’

“When I entered my client’s building, I took the elevator to the 14th floor. But no one was there, and the office was locked. It was now a few minutes after the hour and they had already evacuated the building. I went back downstairs and exited and stood on the sidewalk for a while and watched the fire. After 5 or 10 minutes, I don’t recall exactly how long, there was a tremendous explosion at the other tower—the sound approximated the clicking of an igniter on a gas stove. First, there was a whooshing noise, but magnified a million times over. Oddly, I didn’t even learn that it was a plane crash until I got home later and spoke on the phone to my girlfriend, who was watching the scene on CNN in Illinois. Right then, it looked like a bomb blast. That’s when it became apparent to us, the people in the street, that this event was something besides a simple fire.

“When the explosion occurred, a tremendous amount of paper began raining down on us. People panicked and rushed up Day Street. In their haste to get as far away as possible, I almost got run over. I wasn’t consciously releasing at the time. I felt curious instead of panicked. I tried to call out on my cell phone, because I wanted to tell my girlfriend what I was witnessing, but it wasn’t working down there since the transmitters had actually been on top of the towers. After a couple more minutes, there was also the cacophony of fire engines and police sirens coming towards us. Paper was still falling, not dust yet. It was surreal. I remember that one paper dropped right at my foot, and I noticed it had the name of a German bank on it. It struck a chord in me, as I’m German.

“The next dramatic thing, which has been haunting me, is that people began jumping from the top floors of the North Tower. It happened to be a beautiful, clear morning, so it looked almost unreal to me. It was a Panavision perfect picture, and I felt like I was watching a movie. Perfect colors and wide-open shots. One image in particular stuck in my mind: a businessman jumping out, holding on to his briefcase. Such a clear day, legs up in the air, hands down, and the tie up in the air and waving as he was flying down. Because the towers were high, it took quite a while for him to come down. Gratefully, I didn’t see the impacts of the bodies because other buildings obscured them.

“That’s when I knew that something extremely serious was going on. People were crying in the streets, and whenever someone jumped, everyone went Haaaaaaaah, sucking in their breath. I felt compelled to watch, even though it was horrific. But I told myself, ‘You have GOT to get out of here—NOW! There’s a possibility that something else might happen. We don’t know what caused the impact. There might be more bombs. LEAVE THE AREA AND GO HOME!’ So I worked myself against the flow of the crowd to get to the subway station at Brooklyn Bridge a few blocks north of where I’d been. To get there, I passed by a park near the mayor’s office. There were crowds of people outside in the park, throngs watching the drama unfold. Once or twice I almost turned back and looked over my shoulder. But I had made up my mind to go. Luckily the subway was still running then, but I was almost the only person on it and it soon stopped.

“I got home and immediately called my girlfriend on the landline. She explained what I had seen. I shared my feelings with her and the impact it had on me. Then I went into shock. I couldn’t turn on the TV right away because it was stored in a closet. So I got it out and turned it on. The reception was terrible because the antennas had been blown away. There was a powerful sense that the attack wasn’t true somehow, tremendous disbelief even though I’d been a witness. I urgently needed to see the drama unfolding.”

As Kenneth was recounting the story, I walked him through a release on pieces of the experience: the sounds, sights, feelings, thoughts, and sensations. He released some fear and anxiety. But Kenneth had a lot of resistance, and often he answered “no” when I asked him, “Could you let this go?” I knew that everyone in the group would benefit from his releasing process, since we had all been deeply affected by the scale of the tragedy. It wasn’t until he was able to recognize how he was subtly proud of having been in such a unique situation, and developing such a great story about it, that he was able to let go completely. Once he did see the pride and released it, the anxiety that he’d been experiencing vanished and did not reoccur.

As Kenneth says, “Pride is a powerful emotion, but I was finally able to let go. Persistence paid off. In the end, I was oblivious of the group. It was me dealing with this particular event. It wasn’t about pleasing Hale, or about seeking anyone’s approval, not even my own. After the release I felt good. September 11th was still very much on people’s minds and there was constant talk about it, but I never brought it up again the whole time I was in Sedona. Even better, I was actually sick of it.”

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Many people stumble into common pitfalls when they embark on the path of personal development, no matter what road they take. Here are some tips on avoiding them.

