NEW YORK CITY?Passing by Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan brings back glimpses of the horror which the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (often referred to as 9/11) caused eight years ago.

I remember it was a bright sunny Tuesday morning and looking down from my hotel window in midtown Manhattan early in the morning, the usual crowd of fast-walking New Yorkers filled the sidewalks as cars reduced to matchbox sizes slowed down bumper-to-bumper as rush hour approached. Nothing seemed unusual, and there was nothing that could have warned of the tragedy which was about to take place.

Together with several other Filipino medical specialists (Doctors Ric Fernando, Esperanza Cabral, Rody Sy and Chao Sevilla), I attended a medical convention and I was bound to fly back to Manila that morning. While waiting for the porter to collect my bags, the concierge called up and informed me that a tragedy had happened minutes earlier and all airports have been closed for security reasons.

Hi-jacked

He advised me to turn on the television which repeatedly showed commercial passenger jet airliners hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists who intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the landmark twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) in this city, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings.

Just before the twin towers collapsed to their foundations, TV cameras zoomed in on building occupants trapped in the upper floors, leaping to their deaths rather than be burned or suffocated to a painful death.

Three days later, showing my press card, I was given a pass and was allowed to come to within a few blocks of what remained of the twin towers. To this day, I still could recall the pungent smell of what was a combination of burnt steel and human flesh that was simply too much for any nostril.

For the next several weeks, the images of airplanes crashing to the twin towers, people leaping to their deaths, and the pungent smell kept haunting my senses. Fear, anxiety, anger and related negative emotions filled my consciousness and significantly affected my outlook in life then.

Fear

Senseless as it was, it made me think that there was no point anymore in making long-term plans since terrorists would always be there to ruin everything decent people had built. I canceled all my trips, lectures and other professional activities in the next several months. I feared staying long inside tall buildings, and all bearded men seemed like terrorists to me.

I realized that I was literally crippled psychologically with my 9/11 phobias and anxiety. I repeatedly tried to tell myself that I was not afraid of and affected by everything I saw and smelled firsthand in New York that day. But the more I denied my fears, the more something else in my mind would counter and told me that yes, I was afraid and anxious. I was just kidding myself.

I came across the Sedona method of letting go of negative emotions including fear, anxiety and depression. The method is a practical and powerful tool that helps in releasing negative emotions, and supports disturbed individuals in finding inner balance and emotional freedom. The technique shifts the state of consciousness from one of stress and resistance to one of relaxation and tolerance of stressful triggers.

It actually involves some degree of subconscious reprogramming to delete whatever negative emotions the subconscious brain has assimilated and decided to keep. These limiting emotions grip the subconscious which then dictates to the conscious brain to internalize these negative emotions and act accordingly like what happened to me.

3 steps

The Sedona method may seem complicated but it is actually very simple. I have further simplified it by dividing it into three steps.

Step 1 is Acceptance. Rather than resisting or denying what one feels (?I?m not afraid,? ?I?m not anxious,? ?I?m not depressed?), one should actually accept, admit and acknowledge everything that one feels and is burdened with physically, emotionally and psychologically. One should make it as detailed as possible, identifying the cause(s), the triggers, what one feels, the consequences of the negative emotions.

Step 2 is Releasing. Having admitted, accepted and acknowledged all the limiting emotions one feels and its adverse consequences, one then literally releases and lets go of all these negative emotions. Christians may do this by releasing these problems to God. One may assign symbols of this step, like some form of light released by the body. One visualizes oneself becoming lighter and positively inclined.

Step 3 is Repeating Steps 1 and 2 as frequent as possible, at least twice daily at bedtime and on waking up, until such time that one feels absolutely liberated already from whatever negative emotions have gripped him or her.

As I passed Ground Zero, I?m heartened to see the huge billboards of the ongoing WTC redevelopment plan which will erect five new skyscrapers including the much taller Freedom Tower or WTC 1. It is some resurrection of sorts, just as I have resurrected from the limiting fears, anxiety and depression which witnessing the 9/11 tragedy from a close distance had caused me for a while.