Interview with Jim Leonard

An Interview done with Jim Leonard on Russian Television in

2002.

Aleksey Kolov: Jim, where and when did you get the idea for Vivation
and what does the word mean?

Jim Leonard: I guess I’ve really had a very unusual life, because it seems
like I came into this world with a sense of purpose. The idea for Vivation
did not come all at once, but began to take shape when I was just eight
years old. Eight was a big year of awakening for me in many respects. I was
already a good reader by that age, and that was the year that my sister,
Linda, taught me how to use the Dewey Decimal System at the library. So I
started spending my time there just studying things I found interesting.
What I found interesting was books about spirituality and psychology. In
particular, I started to study yoga that year, from books and a TV program.
That was also the year that I first read Think and Grow Rich, which is one
of the greatest metaphysical books of all time. I remember when it first
occurred to me that the adults in my life were not as happy as they should
be. So really from a very early age I started studying the things that would
eventually lead to my invention of the Vivation process. Also when I was
eight it dawned on me that the big things in life happened as a result of the
millions of tiny things, and unpredictable coincidences in life. So I was
already beginning to see the perfection in things back then. By the time I
was ten, I knew that what I wanted was a way to directly resolve emotions
at the feeling level without going through a psychological process. I never
thought that I would have to invent such a thing, I always expected to find
it somewhere else, already fully developed. So I just kept reading and
studying, always expecting to find what I was looking for. When I was
seventeen, I had a really big breakthrough in which I directly perceived the
perfection of all things. When I was eighteen, I formulated that insight into
a system so I could share it with others–this was the earliest version of
what we now call The Absolute Fourth Element, the seventh of The Seven
Basic Lessons, which is the oldest part of Vivation. After many years of
studying everything I could find that seemed related to what I was looking
for, finally the big day for me was July 13, 1979, when my experimentation
led to the first Vivation session, in Capitola, a village near Santa Cruz,
California. This was the first time that I actually caused emotional
integration directly at the feeling level. Within several days, I had
formulated The Five Elements of Vivation, which are the core skills of how
to do Vivation for yourself. I’ve been practicing and teaching this ever
since. So I was only 24 years old when I created the Vivation process,
which seems young, but, as you can see, it was actually after quite a long
period of research.

The word “Vivation” comes from the Latin word for “life” plus the English
combining form meaning “process”. Vivation is the process of embracing
the entire human experience of life. The word Vivation is protected
internationally as a registered trademark.

AK: Please give us details about the Vivation technique.

JL: The principle of Vivation is simple and grounded in everyday

experience. If you feel any feeling honestly and in detail in your body, and
relate to it in a positive way, the feeling integrates permanently. Everyone
has had integration experiences, but it never occurs to anybody to cause
integrations to happen. What I did was work out how to make integration
extremely reliable and efficient. Vivation is a feeling-level skill that we
teach to the client in seven lessons. The result of the seven lessons is to be
able to have many integrations in a short amount of time, sometimes even
one integration per minute of practice. The teaching of Vivation is
structured in The Five Elements and The Three Points to Remember. The
Five Elements are the component skills of causing integration physically,
that is, at the feeling level. All Five Elements must be present
simultaneously in order to have integration. The Three Points to
Remember are simple ways to maintain all Five Elements without having
to think about them, so that all your attention can be placed on the subtle
details of whichever feeling happens to be presenting itself at the moment.
In The Seven Basic Lessons, The Three Points to Remember go in the first
lesson. Then there is a lesson for each of The Five Elements: 1. Circular
Breathing, 2. Complete Relaxation, 3. Awareness in Detail, 4. Integration
into Ecstasy, and 5. Do Whatever You Do–Willingness is Enough. The
seventh lesson, as I have already mentioned, is the Absolute Fourth
Element, so really there are two lessons for Integration into Ecstasy, first
the Practical Fourth, then the Absolute Fourth. The lesson on the Absolute
Fourth is a direct experience of the perfection of all things, from which
point the client knows for sure that everything integrates.

AK: Is Vivation a breathing process?

JL: Vivation is not a breathing process. The result of Vivation comes from
feeling an emotion or sensation in detail in the body and embracing or
accepting it. The result does not come from the breathing. Circular
Breathing is a very special, precise way to breathe that greatly facilitates
awareness and acceptance of the feeling. It is the most natural way to
breathe. Shortly after getting started with Vivation, Circular Breathing
becomes automatic, so that all the attention can be placed on exploring the
physical details of whatever sensation or emotion happens to be coming up
at the moment. In the lesson on the First Element, we teach the client how
to make very precise adjustments to the breathing rhythm so as to tune in
the feeling, which makes Vivation much more pleasurable and efficient.
But with a little bit of instruction and practice this all becomes natural and
automatic, and even becomes part of normal daily life. There are hundreds
of breathing processes in the world, some ancient and some modern, but
Vivation is unique and unrelated to any of them.

AK: Is it possible to learn to do Vivation by reading your book, Vivation–

The Skill of Happiness?

