I can understand your puzzlement about my financial status. We live in a community property state. My husband inherited his money. I did not inherit money. Under the law, if we divorce, all is his money remains his, and one-half of all money I earn while we are married is also his. I have student loans to pay and I haven't' yet put away anthing for retirement. My husband provides me with things like vacations & dining I could not afford at this time - but I provide for my own basic expenses.

It would seem normal to me for a married couple to share one set of tapes - regardless of relative financial status. It would seem weird & wasteful to buy two. Prior to this seminar, my husband always freely shared any books or tapes of his with me. In fact, my husband had offered to pay my way to the seminar he went to (which would have been $1,500 plus airfare). I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

But at the seminar Larry Crane (Mr. Release) recommended that people not share the materials with others or give them to others because "people don't benefit from them unless they buy them." I find this to be a highly questionable & self serving proposition.

To the extent it may sometimes be true that people appreciate what they work for, the statement fails to recognize economic reality. Based on our proportionate net worth, the $300 my husband paid for the course is equivalent to $2 to me. Additionally, he didn't work for his $300 and I did work for my $2.

I guess these con men would say that if I would only put out the $300 for the Abundance Course, I would soon be amassing millions - just by releasing! Amazing isn't it. And I know my husband honestly believes that he was just looking out for my best interests by not depriving me of benefit. So no - if my husband bought the course for me, I wouldn't benefit according to Mr. Crane. Since the income to Mr. Crane is the same either way, I have to wonder whether the agenda is to curtail input from others about how crazy the stuff in the course sounds.

Elena - I can understand your skepticism about regulating some of these guys. It probably would be an uphill battle. But uphill battles have never stopped me. Does anyone know if there have been any attempts anywhere to impose some sort of regulation?

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The Anticult
Everything else aside, this Sedona business of ignoring one's emotions is just idiotic, and does not work.

There was no talk of "ignoring one's emotions" in the Sedona workshop I attended. On the contrary: the whole releasing technique is about addressing emotions you are having, welcoming them, and allowing them to leave.

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question lady
I can understand your puzzlement about my financial status. We live in a community property state. My husband inherited his money. I did not inherit money. Under the law, if we divorce, all is his money remains his, and one-half of all money I earn while we are married is also his. I have student loans to pay and I haven't' yet put away anthing for retirement. My husband provides me with things like vacations & dining I could not afford at this time - but I provide for my own basic expenses.

It would seem normal to me for a married couple to share one set of tapes - regardless of relative financial status. It would seem weird & wasteful to buy two. Prior to this seminar, my husband always freely shared any books or tapes of his with me. In fact, my husband had offered to pay my way to the seminar he went to (which would have been $1,500 plus airfare). I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

But at the seminar Larry Crane (Mr. Release) recommended that people not share the materials with others or give them to others because "people don't benefit from them unless they buy them." I find this to be a highly questionable & self serving proposition.

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for explaining. I wonder if this Larry Crane has specifically told spouses or family members not to share materials. That seems very strange to me. I can understand that they would want to sell as many tapes and books as possible and thus would discourage sharing between friends and acquaintances, but it seems silly to me that 2 people living in the same house would not be allowed to share.

I wonder if your husband is too afraid to ask Mr. Crane if the recommendation applies to spouses and he is just assuming that that is what Mr. Crane meant? Or maybe it's a ploy by him to get you to go to a seminar with him?

Dear AntiCult - you mentioned that there is a book out there critiquing the Sedona Method. Do you know the name? I know that the "Harvard Medical School proven effective" claim on the websites is vastly overstated. It wasn't the medical school, but rather an unpublished, non-peer reviewed, non-replicated study of a small number of people using the technique in limited situation. Hardly proof of effectiveness.

I respect Mr. Crane's legitimate copyright interests, i.e. not wanting people to copy his work and distribute to others. That's okay. But that is not the situation here.

I also don't have a problem with him being in it for the money. Nothing wrong with making a buck. It does concern me if, as my husband reports, Larry says he isn't in it for the money when the company is a for profit corporation & they buy mailing lists from investment newsletters to target mailings. For me, that is proof that he is in it for the money.

Gulab Jamon - you are correct that Release Technique/Sedona Method teaches people to allow their emotions. So far so good. For someone like my husband who tries to supress his, that alone must feel pretty good.
The trouble is they also say you don't need to know what your feelings are about - that it is best to just release them. I disagree.

For feelings to be integrated, it is important to get a handle on where they are coming from. I think our feelings are giving us important messages - either about something we need to pay attention to & take action on or about something in the past that needs to be made conscious and healed. When this is done - the feelings will release themselves.

I didn't get the impression that Crane specifically said "and this includes spouses" and I wasn't there so I am just reporting what my husband's acount. My husband wanted to call them to see if it would be okay for me to use them, i.e. he wanted their opinion, about me, whom they had never met, about whether I needed to buy my own course in order to benefit from it.

Regardless of whether the Release folks would make this exception, it is shocking to me that my husband would even need to call them. It is scarey that my husband lost the capacity to evaluate a broad (& questionable) generalization in the context of this situation. It is disturbing that he thinks these people would know what's best for me better than I would.

