Face Your Feelings

Just a few weeks ago, my friend Lise told me about the Sedona Method. I vaguely remembered hearing of it before. Originated by Lester Levenson in the 1950s and now taught by his protege Hale Dwoskin, I eventually realized that I had read an ad about the method in an airline magazine. With this new recommendation from Lise, I decided to explore it further — and I’m glad I did!

Just like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), the Sedona Method enables one to truly face and release life’s difficult emotions and experiences. The Sedona Method, however, is particularly simple and rapid in effectiveness. In fact, you can easily watch a few videos on YouTube and read free content on the Sedona Method website and start to use it right away. I’ve been finding it extremely useful for releasing a few of the anxieties I tend to experience.

It wasn’t long after I started reading Hale Dwoskin’s book about the Sedona Method before I realized that it is actually a perfect illustration of homeopathic principles and philosophy. Just as most allopathic treatments focus on suppressing troublesome symptoms, most of us tend to suppress our uncomfortable emotions, often by distracting ourselves with entertainment, alcohol, or even with suppressive drugs.

Homeopathic philosophy, in contrast, teaches us that suppression is never truly curative. Instead, suppression of physical symptoms usually only works for a short time, and if a symptom is completely suppressed, it often leads to deeper and more serious physical problems. Similarly, suppression of emotions never works in the long run. We might evade our feelings for a while but they return. And even if we completely suppress our emotions and don’t experience them consciously anymore, they are still buried in the subconscious, often deepening into physical symptoms (which we then suppress too). For example, we might effectively suppress our anger at our spouse, only to develop recurrent heartburn and bloating, which, after repeated suppression with over-the-counter medicines, eventually develops into chronic colitis.

The homeopathic approach, of course, is to meet like with like — to meet our suffering head on. To treat a symptom, a homeopath will prescribe an energetic dose of a substance that normally could cause the symptom in question. The resulting healing can sometimes be quick and nearly miraculous — a spontaneous release of even chronic symptoms. (To learn more about homeopathy, consider reading my first book, Impossible Cure.)

With the Sedona Method, we likewise meet like with like — indeed we welcome and actively experience our feelings. And miraculously, using a simple three or four step inquiry process, these feelings can be released — often quite quickly. With repetition (just as repeating a remedy is sometimes needed), chronic psychological complexes can also be released, sometimes revealing underlying feelings that formed a foundation for the problem in the first place.

This uncovering of underlying layers is also analogous to the homeopathic healing process. In particular, the successful healing of a physical problem often uncovers the suppressed physical problem that preceded it. For example, homeopathic treatment of colitis might revert into the less intractable gastrointestinal problems, which can then be treated homeopathically too. Eventually, the buried anger at our spouse is revealed, which might be addressed with a remedy — or with a technique like the Sedona Method. Of course, it would have been simpler to use the Sedona Method in the first place!

If you think about it, we all could sure use a daily dose of the Sedona Method. Our daily lives can often be a veritable roller coaster of anxiety, anger, guilt, and fear. We tend suppress it all with drugs, entertainment, coffee, booze, sex, and more. The net effect, of course, is deeper psychological and physical problems — which we then suppress again. No wonder health care costs are eating us alive! Even using alternative healthcare modalities can be expensive.

Why not nip it all in the bud in the first place? That’s why I’ve become so fascinated lately with learning and writing about self-care techniques that don’t cost a dime — techniques like EFT, the Sedona Method, teachings based on Hawaiian shamanism (like Huna), and more. After all, the answer is almost always within. And it doesn’t have to be hard and complicated. Release and happiness can be only a hair’s breadth away, if we only let ourselves see and feel it!