• “I suffer, therefore I am.” Strange as it may seem, this statement reflects the way that most of us live our lives. We identify with our problems, believing that we are the one having them. It is almost as though we feel that we justify our existence by having obstacles to overcome, problems to fix, and how much suffering we can bear. We also identify with our self-created suffering. We become so versed in being the person with a particular problem that we’re often afraid we won’t know who we are without it. When we take a moment to reflect on “our” problems, we may even discover that we’ve grown so attached to these patterns of thought and behavior that it’s hard to imagine ourselves without them. Rather than being open to the uncertainty that comes from letting go, we are clinging to the artificial sense of security that comes from knowing what to expect, even if that expectation is not beneficial.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Think of a problem that you believe belongs to you, and ask yourself: “Would I rather have the false sense of security that comes from knowing all about this problem, or would I rather be free?” If you’d rather be free, you’ll spontaneously let go of your attachment to the problem, and you’ll begin discovering natural solutions to it, as opposed to justifying having, or being stuck with, the problem.

• “But what will I talk about?” Most of us base a significant amount of our interpersonal communications on seeking sympathy for our problems or commiserating with others about theirs. Often we become such experts at describing our problems to others that we do not want to give up our expertise. It is not that sharing our problems is detrimental. In fact, the freedom to share what’s bothering you with others is often the first step in letting go and moving on. Also, being able to be there for our friends and partners when they are in emotional need is a sign of being a good friend. Where we get stuck is in continually sharing the same problem repeatedly, with no relief.

If you find yourself telling the same story more than once, check to see if you are seeking agreement or approval for the problem. If you are, ask yourself:

— Could I let go of wanting others to agree with me about my having this problem?

— Could I let go of wanting approval for this problem?

• “It’s mine, that’s why.” Pride is a shifty emotion. For we don’t only feel proud of our accomplishments, we also get really hooked into being subtly proud of our problems. We feel so special for having them. This pitfall on the path to freedom may take the form of feeling proud of having prevailed even with the problem, proud of having borne it for so long, or proud of having a problem that is unique to us alone.

Keep an eye open for pride. Look at your problems as you release on them, and check to see if you feel that they make you “special.” If you find any pride and you can honestly admit it and let it go, then you’ll find yourself free to let go of the problem, too.

• It is not wise to ask, “Why?” Wanting to understand or figure out why, or from where, problems arise can also be a major obstacle to letting them go. For we have to hold on to our problems in order to figure them out. Interestingly, if there is something that’s important for you to understand, letting go of wanting to understand often brings the understanding that you’ve been seeking with a lot less effort. Ask yourself a question: Would I rather understand my problems or just be free of them? If you would rather be free, I highly recommend letting go of wanting to figure them out.

“Coming from a background of poverty and excessive physical discipline, I’ve been working on myself for umpteen years. But a number of issues have persisted, despite my efforts to shift them. Having completed the Course, I’m relieved of much of my old anger, and I am better able to deal with the deep-rooted fears that come up. I’m not sure I recognize me, but I’m prepared to be surprised. The Method easily comes to mind when faced with daily challenges, so I have gained some highly effective tools and a calmer, happier way of living.”

—Yvonne Wigman, Kingston, Australia

The reason this is so important is that, in order to figure out a problem, we must leave the present moment, which is the only place we can truly solve anything. In addition, we only truly need to understand a problem if we are planning to have it occur again or are planning in some way to maintain it.

Years ago, during a Sedona Method course that I was teaching, I suggested to my class that if they let go of wanting to figure out their problems, the answers would come. There was one man in particular who had a hard time embracing the concept. He was an electrical engineer, and he “knew” beyond any shadow of a doubt that he needed to want to figure things out in his profession or he would not be able to do his job. I didn’t fight with him about his point of view; I merely suggested that he remain open at least to the possibility that letting go of wanting to figure it out might be of service to him.

In between the two weekends of the course, the engineer had an experience that totally changed his perception. He was working to create a sample circuit and needed a particular part to complete it. But when he went to find it in the parts room—a room consisting of rows upon rows of bins stacked on floor-to-ceiling shelves and filled with small electronics parts that were sorted according to their specifications—the bin where the part was supposed to be was empty. He thought, I am sure that this letting go of wanting to figure out stuff can’t possibly work with this kind of problem, but I’m going to give it a try anyhow. So, he just stood there for a few minutes and let go of wanting to figure out where the part might be. Then he found himself walking around the corner to a new row of bins, where he reached into one that was labeled for something else, and, lo and behold, there was the part he was seeking. He was dumbfounded because he had just done this on a lark, certain it wouldn’t work—and it did anyway!

