It’s HOW you pay attention, not what you pay attention to.
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Open Focus is the brainchild of the late Les Fehmi, PhD. He and his wife, the late Susan Shor Fehmi, spent decades teaching people the technique Les pioneered: a simple, effortless way to shift brainwaves from emergency mode beta frequency into the alpha frequency which relaxes the mind and drains stress hormones form the body. Best of all, it requires no equipment, is easy to learn and can be used any time, anywhere.
Dr Fehmi’s big discovery what that how you pay attention matters more than what you pay attention to. He defined attention as “the process by which controls attention.” And identified the two axes of attention: Narrow to Broad, and Objective and Immersed. And he set about to find a way to flex our habitually narrow, objective attention.
A beta brainwave frequency is associated with stress accumulation. This is where emergency mode kicks is: a flight, fight or freeze response occurs, and if the stress response cycle isn’t allowed to complete, stress hormones stay in our tissues, leading to chronic tension and worse. Alpha is the frequency associated with being alert and relaxed. We’re not accumulating tension here so the mind stays calm and the body stays relaxed and fluid. Theta is the frequency associated with healing of mind and body, and delta is the sleep frequency.
Dr. Fehmi found that we habitually do everything in emergency mode whether or not it’s an emergency. This is exhausting! Open Focus practice restores our ability to flex our attention according to what the situation actually calls for.
There’s more in our podcast episode, which you can listen to here:
Transcript of S1E1 – Introduction to Open Focus
Kat (00:00): In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller,
Ferris Bueller (00:03): “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Kat (00:10): But is there an art or a science to stopping and looking around once in a while?
Liz (00:16): I’m Liz.
Kat (00:17): And I’m Kat. And this is Beyond Resilience. When Liz and I met during the COVID-19 pandemic, we discovered that we shared a passion for exploring accessible ways of experiencing and incorporating trance into our daily lives. In particular, we were interested in how different trance inducing practices might promote physical, mental, and emotional healing, enhance creativity and inspire liberation. So in the first season of Beyond Resilience, we explore open focus, a practice developed by Les Fehmi that helps us retrain our brains to access all the different types of attention available. Please join us as we explore open focus and learn about the benefits of daily practice. Hi, Liz,
Liz (01:06): Hi Kat.
Kat (01:07): How are you today?
Liz (01:09): I’m very well. I’m very excited about what we’re about to do, which is to introduce people to open focus.
Kat (01:18): Yeah – so this is the beginning of the journey that we’re going to go on in terms of exploring open focus and the different ways you can practice it. But let’s first I guess, dive into sort of what it is.
Liz (01:36): Sounds perfect. So open focus, it’s a really simple technique that does some kind of surprising things, very accessible, very easy to do, and it’s responding to a series of questions using only your imagination and effortlessness. And the effects of it are to reduce some things we don’t want and to improve some things we do want.
Kat (02:09): Okay, so what things does it reduce or what can it reduce?
Liz (02:13): Can have an effect on anger and anxiety, even eating disorders and gut disorders, the kind of things that are not actual – the kind of things that are called functional disorders like IBS, stuff like that. Headaches and just general overall tension in your body.
Kat (02:36): And what can it improve? I guess it improves those because it reduces them, but what other things can it improve?
Liz (02:42): Yeah, so concentration. So when your mind is not running those loops of anger and anxiety and other stress related stuff, your concentration improves, your emotional regulation improves, and that affects your body. You’re able to remember things, right? All the things that are – if your mind is not busy doing all these other things, protecting you from perceived threats, really – your concentration improves your memory, improves your ability to do things and perform tasks or perform a sport, improve. Your sleep improves and your emotional regulation becomes simpler and more accessible to you, to stay emotionally regulated and not reactive.
Kat (03:25): So this sounds magical. Liz, what is open focus? ‘ Cuz I’m guessing it’s not magic.
Liz (03:32): It’s not magic, and I’m glad you brought that up. Every time anyone talks about any kind of technique that helped – the vagus nerve is having its moment in the spotlight right now. Attention issues or having their moment in the spotlight and autism and all kinds of things that relate to, that are worsened by stress. And a lot of times people talk about things as though they’re a magic bullet. And if you just do this, well then it’s handled. This (Open Focus) is another tool in the toolbox. There are already some good tools: Meditation, attention to breathing, progressive relaxation where you tense muscles and relax them. These are tried and true methods for helping your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in – the one that is the rest and digest system rather than the fight, flight, or freeze system. So we already have a lot of tools. Open focus is another one that actually potentiates the other tools. If you add the technique of open focus to these other tools, they become kind of what you hope they would be in the first place.
