Release Gets You Everything You Want

Almost 20 years ago today, I was traveling to Sedona, Arizona, to attend a teacher training program for The Sedona Method program. Little did I know at the time that I was about to discover one of the most important keys to a happy, fulfilling life.

Soon, I found myself in a Sedona conference room filled with psychiatrists, psychologists, and doctors from around the world. I was a young mother and novice Tarot reader at the time. I didn’t feel I was at the professional level of the doctors and behavioral health specialists attending. I felt intimidated, uncomfortable, and actually wanted nothing more than to just go home.

During the first week of training, the director of the class asked me to come up to the front of the room and stand facing everyone. Oh no, I thought to myself, why in the world did I even come to this event! He asked that I demonstrate the technique he had just taught us, with a psychiatrist seated in the front row. My knees were shaking and my heart racing. But, there was no escape, so I decided to simply go for it. Although it was a daunting experience at the time, it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me.

I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go ~ Jeffrey McDaniel

The Sedona Method’s Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) provides a way to bypass the objections of the mind and go straight to the emotions that are causing resistance and block us from what we want in life. Resistance is often what causes the suffering in relationships, financial health, career, and all other areas of life.

What is resistance? We all have subliminal core fears that cause us to react to certain situations in the ways we usually do. If we feel something or someone is triggering that core fear, we either tend to try to control it, or change it. Or we try to find ways to get that person’s approval, so that we can feel safe. Our core fears can literally cause us to do and say things that are not in alignment with our highest good or best outcome.

A simple exercise you can do to grasp the essence of EFT, is to hold a pen in the palm of your hand. Place the pen sideways so that you can squeeze it tightly. Grab a hold of the pen and squeeze it until your grip becomes uncomfortable. Once it starts to hurt, let the pen go. Let it drop to the ground. We can do the same thing with unwanted emotions, we just forgot how.

When you have a painful emotion that keeps coming up over and over again, there is the opportunity to let it go. However, no one told us that we can do this. We have forgotten how. Emotions are similar to clouds in the sky, always coming, going and changing. Emotions you are experiencing do not define who you are, they are not attached to you, and therefore, are not really your emotions, but rather what you are currently experiencing.

Awareness, your pure state of being, is always experiencing an array of emotions and outer happenings. Awareness, however, does not identify with the comings and goings, but rather with what remains constant.

To let go is to release the images and emotions, the grudges and fears, the clingings and disappointments of the past that bind our spirit ~ Jack Kornfield

When we wake up the emotional body, we drop into our natural state of being. In this natural state, there is a general acceptance of things as they are, with no desire to control or change them. Of course, life moves through us and much of the time when there is something to change or to control, it just happens without a lot of effort.

Not all emotions have to be released. Emotions can be very useful in helping us to get in touch with something that may be coming to the surface, something to be looked at, or to help us determine our true feelings about an issue, and so on. But, when we keep fighting against something that is arising in our environment, or within us, and we do not seem to have the ability to change it, that’s when it is healthier to release that resistance.

When we release, we feel lighter, happier, and a greater sense of peace. We are more open to experience each moment of life with an aliveness and receptivity that may have been previously blocked by old emotions. We return to a neutral place, which is our natural state of being.

This simple, yet very powerful technique can help anyone, anywhere, and it is so easy to do. Once we release resistance, it provides an openness that allows life to unfold in the most beautiful way.

“Get everything you want by releasing” is attributed to Lester Levenson, the creator of The Sedona Method.