Sometimes our mind just will not stop digging a hole to nowhere. Open Focus can dissolve this too.
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When our thoughts pull us into that gripping, narrow emergency mode of paying attention, it’s hard to find a way out – or is it? In this week’s meaty podcast, we deliver the goods for adding space to your thoughts. Even mental distress is mostly space. Here are some highlights:
An atom has a nucleus and electrons that revolve around it. It’s as though each atom was a tiny planet with even tinier moons orbiting around it. And that’s a pretty good analogy, because the nucleus of an atom is 200,000 times smaller than the diameter of those orbiting electrons. Atoms are mostly space. Everything is made of atoms, therefore everything is mostly space.
Your mind is a stream of thoughts, and there is a pause – or space – between them that we can center our attention on. Those thoughts fire neurons in your brain which send electrical impulses across space to other neurons, which is another way to imagine space.
There’s a lot more to chew on in the podcast. The Open Focus session starts at: 37:40:2.
Here’s the transcript:
0:00:00.0 Kat: In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller.
0:00:02.5 S?: Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
0:00:08.6 Kat: But is there an art or a science to stopping and looking around once in a while?
0:00:14.8 Liz: I’m Liz.
0:00:18.3 Kat: 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.
0:01:05.6 Kat: Hey, Liz.
0:01:06.0 Liz: Hey, Kat. Here we are.
0:01:09.3 Kat: Here we are. So I need to give you a little bit of full disclosure here. Is that I have, as you know, two incredibly angelic/evil dogs, puppies. They’re four years old, but they’re still puppies in my heart and…
0:01:25.4 Liz: And theirs.
0:01:27.9 Kat: And theirs. Yes. They will never be bigger than five pounds, even though they’re both 80 pound Doberman pitbull mixes, but they are free ranging in the downstairs area. And so because some of the recording is weird, when I try and filter them out, I’m just… They might show up, so I just wanted to let you know.
0:01:49.8 Liz: Sure.
0:01:50.4 Kat: They might show up in the background to you, Liz, to any future listeners. You might hear a little guard dog expression.
0:01:57.9 Liz: Excellent. I think that having any kind of, any part of the natural world enter into this virtual situation that we have is all to the good. I’m not really a fan of, let’s sterilize the recording so that it seems to be a voice that’s disembodied.
0:02:21.1 Kat: In the ether. Well, and I think that what it is really is they’re kind of… They’re practicing Open Focus in the wild. Like right now, they’re in the alpha state. Like if we went downstairs, the two of them would just be passed out on their respective couches. Dead to the world.
0:02:40.3 Liz: Yeah. Apparently dead. Right? Not really.
0:02:40.3 Kat: Apparently dead to the world. But the very hint of their primary enemy in this world, the squirrel.
0:02:51.3 Liz: Yes. Oh yes.
0:02:51.4 Kat: Second only to the delivery man, of course. Might rear I’s bushy little tail, and they might have to lecture it. So they’re gonna be going back and forth between alpha and beta to protect me.
0:03:08.8 Liz: Well, and maybe even a little theta.
0:03:09.3 Kat: Yeah. Well, they… Yeah.
0:03:11.0 Liz: To like a kind of dreamy state.
0:03:12.0 Kat: Yeah. They’re generally in theta.
0:03:12.0 Liz: It’s hard to know really where they are. Yeah. Theta’s good. We love theta.
0:03:17.5 Kat: Yeah. I only know I’m only ever really positive of beta and delta asleep. Or, yeah. Because sometimes they’ll be in the mix, dreaming and they’re like… And I’m like, what are they doing in there? Like Max, Max, the big baby is his nickname. He was going after something yesterday, and he was like… And his whole body, he was like running.
0:03:42.6 Liz: Oh, he’s trying to bark.
0:03:45.3 Kat: Yeah. And he was like running, like his legs were jerking. Like he was… And I was like, I hope he’s running through a beautiful field. Like chasing something.
0:03:53.9 Liz: Dreaming of a squirrel.
0:03:55.9 Kat: A squirrel.
0:03:56.0 Liz: That he knows he’s gonna catch or he believes he’s gonna catch. It’s good for him. Yeah. As you’re talking, I’m super grateful that nobody can see me dream ’cause I have covers over. I don’t have fur, so I have covers over me, and I’m super great. I wonder what I’m doing in those times.
0:04:16.8 Kat: Yeah. Sometimes I will jerk myself awake. Like, I’ll do something that obviously, you know, and I’ll be like, whoa. I was just like jumping on something and…
0:04:26.6 Liz: And you don’t remember it. Yeah.
0:04:28.4 Kat: No.
0:04:30.9 Liz: Well, delta is its own reality somewhere else.
