The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-being

“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.