The Sedona book I read was their own book, which I got from the library just to see what they were pitching. I found it to be a lousy and useless book. (I sorted the Amazon Customer Reviews Lowest first below, which is a good way to cut through the BS. There are some criticisms there)

The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being (Paperback)
by Hale Dwoskin,
[www.amazon.com]

I found their emotional technique to be useless. It seems to me the entire thing is sort of an est-like trick to make $.

All I can say for your families sake is that these Sedona people don't clean your husband out financially, or "refer" him onto people who will. These LGAT folks are on the active hunt for people with inherited wealth who are vulnerable...one client like that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
:-(
I don't want to be alarmist, but I have seen people buy into some bogus LGAT "franchise" for 250K, and lose it all in 18 months. Gone.

Hopefully common sense will prevail in your situation eventually.

Thanks for the heads up. Do some of these groups sell a "sucker list" to other kinds of businesses?

I almost forgot to mention that my husband also purchased an "iCAP" meter for about $800 last fall. There is some relationship between Larry Crane's company and the folks who sell these. Anyone know anything about these devices?

I was heavily involved with the Sedona Method from 2000 until 2002. I went to about five 7-day retreats during that time plus did other trainings as well.

As a stand-alone tool I think it can be highly beneficial and I have found it to be very effective. However, accepting emotions rather than resisting them is not a new invention of the Sedona Method, it's a common psychological tool which most therapists will teach their clients. Maybe the effectiveness of the Sedona Method comes from their ability to make it easily do-able.

I have not met anybody involved in the Sedona Method (Hale Dwoskin included despite what he teaches), who has got everything that they want simply from releasing on it. I have met people who have effectively used letting go of the blocks to getting the things that they want [i:4fc8d56ac1]and then taking the necessary actions in order to get them[/i:4fc8d56ac1].

I found the tool to be effective but the philosophy behind the Sedona Method to be highly destructive in my life. I would get myself into the most terrible scrapes, because I told myself that I could just 'release myeslf out of them'. Yes, I am responsible for my actions (although Hale often told us at the retreats that we are not, because there is a universal power ("the Power That Knows the Way" which is making us do everything = determinism), but being repeatedly told that I could just release myself out of any situation did not make me avoid them when I easily could or do something practical about them.

Plus I had one friend who didn't meet my need for honesty, when I questioned him about it, he denied that this was a problem and told me to just 'release on it'. Unfortunately, people would use this as a way of not taking responsibility for their actions, and it also made any kind of communication or resolution impossible - if you didn't like what the other person had done, you just had to release on it - therefore, people could use it as a scapegoat for their behaviour.

I don't keep in touch with any of the friends that I made there.

Plus, what kind of society do you think we would create if everybody were to believe that they're not responsible for their actions: "Sorry Judge, I couldn't help murdering all of those people 'the power that knows the way' made me do it..." And a government that thinks the same: "People can't help anything that they do, it's 'the power that knows the way' making them do it, therefore we'll not pass any rules outlawing murder, or rape, or child molesting, etc."

They certainly buy and sell sucker lists...but I doubt they would turn over a nice juicy client to anyone than other a close business partner who would be giving them 50%, or something like that.
When they find a juicy one, they like to keep that one "exclusive".
This is why Larry would give him his cell number, and get him to call him for personal advice, like whether or not his wife should listen to his tapes.
So its pretty clear Larry wants him all to himself...

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question lady
Thanks for the heads up. Do some of these groups sell a "sucker list" to other kinds of businesses?

Oist, thx for the insider info. By the way, how did you find this thread to post in? Please let us know if you can...

I agree with what you have said here, and accepting your emotions is step one of any proper therapy, and then modifying those emotions is the next step, and something like Cognitive Therapy gives many specific tools for this. Accepting is not enough.

As far as getting more of what we want from "releasing" from it, that is literally nonsensical.
Anyone who has not let go of their common sense realizes that to get something you have to take a BEHAVIOR to move you in that direction.
Of course, there are all sorts of psychological issues that could involved "releasing" or "letting go" and forgiving, etc, but these can be handled with a properly trained and licensed therapist.

Its clear Sedona is using junky philosophy and pseudo-psychology as a DEVICE to lure people into all these LGAT workshops to scoop lots of $ off them.

And as is mentioned, its not harmless...[b:738d83742f]that type of over-passivity and magical thinking can seriously damage a person's life, and thus make them more dependent on The Sedona people, thus creating a vicious cycle for the client[/b:738d83742f] and more money for Sedona.

Its clear that these types of "New Age" methods are harmful on balance to people, both psychologically and financially.

Probably a good "cure" for Sedona damage, might be to try out some very precise Behavior Therapy, to counteract the over-passivity.

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Oist
However, accepting emotions rather than resisting them is not a new invention of the Sedona Method, it's a common psychological tool which most therapists will teach their clients...

I have not met anybody involved in the Sedona Method (Hale Dwoskin included despite what he teaches), who has got everything that they want simply from releasing on it. I have met people who have effectively used letting go of the blocks to getting the things that they want [i:738d83742f]and then taking the necessary actions in order to get them[/i:738d83742f]