0:04:35.2 Kat: But delta is not where we wanna go. And I have been a lot better about not even getting into theta with my Open Focus practice. So I feel very grateful to myself for my practice that I’m getting to. And actually, I’m trying to do more of the like, stuff we’ve talked about in our open pokes Fridays, which is this doesn’t have to be a serious thing. Let me sit down and… We’re doing these sessions which are very intentional and they’re great. So I don’t wanna dissuade people listening to not do them, but I think I’m starting to try and do stuff like you’ve been talking about for a while where you’re in the moment and you’re like, let me look at my… Can I see on my peripheral. Let me add some space to this. How to do it in the wild at like, during your day versus…
0:05:36.7 Liz: Exactly.
0:05:37.2 Kat: This kind of like seemingly is like a Buddhist monk, like sitting and all the conditions must be correct and that kind of thing. So.
0:05:47.4 Liz: Exactly. Yeah. I love it. And the other thing I wanna, we’re gonna talk about dissolving mental distress sort of/anxiety today. And it’s the third in our series of artificially separating mind and body and emotion which is so ridiculous.
0:06:07.6 Kat: We’re just following the Western trend, Liz.
0:06:10.4 Liz: We are following the Western trend. It’s absolute garbage. But we are… Just because it gives us more opportunity to practice and understand the kind of the dissolving practice aspect of Open Focus. ‘Cause it really… These things are all completely linked. And we’ve been talking a… Maybe just, I’ve been talking a lot about Lisa Feldman Barrett. Maybe I’ve been oversharing…
0:06:37.1 Kat: No, it’s been exceptional. I’m like, I have to read it so I can engage. I’m just like the Rube in the corner. What do you mean Liz?
0:06:48.8 Liz: And I’ve read 20 pages and I’m like, Oh, I gotta just kind of I hope….
0:06:51.6 Kat: Like I am an expert.
0:06:55.4 Liz: So I’m still really dangerous, but I think that she makes the case the most eloquently about how we’ve got emotion all wrong and have had emotion wrong for 200 years, or. for as long as we’ve been talking about emotion, we’ve got it wrong, and neuroscience and her research in particular. So we’re talking about Lisa Feldman Barrett in the book, How Emotions Are Made, specifically. And the silliness of making any separation between mind and body and that, and believing that emotions have existence outside the relationship between mind, body, and society and our social interactions. She calls emotions predictions and gives a lot of importance to the words we use. And how having more words to describe our experience gives us a different emotional prediction.
0:08:09.1 Liz: And the brain’s sole job is to keep the body alive. So it makes predictions in order to do that using its past experiences and emotions are those predictions. So what we do in Open Focus in this dissolving sequence is we look for something, whether it’s physical pain, emotional pain, or this sort of mental anguish that we have. We find where it is in our bodies, which really fits well with her research that finding it in your body is the way to deal with it. And so we have a process whereby we go through and dissolve it. She talks about re-categorizing, going down to what the physical sensation is, using your rich pool of concepts, which you’re constantly enriching with new words for emotions, new experiences. New ways of seeing the world, using that to re-categorize that physical sensation, so that your brain can make a better prediction and you can take a better action. That’s… It’s her theory. How to deal with your emotions and physical experience in a nutshell, a tiny, tiny little nutshell.
0:09:24.0 Liz: And in Open Focus, we are especially concerned with that physical location for mental or emotional or physical pain. So we get down to not, oh, my back hurts, but where? Where is it? Find it, give it a shape, get to know it. Look for just that spot. And we’re not dealing as Feldman Barrett talks about, we’re not dealing with concepts. That’s not what we do in Open Focus. We’re just dealing with a kind of a mental representation of that physical spot and then dissolving it. So paying attention to the space rather than the particles in the atom, using that kind of imagery in our imagination to shift things in our brain, to shift the brainwaves so that we let go of our gripping attention.
0:10:29.2 Liz: That’s all we’re doing. We’re letting go of this gripping attention. And I’ve so wished that someone would take Open Focus into the lab. Feldman Barrett, if she could study ADHD just for selfish reasons and incorporate Open Focus, I’d be really fascinated to see what those directions might… Where that might take us and take her research and conclusions.
0:11:01.0 Liz: So anyway, today we’re talking about that… Arbitrarily talking about mental distress that the ruminating thoughts and things that just are driving you crazy. Something that seem to be driving you crazy, anxiety that the mental loop gets really, really tight or gripping and it’s hard to see it as anything else. So I wanna just say that we started out talking about how everyone’s like, well, this is the thing. It’s gonna change your life to everything I’m talking about. And that’s just, that’s ridiculous. That is just… If anyone says that, just, I don’t know, walk away, laugh, be amused, but don’t be taken in.
0:11:46.3 Kat: In the immortal words of our good friend Tina Turner. We don’t need another hero.
