Did you know that you can train your brain waves? Did you know that different types of brain waves are useful for different types of focus activities and learning. Since the research behind chronic pain explains it as a type of learning done by the brain, we can use a brain wave entrainment practice to teach the brain a new way of experiencing attention and focus. The work of neuroscientist Dr. Les Fehmi and his wife, therapist Susan Shor Fehmi, explores practices to help us reach a state of synchronous alpha brain waves and how it helps us manage stress and dissolve pain. I share with you an Open Focus practice and some information from their books and research. I've ramped up my practice of Open Focus and it's been helping me relax my mind and body and feel more grounded, centered and emotionally even keeled. I believe open focus training is an essential and simple practice to add to our mindbody tool kit to help us rewire our brains out of pain.
Did you know that you can train your brain waves? Did you know that different types of brain waves are useful for different types of focus activities and learning. Since the research behind chronic pain explains it as a type of learning done by the brain, we can use a brain wave entrainment practice to teach the brain a new way of experiencing attention and focus.
The work of neuroscientist Dr. Les Fehmi and his wife, therapist Susan Shor Fehmi, explores practices to help us reach a state of synchronous alpha brain waves and how it helps us manage stress and dissolve pain. I share with you an Open Focus practice and some information from their books and research.
I've ramped up my practice of Open Focus and it's been helping me relax my mind and body and feel more grounded, centered and emotionally even keeled. I believe open focus training is an essential and simple practice to add to our mindbody tool kit to help us rewire our brains out of pain.
Here's some of the resources I used for this podcast and further reading about Open Focus.
The Main website for all things Open Focus
https://openfocus.com/
Article by The Fehmi's for Thrive
https://medium.com/thrive-global/dissolving-stress-open-focus-training-e0434e3fb238
A review of Open Focus from a meditation teacher
https://www.wildmind.org/blogs/book-reviews/the-open-focus-brain-by-dr-les-fehmi-jim-robbins
Open Focus in Science Direct
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0193953X1300004X?via%3Dihub
Mastering Our Brain's Electrical System
https://www.academia.edu/6496037/Mastering_Our_Brains_Electrical_Rhythm
Attention to Attention: An Introduction to Attention Styles, Open Focus and Object-Less Imagery
https://www.consciousness-quotient.com/attention-to-attention-an-introduction-to-attention-styles-open-focus-and-object-less-imagery/
[00:00:00] Welcome to the curiosity cure podcast. I'm your host, Deb Malkin, master certified life coach, body worker, hypnotist trained in pain reprocessing by the pain psychology center, queer elder, fat human on planet earth here to help you evoke the power of simple neuroplasticity techniques rooted in shame free curiosity.
[00:00:29] So you can feel more better. more of the time in the body you have today and build the rich, full life that you want to live. A quick disclaimer, this podcast is not a replacement for medical care. I am here to provide insights and techniques that can compliment your healthcare journey, but always consult with your healthcare provider for personalized advice.
[00:00:56] Hello, feelers and healers. Today, I'm going to start with a practice. I'm going to jump right into leading you through an open focus practice by Dr. Les Fehmi, and then I will talk more about it afterwards. I'm going to ask you to imagine feeling or seeing space. And I'm going to do this in a way where there's going to be pauses in between each request.
[00:01:26] So if you don't hear me talking, that's just fine. Just go with it. There is no way to do this activity wrong. There is no grade. This is about training your brainwaves to find some alpha synchrony. You don't even have to know what that means to be able to do this activity. Take as long as you need to become adept at feeling these spaces as your first exercise towards a new way of paying attention. Usually, we attend to objects. Here we are asking you to attend to the space in which the objects exist.
[00:02:06] If you're driving, do not do it now, wait until later until you're home. I'll link to the article that goes through this process.
[00:02:16] Gonna start with a simple exercise, asking you to imagine feeling various spaces in, around, and through your fingers and using your fingers, your thumb and your index fingers, because we have more cells in the sensory motor cortex that are related to these body parts that orchestrates feeling and movement in your hands than we have neurons that are dedicated for movement in your whole back.
