Common Misconceptions on “Releasing”

This is a very important video from teacher GP Walsh on the subject of releasing. It comes from The Balls Project, which is an online men’s group / forum that focuses on going deeply into inner work on topics specific to men.

There are a lot of concepts floating around about the topic, some due to basic misinterpretation while others seem to be intentionally propagated for marketing purposes. Two of the most popular schools of releasing as a formalized technique are The Sedona Method and The Release Technique, though there are plenty of other modalities that incorporate this idea.

Followers of any method would be served to continue onward, because these are extremely common traps that are often subtly or not-so-subtly coloring the practice of even some of the most experienced releasers.

 

The releasing misconceptions go into two general categories:

 

1) Releasing = making it go away

The analogy GP uses is best, you take your hands off of the energy. You are not shoving it away, you are not forcefully trying to bend it into what you want it to be.

Because we are dealing with energy and emotions, this is not like the physical universe with laws of gravity. Emotional content and energy does not necessary fall away like something you were holding onto in the air and then dropping it. The energy simply becomes free to express itself. If it is a necessary part of you, which many things we have aversions to are, it will finally be free to integrate.

If you are obsessed with making energy go away because your ego has judged it as “negative,” you are actually fighting with yourself under the guise of improving yourself.

In the Sedona Method and Release Technique, everything is taken down to the level of core human wants/desire. This is very important to remind yourself:

The practice is to let go of the wanting, not the actual thing. The desire to get rid of something is the want to control. THAT is what you release.

 

Obviously, this is counter intuitive to the mind/ego and also requires a level of faith. Faith that the energy system that has kept you alive to this day understands what to do with this material better than you do.

Also, processing it may not always be comfortable or full of happy thoughts. To use another analogy from GP, if you ingest something that the body needs to get rid of, the actual process of getting sick is extremely uncomfortable but it is NOT negative. If you didn’t go through that uncomfortable process, it could mean your death.

Now imagine if you spent all your focus and energy on trying to “release” the “negative” stomach sickness, which is actually saving your life.

The real power comes from releasing your resistance to the situation and letting the body do what it needs to do, without the enormous amount of unnecessary restriction and constraint we put upon it.

To re-emphasize what may be the most important point of the video:

The release happens when you take your hands off and allow things to unfold the way they need to.

This does not inherently mean any feelings, sensations will go away. They may in fact get bigger for a moment, if that is what is needed.

This takes us to what I believe is the second category of misconception:

2) If I release what I want, I get what I want

This is a HUGE trap, where the implication that releasing “on” something makes it come to you.

As said in the video, how can a release possibly happen if the whole intention of it is to make something come to you? That is the very opposite of letting go of your wanting and attachment around the object.

This does not mean you go into self denial, in fact it is just the opposite. Lester Levenson was very, very wise in using goals and strong desires as subjects of releasing. You use that strong desire for the thing to call up the strong attachments that are there, so that you can release your grip on them. Continue to bring that up until more and more of your grip lightens up.

Notice that the emphasis is on your grip loosening, not the energy going away, or some external result happening.

As long as you are obsessively focused on getting the thing, and thinking of releasing as a technique to get vs. something to free yourself of the painful attachment to it, you will continue to suffer. 

Try It!

I hope that you will try this approach, with the visual analogy of taking your hands off of the energy. Give it a shot and see what happens, and we would love to hear your results, questions or comments in the comment box below so we can discuss it more.