(04:41): Because a lot of times, meditation and breathing, you have this promise that it’s going to make a difference. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t.
(04:49): My own experience with breathing techniques is I do them for a while and then I have kind of a rebound effect with the stress that I’m trying to relieve. My body gets to a certain point. It’s like “Uh-uh, no, I’m not relaxing anymore. In fact, I’m going back to being protective.” If I remember to add space and these open focus techniques, then I have a much different experience of these other techniques I would call open focus. It’s wonderful on its own and it potentiates the other techniques that people may know and be practicing.
(05:22): It was discovered by this guy named Les Emmi psychologist, and he got super fascinated by a primate study that showed that alpha brainwave synchrony – big words – but essentially a slower than typical brainwave in the alpha range when it was synchronized across all regions of the brain, help primates to consolidate their learning.
(05:44): So they’d see something, and that would be in sort of the beta bandwidth, the higher brainwave frequency that we use to do things. And that can take us right into fight or flight at the higher end, they would have to drop down into this alpha brainwave frequency to actually consolidate the learning to go, oh, okay, that means this. So he thought, well, if I could figure out how to produce alpha brainwaves in people, we could learn better. That was his initial interest. So his life’s work became about how to produce brainwave synchrony, specifically alpha brainwave synchrony in humans.
Kat (06:22): Okay. And so how did he go about doing that? I mean, did he have a bunch of human subjects or…?
Liz (06:28): No, he started with himself. Himself, yeah. What’s the human subject we all have access to the one they were looking at in the mirror. So he started with himself and failed miserably. He had all these other tools, breath and meditation, and he thought, I can do this. No problem. So he had to hack the neurofeedback equipment of the time. So this was in the sixties when he started, and it wasn’t very sophisticated. Now of course it’s much more sophisticated.
Kat (06:57): But
Liz (06:57): He had to figure out how to track alpha brainwaves all across the brain. So he hacked his own equipment, which is still being used, and he hooked himself up to it and he thought, I can do this. I can figure it out and then I’ll be able to help people do it. And he tried and tried. He spent every day, all day, every day, like an eight hour workday all day for a week. And he could not achieve a durable alpha brainwave synchrony. He couldn’t even achieve a durable alpha brainwave anywhere in his brain. I mean, he’d get there for a little bit, but he couldn’t figure out how to get there and stay there. And finally on the last day of the week, he was coming to the conclusion that his life’s dream was a bust and he was feeling worse and worse about it. And finally he just thought, well, that’s it. I can’t think… I tried everything I know and I can’t do it. I guess it isn’t… I just can’t do it. And he just had this moment of despair. Luckily he was still hooked up to the neurofeedback equipment and that’s when he experienced a durable of alpha brainwave state.
Kat (08:11): Alright, I love this story because in my mind I just see this dude walking around with this helmet on just trying so hard to be as chill as he can, just trying it, working hard and being chill, in the moment that he’s just like, I can’t be chill. Yeah, you can.
Liz (08:39): Right, it’s like in Seinfeld – “Serenity NOW!”,
Kat (08:41): Exactly.
Liz (08:44): Dammit!, Yeah, exactly. And that’s what he was trying to, it’s like you can imagine him on Monday able to be pretty chill by Tuesday, getting a little maybe edgy around the chill and Friday…
Kat (08:58): “I have no chill.”
(08:58): Liz: “I’m chill-less.”
(09:02): So once he figured that out, then that led him into kind experimenting with other people or coming up with ways to reproduce that in himself. Right?
Liz (09:19): Well, there was one tiny step before that. What he realized is that the key was not what he was trying to pay attention to. He was trying to make his mind do certain things to get to Alpha. He realized it’s not what you pay attention to, it’s how you pay attention. So he was getting to alpha in this very narrow focused, intense state, right? We were just kind of laughing about- now! – that’s not it. So when he gave up, when he just said… he just gave up, he stopped trying and that’s when he got to Alpha. So that was the moment that shifted everything for him.
