13 Focus
Les Fehmi’s two basic Open-Focus books supply the exercises and all you need to know for Open-Focus meditation without EEG training.
Most of our formal education encourages a narrow focus of attention. “Pay attention,” a phrase most of us have heard through grade school, meaning focus narrowly on what I am saying or on what you are doing. But the constant narrow focus in managing experiences leads to the gradual accumulation of physical and mental stress, distress, even burnout as it did for me, long before I understood enough to use Open Focus in my job as a counselor, school psychologist, and teacher.
Les Fehmi’s 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 music playing and conversation around you. 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.
But most of us live our lives predominantly on the left side of our brain. This is a world of narrow objective focus. The left hemisphere convinces by trimming away from its dialog whatever does not fit its spiel. The left hemisphere is convincingly consistent and believable allowing no counter-argument.
The left hemisphere singles out experiences for attention and focus. It filters what we “know” to be true, reflecting it back to us in an utterly consistent judgmental “truth.” Most of us never see beyond this narrow matrix of mirrors.
In Les Fehmi’s “The Open Focus Brain,” he says those who were abused physically or emotionally often suffer from extremely narrow focus. They constantly feel a need to protect themselves from getting stabbed in the back. They become hyper-vigilant in this narrow, objective focus-mode of attention and are under constant stress.
It is the difference between a unidirectional microphone and an omnidirectional mic. The unidirectional, narrow-focus mic picks up what you aim it at. This is good in an interview where you want the focus on the interviewee and shut everything else out. But sometimes you had best use an omnidirectional, diffuse-focus mic that picks up everything around. It offers a wider, open sound with birds chirping in the background, planes flying overhead, children playing, and dogs barking.
Left-brain narrow attention excludes peripheral perception from our awareness. We can have narrow auditory perception, narrow visual perception, and a narrow focus of thoughts, sensations, and urges. Extremely narrow perception becomes obsessive-compulsive where we focus on a small piece of the puzzle and blow that piece up so that we are unable to take in a gestalt whole. This tiny segment becomes a reality and behavior in this altered reality may seem bizarre and even offensive to someone outside this narrowly focused field.
In addition to narrow versus diffuse, Open Focus includes remote/objective versus immersed focus. With this 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. It allows us to see things in context and adapt to a world that is constantly changing and evolving, never fully graspable, never fully known.
Narrow Objective Focus
Momo & Hanukah candles
Not to forget, though, a left-brain narrow objective focus is a part of Open Focus. When we are taking a test we need to keep our focus narrow and objective. If we are piloting a plane it could be disastrous to shift into a diffuse open focus where we blend into the scenery around us and lose control of the plane. Shifting into diffuse focus while listening to a lecture or audiobook sometimes requires a rewind to recover our place.
EEG Neurofeedback
Electroencephalography records brain waves from sensors placed on the scalp. Though the technique of measuring brain waves has been around since the very early 1900s, it was only used for experiments with animals until the early 1920s. In 1934, German physiologist and psychiatrist Hans Berger invented the electroencephalogram, giving the device and the field its name and initials EEG.
Each neuron has its electrical charge or voltage. An EEG graphs brain voltage from huge populations of neurons, hundreds of thousands firing together in patterns or frequencies. EEG sensors placed on the scalp pick up these electrical signals from the brain right through the skull and are translated into an EEG wave graph.
Brain waves are described by their frequency and amplitude. The frequency of a wave is measured in Hertz (Hz) or cycles per second (cps). Each cycle is measured from the top of one wave to the top of another or peak to peak.
Scrunched tightly together, gamma are the fastest brain waves ranging from 31 to 90 Hz or cps with an average of 40 Hz. Gamma have the smallest amplitude (peak to peak waves), ranging from 3 to 5 microvolts (uV). One microvolt equals 0.001 millivolts. Long-term Buddhist meditators enter into a state of gamma. Gamma waves are thought to reflect the integration of complex stimuli into a coherent whole.
Delta deep sleep waves are spaced far apart, ranging from .5 to 3.5 Hz or cps. Delta amplitude ranges from 20-200(UV). Ironically, ADD/ADHD kids fall into this slow range of brain waves and even slower theta waves.
Alpha waves, 8 to 13 Hz or cps, range between gamma and delta, with the same huge amplitude range (20 to 200 UV) as delta waves. You can experience alpha state by closing your eyes and relaxing or meditating. The Open-Focus exercises are an effective way to move quickly from high, fast waves of stress, to a relaxed alpha state.
Beta waves of alertness, attentiveness, and mental effort, range from 13 to 30 Hz or cps with a low amplitude of 5 to 10 UV.
Open Focus shifts between narrow and diffuse attention styles. The brain waves associated with Open Focus attention include both high amplitude synchronous waves of diffuse and immersed attention and the low and asynchronous waves of narrow and objective attention.
Fehmi’s EEG neurofeedback sessions move the client toward relatively large amplitude, synchronous, alpha brain wave activity with a frequency range between 8 and 13 cycles per second. Alpha brain waves are associated with relaxed wakefulness. With the amplitude, phase-synchrony of alpha activity, trainees report feeling less tense, timelessness, energy, unity or integration, and unselfconsciousness.
