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

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 53 rdfloor.”

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

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.”

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.

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.