Payson Roundup

Vivian Seville

Lipstick is one of Vivian Seville’s pure joys. She wears it, sometimes in a warm brown, along with earrings and it makes her happy.

Simple things like lipstick and earrings, can enhance life by bringing joy, Seville says.

Seville, 52, is a joyologist. If you look the term up on the Internet, various pages will define joyology as the study of caring, sharing, listening and sacrifice; learning to laugh more, or simply a way of remaining joyful in any circumstance.

Seville knew none of this when she conjured up the term. “I made it up,” she said. “I just decided one day I would be a joyologist.”

Seville has round brown eyes that peer kindly but intensely out of round eyeglasses. She is short, and has short brown hair. She is also skinny, although that wasn’t always the case.

She is happy as well, although that wasn’t always the case either.

About eight years ago, Seville began practicing joyology, helping people to figure out what truly made them happy. She works with massage and essential oils, as well as flower essence body mapping to translate areas of bodily pain into the language of psychic burden. She believes that emotional pain and joy communicate to the body’s cells, which respond with either health or physical pain.

“When a person is living in joy, their cells begin to accommodate that feeling by creating healthy cells,” Seville said.

A large map in Seville’s office features the human body divided into segments. Each segment is numbered, and each number is associated with a particular flower essence, which Seville says helps to heal ailments in the bodily region afflicted with pain.

For instance, a sharp pain in the upper shoulders leads one to area 23 on the map, which translates to olive. The scent helps the body with mental or emotional exhaustion, and helps one’s inability to deal with life.

The flower essence philosophy, developed by the German doctor Edward Bach, is based on the principle that one must treat the patient, not just the disease or symptom — treat the cause and not just the effect.

Seville told the story of Louise Hay, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer after she was raped as a girl. Hay eschewed traditional medical treatment for her disease, instead opting for affirmations, visualizations, nutritional cleansing and psychotherapy. Hay claims on her Web site that she healed in six months.

Seville says the story is proof that the mind affects the body.

She also tells the story of her husband, Dennis, who became paralyzed from the neck down after falling off a porch railing and breaking his neck.

The doctors told Dennis he would never walk again. Dennis refused to believe the doctor and decided he would walk out of the hospital. He laid in the hospital bed, visualizing himself moving his legs and arms again. In five weeks, he walked, with a cane and leg brace, out of rehab.

One’s psyche can affect the body at the cellular level, Seville says.

If one is joyful, then perhaps one can avoid malady. Homework projects like listing your 100 pure joys help people discover what makes them happy.

“Most people don’t know what brings them joy,” Seville said. “We’re all running on auto pilot.”

The smell of fresh green grass, a romance novel, the smell of monsoon rain hitting the earth on a hot summer day — these things bring Seville joy.

The path to joy often begins in pain. Seville, at one time, was heavy. She was also severely depressed.

“I’m like everybody else,” she said. “I have my childhood story and I knew that I didn’t want to live that story anymore.”

She put on lipstick, mascara and earrings every day to gradually lift herself out of depression.

Eventually, Seville and friend Cindy Bryant joined forces and lost weight together. Seville lost 52 pounds and 34 inches in 21 weeks, from July through December 2008, and Bryant lost 70 pounds and nearly 52 inches in 24 weeks.

In October 2008, the two women started the Healthy Perspectives Mind-Body Weight Management Clinic.

Seville says her weight was a barrier mechanism. “Do you notice how people avoid fat people?” Seville said.

Today, she is energetic. She calls herself a “motivational coach” for people who want to change.

“These are people who are ready, willing and able to show up for their 51 trillion cells of their body and do whatever it takes to discover what their joy is and then begin living it,” Seville said.

“I’m ready to just be happy. I do the best I can every day to show up for Viv and live what I’m teaching.”

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