How I Developed the Skill to Find and Eliminate Hidden Attachments

I was sitting there with my smartphone next to me. Nothing pressing was happening. No urgent emails waiting. No important messages to check. Yet I felt this pull—this desire to pick up the phone and just... look at things. Check my email for the third time in an hour. Browse YouTube with no particular video in mind. Scroll through apps aimlessly.

Then something clicked. I recognized this feeling. I grabbed onto it, identified it clearly, and in my next scanning breath session, I worked on that specific attachment. Within a short time, that compulsive urge to mindlessly check my phone simply vanished. Gone. No more aimless scrolling, no more purposeless checking.

You might think, "That's years of work just to save a few minutes of phone time." But here's what most people don't realize: those few minutes multiply by thousands over the coming days and years. More importantly, this was just one "duck" I'd successfully shot. There are many more hiding in the dark, waiting to be discovered and eliminated.

The Hidden Problem: Emotional Baggage You Can't See

Think of your emotional attachments as ducks lined up in the dark. You know they're out there—these limiting beliefs, compulsive behaviors, and emotional reactions that control your actions—but you can't see them. They're hidden, and you have no way to illuminate the darkness.

Some of these emotional attachments are buried deeper than others. Imagine you're on a train with a cargo car. The emotional attachment you're looking for is actually buried deep in that car. To reach it, you have to remove bag after bag of other cargo first. You work through this bag, that bag, this one, that one, and finally you can see the target—it's got a different color and it's easy to identify. But until you removed all that surface baggage, you couldn't even see what you were really looking for.

The scanning breath technique is like turning on a powerful spotlight in that dark field. It's the skill that allows you to see the ducks, identify them clearly, and eliminate them one by one.

My Journey: From Pain to Skill Mastery

The Painful Beginning

When I started, I knew somehow this technique would help me get rid of my emotional baggage. The problem was, I didn't know what my emotional baggage was. I couldn't recognize it. I didn't know where it was hidden.

In those early stages, the only memories or feelings I could easily access were typically painful ones. So I started there, working on them for short periods—5 to 10 to 15 minutes—typically 2 to 3 times a week. It was uncomfortable, even painful at times.

But gradually, those painful experiences became less painful because of the scanning breath. That reduction in pain was enough to keep me going. I could extend the sessions and practice more frequently. This was my first sign that "this is working."

Crossing the Desert

Then came what I call "crossing the desert"—a stretch that lasted about two years where I couldn't find any more easily accessible memories. Once every two or three weeks, I'd manage to surface a memory to work on. But during the intervening time, I'd try to remember things and come up with extremely shallow memories, almost nothing substantial.

I started mapping out my life into sections and segments, methodically searching for emotional content. Progress felt glacially slow. But I knew there was a lot more memory inside me that I just wasn't able to access yet.

The Breakthrough: Songs as Emotional Keys

After about a year of persistent practice, I discovered the power of songs. Songs are incredibly emotional instruments—they conjure feelings with remarkable precision. If you can remember a song, you can start to remember the emotions connected with it.

For me, some of the most powerful emotional triggers were Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Elton John's "Yellow Brick Road," and the theme from the movie "Love Story." That last one was particularly revealing. I must have been seven or eight years old when I saw that movie. I didn't really understand the story, but I sure felt sad at the end. That movie affected me deeply, and working on that music helped me release a lot of heavy, sad emotions I'd been carrying for decades.

What's fascinating is that this sadness didn't affect me in a personal way—it came from a fictional story—but I carried that borrowed emotional baggage with me for years. I discovered there are all sorts of places where we pick up these borrowed emotions. Another song about jealousy made me feel jealous, even though there was no actual person I was jealous of. It became an imaginary jealousy of an imaginary person, and the emotional baggage from that was heavy and persistent.

Here's what I learned: feelings are feelings, regardless of whether they come from real experiences or imagination. They all create the same kind of emotional attachments that need to be cleared.

The Technique: How Scanning Breath Actually Works

Starting Point: Find the Big Bull's-Eyes

When you're beginning, look for emotions that are easy to identify and notice—the big obvious targets. Think of times when you were really sad, really happy, really frustrated, or really disappointed. Recent frustrations and disappointments work particularly well because they're fresh and easy to access.

Important clarification: You're not getting rid of memories, and you're not erasing happiness. You're removing emotional baggage while developing the crucial skill of identifying your feelings and training your attention. This is really a form of attention training disguised as emotional work.

I remember being a little boy driving through the mountains with my family. I felt so upset that we didn't stop at every parking lot to go hiking. I loved the mountains so deeply that I didn't want to just drive through them—I wanted to get out and run and climb and be in them, not just look at them. That childhood frustration became perfect material for scanning breath practice decades later.

The Process Mechanics: Three Essential Elements

This is where most people go wrong. Without all three elements working together, you're not doing scanning breath—you're just ruminating, and rumination actually makes old feelings worse.

1. The Breathing (Essential) Maintain slow, medium-deep breathing throughout the entire process. This is what distinguishes scanning breath from merely thinking about old feelings. Without the breath component, you're just stirring up emotions without the mechanism to dissolve them.

2. Focused Attention on the Feeling Close your eyes and focus all your attention on the emotion and feeling. Feel it more and more intensely. Your attention will naturally wane and wander to related feelings—this is normal and part of the process. When your attention energy returns, gently bring it back to the main emotion. The stronger your focused attention, the faster the whole process works.

3. Sweeping Your Head from Side to Side While maintaining the breathing and attention, gently sweep your head from side to side. All three elements must work together. This physical movement is part of what makes the technique effective.

The Complete Process: Identify your emotional target, close your eyes, begin slow medium-deep breathing, focus all attention on the emotion, sweep your head gently from side to side, and continue until the emotions go "poof" and disappear. It's a slow process in the beginning because your attention is weak, but as your attention gets stronger, you allow less wandering and achieve faster results.

