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

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