A thought that just like meditation or yoga, Sedona Method should be included in company welfare or school extra courses or college breadth subjects.

The Prickly Toy Analogy

Imagine you are handed a heavy, prickly toy. By itself, the toy is just a neutral object, but you are tightly squeezing it, which hurts your hand.

• The Toy (The Trigger): The specific situation you are reacting to (e.g., a friend leaves your text on "read"). Life constantly hands you prickly toys, but they only hurt based on how hard you squeeze them.
• The Pain (The Emotion): The negative feeling (anxiety, anger, sadness) caused by the squeeze.
• Suppression: Shoving the prickly toy in your pocket. You try to ignore it, but it still pokes you every time you move.
• Allowing (Stopping Resistance): Bringing the toy out of your pocket, opening your hand, and just looking at it. You feel its prickliness without fighting it, judging it, or trying to push it away.
• The "Want" (The Squeeze): The hidden reason why you choose to keep squeezing the toy instead of dropping it.

Even though it hurts, your brain tricked you into thinking you must hold it. The Sedona Method identifies three core reasons (wants) you ever squeeze the toy:

1. Wanting Control: "I have to make this toy do what I say!"
2. Wanting Approval: "If I hold this, people will think I'm good!"
3. Wanting Security: "If I drop this, something bad will happen!"

The 6 Steps to Releasing the Grip

To stop the pain, Lester Levenson (creator of the method) outlined six steps to train your brain to let go.

Step 1: Want freedom more than the toy. You must genuinely want to be free of the pain more than you want to be "right," get sympathy, or stay mad at the situation.

Step 2: Decide that you can drop it. Remind yourself that holding on is a subconscious choice. You are fully capable of opening your hand and letting it go.

Step 3: See the "Want" and ask the questions. When you feel pain, stop resisting it (Allowing). Ask yourself: "Why am I squeezing this? Is it for Control, Approval, or Security?" Once you spot the hidden want, ask yourself three simple questions to open your hand:

• Could I let go of wanting [control/approval/security]? (Yes or No. You are just checking if it is physically possible to drop it).
• Would I let go of wanting this? (Am I willing to drop it?)
• When? (Now).

Step 4: Make dropping toys a constant habit. Don't just do this for massive life crises. Make it a habit to drop the tiny prickly toys life hands you all day long (annoying traffic, a rude comment, a minor mistake).

Step 5: If you get stuck, let go of wanting to control being stuck. Sometimes your hand cramps and you can't drop the toy. Don't fight the cramp. Simply ask: "Could I let go of wanting to change the fact that I feel stuck right now?" Stop resisting the stuckness, and the grip will often release on its own.

Step 6: Notice how much lighter you feel. Every single time you let go of a want, you drop a heavy weight. The more you practice opening your hand, the lighter, happier, and more unbothered you become permanently.

In this post, I'm seeking to list those Books by Lester and his Disciples on the Subject of Releasing

Here Goes

1. The Sedona Method Book

2. Happiness is Free and it's easier than you think

3. The Sedona Methodq Workbook - Companion to the SuperCourse

4. The Abundance Book

There are quite a few others

maybe we can list them here

With the permission of the group, I'm planning a Part 2 that will include books on Releasing or Letting Go that are "outside" Lester's Orbit

Hi, I’m trying to articulate my experience with TSM because I feel stuck and I need help.

I was introduced to TSM when I was around 15. I heard people talking about it on Youtube and became curious, but I don’t think I really understood what releasing meant.

Instead of allowing feelings to come up and pass, I think I started trying to create a specific feeling in my body, catch it, then trying to figure it out, and ending up stuck. Over time, this became a pattern that I was constantly scanning my body, trying to identify sensations, control them, and fix whatever felt wrong.

Now I'm looking back, I feel like I was doing the opposite of what the method is about. Instead of letting go, I became hyper focused on my body and emotions. The sensations became more intense, and I started feeling trapped in them. I’ve developed a lot of body tension, pain, anxiety, panic, and even diseases, and I feel like my nervous system is constantly activated.

Now I feel like I don’t know how to stop this pattern. I feel stuck inside my own feelings and body sensations, and I don’t know who I am without trying to control or fix them, like I'm living in delusions.

I’ve tried therapy, but no therapist really understood what I'm going through.

