SGM August 2017 Weekly Message Two: “The Open Focus Solution to Pressure & Stress”
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Welcome to this week’s edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
The Stress of Chronic Narrow Focus
When you wake up in the morning is the first thing on your mind all the things you have to do today? Or maybe, there’s one thing you’re worried about that occupies center stage in your mind and you just can’t seem to let it go? Do you fear that letting go will cause life to spiral out of control?
Do you find yourself going through life focused on all the things that might go wrong and taking steps to prevent them from happening or to correct them when they have gone wrong? Do you have an eagle eye for everything that needs to be fixed? Does it feel uncomfortable to let go of being productive and being on top of your email, texts, tweets, and all the information and entertainment that occupies your mind? Is your mind addicted to keeping up? Do you fear missing out or losing control?
All of the above are symptoms that your brain is locked into a habit of “narrow objective focus.” Narrow objective focus is tightly centered on seeing the world in terms of things to be fixed and work to be done. Out of all the experiences that could occupy your attention, your focus narrows to just those aspects of reality.
Now you might say, “I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I thought that was my goal, to be able to focus my mind and get things done. That’s what I am rewarded for at work. That’s what brings home the bacon.”
It’s true, narrow objective focus is important for that aspect of life. And, it’s important to note that there is more to life than work, getting things done, and making money. There is more to life than completing tasks.
One of the reasons stress is such an issue these days is because we hyper-focus on that aspect of life and neglect healthy balance. When we attend to life only as tasks to be completed, we miss out on the wide variety of ways that we can focus our attention and the wide variety of experiences we can have. We miss out on the joys of listening to and loving each other, enjoying the magnificence of the natural world and other creations such as art and music, appreciating what we have and the feelings of being present in what we are doing, and being grateful for moments of being that aren’t tied to getting somewhere, achieving something, or fixing things.
Notice the words in the first half of the last sentence: joy, listening, love, enjoyment, being, appreciation, and gratitude. How much of your day do you engage your mind with these?
What if balancing your attention by including more of these experiences leads to a more healthy and joyful life?
If you remember from last week’s message, we talked about four styles of attention (narrow, diffuse, objective, and immersed) and “The Curse of Narrow Focus.” In his book, The Open Focus Brain, (Trumpeter Books, 2007) Dr. Les Fehmi and co-writer, Jim Robbins, explain how being locked in chronic narrow-objective focus creates tremendous stress that results in a host of conditions and diseases: from back and neck pain, to digestive issues, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, depression, heart disease, diabetes, ADD and ADHD, and even cancer.
This week, we’ll look at Dr. Fehmi’s solution: Open-Focus training. Open Focus training changes the way that your nervous system functions. It changes how you process information and diffuse stress. It changes how you relate to any event that is happening in your life.
When talking about stress, you need to understand two basic physiological systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic system. In broad strokes, you can say that the sympathetic system gets you revved up and puts you in action mode, while the parasympathetic system returns you to relaxation, recovery, and repair mode. When you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, your body and brain have a chance to integrate all the information you have taken in, enjoy a break, and prepare to move forward more intentionally and creatively.
The sympathetic system is associated with the left hemisphere of your brain and with narrow-objective focus. Remember that narrow-objective focus is task-oriented and focuses on the world “out there” as isolated objects, along with the facts of, and uses for, these objects. It is about figuring out what needs to be done, checking off tasks, and fixing things.
When you are chronically narrow-objectively focused, you are always on “Go,” and your sympathetic nervous system is hyper-activated, as is the left side of your brain. Sympathetic nervous system response is accompanied by high-frequency brainwaves and a lack of synchrony between different systems in your body and between different parts of your brain. You are geared up for action and other important functions, such as digestion, immune response, and creativity, get de-emphasized.
As Dr. Fehmi says,
“When we narrow focus we engage our fight-or-flight response, which tamps down some physiological systems that aren’t needed for emergency—immune and digestive functions, for example, get put on the back burner—and ramps up others that are needed, such as muscle tone, quickness of mind, and heart and respiratory rates. That’s why stress can lead to digestive problems such as acid-reflux disease and irritable bowel syndrome.” (P.44, TOFB)
Sympathetic hyperactivity as a chronic state leads to anxiety, fear, and worry as a way of being, which causes a host of ill effects in your body. This is because your brain is focused on outward action and puts inner functions on hold. Your body does not have its’ resources and reserves geared toward important bodily functions which would mitigate, repair, and heal trauma, injury, and illness.
In contrast with the sympathetic nervous system, the left side of the brain, and narrow-objective focus, the parasympathetic nervous system is associated with the right side of the brain and with diffuse and immersed styles of attention. It is the job of the parasympathetic system to bring us into balance and enable recovery from stress. Diffused and immersed modes of attention activate the parasympathetic system.
If you remember from last week, diffused attention takes in the whole field and immersed attention is “being present” and “engaged” as a “participant” in that field, rather than looking on from the outside.
As Dr. Fehmi says,
“Diffuse focus is panoramic rather than exclusive or single-pointed; in its most extreme form it is inclusive and three-dimensional, giving equal attention to all internal and external stimuli simultaneously as well as the space, silence, and timelessness in which they occur. No particular target of attention stands out, and the distinctions between figure and ground are blurred or erased . . . Immersed, or absorbed, attention . . . is characteristic of someone who enters into union with an object or process to the point of self-forgetfulness or unconsciousness.
Diffuse-immersed attention is an antidote to the narrow-objective style that our culture seems to demand. It is the most effective attention style in allowing us to recover from the accumulated physiological and psychological stresses wrought by modern life. Diffuse-immersed attention involves both moving into union with experience and diffusing the attentional scope of our experience at the same time.” (P.49-50, TOFB)
Open Focus training creates synergy between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, between both hemispheres of our brain, and between all four attentional styles.