0:11:51.1 Liz: That’s right. And what’s love got to do with it anyway? So, yeah. Exactly. We don’t. So our brains are always listening to the words we use to speak about other people, people in power with privilege to speak about ourselves in relationship. And the work of mental health is its work, mental hygiene is just, it’s like physical hygiene. You know? You’ve gotta spend time cleaning your body and brushing your teeth and exercising and getting sleep and eating well. That’s all physical. Keeping your physical environment optimized to the extent that you can and same thing with mental optimization hygiene, it’s mental hygiene. If I’m listening to myself continuing to… And I listen to my thoughts too not just my words, but the words I’m… The things I’m thinking. If I’m listening to myself look for where I’m at fault all the time, then the brain hears that and starts to predict that I will be at fault. And I lose the ability to see differently.
0:13:10.7 Kat: That the flexibility. Yeah.
0:13:11.2 Liz: So words are… Yeah. It’s really important, but that’s additional work to Open Focus. I think the way Open Focus fits in here is that it gives you… It gets you outta that fight or flight ’cause then you’re instantly in emergency mode. Right? Urgh.
0:13:28.0 Kat: Absolutely. Yeah. And then that’s gonna be that in reactive thing. So I’m assuming, and I know as you read page 22 to 25 in the book versus those three pages. Sorry, I shouldn’t be such a brat, but…
0:13:41.9 Liz: No, you should be. I jump ahead to 185. I’ll read pages 22 to 25 in about six months.
0:13:49.4 Kat: We should let you know that Liz does have diagnosed ADHD and this is one of her superpowers, but I…
0:13:58.2 Liz: She’s running rampant as we speak.
0:14:00.6 Kat: But I think that… Oh, now I’m… Lost my story. Oh, It’s open… Talking about losing track of time. So it’s that if enough of those sort of “emotional decisions” or those pathways have been created within the like context of beta, fight or flight, then just even getting yourself out of that. So Open Focus can just help you to go, okay, hold on. Let’s just take a step back. That can be a great tool to just kind of maybe reset the timer as it were, and see something and allow you to see things from a different perspective and make a different choice.
0:14:51.0 Liz: Yeah. And even before that, that’s what Fehmi, Les Fehmi talked about was that having flexible attention. So not everything is an emergency. That’s not my habit, builds a refuge in the mind from which you can have different experiences, right? You could experience life from that refuge rather than from the bomb shelter that you’ve been living, right? Where you have to run out and risk being bombed. It’s really like that this emergency mode that we create that does affect us mentally and physically.
0:15:26.4 Liz: So building the refuge is kind of a pre-condition. It can certainly help to create the room and the space to choose different words, to have different… To notice that you’re habitually responding in this way and to be more accepting. So that refuge just helps with all of the mental flexibility that comes from attentional flexibility. ‘Cause if my awareness habitually goes to one thing, I’m less than, you’re more than, I have to look for blame. And if I habitually do that, I never have the possibility of another choice. If it’s not an emergency, I do have choice. When you’ve had that experience, we’ve all had that experience of being calm and relaxed in a situation that when we are not, when we’re in emergency mode, is a problem, but being calm and relaxed, it’s not a problem.
0:16:25.4 Kat: Yeah.
0:16:28.9 Liz: It’s just not a problem. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s the refuge that we’re building through Open Focus. Having more of those experiences where I can choose what to say and do. So…
0:16:42.4 Kat: And I think it’s about…
0:16:42.6 Liz: It kind of all fits together.
0:16:43.4 Kat: Yeah. I think… And it’s also, I think it’s the practice, right? It’s kind of building that the muscles so that when you are in situations that you need to kind of call upon it, then you have that ability to just drop into it. Like we talked about Open Focus and the, wow, like last week as you know, I had an experience that was very emotionally complicated. I got some news that should have been, on the face of it, very positive and happy and joyful and I lost my mind. I freaked out. I freaked out, and I had no idea why. I had no idea why I was in this anxiety place. I was emotional. I cried for an hour straight. Thankfully, my partner was just like, “Surf it, it’s cool. You’re good.” And so he was encouraging me to just be in the moment and not make big decisions about it.
0:17:40.7 Kat: But there was a practice for me of going, okay, I’m just accepting. I’m gonna be with these emotions. I don’t have to make any decisions based on them. They’re not the end all and be all of this experience or what this experience will mean, or what this news may bring. But just be in the moment. Just let it be. And I really credit the practice. I’ve been doing the daily practice, or almost daily. I would say I’m probably about five days a week at this point of Open Focus to just being… Kind of having that muscle memory almost there of like… Just going like, okay, Kat, just be here with it and give it some space and you don’t have to live in it. And just kind of ride the waves.
0:18:36.1 Kat: And the next day, everything was fabulous. And the next day I was like, yeah, I was… I had the reaction that I thought I would. I was really excited. And so I think that that had I not practiced it for a while, I don’t know if I would’ve just gone to do a straight panic attack ’cause I could… I was on the edge. I started to have the physical stuff, the prickly skin, the heart racing. I started to get into an anxiety attack space. But I was able to just kind of like… It was there, it was like on, it was like, if you take one wrong step, Kat, I’m popping out. It was, the monster was around every corner. But I just was like, I see you, but we’re not hanging out today.
