I am thoroughly delighted to be able to recommend The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Well-being. Reading this book is the equivalent of taking the Sedona Method Basic Course and several Advanced Courses rolled together. Filled with practical techniques and enlightening true stories, Hale clearly and generously explains everything we need to know to master the releasing process and to continue using the Method day by day, moment by moment in real life situations, such as having more fulfilling and harmonious relationships, building financial security, developing satisfying careers, breaking nasty habits, losing weight, and enjoying good health. He reveals the Sedona Method’s powerful secret for manifesting what you want in your life, while showing you how to be at ease and comfortable with what you already have. The Method also enables you to have greater ease, enjoyment, and peace of mind with all that you experience on a daily basis.
So I highly encourage you to read The Sedona Method with an open mind and heart. Please allow the simplicity of its message and the power of this process to open you to all the wonders that life has to offer. It is one of those rare things in today’s world that delivers more than it promises … way more. I urge you to pay close attention to Hale’s message in this book. If you do, it will change your life.
Introduction What Is the Sedona Method?
You feel like your heart is warm and open, your spine is pleasantly tingling, and your body is floating on air. As you look around the room, the colors seem brighter and the sounds clearer, like you are truly experiencing your surroundings for the first time. Your mind feels profoundly quieter, yet there are many new and wonderful possibilities floating into your awareness about how you can improve your life and live happily now. You feel relaxed and at ease, knowing that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should be.
Your eyes are a little teary, because it is hard for you to believe that such simple exercises could make such a profound and immediate difference in how you feel. You are excited about the future, knowing that you can face whatever happens with a new feeling of inner strength, ease, and confidence, no matter what curves life throws your way.
Best of all, you know this is just the beginning.
You can easily have this type of experience for yourself, just like the tens of thousands of others who have been living and using the simple, yet powerful techniques that Sedona Training Associates have taught for years in our live seminars and audio programs. Now these techniques are available to you in this book!
Are you open to being truly happy? Are you willing to achieve everything that you have been wanting in your life? Are you ready to find what your heart has always been seeking? If you answered “no” to all three of these questions, then please don’t bother reading this book. If you answered “yes,” to any of them, The Sedona Method will show you a practical way to tap an inner source of boundless happiness, to achieve your wildest dreams and highest potential, and to become a spiritual “finder” instead of a seeker.
We live in a world that’s in a state of rapid change—and not all of it is positive. Most of us crave a certainty, security, and solidity that we cannot find outside of ourselves no matter how hard we try. But these qualities already exist within each of us, waiting to be revealed. It is as though we possess an inner wishing well or a fountain of joy and vitality that’s disconnected from the water supply. Yet, secretly, everyone has a tool to reconnect.
Intrigued? I hope so. Because I would love to share a simple process with you that can deliver on this promise: the Sedona Method. The technique has already helped many thousands of people to tap their natural ability to let go of uncomfortable or unwanted emotions on the spot. It is our limiting emotions that prevent us from creating and maintaining the lives that we choose. We abdicate our decision-making ability to them. We even imagine that our emotions can dictate to us who we are supposed to be. This is made apparent in our use of language. Have you ever said to someone, “I am angry,” or, “I am sad”? When we speak like this, we are saying to those around us and to ourselves, without realizing it, that we are our anger, or we are our grief. We relate to others and ourselves as though we are our feelings. In fact, we even invent whole stories of why we feel the way we feel in order to justify or explain this misperception of our identity.
It is not that feelings don’t occasionally appear to be justified. It’s just that feelings are only feelings, feelings are not who we are—and we can easily let them go. Choosing to let them go frees us to perceive what is actually here, and to act, or refrain from acting, accordingly. This translates into an ability to handle life—to make stronger, clearer choices. It allows you and me to act in ways that support us in achieving our goals and aspirations as opposed to sabotaging them. I have seen the process of letting go of the emotions grow into an ability to have more money, better relationships, more radiant health and physical well-being, and an ability to be happy, calm, and focused, no matter what is going on around us.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? I thought it did back in 1976 when I met Lester Levenson, the man who inspired the creation of the Sedona Method and would also become my mentor. Back then, I was an ardent, although confused, seeker who had gone to numerous seminars led by teachers from both the East and the West. I had studied various body-centered disciplines, including yoga, tai chi, and shiatsu. I had actively participated in numerous personal growth courses, including EST, Actualism, Theta Seminars, and Rebirthing. At these seminars, I had many nice experiences and heard and understood—at least intellectually—many useful concepts. Still, I felt incomplete. I longed for a simple and powerful answer to some important yet vexing questions like: “What is my life’s purpose?” “What is truth?” “Who am I?” and “How can I feel at home and at peace with my life?” Much of what I heard and experienced only added to my questioning. No one seemed to have truly satisfying answers or to have truly satisfied themselves about their true nature. There was also a strong, almost universal belief that growing was hard work that required baring your soul and reliving painful, unresolved issues. That all changed during my very fortunate encounter with this remarkable man.
Meeting Lester Levenson
I met Lester at a seminar led by a well-known speaker that Lester was attending as the leader’s guest. That day, a group of us went out to lunch together. Lester’s presence immediately struck me as unique. He was in total peace and equal-mindedness, very comfortable with himself. He was unassuming and easy to talk to and treated everyone as his friend—even me, a complete stranger. It was obvious that he’d ended his search by discovering the answers I’d been seeking. I knew I had to find out more.
When I asked Lester what he did, he invited me to a seminar that was being held the next weekend. All he would tell me was that “a group of people is going to sit around a table and release.” I wasn’t sure what releasing meant, but I knew if it could even point me in the direction of the qualities of which Lester was the living embodiment, I definitely wanted it. I took a leap of faith and signed up on the spot.
That weekend I was in essentially the same position you’re in right now. I was about to embark on a journey for which I felt a little bit of trepidation. I wasn’t sure exactly with what I was getting involved, and, since I had done so many seminars, I also had a healthy degree of skepticism. I found myself wondering, “Oh my God, is this going to be another one of those disappointments along the way?” As the course unfolded, however, I watched myself and other people in the class shedding long-held beliefs and limitations with amazing ease and speed, yet without having to relive or explain their life stories.
Almost overnight, I knew that I’d found what I was looking for. In fact, deep inside, I knew that this process of releasing was what I had