[00:02:48] We're going to do this practice gradually and with ease, with a minimum of effort. Not a maximum effort, minimum effort. By asking you to imagine space, that's evoking the effortlessness that imagining encourages.
[00:03:10] So think of imagining as effortless, the way that we attend when we are allowing ourselves to imagine. And by closing your eyes, you will be more easily drawn into feeling. So sit as still as you can, and with eyes closed, sit comfortably upright in a chair. Do not be driving when you do this.
[00:03:33] Can you imagine feeling the three dimensional presence of both of your thumbs?
[00:03:44] Can you imagine feeling the space around your thumbs?
[00:03:54] Can you imagine feeling the space that your thumbs occupy?
[00:04:07] Can you imagine that the boundaries of your thumbs are dissolving?
[00:04:17] As you continue to feel the space that surrounds your thumbs, as well as the space they occupy, Can you now imagine feeling the three dimensional presence of your index fingers?
[00:04:37] Can you imagine feeling the space around your index fingers?
[00:04:45] Can you imagine feeling the space that your index fingers occupy?
[00:04:55] Can you imagine that the boundaries of your index fingers are dissolving?
[00:05:04] As you continue to feel both your thumbs and index fingers surrounded by space, permeated by space, and occupying space, can you now imagine feeling the space between your thumbs and index fingers?
[00:05:27] Is it possible for you now to feel this space, the space between your thumbs and index fingers?
[00:05:43] Can you now repeatedly move your thumbs and index fingers towards each other and then away from each other until you can imagine feeling the space that the fingers move through?
[00:05:58] Can you imagine that as you slow down the movement of your fingers through space, you can imagine still feeling the space they are moving through, even after your fingers slow their movement and then cease to move?
[00:06:20] Can you imagine feeling the space between your fingers?
[00:06:28] Can you imagine feeling the space between your thumb and your left ear?
[00:06:38] Can you imagine feeling the space between your left ear and your left index finger?
[00:06:50] Can you imagine feeling the space between your two hands?
[00:07:00] Can you imagine feeling the space between your two eyes?
[00:07:10] Can you imagine feeling the space between your right thumb and your right ear?
[00:07:20] Can you imagine feeling the space between your left pinky and your left thumb?
[00:07:32] Can you imagine feeling the space between your right pinky and your right thumb?
[00:07:45] Can you imagine feeling the space behind your left hand?
[00:07:55] Can you imagine feeling the space in your right palm?
[00:08:04] Can you imagine feeling the space in both of your hands and also the space between and around your hands, and also the space between your hands and your face?
[00:08:26] Can you imagine feeling all the space surrounding your hands, and if you move your hands surrounding the space where your hands had been?
[00:08:44] Can you imagine feeling the space between your thumbs and your index fingers? And as you continue to feel that space that surrounds your thumbs and your index fingers, can you also imagine feeling this three dimensional presence of your pointer finger?
[00:09:15] Can you imagine feeling the space around your hands, dissolving?
[00:09:25] And as you open your eyes, note how you feel. Are you lighter, brighter, clearer, more relaxed? Or was it hard for you? Did spending a few minutes with feeling space, make you feel relaxed or tense? Whatever your reaction is, this is the first step to learning how to enter into and open up to a feeling sense of the presence of space and a new way of paying attention.
[00:09:51] Over time, you will learn to attend to larger spaces, first in your body, then through and around your body, and finally space through and around you and the objects around you. In time, you'll be able to attend to space in every sense. By making this paradigm shift, making space foreground in your experience, you are changing your experience of yourself and the universe around you.
[00:10:18] Dr. Fehmi, a PhD psychologist, posits the central thesis that we are in a chronic state of stress because our attention or focus is narrow, tense, fight or flight with resulting mental and physical illnesses. However, when we broaden our focus to a relaxed, diffuse, and creative form of attention, a large amount and prolonged period of phase synchronous alpha activity is created.