0:19:28.3 Liz: Wow. So the body… That’s such a good description of just… First of all, congratulations.
0:19:34.5 Kat: Thank you.
0:19:37.1 Liz: That’s awesome.
0:19:41.8 Kat: Congrats on not losing your mind, Kat. Thanks, Liz.
0:19:45.1 Liz: Congrats on, like…
0:19:45.2 Kat: It’s the little things. It’s the little things.
0:19:52.4 Liz: It’s such so habitual. It just really points to the habitual nature of the response. Something has changed. Of course. It’s an emergency.
0:19:57.5 Kat: Exactly.
0:19:58.8 Liz: Who says it’s just habitual way of paying attention? And you’re able to write it out. And acceptance, I think is a kind of attention. Let it be part of something rather than the thing I have to push away. You’re not… It’s not a gripping attention to accept something. You’ve gotta broaden your attention to do that.
0:20:20.5 Kat: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Open… Just make space for it. Right? Like just you’re here too.
0:20:25.1 Liz: Exactly. Right. Yeah.
0:20:27.6 Kat: And you’re not priority. Like we’re all kind of in the room at the same time.
0:20:31.6 Liz: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So that’s an example of how you flex your attention in the wild, as you say. I love that. It’s… You can put space around it. Another way to do it is to… And we’ll practice that today. Is when you’re aware of the physical symptoms of anxiety or panic attack, which is that, that horrible pounding heart. It is terrifying when your heart just starts racing like that. And your skin gets all… You know, it’s like your body is already there. It’s ready to take down that… Run away from that saber-toothed tiger, it’s ready and wants to go and it doesn’t understand why you’re not. You can go right to those sensations.
0:21:17.0 Kat: Yeah, absolutely.
0:21:17.2 Liz: Go right to the pounding heart and do the steps we’ll do today. That’s another way to do it. And as you practice, I think that… As we practice, as I practice as well, that becomes more available. I can more quickly go to what the physical manifestation is and that enables me to put space, do the steps, find it in the body, imagine what shape it has in the body. What that shape is like in terms of texture or three dimensions, two dimensions, sharp, pointy, rounded, whatever it is, and really get to know it, get to know that physical sensation. That’s an effective feeling in Feldman Barrett’s research, the thing your body is always doing. And just work with that and put space inside that shape that you’ve imagined. You imagine shape inside the space, you imagine… Sorry, space inside the shape, you imagine space around the shape, and then you imagine it dissolving.
0:22:31.7 Liz: So you go from the fixation on the object, which in this case is panic, what you’ve interpreted mentally as panic, to the physical sensation in your body, and embodiment is a key to Open Focus. And then you find a way to fill it with space, and that means you’re gonna give it a shape, an outline. And that outline becomes the particles that you’ll dissolve into space. And so we return to that idea, that… Not idea, but the fact that an atom is much more space… 200,000 times more space than the diameter of the nucleus of the atom, right?
0:23:11.5 Liz: The diameter of the atom is 200,000 times larger than the diameter of the nucleus of the atom. Way more space in every atom than particles. So we’re flexing our attention to include the space within and around everything, and that relaxes our gripping attention, puts our brain in alpha, where we have better access to re-categorization, to making the subjective experience, which Feldman Barrett would call it prediction, letting that shift just all by itself. So I think the way I’m seeing the rest of the work is that the more we learn, more we enrich our conceptual landscape, the more words I have to describe what a beating heart and prickly skin might be.
0:24:12.2 Liz: Maybe you’re just super excited. Right? Maybe that’s another way to interpret it. I’m not gonna force myself there. I’m gonna go in and give myself space. And lo and behold, the day after, that was your interpretation. So it’s like we have all the building blocks that we work with. And how exciting that you were able to do that.
0:24:40.9 Kat: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I’m a little bit… I’m not trying to be a bragger. But…
0:24:45.5 Liz: You should.
0:24:47.0 Kat: It is something as you know, since we’ve been talking about this stuff and working through it for the past couple of years, I’ve really struggled to kind of find a place for it in my daily life because I had a lot of chaos going on, just in general. And it seemed like just another thing I had to do. Something else on the to-do list. And I don’t think until it was like recently, the past few months of talking about it in the Open Focus Fridays of like, how do you just do this each day? That I really kind of was like, oh, I don’t have to make it serious. I don’t have to… I don’t even have to make my meditation session serious. I can do both at the same time. I can do something, I can do little bits here and there.
0:25:28.5 Kat: I can have little snacks throughout the day. I don’t need to be like, I’ve got to set aside, you know, two hours and sit on my little perch. No, like that’s not my life. And that’s… Very few people have the luxury of doing that. And so I think being able to, as we talked about accessibility is a huge thing that, you know, for both of us in terms of the practices we do and that we talk about with people is like, these are things anybody can do. You don’t have to, you know, go be in an ashram in India for three months. And you know, like you… This is something you can do in your day-to-day life, regardless of what’s going on, getting into the practice and then doing it for a few minutes every few hours, like Les Fehmi, like how am I paying attention? How am I paying… You know. And just… You know, so.