Physical Sensations: Learning Your Body's Language

Emotional attachments often resolve into feelings in the body, though not always. Sometimes it's a knot of energy in one specific spot. Sometimes it's an indistinct humming or vibration throughout your entire body.

There's no universal "sensation map" that works for everyone. You have to discover your own emotions in your own body and learn where they show up for you. This body awareness becomes part of the skill you're developing.

Advanced Discoveries: The Unexpected Finds

Era-Connected Feelings

As I became more skilled, I discovered that songs from specific eras in my life would unlock not just individual memories, but clusters of emotions from entire time periods. I'm not talking about clearing whole eras of emotions—that would be impossible. Rather, I'd clear specific emotional threads connected to that time period.

Each era in your life has maybe tens or hundreds of emotional facets, and each facet represents emotional baggage that needs to be cleared. The scanning breath works on these systematically: there, there, there, and then suddenly—poof—that particular section of emotions connected to the song simply vanishes.

Borrowed Emotional Baggage

One of my most surprising discoveries was how much emotional baggage comes from sources outside our direct personal experience. That jealousy song created real jealousy feelings about imaginary situations. The "Love Story" movie created genuine sadness that I carried for decades, even though it was completely fictional.

We absorb emotional patterns from everywhere—movies, books, songs, other people's stories. These borrowed emotions create just as much real baggage as our own direct experiences, and they respond to the scanning breath technique in exactly the same way.

The Cargo Car Progression

As you work through the surface layers of emotional baggage, deeper attachments become visible. It's like systematically removing cargo from that train car—each piece you clear reveals what was hidden beneath it. The emotional attachment you're ultimately looking for might have a completely different character than the surface emotions, but you can't reach it until you've worked through the layers above it.

Why This Skill Is Worth Years of Investment

The Multiplication Effect

That smartphone example might seem trivial—why spend years developing a skill just to save a few minutes of aimless scrolling? But consider the mathematics: those few minutes saved get multiplied by thousands over the days and years to come. More importantly, you can use this same skill to identify and eliminate countless other emotional attachments.

Beyond Time-Saving: Removing Life Barriers

Often our emotional attachments prevent us from taking actions that would be in our best interest. These manifest as limiting beliefs. There could be limiting beliefs about money—once you identify and attack these beliefs (in a gentle, indirect way through scanning breath), your ability to create wealth can grow many-fold.

One of my students believed she was too old to learn the rhythm of the English language. If she could eliminate that limiting belief through scanning breath practice, she could start developing deeper English skills, which would increase her pleasure and competence in using the language.

Maybe you believe that rock climbing is totally beyond your capabilities. With scanning breath, you can identify and eliminate such self-limiting beliefs. My personal belief is that practice makes perfect regardless of age, and with scanning breath, even age-related limitations can be overcome.

The Foundation Metaphor

Think of building a house. If you build quickly with a hastily constructed foundation, the house won't last long. But if you invest significant time building a strong foundation, the house will endure far into the future.

Building scanning breath skill follows the same principle. It takes years to develop, but it carries you much further into the future. Without emotional baggage clouding your vision, you can see more clearly and base your actions on outcomes that are farther into the future. You're no longer trapped in short-term thinking—you can plan and act for the long term.

Getting Started: Your First Steps

The "Just Try" Method

I haven't actually helped someone else identify their emotional baggage directly—that's a distinctly personal process you have to go through yourself. I can spot someone's emotional baggage from the outside, but that's useless until they recognize it themselves.

The best way to start is simple: just try. It's rather like learning to swim—I can give you a few basic strokes, but then it's practice, practice, practice. You have to develop your own recognition skills through direct experience.

Attention Training Progression

Start with the understanding that your attention will be weak in the beginning. It will wane quickly and wander to related feelings. Allow some wandering initially—it's part of the natural process. But as your attention gets stronger through practice, try to allow less and less wandering.

You'll develop an intuitive sense of when your attention energy returns after wandering off. That's your cue to bring focus back to the main feeling. The more you can keep your attention highly focused on the target emotion, the faster the whole process works.

Building the Hunting Skill

Remember, scanning breath is fundamentally a skill, and skills have a beautiful property: despite being very hard to acquire, once you have them, they're yours forever. You can use them again and again and again.

Each emotional attachment you successfully identify and eliminate makes the next identification easier. You're building what I call "emotional baggage hunting skill." Years spent honing this ability can save you far more than the years invested in developing it.

From Baggage to Freedom

That moment when I recognized my compulsive smartphone checking wasn't just about gaining a few minutes of time—it was proof that the skill I'd been developing for years actually worked. It was evidence that I could identify hidden emotional patterns and eliminate them at will.

I still have many ducks out there in the dark that I haven't noticed yet, waiting to be discovered and shot down. But the emotional baggage hunting skill I've learned through scanning breath practice is now mine permanently. Each identification gets easier. Each elimination opens up new possibilities.

The transformation isn't dramatic or sudden—it's more like gradually removing fog from a windshield. Slowly, your vision becomes clearer. You start seeing further into the future. You base decisions on long-term outcomes rather than short-term emotional reactions. You stop being controlled by unconscious attachments and start making truly conscious choices.

If you're ready to begin your own journey as an emotional baggage hunter, start with one obvious emotion—something that's easy to identify, like a recent frustration or an old sadness. Close your eyes, breathe slowly and deeply, focus all your attention on that feeling, and gently sweep your head from side to side.

Remember: without the breath, you're just ruminating. With all three elements working together, you're developing a skill that will serve you for the rest of your life. The ducks are waiting in the dark. It's time to turn on the light.