[00:10:48] This means the brain is producing powerful alpha waves, which create a state of alert wakeful relaxation. In open focus, alpha is created in major lobes of the brain, which reduces stress and allows fluid communication among different regions of the brain, improving mental function effortlessly and naturally.
[00:11:10] Here are some notes from Dr. Fehmi and Susan Shore Fehmi, modern Neuroscience has taught us three important facts. By paying attention to space, we can change our brainwaves. By increasing the amount of synchronous alpha brainwaves that our brain produces, we can balance the various aspects of our nervous system. By balancing our nervous system, we can reduce our fight, flight, or freeze responses and shorten the time it takes us to recover from stress situations.
[00:11:43] So open focus training teaches us how to pay attention to space, increase alpha synchrony in the brain and reduce the fight, flight, or freeze response in the autonomic nervous system.
[00:11:54] And these techniques came out of 40 years of research in Dr. Fehmi's neurofeedback labs. And it's very easy to learn. He's recently passed away. He has three books. There's the Open Focus Brain, Dissolving Pain, and then there's the Open Focus Life, I believe, which I haven't read that one, but I've listened to the Open Focus Brain and Dissolving Pain books, and I love them and am somewhat obsessed with them.
[00:12:25] They work in a number of ways. So one, they're helping us loosen our attachment to whatever sensory input is happening in our body. And I talk about that with pain a lot. Talk about loosening the grip of our attention. And his work is all about scientifically studying how attention and brain waves are linked together. Attention sounds like one of those words that's almost a throwaway word, but his work really proves that attention is the guiding light for our brain.
[00:13:05] Here are some quotes, our attention habits and the emotions they repress keep us separate from the world, from feeling part of it. They prevent us from fully sensing what is around us and participating in it. As a result, we are unable to fully engage the here and now. The cruel irony is that because we have no other frame of reference, because we do not pay attention to how we pay attention, we think we are seeing the world as it is.
[00:13:35] Here's another quote. Feelings, if left unacknowledged and unaddressed, can eventually surface as pain of some kind. Then the pain, in turn, causes us to narrow focus on distractions from television or the internet or a range of things. By using narrow focus avoidance to hold back our unwanted thoughts and feelings, our nervous system goes into over arousal, creating muscle tension, blood flow disturbances, which lead to the production of auxiliary pain.
[00:14:09] He says everybody has the ability to heal their nervous systems, to dissolve their pain, to slow down and yet accomplish more, to experience the deeper side of life, in short, to change their lives for the better dramatically.
[00:14:25] Open Focus Attention Training emerged out of Les Fehmi's 1966 work as a postdoctoral student at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. Dr. Fehmi, in this article, talks a little bit about his seeking to produce alpha waves and he tried everything imaginable. So he's wearing these sensors and hooked up to the biofeedback machine and he was trying everything meditation, visual imagery, music, colored lights, incense, negative ions, and muscle relaxation to no avail.
[00:14:59] Exasperated and disappointed, he gave up, and he was still attached to the machine when he gave up. So at the moment of his mental surrender, the pen and ink EEG scratched high amplitude alpha waves across the strip of paper. So he had accidentally stumbled into the state of aware effortlessness without daydreaming or sleep.
[00:15:24] So after practicing in this alpha abundant state for over a week, he observed surprising changes in himself. Some particularly tense muscles in his face and neck relaxed, yet he felt alert, centered and poised. His sleep improved. He experienced unusual mental sharpness and clarity. Colors seem more vibrant and rich. His rather compulsive personality type softened and he said most unusual of all, it seemed that the scope of his vision opened when he looked around, he took in more with less effort.
[00:16:00] This led to a search for other occasions in which synchrony occurred in the central nervous system. Synchronous waves peak and trough at the same time. Alpha synchrony is associated with autonomic nervous system balance, enabling the nervous system to operate more fluidly and effortlessly. Alpha Synchrony supports stress reduction, increased intellectual and physical proficiency, and physical and emotional pain dissolution. Increased amplitudes and durations of synchronous alpha practice over time was associated with positive changes, decreased anxiety, increased emotional intimacy, a greater sense of ease, freedom, and fluidity.