0:26:17.6 Liz: Yeah, the interval timer is my friend. I use it for two things. I use it for posture, to correct my posture. And which, you know, I can do that interval timer every 60 seconds, but boy would that be annoying. And it’s also, how am I now paying attention? And, you know, there’s so many apps that you can find to do that, but yeah. So what I love about what you’re saying is, a lot of times we approach these practices in a life or death manner. I have to do this now, I have to do it perfectly.
0:26:49.7 Kat: Absolutely.
0:26:50.5 Liz: I have to do it every day. And it’s not that that kind of practice isn’t beneficial. It should be on the menu when you can do it. And if you can get yourself to do a, you know, daily listening to recordings for a time, it will help you. If you can just bounce in and do that every once in a while, it will help you. But practicing the effortlessness of Open Focus with effort is not helpful.
0:27:15.3 Kat: Exactly. It’s antithetical.
0:27:17.2 Liz: You get into emergency mode so you can practice Open Focus.
0:27:21.6 Kat: I gotta do this really well. Yeah, I mean, I really, really loathe the like overuse of the, “It’s progress, not perfection” line. I hate it because it provides… It’s like this movement forward, like we must keep improving. And that’s just such an American way of seeing the world. We’ve got to keep working, keep, you know, keep dancing as fast as you can, right? So, but the idea of practice, right? That it’s a practice. That’s all this is. And like anything, like there’s that I can’t… I’m gonna murder his name, that cellist, the… I Can’t remember his name. He’s…
0:28:06.5 Liz: Which one? Yo-Yo Ma…
0:28:07.4 Kat: No, no, no. He’s an older… Is a cellist or violinist. He’s in his 90s and he practices every day. And they said… In this interview one time, somebody said, you know what, you know, you’ve been doing this for decades. Why you practice every day? And he was like, “Because I need to get better. I need to keep practicing. That’s my thing, right? I might be 95, but I’m still practicing my craft.” And so I think that’s an important like thing to keep in mind. Like there is no perfection. There is no end goal of Open Focus, right? It’s just the developing a practice that works for you.
0:28:46.3 Liz: Yeah. And I… Because we’re talking a lot today, we will really get to an Open Focus session.
0:28:53.4 Kat: I was going to say we probably should jump in.
0:28:54.9 Liz: But I wanted to say one thing that, you know, there’s this Japanese concept of Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N. And it’s sort of tied with the cultural values, since we’re starting now to talk about society and cultural relationships. So we will be more… Doing that more. It’s in Japanese society, Kaizen is just a given. And it means one… Taking one small step, just one tiny step. And so not, you know, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna get this. So it’s not Itzhak Perlman, is it? The violinist?
0:29:35.5 Kat: No, it’s…
0:29:36.1 Liz: No. Okay. Sorry.
0:29:36.9 Kat: Here, I’ll look… You go ahead. Yeah, I’ll find it.
0:29:41.0 Liz: All right. So one small step is… The genius of that is that your brain, if it’s a small enough step, and the smaller the better, your brain won’t recognize it as change and won’t defend itself against it. So it will be an effortless step. There will be no resistance generated by your brain trying to keep you alive. It’s like, no, I don’t wanna move. No, that’s too much. So the tiniest step. So when I was working a lot in corporations, I’d be doing workshops or meeting facilitation, and people would be like, okay, let’s go do this. And I’d be like, okay, what one small step are you gonna take after this meeting or workshop?
0:30:25.9 Liz: And people are like, “I’m gonna change my time management system. I’m gonna project… ” And I’m like, okay, that’s great. So I want you to think about a small step that would fit on the smallest size Post-it you have. And mine right here is about one by two inches. And I want you to think about writing down, what is the one tiny thing you’re gonna do? And people were just like stunned. They’re like, well, I… But I… But I… Literally, their brains could not cope. I’m like, “How about right now you make a calendar entry to spend time thinking about what you just said?”
0:31:06.2 Liz: How about you make an appointment with yourself to think about it? How about if you put… Just put a regular time in your calendar to think about this? Not that you’ve committed to do, but the calendar entry will start you thinking about it. So, and I do that with myself all the time, drives my partner, like… She’s like, “Well, are you doing that?” I’m like, “No, no, no. I put things in my calendar before I’m gonna commit to do them to see how it feels, whether or not it is something I can commit to. If I don’t do that, I won’t remember to think about it.”
0:31:45.2 Kat: To do that. To ruminate, like when am I gonna be ready? Yeah.