Kat (10:01): Okay. And so can you talk to me a little bit about these types of attention? So there’s sort of a range that we or quadrants, right? Absolutely. So can you talk to me about those?
Liz (10:15): Yeah. So what he realized very quickly, just reflecting on his own experience and then discovering questions that helped people to get into open focus, is that really our attention – which is just how we control awareness, right? – Attention is volitional, it’s something we can control or affect. It comes kind of in two, four flavors really, but along an axes, right? Two axes. So attention can either be narrow or broad, can be tightly focused the way it is in fight or flight when we have that tunnel visio or we can attend more broadly to something we take in a lot of things at once. And the other axis is whether or not we are immersed in what we’re attending to or whether we are separate from it, which he called objective. So immersed or objective attention. So I’m either separate or I’m immersed in what I’m experiencing. I’m either attending narrowly or broadly. And what he found is that if you think of a narrow objective attention, so I’m both separate and tightly focused, narrowly focused. I’m gripped, my attention is gripping on something that’s that “Concentrate! Serenity now!” gripping. It creates the stress response that’ll send you…
Kat (11:35): We do need. I mean that has a purpose for
Liz (11:39): Well, yes it does. Which we’re really in danger. It has a purpose. What we’ve found a lot now, but certainly he found then and now it’s just accepted as fact, is that we are all stressed out. We do everything in this narrow objective attention. So we act as though everything’s an emergency. We use this emergency style of attention with the attendant release of stress hormones in our bodies, which is harmful to us. So our mind is tight and wrapped up in this narrow objective attention in our body is being showered with these stress chemicals for everything, things that are not a true emergency.
Kat (12:21): So we’re like, for whatever reason, I’m sure we could go on a long soliloquy about this – I know I could. It’s a little about this. I know I could. We’re kind of always living in survival mode. The way our society is set up for a lot of us is that we’re every day we feel like we are in danger.
Liz (12:43): We do.
Kat (12:43): Of not surviving.
Liz (12:45): Yeah, we do. I have this picture that I recently spilled tea all over. So now it’s sort of a sepia picture, but it’s a picture of a little girl in a dress and she’s holding up with all her mind. She’s just standing on her tiptoes with her arms over her head, pushing against this huge boulder, which is leaning over her. You can just see her concentration. She is pushing that thing for all she’s worth. “Oh no, this boulder is going to crush me.” And if you look at the whole picture, it’s a boulder that is fixed. It needs nothing from her to stay upright. Nothing at all. And when I first saw this as a greeting card, I’m like, okay, I relate. There I am. This is me. It’s a picture of this emergency mode. It’s like that rock is fine. It doesn’t need you.
(13:39): Kat: It doesn’t need, yeah,
(13:41): it’s not going to fall down. Things are not – the earth is not going to fall out of orbit because you’re not taking care of it. But especially women have this, I’m not going to say especially women. I don’t know what men’s experience of this is. I think they have their own experience of exactly this. But from a woman’s point of view, everything depends on us. Even that fiction is already in a narrow objective – It’s like it’s separate from us. It depends on us. You better hold up that boulder even though the boulder is just fine.
(14:16): So there’s sort of one side of these two axes. The other side of it, when the mind is relaxed, when the body is restoring itself and in a healing mode, we’re in broad and immersed attention. So not narrow and objective, but broad. We’re attending to all of our senses, or at least more than one of our five senses, and we can see things in our peripheral vision. We’re aware of a lot, not just the one thing we’re focused on – the one task we’re doing right now! And then we’re immersed, we’re a part of it. We feel a sense of unity and a sense of oneness, a sense of belonging, really.
Kat (15:04): So he was like, okay, there’s these types of attention and he was able to correlate them to the brainwave frequencies.
Liz (15:14): Yes. Yeah.
Kat (15:15): Right. So can you talk to me about what those are and how they kind of correlate to the types of attention you were just talking about?
Liz (15:24): Yeah, so there are really four, well, five actually brainwave frequencies. He was not studying the highest of them, which is gamma, which is anything above 40 hertz, right? 40 beats per second, waves per second. So typically,
Kat (15:48): And what is gamma?