Dr. Fehmi says, “Open Focus is a normalizing process, a way of reversing the strains of stress; it allows all systems to return to homeostasis . . . Accumulated stress dissolves when one is in Open Focus, and recovery is able to take place continuously as new stress occurs.” (p.45-46, TOFB)
The first thing that Open Focus training does is activate the parasympathetic nervous system and stimulate slower frequency, more synchronized, brain activity as well as more synergistic activity between the body’s physiological systems. In other words, all our parts and functions start to work together.
Dr. Fehmi describes what happened to him as he began to experiment with Open Focus techniques that put him into a slower, more-synchronized, alpha-frequency brain-wave state:
“After a few hours in alpha some curious and wonderful changes started to happen. My muscle tone softened, and I moved with newfound effortlessness and fluidity . . . Anxiety evaporated. I felt extraordinarily present, centered, poised, open, lighter and freer, more calmly energetic and spontaneous. I laughed and smiled more . . . Arthritic pain in my joints subsided. My senses improved . . . Friends and family responded positively. I was more aware of the bigger picture . . . (and) the things I had been doing—teaching and researching—came easier and more clearly than before.” (p.31, TOFB)
Although it took him countless hours to work out these techniques years ago, he has been able to develop simple Open Focus methods that lead people into an Open Focus alpha state rather quickly. Dr. Fehmi describes this state as a natural one that we have simply neglected or forgotten how to use. As he says,
“Alpha isn’t magical—it just seems that way because we’ve forgotten how to access it, increase its amplitude, and prolong it. When someone learns to operate their central nervous system the way it was designed to be operated, however, and includes abundant low-frequency synchrony, things run more smoothly and efficiently and don’t break down as often. We are equipped with a rapid and sensitive emergency response to assure survival. But we are also equipped with a process of restoration and recovery, a way to lay down our burden: by generating low-frequency synchrony.” (p.32, TOFB)
If these descriptions sound complex or technical, the practice itself is actually quite simple. It is a felt experience that you can learn using simple exercises. So how do you put yourself into Open Focus?
The first key is to develop an awareness of “space”—the space between objects and around objects and the felt sensation of space between body parts, in your body as a whole, and within your environment.
As Dr. Fehmi says,
“Objectless imagery—the multisensory experience and awareness of space, nothingness, or absence—almost always elicits large amplitude and prolonged periods of phase-synchronous alpha activity . . . The imagination and realization of space seems to reset stress-encumbered neural networks and return them to their original effortlessly flexible processing.” (p. 36-39, TOFB)
We can become aware of space visually and with all of our senses. We can become aware of the space between objects and inside our bodies, as well as the space around us. We can become aware of the space through which sound travels to our ears. We can even become aware of the space within which we have our sense of taste and smell and the space within which we have our thoughts and feelings.
Those of you who have practiced Core Energy Meditation know that closing your eyes and feeling the inner space of your body, the spacious sensation of breathing, the feelings of appreciation, gratitude, and trust in the space of your heart, the still, silent, space in the center of your brain, and diffusing your attention into open, clear spacious awareness, are powerful meditative cues.
Dr. Fehmi says that,
“Space is unique among the contents of attention because space, silence, and timelessness cannot be concentrated on or grasped as a separate experience. It slips through, permeates your attention, through all your senses. Seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling, and thinking of space, basking in it—while simultaneously experiencing timelessness—is a powerful way to let go, the most powerful way that I know.” (p.37, TOFB)
O.K., so now you’re primed for Open Focus training. You can get an initial feel for it with the following exercise from The Open-Focus Brain called “Expanding Your Awareness of Visual Space.” Let’s give this a try together now:
“As you continue to read this page, allow yourself to be aware of the three-dimensional physical space between your eyes and the words printed on the page . . .
Now, without shifting your eyes from the page, gradually begin to sense the space that is to the right and to 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 (or computer screen), the table and walls behind the book, can be made foreground simultaneously with the words you are reading. This, too, should be carried out effortlessly and naturally.” (p.26, TOFB)
Don’t worry if that feels like a lot to absorb at once, or if it makes you feel a little light-headed or disoriented. It takes practice to become more flexible and inclusive in your attentional style. Yet, your brain knows how to do this—and it wants to! It’s natural to be able to switch attentional styles. We’ve just forgotten how to do it.
Dr. Fehmi says that, “Maintenance of Open Focus, a roughly equal presence of the four styles of attention (narrow, diffuse, objective, and immersed), is the long-term goal, a balanced state that is the preferred solution for a host of stress-related symptoms.” (p.78, TOFB)
As you practice these different modes of visual attention, it’s important to keep one guideline in mind: “Don’t try too hard.” Have an attitude of “allowing this to happen” instead of “trying to make it happen.” In qigong meditation, we have two sayings that apply: “Follow it, don’t force it” and “Don’t forget, don’t pursue.”
My suggestion for you this week, is to practice this Open Focus exercise whenever you think to do it. No matter what you are focused on at that moment, become aware of the space between yourself and your object of attention. Become aware of the space to the left and the right of that object. Become aware of the background surrounding the object and allow it to come toward the foreground. Switch between these modes of attention and, then, allow them to merge into one integrated experience.
Have fun. Play with this when you have free time. Then, try it when you feel stressed out and see how it shifts your experience in that moment. As you get good at this, it’s a powerful way to instantly release the stressful grip of narrow focus and relax into a wider experience of open, clear, spacious awareness.
In next week’s message, we’ll talk about how to apply Open Focus to dissolve pain and anxiety.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with Open Focus in our Discussion below.
Until next time,
Enjoy your practice,
Kevin