Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal the Mind

Dr. Les Fehmi discusses the power of attention, emphasizing the importance of open focus to reduce stress and alleviate depression.

### Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal the Mind and Body
* 🧠 Dr. Les Fehmi discusses his book "The Open Focus Brain" on the Beyond 50 radio program, focusing on the **power of attention** in mental and physical health.
* 🤔 Fehmi discovered that focusing on space, rather than objects, could shift brainwave activity towards **alpha waves, associated with alertness and relaxation**.
* 🧠 Narrow, object-focused attention can **increase stress**, while open, space-focused attention can **reduce stress and diffuse accumulated stress**.
* 😞 Fehmi suggests that depression can be exacerbated by **comparison and narrow focus**, and that the Open Focus approach can help **alleviate depressive symptoms**.
* 📱 In today's technology-driven world, constant narrow focus can contribute to stress and anxiety, as people are urged to pay attention in a **narrow, object-oriented way**.
* 🎯 While narrow focus is essential in certain situations (e.g., emergency response, sports), Fehmi emphasizes the importance of **attentional flexibility, shifting between narrow and open focus as needed**.
* 🏌 Fehmi shares an anecdote about a golf study where the group focusing on the **trajectory of the ball (the space between tee and green)** was most accurate, highlighting the **importance of attention in sports performance**.
* 📚 Fehmi's book includes CD exercises to help readers practice **Open Focus attention**, which can be beneficial in various aspects of life, including **sports and everyday stress management**.

I [Music] [Music] welcome. Thank you for tuning in. You're listening to the Beyond 50 radio program. I'm Daniel Davis. On the program today, we're going to be talking about harnessing the power of attention to heal the mind and body. Because of today's wonderful advances in the neurosciences, we're beginning to understand the power of our mind, and the difference between how we think and feel is usually just one thought away. On the program today, the book is The Open Focus Brain, and our guest joining us on the program is Dr. Les Fehmi. Dr. Fehmi, thank you for joining us here on the Beyond 50 radio program. Well, thank you for inviting me. Now, The Open Focus Brain. You don't usually hear focus in this particular direction, but generally this is something that's been known throughout the ages. Tell us how you got started in this particular field. Well, I noticed one day, I've been in the field for 40 years. I noticed one day that when a person is asked to field space.

say space between your fingers or space between your eyes. There's a shift in brainwave activity in the direction of alpha alpha activity, which is the kind of activity that's associated with alert and mildly focused activity. And it turns out that this particular activity can be trained by simply asking questions about space. So the electrical activity is just the reflection of this intellectual activity. Did I leave you if Levi's anything? Yeah, just a little bit there. I was just kind of following along with you. You kind of get to a point, but I think that's just it. Is that, you know, just on that moment alone, I thought to myself, we tend to anticipate too much through our thoughts. And would you say that's kind of like this day and age of reason that we tend to create stress? I keep in the last couple of words drop off on me. Could you to you Shane a little louder? Yes, what I was saying is there. It is right there is that I was anticipating that there was a little bit more to it, and it seems this

day and age, and we think about focus or thought that we tend to anticipate. Sometimes things that just aren't there. We anticipate, for instance, a future that's going to be bringing us maybe results that we don't want, or that we hope will be better than where we're at. We anticipate, you know, a reality that isn't real, so we're not grounded in this moment right now, and that usually tends to cause a lot of the stress or the depression and/or the anxiety that a lot of people experience this day and age. I agree, and I want to say that the way you pay attention is just as important as what you pay attention to. So, for example, if your attention is narrow focused and objective orientation, the kind of associated with gripping on a topic like an anticipation, then your brainwaves drop in amplitude and reduce in synchrony. There's a real connection between what's going on in your mind and the way it's going on. So, usually we talk about what are we attending to. I'm suggesting here by

this observation that we can attend to how we're we're attending to these future future thoughts, etc., but it is how we attend. It becomes a critical very variable. It turns out that when you narrow focus on things, you are actually causing stress for yourself by the act of narrow focusing and objectifying or gripping whatever it is you're attending to. And that, of course, is not what we want. Now you can attend to the same anticipation of future activity in an open kind of focus, in which the question or the answer or the subject within the middle of that, and you are experiencing a vast base all around it. If and when you pay attention like that, then there's a marked reduction in stress, and stress in general is diffused. So whatever piled up stress you have gets diffused, and most of us reach advanced ages just being overly stressed, having accumulated stress, not so much because of what happened to them, but how they attended to it. Now that's what I remembered what I was reading in your book. The open focus brain is especially

