Attention Therapies
Attention Therapies have the power to restore the balance trauma took away from us. But it is not a quick fix. It takes action more than reading and understanding.
Chihuly Glass Garden Photo by Hitomi Dames
Open Focus Attention Therapies
Open Focus is a mix of narrow and diffuse focus. If you are narrowly focused on a book you are reading, in open focus mode you take in the space all around. If you are engrossed in an internal dialog, you open up and experience the world all around. You alternate attention between narrow and diffuse focus, sometimes paying attention simultaneously in both modes.
Earth Moon
In addition to narrow versus diffuse, Open Focus includes remote/objective versus immersed focus. With right-brain focus you are immersed in what you are experiencing. If you are tasting something and get totally into the tasting experience, this is immersed attention. An immersion style of attending is associated with mindful meditation where we attend to the body, emotions, sense modalities, and passing thoughts. Remote attention is when you create a distance between yourself and the object of attention.
Attention Training Technique
Attention Training Technique works with sounds with the entire band of focus. It is the audio counterpart of Open Focus space therapy.
Insight Meditation
Insight Meditationand Ki Breathing are my methods of choice for breathing for moods and feelings. But there are so many ways of breath watching and breathing. You will never forget to breathe. Just pay attention and keep coming back to the breath when you forget.
Though the content of what people think can be virtually anything, their thought process involves similar patterns of worry and rumination. Metacognitive Therapy deals with rumination by focusing on the process and patterns of thinking, rather than the content of problems.
Insight Meditation aka Vipassana Meditation predates Metacognitve Therapy by thousands of years. Insight Meditation focuses attention and awareness on thoughts, feelings, urges, emotions, and sensations, without attachment and without judging. You look at your thoughts, feelings, urges, and emotions without getting caught up in them.
Breath Therapy
Breath Therapy can relieve anxiety and tension that interfere with performance, be that sports, sex, sleep, etc. It improves It promotes the integration of mind, body, feelings, and emotions enabling artistic expression to flow and optimizing physical movements to conserve energy and reduce wear and tear on joints, muscles, and tendons. Breath Therapy is a source of vitality and strength of mind and body.
Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)
You question the parts or selves that are a part of the problem. Anger, for example, is a self. But the anger is not your Self. Perhaps it is the accosted little girl who now is protecting you from that ever happening again. You don’t want to hate your protector. It is a part of you, an entity, a self that is attempting to protect your Self.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
