After Vivation course

I have an aquintance in Gothenburg who works with Vivation.

According to Wikipedia:

Vivation is a feeling based meditation. The primary difference between Vivation and other types of meditation is its emphasis on maintaining awareness of the strongest feeling in the body on an ongoing basis. In this way, the experience itself guides and instructs the practitioner where to go next. In Vivation no distinction is made between emotions or sensations, as both are experienced kinesthetically. In Vivation, there is no requirement to quiet the mind. If the mind is overly active, the practitioner simply continues noticing what that feels like in the body. Because of its emphasis on feelings, there is no mental or cognitive component to Vivation. Vivation practitioners claim that by connecting directly to the physical feelings in the body, negative thoughts about those feelings are bypassed, resulting in a much more honest and pleasurable experience. From the perspective of Vivation, there is no such thing as negative feelings, only negative thoughts about those feelings. Feelings once experienced openly and honestly, are inherently positive and blissful. Practitioners claim that by relaxing the mind and body and paying attention to the feelings already present, any "make wrong" about those feelings is relaxed too. This results in a relaxation or "melting" of body armor (see Wilhelm Reich). When a feeling is integrated, the physiological energy keeping the emotion suppressed is now released, resulting in a feeling of bliss (see Sananda). According to Vivation everything integrates. Every integration is permanent and represents a step forward in the individuals autonomy, freedom and liberation. READ MORE

I can't say that I'm not still under the influence of the experience I have had. It was an intensive weekend-course held by my friend. Sometimes I thought it was way too boring because I didn't find anything new in it; sometimes I thought it was too much talk, but at the same time, I wouldn't have been able to ""vive" any more, because it was very intensive when we were "in action"; other times I just wanted to go away - the mind protesting against being reveiled and dethroned. Shaking emotions, mixed memories.

There is nothing new in it. It is a combination of many useful and wise elements yoga/tantra/spiritualism/psychology have ever found.

It's useful to listen to the coaching affirmations of the guide. I've never been praised this much in my life. It's a way to learn how you can and should praise yourself and be a honest support for yourself in any situation.

It's important to talk and share your experiences, even if we all know, noone has the same experience. But it helps us to unload what we've been carrying, and it wakes up compassion.

Facing your mind is the most difficult thing ever. Embracing and loving everything which we always considered negative is not fun, requires a brave heart and lots of patience. You can lie to yourself without being able to recognize you are covering something very stubbornly.

There is a very powerful exercise in Vivation which is called eyegazing. While doing Vivation: observing yourself, integrating everything which manifests itself in bodily sensation and turning to it with loving kindness - your eyes are wide open looking at another person doing Vivation. One can say after trying it: it is spooooooky! And at the same time for a person like me suffering from some grade of social phobia, paranoia and from low/no self-esteem it was liberating.

I've realized that I should allow myself to be tired without falling asleep. :-) Well, it is always difficult when meditating someone feels strong pain or falls asleep. What I was able to do this time was actually being able to observe and accept myself being tired and yawning like a lazy lion - without falling asleep or dozing off just for 5 secs. I also realized that besides having real reason for tiredness, it's often the excuse of the mind for not participating in activities. And this is not laziness, I'm talking about. This is real tiredness - can be measured. This is that annoying numbness depressed people usually experience, a sort of apathy and frozenness.


Pain, fear and tiredness. The summary of the weekend. It seems to come from outside, grabbing us and we experience it as suffering. But it's not something beyond us. It is very concretely in our mind manifesting itself very clearly in the body. But we never listen to it! We try to run away, to cover it, to put make-up, bandage on it, to dump it, replant it, numb it with pills...shut it down! You are supposed to be young, beautiful, painless and fresh - as if you didn't have a body. The body is a tool to understand yourself. If you shut it down, manipulate it and exploit it with dumping all the crap in your life into it, no wonder it gives up functioning! :-)

I practice Buddhism and regularly meditate (Vipassana). This made it easier maybe to understand Vivation. I'm sure I would have come to the same realizations during my meditation sessions, but Vivation's given a little kick to it. As I said, it's nothing new I've learnt. It's just the RIGHT COMBINATION of the already known moments.