I highly encourage you to be open to the possibility that you can get the answers you crave in your life through this process of letting go of wanting to figure it out. Like the electrical engineer, you may be surprised!

• Stop rushing past life. Begin to approach your life as though you have all the time in the world. We live in an incredibly fast-paced world where we’re constantly forcing ourselves to move more rapidly in order just to keep up. In our rush to attain our goals, even in the realm of self-improvement, we often rush past the very moment that offers the greatest opportunity for self-discovery and self-recognition—now.

Exploration: Look for the Freedom that Is Here and Now

No matter where your consciousness has gotten hooked in the past, in addition to releasing on that issue directly, develop the habit of looking for its opposite. Most of us have become very good at finding problems and limitations. We are experts at the quest for limitation because of our habit of looking for our problems when they are not here.

The freedom that we inherently are is always closer than our next thought. The reason we miss our freedom is that we jump from thought to thought, from familiar perception to familiar perception, missing what’s really happening here and now.

Even when you are working on a particular problem, allow yourself to look for where the problem isn’t. Notice how even your worst problem is not always with you in the current moment (NOW). When you start becoming aware of your basic nature of unbound freedom, you’ll find that this awareness puts all of your supposed problems into perspective and allows you to live your natural state of freedom now.

The following process will help you start to move in this direction. It is a way to experience what’s beyond your apparent problems and get more in touch with the second form of releasing—welcoming.

Easily allow yourself to become aware of your sensory perceptions, beginning with your sense of hearing. Could you allow yourself just to hear, listen, or welcome whatever is being heard in this moment?

Then, while allowing yourself to continue to focus on hearing: Could you also allow yourself to welcome the silence that surrounds and interpenetrates whatever is being heard?

For a few moments, switch back and forth between listening to what is being heard and not heard, including your thoughts.

When you feel ready, allow yourself to focus on what is being seen. Could you allow yourself to welcome whatever is being seen, as best you can?

Then, could you allow yourself also to welcome or notice the space, or emptiness, that surrounds every picture or object, including the white space between the writing on this page?

Again, alternate between the two perceptions for a few moments.

Next, focus on whatever sensations are arising in the moment. Could you allow yourself to welcome whatever sensation is being perceived in this moment?

Then, could you allow yourself to welcome the space, or the absence of sensation, that surrounds every sensation?

Easily switch back and forth between the two ways of perceiving.

Then, could you allow yourself to focus on a particular problem, and welcome that memory with all the pictures, sounds, sensations, thoughts, and feelings that are associated with it?

Could you then allow yourself to notice how most of your experience happens apart from this particular problem?

And, could you allow yourself to welcome at least the possibility that this problem is not as all consuming as it has seemed?

Switch back and forth between welcoming the problem and all its associated perceptions, and then noticing and welcoming what is actually here now.

As you do the above, you’ll find yourself gradually gaining a new sense of clarity about your supposed problems and also noticing the exquisiteness of what is already here now.

Growth Can Be Fun

Please be an active participant in the releasing process. The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. But set aside any unpleasant notions you have about work. Many people believe in the adage “no pain, no gain.” As you practice letting go, I’m sure you’ll discover that this simply doesn’t have to be true. Rather than working with this process, allow yourself to engage in it as a game of exploration of everything that is truly possible for you. Yes, personal growth and healing—becoming whole—can be playful and fun.

Have the courage to make wonderful changes for the better in your life. Give yourself the happiness, success, and well-being you deserve. I want you to have it, and this process was developed to help you get it. As you allow the ease, simplicity, and amazing power of the Sedona Method to reveal itself to you in the pages of this book and through your personal explorations, you’ll be gaining a tool that will be with you from now on. For nearly 30 years, people just like you have been using this incredible technique to radically improve every aspect of their lives.

Chapter 3 Your Roadmap to Emotional Freedom

Please read this chapter with an open heart and mind. It is designed to help you explore and release through the nine basic emotional states that everyone experiences throughout the day: apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, pride, courage, acceptance, and peace. Not only will this information help you to gain greater clarity about your emotions, and those of others, it will also aid you in incorporating the process of conscious releasing into your life.