In the West, we tend to, as you were talking about, have narrow-focused attention. You know that we need to be sure that we're hyper-vigilant on, you know, having focus that's so direct on, you know, you need to get focused, you know, you need to pay attention. And I think that that becomes damaging after a while. I know many years ago, as I worked in the food service industry as a waiter, that I tended to go about my task with the nun Shalonda, though I was walking in the park. And for me, what I was doing is I was basically expanding my awareness to the point of paying attention to everything that was going on, but in a very relaxed way, which allowed me a pace that was very leisurely. And there was one point where I was reviewed by the management, and one of the things they said was, You tend to have a pretty easygoing, slow-paced manner about you. You don't have a sense of urgency. And I looked right at him and I smiled and I said, Then how come I have the time to

help all of my other team members do their work while doing my own at the same time. They didn't have much of an answer for that, whereas you know, you'd see a lot of people basically running around, you know, trying to get things done, and they're making a job just look impossible. And I think it was just because I allowed myself not to be so narrowly focused but open-minded that's what I'm talking about. Just allow things to be, and everything just seemed to fall into place and made the job very easy. May I ask how you came to this way of attending on your own? I really don't know, you know. I think a lot of it has to do with being out in nature and just, you know, opening myself up to listen and to feeling, you know, the sounds around me and experiencing things just sort of coming to me. That's the best way I know how to describe it. Well, that sounds very good and certainly relevant and one way to get into it and focus in nature as you

mentioned, but perhaps your parents also were disposed to attend in a more open way. Could have been, but now it's interesting because you came to the open focus and brain, I guess technique if you will, because you noticed how quick it was the slip by giving the brain spaces to be in. And I found that fascinating because many years ago as I was reading and studying about Zen, they were talking about Japanese art and what they tend to do in Japan anyway is they focus on the spaces in between the object that they are actually, you know, say rendering and drawing of, and that's what creates the object could be, and they actually draw the spaces. And I thought that's an interesting way to think about things. So when I would go out, I would tend to look at the spaces like you're looking at a tree, you look at the spaces in between the weeds, and it's really a different way that you, I guess, attend or have attention. And that's what it seems like the open focus brain does. It changes the way the brain relates to.

reality in the world tell us how you came to this again. The major orientation was I was looking at alpha activity because I had such a dramatic experience myself that I wanted to share it with others and help them to that same realization. The problem was there was no way that I could induce this alpha activity in them. It was kind of met with a curiosity but little success. So while I was looking around for ways of producing large amplitude alpha activity, nothing worked. Beautiful music, a sunset scene, a dew drop on a rose petal, any number of beautiful images just didn't do it. Like can you imagine the space between your nose and the wall in front of you or something like that. So it came out of the realization that alpha activity was relevant to this space experience and vice versa. The space experience increased alpha activity. So it was a serendipitous event. I didn't make it happen. It just happened and I was just in a position to recognize.

it its value mm-hmm and it took took many many many years for me to truly understand what was going on and and what was going on of course with attention attention change there are four kinds of attention as I eventually viewed it as narrow attention is a very diffuse attention wide open there's an objective attention paying attention to the thing rather than to the space in which the thing is is experienced or embedded and then finally an immersed kind of attention it's like when you become one with something or you love something you enter into that space and then various combinations of those four basic kinds of attention was understood ultimately as being a a very positive result now dr. family it seems this day and age that one of the biggest I guess if you will problems that people tend to face is depression and it's interesting as you hear about it through the media that you know there's such general symptoms that just about anybody can feel that they have this from your perspective and experience what do you think is the

