“What if the emotion you’ve spent years trying to get rid of isn’t asking to be solved? What if it’s simply asking to be felt?”
Most of us are taught two strategies for dealing with uncomfortable emotions.
We either suppress them or we analyze them.
We distract ourselves until they fade, or we spend hours trying to understand why they appeared in the first place.
Sometimes both approaches help but honestly, most times, they don’t. Instead, we end up carrying the emotion for days, weeks, or even years because we’re unknowingly holding onto it.
The Sedona Method offers a simple alternative. It isn’t “How do I fix this feeling?”… only,
“What happens if I simply stop resisting it?”
What Is the Sedona Method?
The Sedona Method is a self-inquiry practice originally developed by Lester Levenson in the 1950s after a profound personal transformation following serious health problems. The method was later organized and popularized by Hale Dwoskin.
Emotions are not the problem. Our resistance to emotions often is.
Rather than suppressing, expressing, or endlessly analyzing feelings, the Sedona Method encourages us to welcome them fully, notice our tendency to cling to or push them away, and practice letting go (that is key). It is about removing the struggle surrounding the issue.
When we think of attachment and we usually think about possessions or relationships but the truth is we also become attached to emotional states. Sometimes we hold onto anger because it feels protective. Sometimes we hold onto sadness because it keeps us connected to someone we’ve lost. Sometimes anxiety creates the illusion that if we worry enough, we’ll be prepared.
The emotion begins with a purpose but sometimes when we hold it too long it becomes a part of our identity without us noticing.
It’s no longer, “I feel anxious.” but becomes “I’m just an anxious person.”
The Sedona Method invites us to loosen that identification by remembering that experiencing an emotion is different from becoming it.
The practice revolves around a few simple questions.
Could I allow this feeling to be here?
Notice that the question isn’t asking whether you like the feeling. Only whether you can make room for it.
Could I let it go?
This introduces possibility instead of pressure.
Would I let it go?
This shifts the focus from ability to willingness…
Sometimes we discover that, consciously or unconsciously, we’re not ready to release a feeling because it’s serving a purpose.
When?
It’s okay if the answer isn’t now. We just need to be consciously aware of the option and choice.
Most emotional strategies involve doing something.
Reframing.
Journaling.
Breathing.
Talking.
The Sedona Method asks you to stop doing for a moment… to notice what you’re already doing.
Resisting?
Controlling?
Judging?
Clinging?
The practice suggests that much of our suffering comes not from the emotion itself but from the layers we’ve built around it.
The Sedona Method itself has not been extensively studied in controlled scientific research, though, many of its core principles overlap with approaches that have been studied.
Acceptance-based therapies encourage making space for difficult emotions rather than avoiding them.
Mindfulness practices emphasize observing thoughts and feelings without immediately reacting to them.
Research on experiential avoidance suggests that constantly trying to suppress or eliminate emotions can actually make them feel stronger over time.
So, it does support the broader idea that allowing emotions often works better than constantly fighting them.
One of the biggest misconceptions about emotional release is that it means becoming detached or indifferent. Here, we just want to practice releasing the unnecessary tension wrapped around the experience. You can still care deeply. You can still grieve. You can still love. The difference is that you’re no longer tightening around the emotion in an attempt to control it.
A Simple Example
Imagine someone criticizes your work. Immediately, frustration arises. Instead of replaying the conversation all day, imagine pausing.
Could I allow this feeling?
You don’t have to like it.
Just let it exist.
Then:
Could I let it go?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Then:
Would I?
Perhaps you realize part of you wants to stay angry because anger feels like protection.
Simply noticing helps. You haven’t denied the hurt or push-back but you’ve become aware of your participation in holding onto it. Sometimes that’s enough for the feeling to soften.
One of my favorite ways to think about this practice is to imagine emotions as weather. Storms don’t ask permission. Neither do feelings. The mistake isn’t that storms arrive. The mistake is believing we have to chain them to the landscape.
Every emotion has a natural rhythm.
It rises.
It peaks.
It changes.
It passes.
When we stop resisting that rhythm, emotions often move through us more easily.
Trust that you don’t have to micromanage every feeling. Trust that your nervous system knows how to process more than you think. Trust that awareness itself has a healing quality. Some emotions may stay longer than we’d like. Others disappear surprisingly quickly. The goal isn’t to manufacture a permanent state of happiness. It’s to stop turning temporary experiences into lifelong identities.
We spend so much of life trying to become someone who never feels fear, grief, anger, or uncertainty. That’s the wrong goal. Emotional freedom isn’t the absence of difficult feelings but knowing they can arrive without taking over the environment.
And sometimes, the moment we stop gripping emotions so tightly… they begin to let go of us.
Shoutout to Heather Schwartz for prompting this piece. :)
The storm image. What I notice in sitting practice is that the emotion is rarely the thing I can actually locate. The grip is. I go looking for the sadness and find my hand already closed around it, and the hand is the part that can open.
My mother held a Ph.D. in psychology. Her approach was to analyze emotions instead of allowing them to be felt, seen, and released. It took me many years to discover I didn't have to know why I felt that way; I just did.