Freedom/Imperturbability

Freedom, or imperturbability, is the ultimate goal of the Sedona Method—the freedom to choose to have, be, or do or to not have, be, or do anything and everything. This is the natural state of being when we cannot be disturbed any longer by what happens in our lives. Your freedom is already here and now, resting just beneath the surface of your emotions, and, as you master releasing, you’ll eventually uncover it within. Then nothing and no one can perturb you. Although you’ll be aware of everything that’s happening, and you’ll enjoy it, you won’t be attached to, or bothered by, any particular outcomes. You will remain at rest, at peace.

Right now you may be wondering, “I don’t know if I want to let go of all my emotions. They give color to life. They make me feel alive.” I assure you that releasing in no way leads to emotional deadness. The exact opposite is true. Because we typically keep so much suppressed, we don’t really let ourselves feel enough. That numbness cuts us off from the natural goodness and richness of life even more than it cuts us off from the so-called negative emotions. Once you understand that you can let your emotions go, and you start letting them go, you’ll be able to feel everything to a greater degree and in a very positive way. You will rest safely in the knowledge that no feeling has power over you unless you choose to allow it.

Uncover Your Intuition

Another reason many people are hesitant when they begin letting go of feelings is the belief that feelings give them important information and intuition. In my experience, the opposite is true. Although limiting feelings may seem to arise from the same place below conscious awareness as intuition does, intuition is actually the natural knowing of our true nature that gets obstructed by emotions. When we release, we uncover intuition.

Lester Levenson used to say, “Intuition is only right 100 percent of the time.” Until you can tell the difference between your intuition and your emotional reactions, you may find this hard to accept. So, use the process of letting go to distinguish more easily between them. Simply release in the moment and pay attention. You’ll soon discover that as you let go of a limiting feeling, it diminishes or disappears, whereas intuition simply gets clearer and quieter when you release. You cannot release intuition. In fact, the more you release, the more intuitive you’ll be—without even needing to let go in the moment.

The Nine Emotional States

Inherent in all of us are nine emotional states: apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, pride, courageousness, acceptance, and peace. These emotional states are listed on a two-page graph at the end of this chapter (see page 106). These fall along a gradient scale of energy and action. In apathy, we have almost no energy available to us and take little or no external action. We have more energy and take more external action when we move up to grief. Each successive emotion in this scale, all the way up to peace, has more energy and affords us a greater capability for outward action.

Here’s an analogy you may find useful. Imagine that your emotions are how you would experience an ocean of energy being channeled through a garden hose that represents your body and your mind. When you’re in apathy, the hose is almost totally crimped, letting very little energy through. In grief, it is a little more open. By the time you get to courageousness, it’s mostly open, so you can focus your energy on creating what you choose. In peace, there is no longer any constriction: you are one with the ocean. Among other things, if you look at your emotions this way, it can help you to stop judging yourself for those emotions you do or do not have. After all, emotions are just energy.

Please use the remainder of this chapter to help you identify which emotional state you’re experiencing in a given moment. Refer to the lists of words and phrases that describe each of the nine emotional states whenever you’re having a hard time getting in touch with what you’re feeling. For instance, if you find that you often give up, feel negative about yourself or others, or just have a hard time getting started, you’re probably experiencing a state of apathy. Perhaps you find yourself thinking, “I’m not like them. I’m right. I’m smarter than everyone,” or feeling smug or better than … Thoughts and feeling of this nature indicate that you’re probably experiencing a state of pride.

As you work through this material, you’ll probably find that you can relate more easily to certain emotions than others, and that you tend to spend more time experiencing certain emotional states than others. It is important, however, to work on releasing your emotions while experiencing all nine emotional states in order to attain true imperturbability and freedom in life.

The nine emotional categories are a way to make sense of the large part of our mind that is below our conscious awareness. This part of our mind is like a junk drawer—you know, the place where you throw everything that you don’t know what else to do with. Some of us have a junk room or a junk attic or garage that looks that way. Over time, we’ve tossed everything into this part of our minds that we didn’t know how to handle or that remains unresolved in any way. As I mentioned earlier, any feeling that’s not let go of gets stored in the subconscious mind, which is filled with buried emotional baggage and limiting thoughts and feelings. Because of the accumulation of unresolved issues that most of us develop, it is often hard to remember what we consider important and far too easy to remember what we wish we could forget.