greatest cause of depression is there general things that people experience and you know obviously this seems to me to be a regional approach to alleviating depression. My best guess is could be comparison you know the way your lifestyle is compared to somebody else can cause depression because it isn't good enough. As a matter of fact many messages we experience for instance through the media maybe even through entertainment tell us somehow inherently maybe even subliminally we're just not measuring up we're not good enough but here is a product or solution that can help you do this. I can see how the open focus brain tells us you know what worrying about it so much tell us kind of the relationship there with how we experience depression of why it's so prevalent. I certainly couldn't speak to all kind of depression there are many reasons for depression but there is a category of depression that does respond to this kind of approach so that you can learn to merge with depressed feelings that have allowed them to dissolve if if you

got the book after the one you hear you mention called resolving chronic pain which has just came out. Yes now a year and a half ago mm-hmm. Well that would describe how you could you could find a way to experience your depression so that it isn't devastating to you. That is experienced here while you're an open focus and in fact by doing that you allow the stress associated with the detention associated with depression to diffuse the diffuse laterally up and down forward and back. You then experience yourself in a three-dimensional environment in which depression no longer is gripped - it's held on - mmm. So by practicing these these exercises that that are in the both books you can actually learn to resolve depression some some people can. We've been very successful here at the clinic. I would say just about everyone at least benefitted from it to some degree but many had a dramatic reduction in depression and even alleviation total daeviation of depression and it's due to the way we pay attention if we grip on

onto the depression in a narrow focused way. We're just holding it, we're keeping it in place, we're not allowing it to go through like we allow many other things to go through. We live in a day that technology just seems to be overwhelming us, and you know, people have cell phones now. If anybody uses public transportation, everybody has earphones plugged into their ears, and we seem to be living more and more in a society that, at least I've noticed, seems disconnected, while at the same time, seemingly trying to reconnect through technology. This can't really be very good for the brain, could it? I think that the brain is remarkable in what it can do, and if you're stuck on the headphones and narrow focusing on it, then you are actually creating stress, even if it's something you like, like some music you like. If you narrow focus on it, you're gripping in a very direct way to your experience, and that will get you the accumulation of stress over time. In fact, since we've been born, we we

been urged to pay attention, pay attention, and of course, they mean narrow focus on what you're doing so that you don't lose your place. But on the other hand, pay attention could mean open and immerse yourself in your experience. Now after listening to the beautiful music and I'll allow that music to go through the experience of that music to go through because you're paying attention and open focus, then no harm is done and maybe some good would be done. But if they're narrow focus, as I said, the chances are that their experience is a stressful one and they hold on a grip to what they're listening to, what thinking about or feeling or tasting or smelling or a sense of time, time anxiety for example. My anxiety is just the result of narrow focusing and gripping your experience. Anxiety now there is a big one. I like the quote that comes from that particular chapter, anxiety is the state of 20th-century man. Everybody seems to be anxious to be everywhere and nowhere than where they are. And boy, there sure

is an industry out there that's helping to address that for profit isn't there? Yes, yes. In fact, you know it. It's the nature of our world that it is, it is script, it is narrow focused, it is stress producing rather than stress reducing. And I think the book has had a great deal of interest for a nonfiction book. It's already sold over 20,000 copies. And I think because it rings some bells about the world we live in and about the role of attention in creating the world that we live in. I know Dr. family it was quite fascinating. I remember as I was reading the open focus, I really like this because it kind of affirmed to me personally as I was describing earlier. You know that really opening or expanding your consciousness to just kind of feel and experience everything which to me I feel the human body was made to do. Now narrow focus is phenomenal especially when you consider how it's applied. For instance, you know you could be an emergency technician.