[00:16:47] Research on the ability of student subjects to increase alpha synchrony, later called brainwave biofeedback or neurofeedback, led to the discovery that controlling production of brainwave activity could alter physical, emotional, and intellectual functioning.
[00:17:05] Maybe we don't know what brain waves are, but sometimes I call a brain an electrified meatball in a box. And that our nerves are like these electrified jello tentacles running through our bodies and so, neurons are microscopic power sources that build up an electrical charge by chemical means, like a little battery and then it briefly reverses the voltage over and over and over. So the neurons in our brain communicate via electrical potential. So we need this cool brain electricity, and in the early 1900s, they discovered brain waves with the first human EEG. You know, these things that seem so ordinary today were discovered. We didn't know them until we knew them.
[00:18:01] There are all kinds of scientific experiments. about our autonomic responses as heart rate or brain wave generation. We now have this whole study called heart math, which is about the synchrony between the heart and the brain. In the 1950s and early 60s, Neil Miller at Yale trained a mouse to raise or lower its heart rate by 20 percent by rewarding the animal with a jolt to its brains pleasure center every time it's changed its heart rate in the desired direction. Remember my podcast on conditioning, right? So the mouse was trained to change its heart rate and then was given a pleasure stimulus. So the pleasure stimulus didn't create the change in heart rate. The mouse created the change in the heart rate to get a reward.
[00:18:53] Then later he taught humans with tachycardia or abnormally fast heartbeats to slow the beat, and they were rewarded with a pleasant musical tone. So we have all kinds of ways that we can learn to entrain our brain and our body on purpose. Years of clinical observation support the idea that brain activity and the brain structure may be changed by operant conditioning with resulting increase in the flexibility of attention. Just as learning a new task permanently alters neural circuits, so too does conditioning via EEG biofeedback, another kind of learning.
[00:19:35] The human brain operates along a spectrum from one hertz, a frequency of one cycle per second, abbreviated as HZ, Up to as much as 100 Hertz, although most commonly we record up to about 40 Hertz.
[00:19:49] Brainwave frequencies are clustered into 4 basic categories associated with different mental functions and named with letters of the Greek alphabet.
[00:19:58] Delta is from 1 Hertz to 4 Hertz and that's associated with sleep.
[00:20:03] Theta is from four Hertz to about eight Hertz, and that's associated with hypnagogic and hypnopompic states. And I did a podcast about using those states to help train our subconscious. So hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, those are those in between sleep and alert states.
[00:20:24] Alpha, which is from 8 hertz to 13 hertz, is associated with a deeply relaxed, yet waking state.
[00:20:32] And beta, from 13 hertz to 40 hertz, is the frequency range in which we operate in our day to day waking state.
[00:20:40] So when he was studying with subjects, also trying to help them produce phase synchronous alpha brainwave states, he measured their EEGs while he varied the imagery and relaxation exercises. He asked them to imagine a series of sensory images, a waterfall or a sunset designed to induce relaxation. It was here where he realized another thing. Out of 20 images, only two produced immediate alpha amplitude increases. One question is, can you imagine the space between your eyes? And the next one was, can you imagine the space between your ears? And so imagining space became a simple, effective tool for helping people get into alpha more quickly.
[00:21:28] You didn't produce alpha when you were visualizing or imagining a waterfall. But if you were to imagine the space in and around a waterfall or between you and a waterfall, between the waterfall and something else, that's what would, help you get into alpha. He talks about imagining an object can create desynchronized brain waves, but when space is imagined, there is nothing for the brain to grip, nothing to struggle to make sense of, profound relaxation results because tension is released. And then he learned later that this is similar to some techniques, in meditation.