I don’t know about you, but when I used to keep a junk drawer, I could get very frustrated trying to find anything there. Finally, I cleared it out and organized its contents. Using the Sedona Method, you can do this with the mind as well. As you spend time working through and releasing the nine emotional states, you’ll see that all the emotions relate to each other in a very organized way. This will help you to sift through your accumulation, discard what you no longer need, and uncover what is important to you. As you release, you’ll find your mind getting progressively sharper and your memory progressively clearer. Not only will you get clearer about what you’re feeling in the moment, you’ll also begin to understand other people’s emotions better.

“Understanding my feelings gives me a more peaceful life with better focus. I feel more in present time. The Sedona Method Course gave me what no other course ever did: a clear-cut system to support my goal of letting go of the barriers. I can also decide for myself where to go and how fast to develop.”

—B.V., Gent, Belgium

When you visualize the scale of energy and action, or look at the chart at the end of this chapter, imagine that courageousness, acceptance, and peace are buried under the other emotions. As you let go of your apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, and pride, you’ll be uncovering these higher energy emotions, which are the real you that has always been here. Your whole life will turn around as a result. Everything will get easier for you.

Please be aware that the turn-around might not happen suddenly. It might be a gradual process. However, every time you work through the process of releasing, no matter where you start out—whether in apathy, grief, fear, lust, anger, or pride—you will find that you tend to gravitate naturally towards courageousness, acceptance, and peace. Recognizing your underlying strengths in this way can make a tremendous difference in how you feel and act and your whole outlook on life.

As you read through the nine sections that follow, permit yourself to be as open as you can to whatever feelings, thoughts, or pictures arise. Please pause any time you’d like to release whatever has come up. Definitely pause at the end of each section and spend some time releasing everything that is in your awareness.

Apathy

When we experience apathy, we feel as though desire is dead and it’s no use. We can’t do anything, and no one else can help. We feel dense and heavy and see no way out. We withdraw and play weak so we won’t get hurt. Our minds can get so noisy that we may go numb. The pictures we have are limited and destructive. We only see failure and how we can’t do it and how no one else can, either. We have little or no energy to act on our pictures and thoughts, because inwardly we are being pulled in so many conflicting directions.

Cheryl was retired and had been living in the same house for over 30 years, a period she’d spent collecting all kinds of objects and detritus. Her house, in fact, looked like the junk drawer I described a few pages ago in reference to the subconscious mind. By the time she decided to attend the Sedona Method Basic Course, she reported feeling quite heavy and apathetic about the condition of her environment. Interestingly, during the course she never directly released on the issues of her accumulation or her apathy. She merely listed procrastination as one of her goals. But when she arrived for the second weekend of the course—looking much more alive—she excitedly told the story of how, as she released throughout the week, she found herself cleaning and throwing things out. As her surroundings became less cluttered, her energy and self-confidence grew steadily higher. Cheryl said that she’d been trying to force herself to clean her home for many years, but to no avail. When she lightened up by releasing, she found herself doing just that.

Words and phrases that describe apathy:

• Bored

• Can’t win

• Careless

• Cold

• Cut-off

• Dead

• Defeated

• Depressed

• Demoralized

• Desolate

• Despair

• Discouraged

• Disillusioned

• Doomed

• Drained

• Failure

• Forgetful

• Futile

• Giving up

• Hardened

• Hopeless

• Humorless

• I can’t

• I don’t care

• I don’t count

• Inattentive

• Indecisive

• Indifferent

• Invisible

• It’s too late

• Lazy

• Let it wait

• Listless

• Loser

• Lost

• Negative

• Numb

• Overwhelmed

• Powerless

• Resigned

• Shock

• Spaced out

• Stoned

• Stuck

• Too tired

• Unfeeling

• Unfocused

• Useless

• Vague

• Wasted

• What’s the use?

• Why try?

• Worthless

Allow yourself to take a few moments and remember the last time that you or someone you know experienced apathy. Then give yourself a few moments just to be with whatever feeling this memory brings up in this moment.

Could you allow yourself to welcome this feeling as best you can?

Could you allow yourself to let it go?

Would you let it go?

When?

Repeat the releasing process a few more times until you feel as though you’re able to let go of some or all of what you are feeling. Then move on to the next emotion.