somebody happens to be in a trauma state, you narrow focus for a short period of time to be able to help alleviate whatever is going on in that moment with, you know, in an emergency situation you have firefighters, you know there's another one so you know narrow focus is a great thing to have and inherently were, you know, built to do this but it's just so unnerving to me to think that, you know, that especially in America that we need this feeling of that we need to do this and, you know, our regular jobs and I don't think and as you say it's really not very natural to sustain that kind of focus for long periods of time so there is a contrast if he can for our listeners sure the contrast between, you know, the essentialness of narrow focus of sure I touched on a little bit and how you back off and how to but, you know, obviously too much of it causes a lot of the problems that we experience yes and you said it well we do need those you did in

your book I said you said it well in your book. I was just repeating. I say well, you were smart enough to recognize the right part of the book to mention, so we do need narrow focus. It's not that I'm trying to suggest that that narrow focus should never be entertained. I would say that we're overdoing it. In other words, certainly when you jump out of the way of a bus or something, you might narrow your focus for a bit of time. But now, if you said, Oh, what if I wasn't that truck? What if a bus hit me? And what if I would have broken my legs? And what would my children do? And you carried it forward, you know, right? Of course, in our focus, and that would be the wrong thing to do for sure because all that we do is accumulate stress in your system. So we want to have attentional flexibility. That's at the bottom, that's talk, but at the heart of the most positive result, being able to narrow focus when it's important. Take

the first opportunity to broaden your awareness and let that go through and enter into experience. Like if you're interested in a love relationship, love is not a narrow focused kind of thing. It's more open and worst kind of attention. So, certainly interpersonal relations have their preferred attentional orientations. And say a prizefighter, although a prizefighter might actually have in some ways some of the same attentional styles associated with being intimate with any experience like loving an ice cream cone or merging with that ice cream taste is a little more narrow but into it kind of experience. So, you have an opponent and you're narrowing on the opponent and his actions. And that's a kind of attention or attention style. And it's not only open, it allows say the punch to arise within oneself and be deflected or hit its mark. So, did I get near where we were? You know, yeah, you didn't. What was interesting about what you just said is just yesterday I was thinking, for instance.

about Muhammad Ali you know and I for some reason I was thinking about boxing, and what I really loved as I grew up watching Muhammad Ali. It's interesting to watch him today if you can catch the old fights as they're broadcast on a sports channel, because Muhammad Ali had such a unique fighting style. Because his hands always seem to be down by his side's when he bought you see a lot of boxers today, they tend to be covered up, and you know, and basically, you know, kind of always on guard getting in there for the attack, but all we just had this very relaxed style. He made it look easy, you know, and he could never figure out except for the fact that it was probably due to him being relaxed that he allowed the opportunities to present themselves through the mistakes of his opponents to basically Lam out, yeah, you know, versus these other guys that cover up and they go in there, and you know, they're all protected, and to me, it just seeing that that's probably what made him a great.

fighter was the fact that he did seem to be so relaxed while he was in the ring. That he could pull the narrow focus at moments that he needed to. And at other times he just relaxed. And to me it sense that he was just conserving a tremendous amount of energy when it just wasn't needed. It's uh it's probably true in every sport that the best the best of them are attending in in particular ways that are ideal for that sport. For that the abilities of the players. And and I just read an article the other day apropos of the Japanese art that you mentioned earlier. And they did a study about how to hit a golf ball from where it's teed up to the green. And and three groups were were used. And the first group kept their eye on the tee when they were swinging to reach the next screen. The second group kept their their mind on the green they were trying to reach. And the third group was asked to attend to the trajectory the space between the tea and the green. Wow. And and

that the people that were most accurate were the people who who envisioned the trajectory of the ball, and they got closer to the hole. So, this space thing comes into. I'm just learning tennis now. I'm 78 years old, and I'm just starting with tennis, and it's really remarkable how even in tennis, I don't pay attention to where I'm hitting the ball or that I'm hitting the ball. I just did attend to the trajectory of the ball as best I can, mm-hmm, and they were mighty. I had 10 group lessons, and the teacher said, You picked this up very quickly. It's gonna need to have the relaxed mind, you know. Again, for instance, you mentioned golf, and certainly many of us have. We've been out on the golf course. When it comes to tee up, we just want to hit that ball with everything we can and drive it into another County, and it would always be fun when I would be with my brother, you know, and we would be out golfing, and he golfs quite a bit, and he could always