0:31:48.6 Liz: Or, you know, put on a Post-it, say, call so-and-so. Put that on your to-do list, put that in your calendar. Tiny, tiny, tiny steps. So what’s the tiniest step you can take to practice Open Focus daily in the wild? Tiniest step. Put it on a Post-it, put the Post-it on your computer, set an interval timer, whatever it is. I’m just going to engage my peripheral vision.
0:32:16.6 Kat: Yeah, and that’s been helpful. That one, that tiny one, has been really helpful for me, you know, that peripheral vision.
0:32:25.9 Liz: Yeah. The visual…
0:32:26.0 Kat: I don’t know why that, like, hit with me. Yeah.
0:32:30.0 Liz: The visual cortex takes up a lot of room and a lot of airtime in the brain, and it’s super grabby. It’s the thing that, where we’re scanning for threats. So it’s very, very overdeveloped in terms of keeping us alive. So just kind of reminding yourself that there’s more than what you’re now focusing on at this moment. There is… And it’s like, oh, there’s all this space in the room. Oh. So yeah, it’s gonna be powerful.
0:32:57.9 Kat: Well, I trolled myself, Liz, because it’s…
0:33:00.1 Liz: Did you.
0:33:00.1 Kat: Yeah. So, ’cause I was just talking trash about the word progress. So anyway, it was an interview in 1957 with Pablo Casals.
0:33:08.9 Liz: Oh, Pablo Casals. Okay.
0:33:11.7 Kat: Yeah, and at 80, they said to him, why do you continue to practice four or five hours a day? And he responded, because I think I’m making progress.
0:33:18.6 Liz: I love it.
0:33:20.8 Kat: So I guess, I trolled myself, but I do think that that is the story, right?
0:33:30.1 Liz: Yeah. Well, you know…
0:33:33.2 Kat: That’s what happens when you’re just kind of shooting from the hip in your podcast and you’re in this, Kat.
0:33:36.9 Liz: We learn as we go.
0:33:39.5 Kat: I’m like, I got this good thing, it’s so witty. And then it’s like, no, ha ha. See, I hate the term progress, not perfection, because that’s my life.
0:33:51.5 Liz: Right, I know.
0:33:55.7 Kat: So shall we dive in.
0:33:56.4 Liz: Yeah. Let’s do it.
0:33:57.5 Kat: After our discussion? So we’ll get into dissolving kind of mental pain, anxiety, that kind of stuff.
0:34:08.9 Liz: Distress.
0:34:10.4 Kat: Distress, okay. All right.
0:34:14.3 Liz: Yeah. So I wanna just say one thing before we start about it. To the five senses, you know, hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, what’s the last one? I can always name four out of the five senses. It’s been a problem all my life. Just fill in the blank yourself. Smell, smell, it’s smell, it’s always smell. Almost always smell that I leave out, ’cause I’m like, okay, ears, eyes, nose, skin. To those five senses in Open Focus, we add a sense of timelessness, time and timelessness as a sense we can pay attention to in Open Focus, we can use an Open Focus.
0:34:58.8 Liz: And also our thoughts, our stream of thoughts are something we can use. And we kind of put those together because thoughts are this kind of internal thing that we can kind of hear almost. We can hear ourselves talking to ourselves. So we can hear our thoughts. We can notice that there’s a period between thought. You have a thought, a thought comes up, it goes away, there’s a space there between thoughts. So we can use time, duration, periodicity as a way to add space to our thought process.
0:35:35.8 Liz: So the flow of thoughts is something that we want to bring in to Open Focus as a way of finding another place to add space. So we find the thought process, just the way we would find something in the body, we can also find a flow of thought and look for the duration between the appearance of the thought in the nothingness, if the thought arising or being interrupted by a thought. So we’re looking for the space between thought, we’re looking for… Sorry, between thoughts. And we’re looking for the way we focus on it for a time, and then we don’t. So those gaps in time between thoughts are another way of adding space. We can also find the effect of those thoughts in our body same way.
0:36:32.6 Liz: So those are a couple of ways to do that. And just as an object doesn’t kind of take precedence over the space, it’s physically smaller than the space, thoughts don’t take over the space either. If you want to, you can think of them as a firing of neurons in the brain. If that helps to picture a thought or a train of thought, you can do that. Picture some image, make up some image of the neuron firing, shooting an impulse across the space in your head into a network, and use that as the shape that you fill with space, and surround with space. So we have a few more possibilities here.
0:37:23.3 Kat: I like that.
0:37:25.6 Liz: When we’re talking about mental distress. So I’ll see what I can do to cue all of those in the session. Okay, now.
0:37:32.8 Kat: Go Liz, I believe in you.
0:37:36.2 Liz: Thank you Kat.
0:37:38.2 Kat: All right, okay, let’s do it.
0:37:40.2 Liz: Let’s do it. Okay, so we’ve got our body erect so that we don’t fall asleep and inadvertently go into delta and miss the opportunity for Open Focus and flexing our attention. And I like to have my feet flat on the floor, my hands free, especially my thumb and index finger ’cause those can be a gateway to Open Focus, filling those with space. It seems to work well for people. So eyes closed for now, especially if you’re new to practice because that visual cortex is so grabby, it helps to close your eyes to achieve more flexible attention.
