Dissolving Pain
Dissolving pain requires doing the opposite of what we want to do. When we feel pain, we automatically want to distance ourselves from it and fight it, thinking that resisting or otherwise avoiding the pain will give us some relief. But we give power to pain by narrowly focusing on it. Instead, you both focus on the pain and make the pain a part of an Open-Focus background.
Dissolving Pain
Accept the narrow-objective pain and at the same time focus widely and diffusely, experiencing surrounding space and sounds. As you include diffuse attention, along with a narrow focus on your pain, a broadened awareness develops around the pain. Your arousal levels are lowered. Opening to and accepting pain, and moving even closer to it, in this broadened scope of attention, diminishes its intensity. Your pain becomes a small portion of your total broadened awareness and becomes more acceptable. It becomes less threatening, and with practice can be merged with and dissolved altogether.
Open Focus
Open-focus training maintains a balance between narrow/objective and wide/diffuse focus. Narrow/objective focus is the “Pay attention!” school-type, teacher command. When you focus widely and diffusely, you take in surrounding space and sounds.
Wide/diffused focus shifts your brain to the right hemisphere. Narrow/objective shifts your brain to the left hemisphere. The left hemisphere is where, with OCD, I have been imprisoned most of my life.
Right hemisphere (wide/diffused focus) immerses you in what you are focused on. The left hemisphere describes, rather than engages. With the right hemisphere, wide and diffused focus, you savor the sweetness, crunch, and texture of a grape. With left hemisphere, narrow-objective focus, you classify the grape as a small, round, fruit of the vine.
Les Fehmi hooks his clients up to an EKG, but he says it is not necessary. It is not hard to shift to alpha EKG brain waves by simply focusing on space. The more you practice, the better you get at dissolving both physical and emotional pain and fear. When the internal voice gets incessant, don’t shut it out. Shift into alpha, by focusing on space, any space; between your fingers, between your eyes, inside your skull, inside the room, out into the universe.
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