say with accuracy is after the swing. You know he you were trying to kill it, weren't you? We would go it. This is just relax, trust me on this. Allow the swing to happen and keep your eye on the ball. But I like what you're saying to focus more on the space between where you are and where you want to be. That slips the mind into a whole different way of being. I'm sure it almost delights in it. You can be. You would think, Let's see. I was thinking of what I was going to say to you and then I started listening to you. I was going to say, but in any case, the problem is having the right kind of attention. So when you spread your attention from tee to green, then you know it's a different, you're a different animal than if you were narrow focus on the green. So by the way, in the back of the both books, there are CD exercises, and I recommend that if you're going to play golf with your brother again, do one of those exercises.

especially the general the general open focus exercise and do it say half an hour before you go out and play, and then see what happens to your score and what happens to your whole style of golf. Mmm, as I remember taking my son up many years / Gulf ago for the first time, and I said, Does my son's name is dusted, and I said, Your whole goal today is to get that one been shot. Let's sort of had a good thing going on at that one time, and I said, If you get one of those today, then this whole this whole game has been worth it. And he says, What's his end shot? And just as he said that, it's almost as though God was listening. You hear the screaming and hollering off of a distance, and as the death of zeg shot, and if you have one of those, your score doesn't matter, you know, nothing really matters with that because that's really the only thing you're ever going to remember anyway. And it was like I

was describing other people. The Zen shot isn't one that actually goes in the hole, although that could be one of them, but it's just a particular shot that maybe you thought out and it worked exactly the way you wanted to or better than you thought it would - unless effort exactly fascinating stuff. Now what about the exercises themselves, very simple and straightforward. Of the beauty for the listeners out there is these are exercises you can literally do anywhere at any given time. Would they be ones that you could recommend or can they be done, let's say you're on the drive to work and you're stuck in traffic. Well, as a disclaimer, I suggest that no one does the exercise while they're operating a vehicle or are in any kind of dangerous situation, okay? So otherwise, I'd be happy.

The Open Focus Brain: Breaking the Addiction to Narrow Focus

50beyond

Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal the Mind and Body

Les Fehmi discusses the power of attention and its impact on the mind and body, emphasizing the importance of how we pay attention, rather than what we pay attention to.

He explains that narrow-focused and objectifying attention can cause stress, while an open and expansive focus can significantly reduce stress levels.

By training the brain to have an open focus, individuals can diffuse accumulated stress and improve their overall well-being.

Having a relaxed and open-minded approach to attention can lead to better performance and a more leisurely pace.

This way of attending, inspired by nature and the concept of open focus brain, allows for a different way of experiencing the world.

The focus on alpha brain activity and the space between objects led to the realization of the power of open focus attention.

The Power of Attention and Its Impact on Depression

Different types of attention, including narrow, wide open, objective, and immersed, can have a positive effect on our well-being.

Comparison and the constant message of not being good enough, often portrayed in the media, can be a significant cause of depression.

The practice of open focus, which involves experiencing the environment in a three-dimensional way, can help in resolving and alleviating depression by allowing the feelings to diffuse.

Paying attention can have a dual nature, either narrow and stressful or open and immersive.

Narrow focus can lead to a stressful experience and anxiety, while open focus allows for a more positive and enriching experience.

The book discusses the importance of attentional flexibility, acknowledging the need for narrow focus in certain situations but warning against its overuse, which can lead to accumulating stress.

The Different Attentional Styles in Activities

Love and interpersonal relationships involve a broad attentional focus, while activities like boxing require a narrow and focused attention style, as seen in the unique style of Muhammad Ali.

Different attentional styles also impact sports performance, as shown in a study on hitting golf balls and in the experience of learning tennis.

The ability to relax and attend to the trajectory of the ball is crucial in various sports, leading to better performance.

Improving Your Golf Game Through Mindfulness

Mindfulness can improve your golf game by shifting your attention from the narrow focus on the ball to the space between your current position and the target.

The "Zen shot" is emphasized as a memorable and impactful moment in golf, regardless of the overall score.

Simple and accessible exercises for mindfulness can be done anywhere and are recommended for enhancing your golf performance.