Personal
Experience with Vivation© by Lans Peterson
It
would be easy for me to write of individual sessions that I have had with Vivation© that
literally changed my life. In one session, I experienced the cessation of a chronic back
pain that had plagued me for years. In other sessions I have healed deep-rooted issues
with my mother, father, and other loved ones. I also used Vivation quite successfully in
dealing with my emotions and my life as my mother died and then as I faced my own major
health challenges.
However,
for my chapter here, I think the most profound way of sharing my experience with Vivation
is to relate the impact on my life it has had over the many years that I have used it as a
part of my life. I first learned Vivation around 1988. I met Jim Leonard in 1990, and
since that time, I have used Vivation on a regular basis. I try to have a complete session
once every one or two weeks. In times of crisis, I will have a session once or twice a
day. Also, as the skill has integrated into my life, I find myself using it on a daily
basis, in times just to center myself, feel peace, or when faced with the variety of
things that one encounters in life; such as going to the dentist, taking an exam, getting
stuck in traffic, or facing rattlesnakes in the desert.
Vivation
has allowed me to really go after my dreams, and to even be clearer what my dreams are. I
have been able to face any and all opposing energy with the gentle loving nature of
integration, which Vivation teaches. I have been able to open up to many more experiences
and possibilities. I have gone from being totally afraid of public speaking to teaching
hundreds of people with confidence and excitement. The anger and sadness from past
experiences that once limited me from receiving love has integrated with a compassion for
all those who suffer with their own unresolved patterns, thoughts, and behaviors.
So
I'll go back to 1988. I have always been an adventurous and fun loving soul. My
experiences have been many. I learned to meditate in the late 60's. I traveled
extensively and my careers included being a paramedic, dancer, and police officer. In 1988
I was a successful commercial interior designer. All was quite well, on the surface
anyway. The relationship department obviously needed some help. I had just been
dumped on Christmas Eve by my fiancée.
In
search of healing, I ran across Jim Leonard's first book, and someone who taught his work.
From the very first session, I began to get in touch with unconscious thoughts, patterns,
and habits that were running my life. With each session my own personal map and treasure
began to unfold. Each session was like riding a gentle current of energy with my soul. I
would be carried to sensations at a feeling level, by-passing the thinking process.
Sometimes I would see actual events of the past that immediately became clear to the
reason it had caused pain or blockage. Other times the resistance would only be in the
form of energy that I could sense or feel somewhere in the body. Applying the skill of
Vivation, I could feel the resistances dissolving into a loving energy. Day by day I
watched my life getting better and better. The more I consciously integrated the
patterns that were blocking the free flow of energy, the more energy started to flow in my
life. Money started to flow, love came my way, my whole being radiated with a super high
energy, and I experienced a very deep healing with my father and mother, which changed our
relationships forever.
I
suppose the most profound hidden insight for me was to get in touch with anger. Sometimes
the undercurrent of emotions is so submerged, it is quite undetectable. In my life I felt
almost like a flower child. I saw good in people, enjoyed people, and did well in my work.
I was well liked, enjoyed life, and smiled a lot. I had meditated for years, ate well, and
exercised. I was quite amazed to see that anger existed from varying experiences that were
controlling my behaviors at a very subtle level. In no way did I feel like an angry
person.
The
process of Vivation is very gentle. Seeing anger does not imply some cathartic exercise.
There is no inferno of emerging demons. On the contrary, the process has a miraculous way
of letting one get in touch with the energy in very gentle ways. During the process, the
energy of anger would appear something like a tightening of my muscles, my jaw in
particular. As I focused on the tenseness, the energy would usually dance around;
sometimes I would feel a little frustrated and even angry. As the process continued, I
would usually have some flash thought or insight to a particular time and place. For
example, I recalled my father leaving and I could feel the anger locking into the cells of
a 5-year-old little girl. I would awaken to the understanding, usually not in a thinking
mode, that I indeed was angry at the situation. Being that there was nothing for me to do
about it, I had just taken the anger in and stored it!
Several
sessions were similar leading me to insights where I had felt angry, but also helpless to
the situation. As I continued having Vivation sessions, I could feel burdens of weight
literally being unloaded as the process naturally allowed the integration. It was during
this time that I had a visit with my father, which led to a very deep healing filled with
love for both of us. For 30 years our relationship had been estranged, very superficial,
and even a bit cold and tense. I never lived with him after he left. My father died a
couple of years later, and I have always been so thankful that we had been able heal old
wounds, straighten miscommunication, and truly love each other. I am confident that
without Vivation, my father would have passed on, and I would have remained superficially
with a smile, completely unaware of the anger that lay unresolved within me.
The
interesting thing about this example of my father is that I was recreating similar
situations in my life. These patterns showed up in my relationships. In several cases, all
looking quite different, I created scenarios of men I loved leaving. I was left angry and
helpless. Good news is that integration allows patterns to change.
I
was diligent in my pursuit of personal freedom of my own limitations. When I started, I
had 10 sessions with one person, then 10 sessions with another, and then 10 with another.
Then I began to take longer workshops and traveled to many different countries. I saw my
own healing and the healing and transformation of many other people. People started to
approach me and asked me to teach them whatever I was doing. I let my design career go and
began my new career in a health center. It was then that I met Jim. I first took several
professional seminars from him and then began to travel and teach with him. We taught
thousands of people in 15 different countries. I continually used Vivation myself and over
the years observed the continual healing.