Liz (15:53): It’s something that we see in the studies of monks who meditate, Buddhists who meditate, longtime meditators go between alpha and gamma, at least in the studies I’m familiar with. And gamma is when you are, it appears to be when you are very focused, but functionally so it’s not a stress response, it’s just you’re able to be very clear. It’s kind of like you’re rising above all the staticWhere most of us live is in beta, either mid and low beta are thought to be functional because you do need to focus to get something done. You do need to exclude other tasks to focus on one task. If you grip and get narrow about it though, that’s different than just having your dimension centered on something and being able to attend to other things as needed. An example I’ll give of functional beta at the low end, so nudging into an alpha, which is that healing state. If you’re driving, you’re centered on where you’re going. And you also need to attend to someone who’s pulling out of the intersection to your right or left or maybe pulling out when they shouldn’t be. You don’t need to flip out and go into emergency mode and start screaming rage person, road rage. That’s oad rage. That’s an emergency response. No, you can respond to that with a different kind of attention. So if you broaden your attention while still centering on your own driving, you can do that without stress.
Kat (17:38): And so that’s kind of in that lower beta,
Liz (17:40): Lower beta to alpha range.
(17:44): They’re both functional states. So beta is where we go when we need to kind of kick it into gear. But because we’re so used to overdoing it and getting over-stressed about all of it, we end up in high beta and into fight, flight or freeze kind of dynamic. It is possible to work from alpha as well, which is a lower brainwave frequency. So eight to 12 hertz, that is where we are. A cat is a great picture of this. A cat is lying there, it appears dead, maybe it’s asleep, maybe it’s actually dead. Sometimes you don’t know because they’re not moving. And then suddenly you see an ear twitch and you think, huh. And the cat goes from being completely laid down on its side to hearing a noise and jerking up to attention. They look over, it’s like, that’s fine. And they go back to sleep.
(18:35): That was someone – -a being that went from an alpha state, maybe even a theta state – which is a lower and slower brainwave frequency – to alertness. So alpha is when you’re both alert and relaxed. Any of the beta range is when you are alert and moving, but not relaxed. There’s some tension, necessary tension. If you’re lifting something, you’ve got to put tension in your muscles. It’s not that it’s negative. The higher ranges it becomes that we get locked into fight or flight. Alpha, relaxed and alert. So if I’m driving in alpha, I’m really relaxed and that car comes at me from the right or appears to come at me from the intersection to my left, or I just look in a very relaxed way. I just look over, it’s fine. I don’t react at all. I just keep driving. I’ve taken in the information. My attention is already broad. I’m kind of feeling a taffy-like quality to my relationship to other cars as I’m driving. That’s what alpha feels like. It’s relaxed. I’m not fussed, I’m just there. I’m present. Generally what presence feels like. Alpha is very much when we talk about being present and being mindful, very much an alpha state.
Kat (19:55): So that’s why you said in the beginning, by combining this with other practices, it has the potential to make those practices more effective in a way.
(20:07): You won’t be trying so hard at it.
Liz (20:09): Yeah. If you bring narrow grip attention to meditation thinking, I’m thinking, “Alright, why do I keep thinking? I don’t want to think anymore and my foot really hurts.” It’s like, or if I’m going to get it today, I’m really going to meditate. I’m going to be mindful for the next five minutes. I’m going to follow my breath, right now.
Kat (20:27): I’m going to meditate the hell out of this situation!
Liz (20:31): I’m going to be so chill. Wait. But that’s what we do because we’re living in this constant emergency mode. Everything becomes an emergency. Even relaxing does.
Kat (20:44): Yeah. So we’ve got alpha then theta right is below that, right?
Liz (20:50): It is,
Kat (20:51): Yeah. Okay. And is that still an open focusy space or are you moving out of it?
