What is The Sedona Method?
The Sedona Method is a series of questions that are meant to facilitate your complete and total emotional freedom. Negative emotions, the ones we feel in our day to day lives and also those stored within us from the past (that still affect us in the present moment), inhibit us from growing, create health problems, and restrict us from having what we want in this lifetime. What all of us want in this lifetime is love. The irony is that love is already what you are. It’s the essential nature of your Being. So there is nothing you have to do to get it. You just have to surrender and let go of anything that is not love. Any place in your life where you feel negative emotions, whether in your relationships, at work, with financial issues, with your health, or anything else, you can use the Sedona method to surrender and let go of those emotions so that you can be free.
The guiding principle of the Sedona method is that you are whole, perfect, and complete just as you are. Yes, just as you are. So often people’s sense of identity, purpose, and value is tied to the physical body and to the mind, which is thoughts and emotions. The physical body has nothing to do with the essential nature of you. Neither does your mind. The thoughts and emotions that you experience don’t have anything to do with you either. If you are not the body, emotions, or thoughts, who or what are you?
You are consciousness itself, spirit or soul, that which transcends physicality, emotions, and thought. There are four levels or layers to the human experience. The first is the physical layer. This pertains to anything in the physical domain, such as a body part, the trees outside, your car, a chair sitting in front of you, etc. Do physical things have the capacity to be aware of themselves? No, nothing in the physical world can be aware of itself. Something greater than things in the physical world needs to be aware of things in the physical world.
This points to the second level or layer to the human experience, which is “mind.” Mind is composed of thoughts and feelings. I can have thoughts and feelings about physical things. But even thoughts and feelings cannot be aware of thoughts and feelings. Something greater than thoughts and feelings needs to be aware of thoughts and feelings.
This leads to the third layer of the human experience which is consciousness itself. Consciousness is the part of you that is aware that you are having thoughts and feelings and an experience in the physical world via the body. This is what makes humans different from the rest of creation. We are conscious of our experience of thought, emotion and the physical body.
Consciousness has been referred to as being the watcher, the witness, or the observer of the phenomena of mind and physicality. You are that which is watching, witnessing, and observing the mind and the physical world. But, you are not the mind and things in the physical world. An example of this would be watching a movie and being aware that you are watching, witnessing, and observing the movie rather than thinking that you somehow are the contents of the movie. You are the context (consciousness), not the content (mind, body). You are that which is watching the movie, you are not the movie. This is the same with your life. Your life is a like a movie and you are that which is observing it.
Even consciousness cannot be aware of consciousness, which leads to the fourth layer of the human experience which could be called pure awareness. Pure awareness is what’s associated typically with Divinity or God. Pure awareness is defined by wholeness, perfection, and completion. Synonyms for this would be love, joy, and peace. This is why you do not have to do anything to get love, joy, or peace. Those things are already the essential nature of your being.
So, how do we go from experiencing negative emotions to experiencing more love, joy, and peace, which is the essential nature of our being? Well, this happens through the mechanism of surrender. We simply surrender everything that is not love in our life, so that we can increasingly experience the love that we already are.
Therefore, the first question that we ask in the Sedona method is, “Could I welcome____?”
The reason why this is such an important question is because much of the human experience is spent in resistance. Whenever you are feeling a negative emotion, you are in resistance to life itself. Life itself is love. When you experience something negative, you are literally resisting life.
Imagine for a moment that I were to ask you to put your hand against mine as if to give me a high five. I’m going to push against you with my hand and you’re going to resist and push against me. The longer that you and I continue to resist each other’s pressure, the more that we will experience symptoms in the arm such as discomfort, pain, and weakness. If I asked you, “Could you welcome my pressure?”, this would instantly mean that I would have nothing to push against anymore. And in that moment, the physical symptoms you were experiencing in your body would begin to go away. This analogy is exactly how we experience resistance in the rest of our life. When you let go of resisting life, you begin to experience life as LOVE. There is a phrase in the medical world that says whatever you resist, persists. The corollary to that is whatever you welcome, dissolves.
Could I welcome the pain that I’m having in my body in this moment? Could I welcome the anger I feel in this moment? Could I welcome how afraid I feel in this moment? And remember that the past can be accessed in the present moment. The future and past are being experienced now. So, things that you felt 20 years ago that are still inside of you, are accessible right now in the present moment. Time doesn’t heal wounds.
When you ask this question, it instantly puts you into the position of watcher, witness, or observer. When you put yourself in this position, choice becomes available. What choice? The choice to either continue holding on to that specific emotion or experience, or surrendering it and letting it go. Emotions are like holding onto a pen in our hand. We know the pen is not “us,” so we can drop it at any time. Emotions are not “us” and can be dropped the same way. Just this question alone can facilitate your freedom. It is a very powerful question. So, my encouragement is for you to start asking this question all the time in relation to anything in your life. Every health problem we have has a negative emotional component to it. In some it is larger than in others.
Next, we ask ourselves how we know that we are experiencing something and welcome our experience. This boils down to three things: physical sensations, pictures (emotions), and sounds (thoughts). Let’s use an example of a headache. How do we know that we have a headache? Well, because we feel the physical sensation of it. It feels dull, sharp, achy, stabbing, constant, pressure, etc. A headache also could be caused by pictures which are fueled by emotions. These are our memories from the past. You have a deadline at work and are very stressed out. Stress in this instance could be fueled by fear and frustration. So, whatever the picture or experience is, that can be welcomed as well. We can also welcome sounds which can be physical sounds like I got a headache because the fire alarm at work was blaring very loudly, or sounds that can be internal such as our own thoughts, judgments, and opinions. So we welcome physical sensations, pictures or sounds, the evidence for how we know that we’re experiencing something that is causing us to suffer.