Figure 8-3: Cycles per second (Peak to Peak)
Open-Focus exercises are designed to promote greater brain-wave synchrony by opening and merging self with outside, other than self. A diffuse-immersed style of attention dissolves the separateness and isolation resulting from the overuse of narrow-objective attention. Fehmi says attention bias and attentional rigidity are the principal causes of human misery and suffering. Chronic use of narrow-objective focus separates us from the outside world. An Open-Focus mix of narrow and diffuse attention allowing us to merge inner thoughts with outside experience is optimal.
Exercise One: Expanding Your Awareness of Visual Space – from Fehmi’s “The Open Focus Brain”
The perception of space is the foundation of open focus exercises. Once you grasp the concept of focusing on space, you can shift from narrow to diffused and immersed focus, between foreground and background, and into a relaxed and synchronous space of alpha brain waves.
Diffuse Focus
As you read this page soften and relax your focus to include the space between your eyes and the print on the page or screen. Become aware of the three-dimensional physical space between your eyes and the words. Allow this to happen as you continue reading. Because we are conditioned to sense only objects and exclude space, it may take some time for you to become aware of this visual sensation of physical space. Once you are aware of this space, pause for a few seconds as you gently maintain this awareness. Focusing on space is at the heart of Open Focus.
Now, without shifting your eyes from the page, gradually begin to sense the space that is to the right and the left of the page. Let your peripheral field of vision widen spontaneously at its own pace to take in that awareness. And once you develop that awareness, enjoy it for a few seconds.
Now allow your visual background to come forward, to become as important as your visual foreground. In other words, the whole page, the edges of the book, the desk or table, the walls, the windows, can be made foreground simultaneously with the words you are reading. This, too, should be carried out effortlessly and naturally. It may seem difficult at first, but it is within our capacity to focus in this way. Sit for a few seconds as you gently maintain this awareness, and allowing background and foreground to become equally important or interesting.
As you continue reading, also include the appearance of space that surrounds your entire body. Allow time for this perception to take place as your visual awareness opens and broadens into three dimensions. Now permit yourself to become aware of the space between the lines you are reading, even as you continue to read. Also, bring into your awareness the space between the words themselves, and then the space between the letters of the words. Your awareness of physical space can continue to expand effortlessly while your awareness of letters, words, and concepts continues.
Expanding your three-dimensional visual awareness of space is creating a change in the way you are paying attention. You may also begin to sense your awareness expanding into other sensations of the absence we call space––feeling it, tasting and smelling it, hearing silence, experiencing the space and silence (and ambient sound) in your mind from which visual images and internal dialogue emerge, along with a limitless sense of now.
As you continue to allow your awareness to open and become more inclusive, you may notice subtle alterations in your reading experience. Your understanding of what you are reading may become more centered, enriched, and engaged. It may become easier to read the words. Thoughts of things unrelated to what you are reading may float effortlessly through your mind. Perhaps your eyes feel less strained as you read. Perhaps your hand supporting the book feels more relaxed. Breathing may come more easily. You may discover that muscles in your face or neck have started to loosen somewhat or that your position in the chair has become more comfortable. You may feel more whole or unified. You may also feel some mildly unpleasant feelings that have been repressed by the sustained act of narrow focusing.
If you notice even small changes during the reading exercises, you have begun to experience some of the benefits of Open Focus. This exercise can be done while washing dishes, commuting on a bus or subway, or while doing any other mindless tasks or activities.
This is one of the seven exercises throughout the book. And the book includes a CD with an hour of more guided exercises by Les Fehmi. Fehmi opens up and shares everything. You do not need an EEG to make use of this therapy. And you do not need a therapist.
You can create this same relaxed alpha state while driving or while talking with someone, or in front of a classroom, by alternating from narrow to diffuse focus, taking into attention a more spacial and inclusive view.
Video
(This is the first of an eight-part series of videos/mp3s. The other seven videos/mp3s will follow.)
mp3
Exercise Two: Head and Hands Exercises from Fehmi’s “The Open Focus Brain”
These exercises unlock stress in our head, neck, arms, hands, and fingers. You move from narrow to open diffuse focus by imagining the space between your eyes, inside your nose, mouth, throat, tongue, shoulders hands, and arms, etc.
Fehmi advises not to give any effort and your response is whatever sensory experience spontaneously happens. Your sensory experience will change and deepen with practice. Practice means two times a day for a week before moving on to the next level.
Fehmi says it is usually easier to imagine or realize and experience space at least initially with eyes closed. His book comes with a CD (mp3) with exercises recorded. After you become proficient with all of the exercises in the book, more can be downloaded, but do them in the order they are presented.
In a sense, these open-focus exercises are not so different than the Autogenic exercises in the following chapter. They both serve to relieve stress from the body a section of the body at a time. And once you master the individual sections, the goal is to be able to accomplish a more instant general relaxation you can call upon in any situation. But Open Focus is more than relaxation. Visualizing space will open and free your mind, virtually adding another dimension to your awareness.
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