Liz (21:00): It’s still an open focusy space. In fact, that’s how really you get into theta is the more you’re, I don’t want to say that that’s not really true. The more you practice open focus, the more you can broaden your attention and immerse yourself in what you’re attending to without slipping into theta. The more you can learn to operate from alpha, the less need there is for theta. So when you have a lot of accumulated stress, theta is the most healing frequency – to be awake, but really it’s like that when you’re slipping into sleep or just coming out of sleep, that is, you’ll end up in theta a lot when you first practice open focus. If there’s a lot to heal, if there needs to be…
Kat (21:52): Right? That’s my problem with this. Anytime, because I was trying to do it, I would be like, I’m going to do it first thing in the morning and I would do it, and then I would just kind of go start to go on a snooze patrol a little bit, just go and I sit up. So I was putting myself into uncomfortable positions and then I was like, you’re trying too hard at this Kat. But that’s good to know that maybe it’s just because I have a lot of healing to do with
Liz (22:19): Don’t we all Kat? I do too. There are days when it’s just like, wow, I’ve been really, I need to just go into this theta state. I love that theta state. So I mean, a lot of people love that theta state. They use substances to mimic that theta state or to drive their brain. You don’t need to do that. It’s actually much simpler than that. But that’s one of the reasons why practicing open focus is done sitting upright so you don’t fall asleep. Or if you do, you’ll fall off your chair and wake up. So maybe you’ll strap yourself in. I don’t know.
Kat (22:55): I mean, my chair leans back, so that’s the problem. Maybe a different chair. I got the hard back chair
Liz (23:01): put it against the wall.
Kat (23:05): So we’ve talked about how narrow and objective is emergency mode. So can you give examples of what’s an example of somebody who’s in a state of broad objective attention?
Liz (23:25): Let me do this about sleep first and then I’ll go there because…
Kat (23:27): Oh, sorry.
Liz (23:28): It’s really a lot of time, you know — when we go to sleep, that’s the delta brainwave frequency. There’s a lot of research – and it’s true – that that’s kind of where our brain takes out the trash and restores itself. And that’s right, it does that, but that’s not the same as healing. So taking out the trash is not the same as giving your house a deep cleaning. They’re different functions.
Kat (23:52): OK – got it.
Liz (23:53): The deep cleaning and the healing happens in theta, not in delta. And that’s why it’s important not to fall asleep during open focus.
Kat (24:04): You’ll take the trash out before your house is clean.
Liz (24:06): That’s right. You take your trash out of a dirty house, you wake up to the same place
Kat (24:11): I mean I do that all the time myself, but…
Liz (24:14): Well, it’s a lifestyle.
Kat (24:16): Well, we are trained to help people live their best lives.
Liz (24:19): That’s right. I mean, if the trash needs to be taken out, you take the trash out, you got to sleep every day. But open focus is different than that. We’re not going to sleep. That said, it can help people to fall asleep. That’s one use for it. But if you want all the benefits of open focus and to use the practice so that you can live out of an alpha state, that’s not helpful
Kat (24:41): So I think you told me that as part of developing this practice and I guess working with people over the years, Les Fehmi had it. He was basically like, if I ever go out, he would check himself every 15 minutes or something to make sure he was always in alpha.
Liz (25:04): He did. He had this little interval timer.
Kat (25:07): That feels like not effortless.
Liz (25:10): Okay, so here’s what’s funny, right? Because you think, oh, but this was, you kind of have to think of back in time too. Now we all have these iPhones that are beeping at us and driving us. For many of us anyway, it’s like I’ve got this reminder set and this alarm set. Those were simpler times and that wasn’t happening. So he had a little pocket interval timer that he sent and all that would happen for him. So again, it’s not what he paid attention to, it’s how he paid attention to it. So when it went off, he wouldn’t let go, “You Fehmii, you’re not enough…”
(25:44): Kat: “…It’s time to do this!”
(25:47): Liz: “Fehmi, you suck, drop it. Give me 10.” No, it’s not like there was a drill sergeant. He would just notice what he was attending to and notice how he was attending to it.
(26:02): So, is it possible to take in, for example, is it possible to take in more of my peripheral vision right now? Is it possible to add another sense perception? So I’m talking with someone in a meeting, I’m writing something, whatever I’m doing, what about the sounds that are happening in the environment around me? Can I broaden my attention to include other senses? Can I immerse myself more fully? If I broaden my attention and I hear a bird, can I let myself enjoy it. So can I move toward it and immerse myself in it. So that’s all he would do. It wasn’t “Okay, you suck. Okay, Fehmi, you suck. Here’s 15 minutes, you suck”. It’s like, oh, it’s just a little, how am I attending now? That’s what he would do when that timer went off.
Kat (26:55): Okay. Alright. That does seem more chill.
