By Dana Smith, Ph.D
Here at the Lessac Training and Research Institute, we understand that for many people, 2020 has long ago worn out its welcome. With the winter holiday season here, we long to celebrate with friends and loved ones, often after months or even years apart. Of course, this year the usual gatherings with family and friends will be quite different due to the pandemic. It’s likely that our enjoyment of the season will be directly affected by the degree to which we can adjust to masks, hand-sanitizer, social distance, teleconferencing technology, and the absence of loved ones who prefer not to take any chances.
If you’re looking for ways to find delight in the season during challenging times, Lessac Kinesensics offers a number of tools that can help (the Body Energies, pleasure-smelling, and the YBuzz, to name a few), even if your interactions with people you care about are done via Zoom this year. One of the most effective resources we have is what Arthur Lessac calls, “Inter-Involvement Energy,” which is what you feel when your whole being desires to connect with the person(s) in front of you.
Like the Body Energies of Lessac Kinesensics, Inter-Involvement Energy has nothing to do with anything negative. “Its purpose,” according to Arthur Lessac and Deb Kinghorn, “is to connect you in a positive manner with other living beings,” and the interactions that result cause changes in the human body that are felt in a number of ways (The Essential Lessac 101). We might feel this energy deeply as an emotional response or as a driving impulse to have a calm and rational discussion with someone whose opinions differ from our own. For Master Teacher Crystal Robbins, Inter-Involvement Energy “is to notice within myself where gratitude lies for the conversation. If my family members feel differently than I do about a given subject, do I take the time to have awareness within me that trust is involved on their end to share how they feel? I can then honor that by really hearing it, being the kind of listener that I would want them to be for me. I then am starting my response from a different, non-reactionary place, a place more concerned with the deep desire of sharing.”
The key to tapping into Inter-Involvement Energy begins and ends with the desire to connect with someone. When you’re focused on and committed to involving yourself with another human being, any obstacles that appear can recede to the background; instead of forcing solutions, Inter-Involvement Energy empowers the interaction. As Lessac notes, Inter-Involvement Energy can be such an intense experience, “the emotional experiencing system, in synergic cooperation with the body’s communicating systems, appears to take charge with such vigor that it bypasses the muscular system and all consciousness of kinesthetic exertion” (Body Wisdom 56). All thoughts of effort fade into listening and hearing with one’s whole heart, for the goal is connection. Time flies, because your bodymind is fully entertained with both the process and product of the communication.
Perhaps this is really what the holidays are all about. There’s often a kind of anticipatory joy in the air during this time of year that puts a spring in the step and makes people more generous toward one another. Maybe someone lets you go first in a check-out line at the store, or a patient and cheery driver stops to allow you to pull out into a busy street. Inter-Involvement Energy is what happens when this sort of desire to do good for others meets your personal interactions. Consider how our daily lives might be different, were we to engage in Inter-Involvement Energy every day of the year! That sentiment is expressed in the lyrics to a song called, “The Secret of Christmas,” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn:
“It’s not the glow you feel when snow appears.
It’s not the Christmas card you’ve sent for years,
Not the joyful sound when sleigh bells ring
Or the merry songs children sing.
The little gift you send on Christmas Day
Will not bring back the friend you turned away.
The secret of Christmas…
It’s not the things you do…
at Christmastime,
But the Christmas things you do…
all year through.”
Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, we at the LTRI wish you the gift of Inter-Involvement Energy that can penetrate all your interactions to make you and those around you feel loving and beloved. Happy Holidays!
Dana Smith, Ph.D.
Newsletter Editor, LTRI, Lessac Certified Trainer
Professor, Truman State University