I
certainly do not claim to be perfect in any way, except perhaps that my divine birthright
is perfect. Yet, if there has been a way to stumble and fall, I have probably done it.
Even with the best of tools, we can choose self- destruction at any moment. The choice is
there each moment, each day, to love and see all that is working, or to see all that
doesn't work and be miserable. I do know that without any doubt I would not be the person
I am today had I not learned Vivation and actually use it. Vivation is only the tool, but
it is like one of those high-tech, high-powered tools that if you plug it in, it will make
the job go a lot faster and easier.
I
know my life has greatly changed. Without a doubt I live a more enjoyable, happy, and
fulfilled life than most people do on the planet. I still have stress. I still have the
same challenges that we all do of paying bills, PMS, working, relationships, heartaches,
addictions, habits, etc, etc. What I do have is the knowledge of a simple tool, which has
helped me immensely to broaden my perspectives, face life's challenges, expand my love,
and decrease my own relationship to pain and suffering while having a greater compassion
for those who suffer.
Life is a process. One integration
with Vivation can and will heal your life. Yet, if allowed, a continual use of the process
will allow for a continual free flow of energy. We are always faced with new challenges.
Stress, wars, murder, pollution, bacteria, and viruses are all a part of our lives.
Vivation does not eliminate these things, yet it certainly can help to alleviate our
suffering of them. Vivation is the only tool I know where one is taught how to actually
focus on the present moment and to embrace a loving energy, which is at the core of all
things. Embracing all experiences in love allows one to move through life with a different
perspective. Facing all resistance as energy and using the process to integrate it allows
one to go beyond the highest horizons imagined. A
context of love even in the midst of suffering and pain, and the elimination of all
judgement, only can lead to a life full of love. The only key is to actually do it.
SKYDIVATION by Jim Leonard
This is the story of how I permanently resolved my
fear of high places, and of flying, in a single Vivation session.
One of the formats in which we do Vivation with advanced
clients is called a "Vivation-in-Action Adventure". We do not need any special
circumstances, or even a quiet place, to Vive. Our aim is to Vive continuously, everywhere
we find ourselves. So for advanced clients, who are already comfortable with their ability
to Vive, we sometimes do a session while we are doing something else at the same time.
Often this means doing something that the Viver has found challenging and emotionally
activating in the past. Gentleness and safety are the highest priorities for doing this,
and we do not seek an activity that is too activating. What I am going to describe would
be too activating for most clients who have a fear of high places, but I am an advanced
client indeed, and it worked for me.
All my life I had a fear of high places,
"acrophobia," we could call it. Flying used to be a major ordeal for me, which
was inconvenient since my work requires frequent travel. I used to be unable to relax
fully while flying, never quite letting myself sit all the way down in the seat.
In a seminar I was leading in Florida, in the mid-1980's,
I mentioned this to the group, and someone suggested that I overcome it with skydiving.
Needless to say, I found this suggestion just horrible, but I knew I could integrate
anything with Vivation, so I decided to try it.
I found a parachute ranch nearby, outside of Tampa, and
called them up. It turned out that two world champions skydivers, a father and son, both
named Cliff, ran the school. They told me that we would do a kind of jump called
"tandem," which meant that one of them would jump with me, attached to my back
by a rigid harness. My instructor would pull the ripcord.
I went to the ranch and started off by explaining
Vivation to them, so they’d know that I was Viving and not hyperventilating. They
understood well.
Before
I could jump, they did a couple of things that heightened my activation. They made me
watch a video that covered many different things that could go wrong with the jump,
including cutting away the main chute if it did not deploy properly and then pulling the
reserve chute. Then they made me sign a very long liability waiver, that said basically
that no matter what went wrong, I wouldn’t sue them, and neither would my estate.
They also told me that skydiving is much safer than it looks, there being about one chance
in a million that I would hit the ground without either of the parachutes opening. The
senior Cliff told me, "Obviously I think it’s safe or else I wouldn’t let
my son do it. The most dangerous part of skydiving is the drive to the parachute
ranch."
So we got in the plane and went up. I had never been in a
small plane before, and even this initial part was very frightening for me. But then came
a very scary part, followed by the really scary part. The very scary part was that when we
got to 12,000 feet, Cliff (the elder) had to open the door and lean out to make sure that
we were in the right position over the drop zone. He was attached to my back in a rigid
harness, so when he leaned out, I did too. "Don’t hold on," Cliff told me.
I told him words to the effect of "Agggghhhhh!!!"
But then, the really scary part was getting out of the
airplane. This made no sense to me–climbing out of a perfectly good airplane. We had
to put all four of our feet on a tiny little platform just beneath the wing strut--I hated
it. Then he said, "One two THREE!" and he jumped. Extremely unwilling, I tried
holding on to the strut, but obviously I went with him. I blacked out with fear, and
cannot remember the first few seconds of the jump. He told me afterward that because I
held on, we tumbled through the air, but I can’t remember that part at all. Then,
finally, I managed to relax in free-fall, Viving, as I had been doing from the time I
arrived at the parachute ranch. When I relaxed and Vived, the fear integrated, and I
really enjoyed it. We landed so gently that it seemed almost like a miracle to me.
After that integration, I have never had acrophobia. I
returned to Florida a couple of months later, to lead another seminar, and I went back and
did another parachute jump. I loved every minute of it. Ever since that first jump, I have
loved flying.
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