Liz (26:58): It’s chill. Alright, after that first week,
Kat (27:03): I’ll allow it. I’ll allow it, Liz. Okay, so before I jump the gun,
(27:11): Now talk to me about what is broad objective? How have people experienced broad objective attention in their life possibly? What are some examples of that.
Liz (27:23): That? Yeah, we do all these attentional states. It’s not like we’re learning something we don’t know. It’s just not overusing this narrow objective attention. So examples of all these attentional styles, so we’ll talk about four of them that are the various combinations of these two axes of narrow to broad, immersed to objective Broadened objective – So you are broadly attending. You’re not narrowing your focus. You’re broadly attending and you are still separate. This is something that you would do as a teacher or a speaker or a meeting facilitator. It’s what happens naturally when you’re in nature. So let’s say you’re taking a hike in nature, you’re walking along a trail and you’re paying attention. You’re centered on the trail. So you don’t trip, but you are, without even trying, noticing, you’re doing it. You are taking in the leaves on the trees, you’re taking in the smells of being on that trail, the feeling of the ground through your shoes, the air on your skin, the way you are balancing as you walk the whole way your body feels enlivened by being in that space. You’re taking in all the sounds of birds and you’re attending very broadly, but you are still separate from that.
Kat (28:46): And then as a teacher, you have to focus on who you’re working with, but you can’t be so into your material that you can’t actually share it…
Liz (28:58): …Exactly- or so into one student that…
Kat (29:01): Which we’ve met. We’ve met teachers like that before, right?
Liz (29:04): It’s like, “Oh, sorry, we’re out of time. I got involved with this one aspect of physics that I love and whoops, which I did last week too. Sorry.” Yeah, you can’t be buried in it and you can’t be buried in one student. You’ve got to attend to the whole situation.
Kat (29:22): Okay, so we’ve talked about the narrow objective, which is the emergency mode fight or flight, and then our broad immersed is that healing…
Liz (29:38): Where our mind can rest and our body can heal from the stress hormones.
Kat (29:43): So then when we have narrow immersed, what’s an example of that?
Liz (29:50): There’s a whole book about the flow state, right? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and me I wrote that is about exactly this. When you are just immersed in something that you love doing, you’re immersed in reading a book, you are immersed in an art form that you love, immersed in playing music.
(30:09): Now, it doesn’t mean that when you play music, you’re automatically in flow. Or when you’re making art for example, you’re automatically in flow. It is how you are paying attention to those things. So if you are, I was a classical guitar major in college and I loved drilling. I loved playing scales and exercises. For my right hand, I would get immersed and the way it felt was I would be very attuned to the sounds, the way my finger felt on the strings the way I was. I could attend to all of these little parts very effortlessly and see how they came together. I was so in it, I would be very narrowly focused on the sound I was producing and just loving it. It was like a technicolor experience, like falling into a big pool, a big rainbow. And art can be that way too, where you see colors differently and a conversation with someone can be that way where things just spark the world just falls away and there’s a sense of timelessness.
Kat (31:21): Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. That’s why flow to me is when I look up and I’m like, oh my gosh, six hours have passed. Right,
Liz (31:28): Exactly. Yeah.
Kat (31:30): So that’s that kind of narrow immersion where you’re just in your, okay, can you talk to me, you’ve talked a lot about sort of the gripping attention, right? That is that kind of beta fight or flight. And then we’ve talked about flexible attention. So all what you’ve talked about are all these different states you can be in. And so open focus isn’t necessarily putting you in a specific state, right?
Liz (32:00): That’s right. Yeah.
(32:01): That’s one of the things that can happen when we’re approaching everything from narrow objective focus. Like, okay, well that’s the better one, right? Then I have to be in that one all the time. That’s the good one. So I’m going to get there. I’m going to be like that all the time. No, no, we need ’em. All right. There’s nothing bad about narrow and objective, it’s just that when we approach it with that gripping, I have to do or die, fight or flight. No, it’s very functional to have narrow and objective attention. When I need to focus on one thing and just get it done, the kids are making all kinds of noise and I still need to cook dinner. So you can argue I still need to attend broadly. So no one dies. I was going to say, and nothing…
Kat (32:48): …burns. It depends on your parenting style and we don’t judge anyone,
Liz (32:51): But you’re going to have to shift into a narrow focus for certain parts of that, and that’s normal. So flexible attention is what open focus is all about. You open your focus and can attend in the way that matches the situation.