[00:22:10] And I think that again, this is the same as when we're feeling discomfort or pain, we're often looking for the object or the source or the reason. And that brings us into this narrow focused attention. We're fixated on both the physical experience, but also what we think is the cause of it. And we're either resisting the feeling or we're trying to change the source and the reason. And that creates more of this attention that is stuck in fight or flight. And that's like an emergency mode of paying attention. It makes sense if we think about walking in the woods and we're relaxed and then you hear a twig snap, your whole body is just going to tighten, your heart rate goes up, adrenaline production goes up, your vision is going to narrow, your body is preparing to do something to fight or flee. And that's a normal human physiological response. That's a normal mammalian response, right? Animals do this too. And then after we discover the source of the sound, if it was not threatening, we would gradually return to a more open kind of attention.
[00:23:24] And so with modern life, if we think of it from a body up point of view, a lot of our activities demand this narrow objective focus, we are looking at our phones all the time, which are stressing our eye muscles, which are creating this subconscious tension in the body, right? We're playing video games, we're watching television shows, we're having emotional experiences while we're texting people. We're paying a lot of attention, often in a heightened, state of discomfort and emotional distress and that narrow beam of attention becomes habitual.
[00:24:06] We almost don't know how to not do that. That feels really normal. It feels really normal to live in narrow focused attention. We are often rewarded by seeing ourselves as creatures of action and people who like do things, make change, are productive, like who are creators, or we're also in this capitalistic individualistic world, we're not rewarded for relaxing with a group of people, we get a lot of the benefits of society, both financially and socially, for being more.
[00:24:53] Here's a good quote. Chronic narrow focus is akin to keeping a hand constantly clenched. After a while, the muscles stiffen and we lose control over them. And this can be seen with kids who grow up in an abusive environment. They're chronically hypervigilant, so narrowly focused on the possibility of harm that they have trouble with tasks such as reading because their scope of their visual focus is so small that they can only see one word at a time and they must be taught to relax and broaden their focus so that they can learn to read.
[00:25:29] And I would imagine the same thing happens where there is abuse happening in schools with bullying, it's very hard to learn and feel relaxed when you're in a threat driven environment. And so this phase synchronous alpha activity is an antidote to narrow focus and it's a way to break its grip and reduce stress.
[00:25:52] The brain and central nervous system are the master control system for the mind and body. So unresolved activity from chronic fight or flight responses, hyperactive nervous and glandular systems and tense muscles are dissolved in this open focus phase synchronous alpha activity.
[00:26:13] You can see this in your animals, watching your dog or cat lying on the rug with their eyes half open, seemingly near sleep, and the minute food hits the bowl or there's a knock on the door, however your pet is relaxing, they just spring up to investigate. This uncommitted readiness to perform is what he calls zero bias. It is an optimal attention in which people can throttle back and rejuvenate instead of being in a chronic narrow state of hypervigilance. And this state synchrony takes over and normalizes this nervous system. When something demands a narrow, object oriented attention, we can flexibly zoom in with less effort.
[00:26:58] And ideally, we can stay in that mode of attention as long as is needed, and then return quickly to open attention. He talks about the eclectic range of attentional styles, he says there are four basic types. Narrow, which is focus on something and exclude everything around it. Diffuse, which is encompassing awareness of all present sensory experience. Immersed attention is absorbed in experience. And objective, maintaining distance from experience.
[00:27:28] And one is not superior to the others, each is appropriate to a particular situation. So the goal should be flexibility, being ready to emphasize any type of attention that situation demands. When he talks about brain cortical rhythms, phase synchronous alpha waves, for example, appear to be inherently stable. Much of the anxiety, fear and depression that we experience and repress was never meant to remain in our bodies for extended periods. The feelings were meant to be experienced as needed and then dissipate.
[00:28:01] But in a heightened state of arousal brought on by narrow and exclusive focus, these feelings are either tormenting us because they're spotlighted or chronically blocked from our awareness, avoided or repressed. It's a, this is why I talk about allowing your feeling to be felt, making a space for feelings and allowing them to move through you.
[00:28:23] How we pay attention and how our attention has been conditioned to react to situations and emotional stress is at the root of more of our problems than we realize. Taking medications to mask emotions does not necessarily solve the problem any more than disconnecting a warning light in your car gets at the cause of the mechanical problems the light is warning you about.