Grief

When we experience grief, we want someone else to help us because we feel that we can’t do anything on our own. We hope maybe someone else can. We cry out in pain for someone to do it for us. Our bodies have a little more energy than in apathy, but the energy is so contracted that it is painful. Our minds are a little less cluttered than in apathy, but they are still very noisy and opaque. We picture our pain and loss, often getting lost in these pictures. Our thoughts revolve around how much we hurt, what we have lost, and whether we can get anyone else to help us.

When Sarah’s aging mother had a stroke, she realized they had turned a corner. She felt extremely sad to be losing the relationship they used to enjoy when her mom was vital and capable. Because of how much help her mom now required, it was as though Sarah were taking on the role of being the parent while her mom was becoming the child, at least part of the time. Making a decision one day, Sarah dove into her grief and found a measure of peace. She understood that, as long as she used the Sedona Method, she could allow herself to grieve appropriately instead of being stuck in a constant state of sorrow. Although there was sadness, and the unknown, there was also a feeling of great relief and movement. Releasing made it easier to welcome the changes in her mother.

Words and phrases that describe grief:

• Abandoned

• Abused

• Accused

• Anguished

• Ashamed

• Betrayed

• Blue

• Cheated

• Despair

• Disappointed

• Distraught

• Embarrassed

• Forgotten

• Guilty

• Heartbroken

• Heartache

• Heartsick

• Helpless

• Hurt

• If only

• Ignored

• Inadequate

• Inconsolable

• It’s not fair

• Left out

• Longing

• Loss

• Melancholy

• Misunderstood

• Mourning

• Neglected

• Nobody cares

• Nobody loves me

• Nostalgia

• Passed over

• Pity

• Poor me

• Regret

• Rejected

• Remorse

• Sadness

• Sorrow

• Tearful

• Tormented

• Torn

• Tortured

• Unhappy

• Unloved

• Unwanted

• Vulnerable

• Why me

• Wounded

Allow yourself to take a few moments and remember the last time that you or someone you know experienced grief. Then give yourself a few moments just to be with whatever feeling this memory brings up in this moment.

Could you allow yourself to welcome this feeling as best you can?

Could you allow yourself to let it go?

Would you let it go?

When?

Before you go on, repeat the releasing process a few more times. Keep at it until you feel as though you are able to let go of some or all of what you are feeling, and then continue with the next emotion.

Fear

When we experience fear, we want to strike out, but we don’t, because we think the risk is too great. We believe we’ll probably get hit harder. We want to reach out, but do not because we think we’ll get hurt. Our bodies have a little more energy than in grief, but the energy is still so contracted that it is mostly painful. Feelings can rise and fall very rapidly, like cool water on a hot skillet. Our minds are a little less cluttered than in grief, but still very noisy and opaque. Our pictures and thoughts are about doom and destruction. All we can think of and see is how we will get hurt, what we may lose, and how we must protect ourselves and those around us.

Releasing is an excellent tool for coping with fear, as Judy discovered on a six-week camping trip through Morocco and Kenya. On an isolated and precarious road atop the Atlas Mountains, the four-wheel drive jeep that she and eleven others were riding in suddenly turned over. For a few moments, everyone thought they were going to die, until the jeep stopped partway over the cliff. Hearts pounding, they scrambled carefully out onto the slope where they remained stranded overnight under challenging conditions. It was windy and chilly. They had few supplies or provisions, several people had diarrhea, and one injured man went into shock. Yet, throughout it all, Judy kept releasing her fear. As a result, she was calm, even fascinated, wondering if they would ever get out of their predicament and thinking it was an incredible adventure, however it wound up. Best of all, she lived to tell the tale without carrying around any sense of trauma from what had happened.

Words and phrases that describe fear:

• Anxious

• Apprehensive

• Cautious

• Clammy

• Cowardice

• Defensive

• Distrust

• Doubt

• Dread

• Embarrassed

• Evasive

• Foreboding

• Frantic

• Hesitant

• Horrified

• Hysterical

• Inhibited

• Insecure

• Irrational

• Nausea

• Nervous

• Panic

• Paralyzed

• Paranoid

• Scared

• Secretive

• Shaky

• Shy

• Skeptical

• Stage fright

• Superstitious

• Suspicious

• Tense

• Terrified

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