Kat (33:07): So you’re not just always like, everything’s on fire or I’m so chill. Exactly. But you get hit by a car because you’re not paying attention…
Liz (33:18): …or you’re half asleep in a situation that’s not a good fit for that, shall we say? Yeah, it’s about flexible attention.
(33:26): And the reason that we practice open focus and flexing our attention is that flexible attention builds a refuge so that we can handle all kinds of experiences and we handle them appropriately, not as though everything is an emergency. So we have a home to go to. Our attention goes home and can choose, it’s not chosen for us. And practicing open focus is how we train our brain to have that flexible attention, create that refuge from which we can handle all kinds of experiences.
Kat (33:59): So we’ve talked about its history and what it does and the background, the sort of science behind it. And we will talk in our next episode about the practice, how to practice it. Before we dive into actually doing sessions, can you talk to me generally about the keys? What’s the overarching theory of open focus?
Liz (34:25): Well, this is the thing that Fehmi discovered in his first week of failing to success, failing his way to success, is that effortlessness is one of the keys. There are three, it’s effortlessness, embodiment, and I’ll talk about that more in a minute. And space. Space turned out to be huge.
(34:46): Effortlessness – He discovered that when he started experimenting with questions, once he realized that effortlessness mattered, he started experimenting with questions and found that sentences that begin with, “can you imagine?” Or “is it possible to imagine” were sort of a gateway drug to open focus, right? That’s the portal that you walked through: effortlessness. Because – can you imagine? – It’s like, well, yeah, I can make anything up. I can pretend. Sure, can you pretend why not? That’s what imagination does. So that was a key.
(35:30): A second key was space and imagining space- that, was it. Can you imagine the space between your eyes? Well, I can only imagine that because I don’t have something I can measure that with unless I maybe do an MRI or a CT scan. But we’re not looking for precision. We’re looking for effortlessness and space, because space is intangible. There’s nothing to objectify in space. There’s nothing to separate from in space. There’s no object there.
(36:09): So if I flex my attention to include space, which I have to imagine, I’ve just hit two of the three things that are keys to this, and I’m on my way. So even talking about this, I’ve practiced open focus enough now, so even talking about this, I start to go, it starts to feel delicious to me.
(36:32): The third thing is embodiment. And by embodiment, it’s physically, literally your body. Can you imagine the distances or spaces between things in your body? It also includes all the senses, all five senses. So can I imagine, I often will visualize something I say. Can you imagine feeling the space between your eyes? I’ve just added – there’s going to be an automatic visualization. I’ve just added another sense, the sense of touch or feeling. Can you feel it? Can you viscerally feel that? If I say, can you hear the space between your ears?
(37:15): Well, again, can you imagine hearing the space between? You’re only going to be able to imagine that – you’re going to have to make something up. So you’re a winner already because I’m asking you to make something up. But I’m asking you to make it multi-:sensorial. And one big difference between open focus and meditation is that the thought stream, right? The stream of thoughts that just keeps going, we think of as another sense. So we want to include that too. It’s not excluded, it’s not considered an interruption or something other than it’s just another chance to broaden our attention and to let ourselves be immersed in open focus. So I’m not rejecting or pushing away anything. And another thing that really falls under embodiment in open focus is that sense of timelessness or time. So we play with time and the space between events, the space between the ending of one thought and the beginning of another thought. The fact that things come into awareness and go out of awareness. We want to look for as broad an experience as we can have and immerse ourselves in everything, have it all be a place that our mind can go home to and our attention can rest in.
(38:34):
So embodiment, effortlessness, and space are the three keys to open focus. It’s what differentiates it from some other things like meditation. And if you can add, for example, space to meditation and imagine imagination, space, effortless and space meditation, if you can let the thoughts be a part of your experience rather than an interruption, your experience of meditation will shift. Your ability to be more mindful will shift. Because being mindful won’t include things you want to push away. You’ll be able to effortlessly include them in your attention
Kat (39:18): Without necessarily letting them run the show. They just are part of that. They’re just in the room with you,
Liz (39:27): Including your reactivity. It’s just part of it. Where is it in my body? Can I surround it with space? Can I imagine the feeling of it being full of space that’s bought in my body? So I bring space and effortlessness and acceptance. Really that’s what immersion is, right? I’m letting it just wash over me or moving to be inside it. Those are the things that you can add to any experience. So you bring your refuge with you no matter what your experience is.