[00:28:46] So a lot of his work, he talks about these relationships between the mind and body, between different symptoms and our attentional system. So this goes into becoming aware of a diffuse style of attention and locating in your body a pain or an unpleasant experience. And so whether that's anxiety in your chest or stomach, resisting anxiety and pain takes energy. Diverting energy for resistance, energy a person needs to operate efficiently, can cause depression. But as anxiety is re experienced in the diffuse style of attention, it can diffuse or disappear. Depression lifts as the need for repression wanes and the system normalizes. So he talks about things like migraine, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, anxiety, and insomnia appear as disparate symptoms, but they are often manifestations of one problem, a stressed nervous system. And these and many more conditions have been helped through attention training.
[00:29:52] What I like about this work is that it is kind of the next level of somatic tracking. So somatic tracking where we're feeling and sensing into our pain almost as the object. If we were to layer this on, make a little layer cake of it with somatic tracking, what open focus would do would then be to ask us to sense the space around that pain, around whatever it is that you're observing. So we're observing the physical sensations. We're observing them do they have a shape or a color? With open focus what you're going to do is sense into it, but then also sense the space around it, sense the edges, sense the edges of it dissolving, sensing the space beyond it or through it, sensing the space and other body parts, you know, broadening out our ability to sense while then bringing the focus back to this now, smaller awareness and sensation.
[00:31:02] And this is what open focus brain technique is, seeing the space and training your brain, with ease and relaxation. So not with a lot of intense effort. Dr. Fehmi training alpha brainwaves only happened when he gave up. When he surrendered, that's when the little, pen or whatever it is that's marking your brainwaves, that's when it started recognizing alpha brainwave state. So there's a lot of relaxation and ease that is inherent in this practice.
[00:31:33] I've been using it this week in particular, because I tested positive for Covid right before I was supposed to go on a trip and I was really pissed off and mad and upset. I feel fine, but I was in some emotional distress . Once I kind of did all of my to do items, I noticed my brain wanted to keep narrow focusing on getting things done so I could feel better. Like I wanted to just launch into being super productive. I also knew that there was this feeling part of me that really needed to allow feeling disappointed.
[00:32:11] So one of the things I practiced was going into this open focus state. So both feeling the disappointment and the emotions that came up with it, but then afterwards just resting in an expanded awareness and just seeing the space between me and objects in my room, seeing the space around myself, and what I noticed was my anxiety went down. My body felt relaxed. The internal distress that I had and the frustration really melted away.
[00:32:44] I didn't have to really work hard at that. I didn't have to think hard about it. I just practiced this technique, and I trusted that it was going to create this shift and change for me. And It's been really, really wonderful. I think what's lovely about it because it's attention training, it's not what we're taught sometimes in meditation, which is to Focus on no thing, right? You can't not think about something. You have to think about something. Whether you're thinking about space, that becomes the object of our awareness. And that object, that non object object is what trains our brain. And then we go into this synchronous alpha brainwave state.
[00:33:30] What we'll see is relaxation of physical tension. If anybody's doing any kind of physical activities and they notice that they're having tight muscles instead of trying to stretch to affect the muscles want to think about it from a nervous system point of view and how can we relax the body from the inside out? Focus on the space around objects. around senses, around sounds, around tastes. You can even do this when you're eating something to like notice how it tastes, but then notice the space around the taste and see what happens. This is a activity in curiosity and in letting go and in having no outcome orientation in the practice.
[00:34:24] I hope that you enjoy this practice. Let me know what you think about it. If you are interested in applying these kinds of techniques in your life to help you feel better, if you're looking for a guide and a coach to help you go through pain reprocessing work, adding these kinds of techniques and more into your daily life to help you feel more better, more of the time, training your brain away from chronic, narrow focus, especially chronic, narrow focus on uncomfortable sensations, both physically and emotionally, that is the key to rewiring the predictive code of your brain and to get a different physiological experience. Please book a curiosity call, let's talk about how working with me can help you.