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241 of 245 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptionally Good Book for Relieving Emotional Stress, October 31, 2003
This review is from: The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being (Paperback)
Although I have read dozens of self-help books and attended weeks of self-help seminars, none of those books and seminars helped me in the profound way that The Sedona Method has. The book's core observation is that we allow emotions based on old memories to block our minds and bodies from experiencing what is possible now. Many self-help authors make the same point. What makes The Sedona Method different from the others is the proposed method for eliminating those emotions. I have learned many other techniques for changing memories (such as the Tony Robbins Swish pattern) and use meditation to withdraw from emotions. I have found that meditation has worked best for me in the past. While meditating, my head is pleasantly vibrating and I feel at mental peace. With The Sedona Method teachings, I find that my whole body shudders pleasantly into relaxation and peace. In other words, this process causes me to enjoy a greater release from old memories and emotions than I had thought possible. It's a wonderful gift. So what do you have to do to enjoy this peace? You just need to ask yourself a series of questions (and the book is full of exercises to help you do that). I soon found that I did not need to ask all of the questions. With practice, I could just release negative emotions whenever I wanted to. This book came to me at a very stressful time . . . just after my Father died. I find that the grieving process has been greatly eased by the emotional releases I can stimulate any time I want. To get the most benefit from this book, you should practice every day to establish new habits. I read the book over two weeks to help make that transition. In retrospect, I would have done better to have read it over more weeks and practiced more each day. I plan to reread the book now to deepen my benefit. What was most impressive to me was that I could get so much benefit without going to a class or listening to an audio version. I suspect the teachings would be much more powerful in those forms. But you certainly can experience great things from just reading the book, doing the exercises, practicing and remembering to use the teachings when those emotions well up. May your days be filled with tranquility and a greater sense of what is possible!
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147 of 147 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the Better PRACTICAL Self-Help Tools Available, March 13, 2006
This review is from: The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being (Paperback)
Over the past couple of decades, I have read a LOT of books that address the issue of creating a better life and ending "personal suffering." The "problem" with most of these teachings-- although certainly worthy-- is that they either require extensive learning, or following the ways of a Teacher (to the exclusion of ALL others) for *years*, before some level of self-awareness is reached.
The Sedona Method has certain aspects of "New-Age Mumbo Jumbo" it is also the antithesis of most "wishful thinking" programs. while basically offering very similar tools and skills to many of history's great Teachers in the tradition of nonduality. Here's a tool for everyday living, that you simply just take home and apply right away. I say this not only from the perspective of having read the book, but also from having attended seminars with the author, Hale Dwoskin.
Many teachers and "systems" explain how we are held back in life by old memories and patterns. Essentially, we will recoil from, or even fear, certain situations... and when we do so, we're not actually responding to the PRESENT situation, we are responding to a MEMORY. What makes The Sedona Method stand out is its simple, easy to apply steps to moving on. No need to sit at some guru's feet for 10 years, no need to spend $5000 on seminars. The Sedona Method is a systematic "distillation" of the insights of a man named Lester Levenson who underwent a profound life change after being told he had only three weeks to live. Levenson defied the odds offered him by doctors, and lived another 40+ years.
The core of the Sedona Method is extemely simple: "Letting go" or "releasing" the feelngs and emotions that arise around whatever issue is facing you, and are causing you to feel stuck. In some ways, it is not dissimilar from the teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements), in that it follows a basic "release your attachment to the outcome" premise. Perhaps that sounds overly simplistic as a life-altering tool, but it isn't. And the benefits are immediate.
The book offers up a number of steps (basically in the form of questions you ask yourself) which will allow you to let go of pretty much any kind of "stuck" feeling you might have. A variety of scenarios are offered, so the method can be applied broadly to everything from setting life goals (overcoming negative "it'll never work" self-talk) to overcoming fears of specific events. It does require a little practice to get used to the idea of "releasing" everytime you encounter one of life's obstacles... I personally found that it took me about a couple of months before the system became "second nature."
About the book itself, it is a mixture of description, exercises and "real life examples" of how people have put variations of the method to use. Whereas it is easy to read, it does get incredibly repetitive, after a while, and some readers might find this a tad frustrating. The book also leans towards pointing the finger at "feelings" as the culprits behind most of our personal suffering, and I found this a bit offputting, at times-- but it's a very minor niggle.
Having read the book AND been exposed to the material in seminar settings, the best I can offer is this: The book DOES stand alone, and most people can easily learn and apply the method without taking a seminar. The workshops (which can be pretty expensive) offer the benefit of the "full immersion" experience, and might be helpful for those who don't believe they are the best "self-starters" in the world. However, taking a class is NOT necessary to get the benefits.
Final thoughts: Highly recommended (9 out of 10 possible bookmarks) for anyone looking for a practical way to address and move beyond old patterns. On the other hand if you're attached to the idea that self-awareness is complicated and "must" happen as a result of studying with a guru for 10 years, then this book is probably not for you!
Thanks for reading!
--Peter
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69 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Important tips on how to use the Method, July 28, 2005
This review is from: The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being (Paperback)
I've been using the Sedona Method for more than a year now, but I've gotten the hang of it only recently, so perhaps these words of caution will save you time and allow you to take full advantage of this wonderful method right off the bat.
The basic idea of the Sedona Method is this: if we "release" our emotions and feelings, we immediately feel better and are more able to deal with whatever life has handed us. So, the entire book is geared toward teaching you how to "release." In particular, there are lists of questions that you can ask yourself and that will help you to release.
The crucial point to understand, however, is that the questions themselves do not get the job done on their own. In fact, YOU have to do the releasing - just reading the question or memorizing them won't do. As the author notes on page 40 "[The questions] are not important in and of themselves but are designed to point you to the experience of letting go, to the experience of stopping holding on."
I should point out that the written format is certainly not the best support for the Method. I am not advertising for the Sedona Method audio program nor the live seminars (both are very expensive, indeed, well beyond my current financial means), but I am guessing that hearing someone guide you through a release is more powerful than just reading about it and then having to figure it out yourself. Besides, Hale Dwoskin (the author of this book) is not a writer at all, and his writing is really not that great. (It should be pointed out, however, that it's quite an achievement for a non-professional writer to write 400 pages like this book, which in itself shows the Method to be quite powerful.) Yet, it's very possible to learn how to release by reading this book, providing you are mindful of not "just reading" but actually trying to find in your mind and your body what it is to release, and then practicing it over and over.
I don't remember the date I first "released" using the Method. What I can say, though, is that using it makes life better and better. Problems are easier to solve, and if there is something you can't solve, you will be more able to accept it the way it is and it will not ruin your life. I don't think anything can be more helpful than this method in having a better life.
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