Kat (40:02): Open focus is kind of what like you talked about earlier, it’s a tool, right? It’s not the magic bullet. It’s a tool. And so this podcast, the journey that we’re going to go on is this season we’re going to explore this tool, which is one that you use yourself and use professionally in working with your clients and things like that. So obviously the next steps are we invite people, dear listener, to join us on this journey. And then what else can they do if they want to learn more about open focus or work with you?
Liz (40:45): Yeah, well, they can go to the website that we’ve created beyond resilience.io. And there you’ll find a couple of slides, presentations that talk about this material if you want to go over it. And if you’re a visual learner, that might help. And then there’s another one about how to do open focus. And I recommend looking at both of those before you go onto the next step, which might be to listen to one of the pre-recorded open focus sessions that ar also available on that website. If you like that you’re welcome to join us for Open Focus Fridays, which happens at noon Pacific Time over Zoom. So get in touch, use the contact page to do that. And those are the things that are ongoing. So the recordings will always be on the website. The slideshows will be on the website and Open Focus. Friday has been going for a while now, and it just gets more delicious the longer it goes. And there’s something that has happened over time for the people who have committed to being there. Whatever that ends up meaning for them. I’m not saying every Friday or you will fall off the list. It’s not like that. It’s not like that.
(41:59): But just showing up when you can
Kat (42:02): Be effortless in your attendance
Liz (42:04): And calm down. Those are the things that are just available in an ongoing way. And then the other thing that I’m available for and have done is open focus for your group. Maybe you have a team at work, maybe you’ve got a partnership that’s not working, can be wonderful for couples. Now it’s not any kind of couples therapy, it’s just is this something that you would like to do together. Couples who practice open focus together, they find it to be beneficial.
Kat (42:38): I mean, because we all need a little space.
Liz (42:42): We all need a little space in relationships, and we’re sharing this space and doing it in a way that’s, it’s just a different sensation of being together in space, a different way of doing it, a different how, and how you do it. I’ve worked in organizations for most of my careers with teams, with departments, a lot of wellbeing and wellness is very much in the fore right now for employees. And this is one of those things.
(43:10): So I can put together a workshop, a seminar, I can come and do a keynote at your conference, can work with your team over time in person if you’re in the San Francisco area. Online, if you’re anywhere else. I’ve also worked with individuals who have, maybe golfers is very common with golfers and tennis players are not being in the zone. They talk about being in the zone and not, if you’re a golfer, not succumbing to the yips where your body just does something crazy, usually because you’re narrow focused. So sports performance, any kind of performance, business performance, a difficult conversation, a relationship that’s not going well, that would help you.
(44:01): You don’t need to have both people in an open focus session to make a change in a relationship. You can make a change in yourself and that can shift everything. So those are all the possibilities. But right away, go to the website, look at the presentations, listen to a recording. Consider Open Focus Fridays at noon Pacific time.
Kat (44:23): Alright, so I’m excited to go on this journey. Our next episode, you’re going to have to pour your guts out because you’re going to talk to us about how you found this and why, and then you’re going to talk with us about how to do it, how to practice it.
Liz (44:42): The guts episode.
(44:45): I’m telling you everything. Thank you.
(44:48): Kat: Spell it. Yeah. Thanks Liz.
(44:51): Thank you, Kat. It’s a pleasure to talk to you as always.
Kat (44:55): Are you interested in learning how you can incorporate open focus into your daily life? Consider joining us for our weekly Open Focus Friday group session at 12:00 PM Pacific on Zoom. Registration details and more information on Open Focus are available on our website, www.beyondresilience.io. Thanks for listening to Beyond Resilience, which is hosted by Liz Williams and Kat Oak and produced by Liminal Nation. Neither Liz nor Kat are trained medical or mental health professionals, and all of the ideas, techniques, resources, and tools we explore in the podcast reflect our own personal perspectives. Special thank you to Stephen Cary for our musical ambiance and to John Hughes and Paramount pictures for the excerpted audio of the preeminent philosopher of late stage Capitalism, Ferris Bueller. All rights where appropriate are reserved. Until next time, stay open.