Then, we break down whatever we are wanting to let go of into more bite-sized releasable pieces called the five wants. They are wanting approval, wanting control, wanting safety or security, wanting separation, and wanting oneness.
Wanting approval is like wanting care, love, attention, affection, to be noticed, to be understood, to be liked, etc. Think of all the things you have done in your life because you have wanted someone else’s approval. Additionally, if you have not gotten that approval, it may have caused you to suffer greatly. The opposite of wanting approval is rejection. If you are rejecting yourself, another person, or an experience, this is the same as wanting approval. When you are in a state of rejection, there is no approval present and that is the very thing that you want.
Wanting control is to force and manipulate and make something be exactly the way you want it to be. Most people come into my clinic because they want to fix their health problems, they want control. Synonyms for wanting to control include resistance and wanting to change, as well as wanting to understand, to manipulate, to push, to fix, to force, to have it be our way, to be right, and to be on top, among others. As we let go of wanting to control, we feel more in control.
The opposite of wanting control is allowing yourself to be controlled by something or not having any control. In either state, allowing yourself to be controlled is still the same as wanting control, because control is the very thing that you don’t have and that’s what you want.
Wanting security or safety may include a sense of being threatened, uneasy, in danger, on guard, or impending doom.
The opposite of wanting safety and security is like wanting to give up or wanting to die. You can recognize it, however, because it may also feel hopeless and defeated, like the end is near. In the extreme, it’s either paralyzing fear or paralyzing apathy or hopelessness—we feel like we’re about to die, and we don’t care. Depression is one of these states of wanting safety and security.
Wanting separation is wanting to stand out, avoidance or escapism. Escapism looks like drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana or cigarettes, doing illicit drugs, having tons of sex, binge eating sugar, binge-watching Netflix, workaholism, gambling, etc. Escapism is doing anything to avoid facing our negative internal emotional states. Separation can also look like being constantly engaged in differentiating from everyone and everything else. We want to prove how we are different, better, and special.
The opposite of that is wanting oneness. Wanting oneness is like wanting harmony, connection, and unity to all things. Wanting oneness may have a strong feel to it, or it may be very subtle. It feels like a sense of yearning, of longing for connection. Synonyms include wanting to unite, to accept, to be equal with, to be ordinary, to attach, to associate, to join, and to connect.
The reason why we refer to these as the five wants, is because if you are whole and perfect and complete, you do not want anything. So, highlighting these helps you to identify what it is that you need to surrender and let go of in order to be free.
After identifying what wants there are to let go of, the final question where the alchemy of The Sedona Method happens is this:
- Could you just set that want free?
- Could (ability) you just drop it as best as you can?
- Would (volition) you set it free?
- When (encouragement to do it now)?
While The Sedona Method is very simple, I have seen people surrender their emotions and dissolve their health problems, relationship problems, financial problems, etc. You just have to learn it, put it into practice regularly and I promise it will change your life.
How To Do The Sedona Method?
Step 1: Focus on your issue and then allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling in this moment.
Step 2: Allow yourself to welcome the sensations, sounds, mental pictures, and other thoughts that arise with that feeling. Ask yourself: could I allow myself to welcome or allow this feeling?
Step 3: Allow yourself to dig a little deeper and discover whether the feeling feels like it’s coming from wanting approval, wanting to control, wanting security, wanting separation, or wanting oneness. You can do that by simply asking yourself, is this wanting approval, wanting to control, wanting security, wanting separation or wanting oneness? If you are not sure which want is activated, or you feel like it may be several at the same time, pick the one that you feel is the most accurate or the one you would like to let go of first. Then proceed to step four.
Step 4: Ask yourself one of the following questions: could I let go of wanting approval, control, security, or oneness? Or could (able to) I welcome this wanting of approval, control, security, or oneness? Would (volition – just do it) you let it go? When (the best time to release is now)?
When you are releasing on the wants, simplify the questions. When you realize you can let it go, you will find yourself releasing spontaneously without a lot of excess thought. Remember yes or no are both acceptable answers. You will often let go even if you say no. As best as you can, answer the question with which you choose to work with a minimum of thought. Stay away from second guessing yourself or getting into a debate with yourself about the merits of this action or its consequences. Whatever the response, go to the next step. It is important to remember that we are not asking you to let go of control, approval, security, or oneness, but merely to let go of the feeling of lack – the sense of “wanting.”
Step 5: You can use the step at any point in the process. It is the safety valve of the method. You can use it on any feeling, any want, or any sense of indecision or stuckness. Simply ask yourself, would I like to change that? The answer will invariably be yes. If you’re not sure, check to see if you like it the way it is. Anytime something is not okay the way it is, that’s the sign you want to change it. Then ask yourself, could I let go of wanting to change it? In most cases you will be able to say yes to this question, even if you are stuck. Letting go of wanting to change it will dissolve the stuckness. And you will be right back on track. Also, if you are ever struggling with letting go, you can also give yourself permission to hold on for a moment and then allow yourself to let go. When you give yourself permission to do what you are already doing, this makes it easier to make a new choice.
Step 6: Repeat the preceding five steps as often as needed until you feel free of the emotion(s) or situation that you were releasing on. The results at first might be quite subtle, but very quickly, if you are persistent, the results will get more and more noticeable. You may find that you have layers of wants about a particular topic; however, what you let go of is gone for good. As you start to notice and welcome wanting approval, control, security separation and oneness that are attached to the feelings you feel, you will often notice they will release very quickly, while some may take more time.