Has anyone gone through something similar, where trying to release became a form of control or hyper fixation?

I’d really appreciate any advice or perspective, as I'm in a very dark place, and in so much pain.

A lot of emotion has come up lately that seems to be triggered by life circumstances and a strong desire to fix the emotion and also create texts or conversations with those involved to ease the strong feelings.

To handle this without trying to fix things, could you share your experience of how to deal with the huge force of emotional energy that is felt. Thank you.

Was anyone able to heal physical issues like Lester did? I would love to hear your stories! I am stuck with symptoms for years unfortunately...

I may be missing something...

When I feel total Acceptance

I experience Peace.

So How do these 2 Emotions Differ?

And yes, I could let go of figuring this out.😁

So far I'm finding most people I know are just not interested in it at all. They politely listen, but ask no questions. Most think of their feelings, even past trauma as simply being themselves. Even basic psychological concepts like ego vs true self make no sense to them.

When you read that something should be done ‘24/7,’ you might assume it means doing it as much as possible. Because otherwise it’s being assumed you ought to be releasing in your sleep as well.

However, this doesn’t quite line up with the precise language used in the six steps. Why be so precise? Well, it turns out that if you’re releasing constantly as suggested you’d find yourself spontaneously releasing when you encounter a clinch (wanting/resisting) in your dreams. Im currently noticing this.

This is similar to a technique often used to trigger lucid dreams, where the practitioner constantly does reality checks during waking hours until the act becomes automatic. When it happens in a dream, the dreamer becomes lucid.

I came across the Triune brain theory a while back which I found super interesting and very relevant to the topic of anxiety. Bear in mind, any theory is just a model of reality useful for analysis and prediction. In short, the theory states that the human brain evolved in three distinct layers that aren't perfectly integrated. 

The oldest is the reptilian brain: responsible for fight, flight, freeze, reproduction, feeding etc.

Next came the mammalian brain: responsible for complex emotions like fear, shame, joy etc.

And finally the frontal cortex: which is most evolved in humans & is responsible for complex logical thought.

And while these different parts work together, if there’s ever a conflict in motives/desires, the oldest layers always take precedence. Survival & procreation (fight, flight, sexual attraction) take priority over emotions. And emotions take precedence over logic. So for example, you can’t override a visceral survival fear with positive affirmations. OR choose to not feel sexual attraction if the reptilian brain decided so. OR logically convince someone who is motivated by emotion.

Fight & freeze are controlled by the reptilian brain. And while it has its analogs in the mammalian brain (fight/flight = feeling of fear, aversion, apprehension etc) they are distinct from each other. Fight/flight flagged by the reptilian brain is a context-less feeling of danger. This is what raw anxiety actually is. Similarly, freeze shows up as a visceral desire to not move, which then triggers the emotional components to it as well (aversion, disgust, shame etc).

You can’t reason with anxiety. You can’t make it go away. It is run by a totally different part of the brain that circumvents logic, and emotion.

There’s also this crazy interplay between the mammalian & reptilian brain. The context-less anxiety is seen as an actual threat by the emotional brain, which triggers aversive feelings, which then signals back down to the reptilian brain that danger is real. It feeds & maintains the cycle. Fight/freeze in reptiles is a transient phase. Once the threat is over, the organism goes on without the memory of the event. However, the mammalian brain needs to contend with the emotional residue of it which can accumulate over time due to repetition & feedback.

I have started to notice the distinct difference between context-less anxiety & its emotional analogs. Most important being that anxiety produced by the reptilian brain does not respond to cognitive interventions like journaling, talk therapy, sedona method etc. Once it hits, trying to escape it feels futile and may even prolong it. Resisting it signals to the mammalian brain that it is something to be avoided so it builds secondary emotions around it (fear and worry about your anxiety etc). The best bet is treat it like post workout muscle soreness. It’s a process and it will pass. 

Once you realize it's just an artifact of your reptilian brain that you can’t really control with your thoughts, you can stop fighting it and actually start managing your biology.

My sense is that TRE and cognitive approaches like talk therapy, sedona method, emdr etc target the emotional structure. Over time, as emotional controls unravel it creates secondary signals which in turn lowers the alarm threshold that triggers the reptilian brain.