The following is the transcription of a discussion that took place between Dr. Les Fehmi, Susan Shor Fehmi and Kurt Vega during the “Ask Dr. Fehmi” teleseminar on March 7^th, 2012.

The interview has been edited for clarity and to add some additional content.

TITLE:              Attention, Body Awareness and Space – Part 1

TOPICS:         Open Focus, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction(MBSR), multi-tasking and brain entrainment.

SUSAN

Can you refresh my memory about how you came to be an Open Focus trainer?

KURT

It was 2008.  I had picked up the “Open Focus Brain” book earlier and flipped through it quickly and thought it was interesting.  I thought I might pick up some tips.  At that point I had six-year meditation practice and I was interested in neuroscience.  But I put it aside and didn’t get around to looking at it right away.

The summer of ‘08 was a very stressful period in my life.  I had been through the 8 week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) course and been practicing it for years. It is great work and was very effective for me for several years.  But I realized my meditation practice was being swamped, I was loosing perspective about whether it was being effective or not.  I happened to pick up the “Open Focus Brain” book again, and read a chapter.  I was surprised at the content––instead of picking up a few tips, it seemed very substantial.  I had never seen anything like Dr. Fehmi’s theory of attention.  I put on the CD that came with the book, and in 10 or 15 minutes felt an incredible difference in my own physiology.

I was amazed at how effective it was, how simple it was and how effective it was even for someone who had a meditation practice established.  I am a big promoter of Open Focus™ because I think it really does some things superbly well and anyone with a relaxation or meditation practice would benefit from using it. After that I was impressed enough to get in touch with you at the Princeton Biofeedback Centre and ended up doing the Open Focus trainer certification.

SUSAN

I remember you wanted to ask Dr. Fehmi a question.

KURT

When I was thinking about today’s topic, I was interested to know why does OF start with an attention of body awareness to lead to a feeling of space.  (Open Focus ™seems) to build up that feeling of space through the body and I wonder why that was.

LES

You mean why do we couch it at a feeling level?  ‘Can you imagine feeling the space between your eyes, and the space between your fingers.’  It is because most problems are body feelings, we feel various things from pain, to tension, to stomach aches, just about every feeling you have, you would recognize as a feeling.  So if we develop an open focus in and around feeling, we are getting directly at the problem of feeling unpleasantness.  We go straight for the juggler, I might say, and dissolve the pain right where it is––in body.  At the end of the session we could emerge pain free. 

Even beginners who never meditated, or in other ways were interested in relaxation, this could help, at least in my hands, just about anybody who wants to participate.