0:38:24.2 Liz: And we’ll start with, can you imagine the space your body occupies? Can you imagine the space the room you’re in occupies? And if you’re not in a room but you’re outside, can you imagine the space, the property you’re on occupies? The forest you’re sitting in, what space does that occupy? The municipality you’re in, what space does that occupy? Or the county? Your imagination is up to the task.
0:39:52.6 Liz: And can you imagine letting this be so very effortless, so easy. Just making it up. No right, no wrong. Just your imagination responding. And is it possible to imagine that your imagination is more sensitive and more intimate in its imagination each time it responds to a question. And can you imagine what the space inside your thumbs and index fingers feels like? Letting your attention center on that while at the same time imagining the space your body occupies and the space the room you’re in occupies. And using your thumbs and index fingers as a model for imagining the space inside your body, can you imagine space filling your entire body, flowing from thumbs and index fingers into your other fingers and hands, into your wrist, forearms and elbows, upper arms, shoulders, the way air might come into a balloon? Can you imagine the space in your neck and head, your jaw and jaw muscles, eyes and eye muscles, gums and teeth, throat?
0:43:06.7 Liz: And can you imagine that same feeling of space filling your torso, top to bottom, side to side, front to back, flowing all the way down to where your sitz bones contact the chair or if you’re standing to where they are right above your hip joint. And can you imagine that space, that feeling of space flowing into your thighs and knees, calves, ankles, feet and all 10 toes. Can you imagine the feeling of space inside your body and the feeling of the space all around you, that three-dimensional space of the room or the area you’re in?
0:45:06.0 Liz: Just as this space inside you is three-dimensional and multi-sensorial, it can be felt and imagined, visualized. There may be sounds, can be heard in your imagination, tasted and smelled. Can you imagine that this space all around you is equally three-dimensional and multi-sensorial? Can you imagine your thoughts in this space? Maybe you’re imagining hearing them, maybe you’re imagining what they are structured in your brain as what the physical structures of thought are. Maybe you’re imagining a place in your body where thoughts are having an effect, a loosening, a tightening, a smile, a crease in your forehead, whatever you imagine as a thought.
0:47:53.6 Liz: Can you imagine noticing it, imagining it more sensitively and more finely. For me, right now, I don’t have a specific thought, but I have what I notice as a tightening in my abdomen, right under my ribcage, a tightening of breath right around where my diaphragm is. Doesn’t matter if I’m wrong or right about that, I’m going to imagine the shape of that physical sensation. So whatever is happening for you, can you imagine the shape in a physical location of your stream of thoughts? And if there are more than one, if there’s a concentration or a rumination, just a tension in the mind and a feeling, a sensation in the pit of your stomach, choose the one that is strongest.
0:50:23.1 Liz: And can you imagine a shape? Is it possible to imagine that shape even more sensitively and fully imagining what it feels like, whether it’s smooth, spiky, rough, silky, dense, or squishy, hollow, angular or smooth, imagining it even more fully. And can you imagine that shape, full of space and surrounded by space? And if it’s a train of thought, a mental conversation, can you imagine each thought as an instance in time with a shape and a physical location? Just make it up.
0:52:43.0 Liz: Filling each instance with space, the entire train of thought surrounding it with space. Can you imagine the silence between thoughts? If you’re hearing them, can you imagine the space of time between thoughts? There’s no one way that’s better than another. Pick the one that’s easiest, the one that’s easiest to make up. And can you imagine that shape? I’m going to refer to everything as a shape, whether it’s an instance or an utterance, a mental utterance. Can you imagine that shape, full of space with the same sensitivity you’re experiencing the space in your thumbs and index fingers effortlessly imagining it full of space and surrounded by space, three-dimensional space, multi-sensorial space that is alive with sensory information.
0:55:37.8 Liz: And can you imagine that shape dissolving into the space around it? Joining with the space inside it as the particles, the outline, the border of that shape disperses into space. The space that you are immersed in and broadly aware of in your imagination. And as that shape dissolves and disperses, can you reach out toward it or dive right into it while imagining a feeling of the space inside and all around you? And can you imagine those particles dispersing into space all around you dissolving that shape, those particles joining with the space all around them and inside them?
0:58:25.4 Liz: Because in your imagination, it can just keep going. Everything with a shape can be filled with space in your imagination. You can ask yourself, can you imagine even the particles full of space surrounded by space dissolving into space? And can you imagine this space all around you extending out even further than you’d previously imagined, all the way out into the solar system, three-dimensionally all around you, all the way out into space, actual space, the thing we call space, outer space.