JL: You can learn all about Vivation by reading the book, but if you want to
learn to actually do Vivation for yourself, then you have to get the lessons.
There is just no way to avoid the necessity of getting the lessons. This is like
you can read a book about playing the saxophone, but no matter how good
the book is, you are never going to learn to play the saxophone just by
reading a book. You cannot hurt yourself by trying to do Vivation by
yourself, but what will happen is that within a few minutes of starting,
some emotion or sensation will come up that you have been avoiding your
whole life, and then you’ll just stop. With the help of your Vivation
Professional, when the feeling comes up you’ll apply the skill and integrate
it very quickly. After The Seven Basic Lessons, you’ll always be able to do
Vivation anytime, anywhere you like, and have one pleasurable integration
after another. You’ll even be able to do this in the presence of other people,
for example at a business meeting, and nobody will know that you are
doing anything special. They’ll just think that your nature is to be relaxed,
happy, creative, and alert.

AK: How is Vivation different from yoga or meditation?

JL: Vivation is much easier, more productive, and more fun than yoga or
meditation. Don’t get me wrong, I love yoga and meditation, and have
studied and practiced them a lot. I recommend yoga and meditation to
everyone who is interested in them. But they are difficult to do, require a
lot of discipline, and are just not much fun. Vivation is much more natural
than doing yoga or meditation. In fact, it is more natural to do Vivation
than it is to not do it. In meditation, you focus artificially on something like
a mantra, or a sound, or a fixed point on the body. This is not very natural,
because the mind is simply a lot more dynamic than that. When you try to
focus the mind artificially, it wanders off right away, and you have to keep
trying to use discipline to pull it back again. But in Vivation you give your
attention to what is most asking for your attention anyway, the strongest
feeling in your body at the moment. This is very easy. Then you feel that
feeling integrate right away. This is fun. A Vivation session is an exciting
and pleasurable adventure within yourself. If you do Vivation at the same
time that you are doing something else fun, you’ll have a lot more fun than
you would have without Vivation. With yoga and meditation you do make
some kind of progress, but slowly. With Vivation every integration is a big
acceleration in your personal progress, and you get many integrations in
every session.
AK: How would Vivation be helpful to a businessperson?

JL: I often teach Vivation to businesspeople both individually and in their

companies. Vivation is helpful to everyone in the same way, but there are
two benefits of Vivation that businesspeople find very attractive. One is
that it is the most effective stress-reduction practice in the world.
Integration is permanent. This makes Vivation the stress-reduction
technique so effective that the stress never comes back. The other exciting
benefit is that Vivation increases creativity. This is the subject of my second
book, Your Fondest Dream. Vivation increases creativity in two ways. One
way is that Vivation makes it comfortable to let new ideas emerge from the
subconscious level. The subconscious is infinitely creative–it creates all our
dreams at night. People mostly get very fixed in their ideas about things,
and not open at all to new ideas, even their own. Vivation changes this
completely. The other way Vivation increases creativity is that every
integration is, itself, a creative breakthrough. All creative breakthrough
comes from changing perspective, so that instead of focusing on what isn’t
there that you wish were there, you focus on doing something new with
what is there. Vivation accomplishes this change of context physically, at
the feeling level. Even a little bit of enhanced creativity makes a
businessperson a whole lot more effective.

AK: Is Vivation helpful to people under extreme stress, like people who
have lost a loved one, people with life-threatening illness, victims of
crimes or terrorist acts?

JL: Vivation permanently resolves feelings and emotions related to

everything. I have worked a lot with people who have been through terrible
traumas, including refugees from wars, who have experienced absolutely
horrible things. All these people get tremendous benefit from Vivation.
Vivation is enough to go from being very depressed to very happy. Vivation
also integrates physical pain. Vivation gives a surpassing sense of peace
and wellness to everyone who uses it. Vivation is very gentle. There are
absolutely no contraindications for Vivation–even very sick people can do
it. Vivation is physically pleasurable, which helps right away. And the
feelings and sensations that integrate with Vivation remain integrated
forever. Vivation is absolutely the best thing for very traumatized people.

AK: If someone wants to learn Vivation, what should they do?

JL: I, myself, concentrate on doing two things: training Vivation

Professionals and giving private Vivation sessions. I have personally given
more than 45,000 Vivation sessions in 22 countries, and I have trained
hundreds of Vivation Professionals, all over the world. If someone wants to
learn Vivation, the best thing is to go on the Internet and visit the Web site
of Vivation, Internationaland submit the form that asks me for a personal
presentation. I respond to all these email forms personally. With a little bit
of back-and-forth correspondence, I can customize a lesson plan for the
individual and make the connection with the best Vivation Professional for
them, personally. Coming up this year, in 2002, I will also be teaching two
Vivation Professional Trainings in the English language, one in London,
England, in May, and one in Minneapolis, USA, in August. These Trainings
are open to everyone and teach both how to do Vivation for yourself and
how to teach Vivation to others, professionally. The first step is to go to the
Web site and submit the form.

AK: And finally, can you explain why Vivation is particularly important
at this time in our history?

JL: These are times of special stress for many people and so it is especially
important to be able to relax and be creative. At this moment, the economy
is in a downturn, but there are also millions of opportunities for someone
who remains alert to them. Vivation renews your optimism and
enthusiasm and empowers you to do your very best. Many people have
special fears these days, fears of flying, terrorism, etc. The biological
purpose of the fear is to make you more attentive, but if you have to
suppress the fear in order to feel OK, then it has just the opposite effect.
When Vivation integrates the fear, it helps you to be energetic, attentive,
and relaxed all at the same time.

Jim Leonard was the originator of the Vivation process. During his life he
conducted more than 45,000 Vivation sessions in 22 countries.

For more information on Vivation or to experience it yourself, feel free to

contact us on our toll-free number at 1-800-514-8483.