0:59:46.8 Liz: Can you imagine repeating this process, locating a thought in your body, in your imagination as a physical sensation, as a heard mental conversation, a train of thought that is the firing of neurons in your brain or something else that your imagination shows you. And can you imagine then giving it a shape, just making it up, imagining a shape, and then imagining it full of space, that shape surrounded by space dissolving into space, space inside you and outside you, all around you immersing yourself in those particles, which are themselves a shape full of space and surrounded by space.
1:01:58.6 Liz: And can you imagine effortlessly remembering to take one tiny step toward remembering, considering, imagining to practice Open Focus in the wild. And can you imagine that as you practice Open Focus, whether it’s in a tiny way in the wild, whether it’s a sit down practice where you listen to a recording, can you imagine that as you practice, however you practice, your experience becomes more sensitive and effortless?
1:03:40.8 Kat: Okay, Liz. So I really liked the kind of going through the imagining things from like, almost like a synaptic level going to like outer space. So that was like, yeah. So that was really helpful I think in this session.
1:04:08.4 Liz: That’s great to hear. ‘Cause that’s all imagination or you can’t… I don’t… Maybe you can feel your synapses. I don’t know. Maybe there are people who can hear them. You know? I think there may be people here buzzing in their brain or something. So I don’t… I’m not one of those people and I don’t think you are either. It was just…
1:04:25.2 Kat: No, but I’m like, I always hear a buzzing.
1:04:28.5 Liz: Maybe that’s what it is. I don’t know. [laughter]
1:04:33.5 Kat: I just thought I was going a little bit mildly insane. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think like what the imagination side of it. Like I definitely have visualizations, right? ‘Cause you know, if you take neuroscience classes, like I have, they have like, here’s pictures of, you know. So I kind of like was sort of doing this microscopic kind of visualization. But you know, then it gets too like out of touch and then it becomes pure imagination.
1:05:04.7 Liz: Right. Which is great. Totally effortless. Yeah. Good. I’m glad that worked. Yeah, I loved that session too. And, I do… You know, when I do these, I experience them. I’m not just, reading a script or holding myself aloof. It’s actually happening for me too. So, yay.
1:05:34.3 Kat: Yeah. And I think like, in my early… You know, because of the kind of not getting in or I’m much less, prone to getting snoozy, you know? So I feel like I come out of these sessions, like this one where I’m sort of re-vital… I’m sort of refreshed. So it’s kind of a cool sensation to not feel. ‘Cause sometimes with meditation, that kind of stuff, you get done and you’re like, all right, I’m so chill. You know, and it’s not like I’m un chill, right? But, you know, at this moment, ’cause I’m always chill.
1:06:06.2 Liz: Of course.
1:06:10.3 Kat: But it’s more like, like I’m ready to go. Like I’m ready to delve into something. So that’s… Yeah.
1:06:18.7 Liz: That’s great.
1:06:19.8 Kat: It’s an interesting sensation.
1:06:22.0 Liz: My experience is slightly different when I… Whenever I’m dealing in this realm with anxiety, or yeah, anxiety in my body I come out of an Open Focus session with it still in my body. And I don’t know if that’s the stimulants I’m taking, I really don’t have any idea, but I know that I’m having a physical experience of… And I come out though with some room to make a different interpretation. To not have it be the thing that I focus on with gripping attention and or catastrophize about or need to have meaning for. I come with a… An enhanced… Come out with an enhanced ability to just let it be part of the things that… One of the things that’s in my attention that I can… And I have more ability to flex my attention.
1:07:18.3 Liz: So I don’t wanna give people the impression that they’re failing at Open Focus if they’re having a different experience than the one we’re describing. What really matters is the ability to find it in your body and effortlessly add space. That is the practice. It’s not about producing some effect. It’s lovely when we have it.
1:07:44.2 Kat: Absolutely. Yeah.
1:07:47.2 Liz: And, alpha has a deliciously taffy like quality to your attention where it moves very smoothly. Really, It’s very taffy like in my experience. So, because I feel that because I’m not immediately pulled into what the anxiety means and how it’s gonna wreck my day, for example, I can detect the presence of alpha in my thought process, even in an ADHD… Medicated ADHD brain, which is a fascinating place.
1:08:24.3 Kat: ‘Cause I was gonna say, that’s a very special place you live in, Liz. It’s quite nice.
1:08:29.1 Liz: It’s lovely here.
1:08:31.7 Kat: It’s quite nice. Yeah. Yeah. And, I should note, like, it’s different every single time too. So to your point, it’s not like you’re looking for an end product or result, like you’re failing, right? If you don’t experience this thing. But, so it’s different each time kind of as we explore different ways of working with it. But yeah, so I enjoyed this one. Thanks, Liz.
1:08:52.6 Liz: Yep. Thank you Kat. I enjoyed all of it, our conversation and the session, and I look forward to next time.
1:09:00.7 Kat: Yay. Bye.
1:09:02.4 Kat: 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.
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1:09:26.2 Kat: 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 Carey 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.
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