Dear Folks,
OK and thanks! I heard from several folks who had actually been enjoying reading the blog, so OK... you read and I'll write.
Truth be told, I simply can't study options anymore today. Learning options is both thrilling and incredibly boring. Sometimes the thrill wins out... sometimes it's boredom (or enough already). It's the kind of subject where you can read and read and suddenly realize that not one word has sunk in.
So now I'm going to jump into discussing more deeply each of the resources I listed in an early blog. I'll start with Open Focus, because I'm doing a presentation on it locally and some of the folks who are attending may enjoy reading these entries. However, I'm not gonna be super-methodical about how I discuss Open Focus, meaning this isn't a teaching tool. If you want to learn about Open Focus in a formal manner, the best way is to buy Dr. Fehmi's two books. His website is openfocus.com. I think, or Google Les Fehmi.
People with chronic pain, in my opinion, are addicted to their pain experience. I say this with compassion, and also freely admit that I was one of these people (for 40 frigging years, so believe me, I know of what I speak). Of course, I am not denying the physical component in physical pain, or the biochemical component either. And, what I am asserting is that if you've been in basically the same kind of pain for longer than six months or so, then the question you've got to ask yourself is: what am I doing to keep this pain going?
What you'll discover is a whole host of ways that you keep returning to the conditions that generate your pain, or undoing the conditions that relieve your pain, or ignoring obvious commonsense realities about your pain. For me, it was one thing after another. Meaning, the mind (disconnected from its feeling nature, and connected to ego) endlessly generates excuses about why and how you can never actually be out of pain for very long.
When I started working with Open Focus I noticed an immediate shift in my pain levels. Way down. Yahoo! What came next was a surprising discovery that many of the ways I was self-tuning, though inherently and even profoundly helpful, were actually keeping the pain going as well. For instance, I would get a terrific insight about a new way to access fascia release, or breathe, or let go of a misconception... and then it would quickly get taken over by the ego in me. The result: more pain, even from using good techniques!
To date, the biggest gift I've received from my Open Focus work is that I have proven to myself, absolutely, that by shifting my focus from objective and narrow to immersed and diffused (terms Fehmi uses to describe different ways to focus) IT DOESN'T MATTER IF this or that physical and/or emotional condition is present. My fascia can be stuck, I can be tired and tense, I may not have stretched lately... and when I am willing to bring space into my perception--into my body and being--a shift occurs out of pain and into comfort.
To realize and really be able to perceive how most of my pain experience begins and ends in my mind, not my body, is humbling. And heuristic: now I can do something, for real, about it; now I can heal myself.
Working with a pain condition using Open Focus exercises gives grounded reality to the concept that "it's all about what you focus on." And again folks, I don't mean, think positive. I mean, wake up and be OK with what is--with all of it. Fehmi talks about how Open Focus teaches us "attentional flexibility." This is the ability to shift one's focus, as is appropriate to the situation at hand, rather than be stuck in the habit of narrow focus (a fight or flight state, basically). Doing Open Focus I can now feel my brainwaves coming into synchrony and let me tell you, that feels GOOD.
The act of consciously bringing space into the body and being is remarkably freeing. Literally, the areas that hurt are constricted. Bound up, stuck, black holes of energy, so overstimulated to become numb… these areas breathe a huge sigh of relief when you choose to allow light (i.e. space) in. When Dr. Fehmi talks about immersing my focus in the pain, my first reaction was “NO—that is bad, wrong and shameful.” (Wow: releasing pain is wrong. Hmmm, I wonder if that misconception could possibly contribute to prolonged pain.) Open Focus is all about bringing space into the body, about feeling space. And yes, space feels very, very GOOD, particularly where there hasn’t been much of it, for a long, long time.
Openly focused on loving it All,
Laurel
OK and thanks! I heard from several folks who had actually been enjoying reading the blog, so OK... you read and I'll write.
Truth be told, I simply can't study options anymore today. Learning options is both thrilling and incredibly boring. Sometimes the thrill wins out... sometimes it's boredom (or enough already). It's the kind of subject where you can read and read and suddenly realize that not one word has sunk in.
So now I'm going to jump into discussing more deeply each of the resources I listed in an early blog. I'll start with Open Focus, because I'm doing a presentation on it locally and some of the folks who are attending may enjoy reading these entries. However, I'm not gonna be super-methodical about how I discuss Open Focus, meaning this isn't a teaching tool. If you want to learn about Open Focus in a formal manner, the best way is to buy Dr. Fehmi's two books. His website is openfocus.com. I think, or Google Les Fehmi.
People with chronic pain, in my opinion, are addicted to their pain experience. I say this with compassion, and also freely admit that I was one of these people (for 40 frigging years, so believe me, I know of what I speak). Of course, I am not denying the physical component in physical pain, or the biochemical component either. And, what I am asserting is that if you've been in basically the same kind of pain for longer than six months or so, then the question you've got to ask yourself is: what am I doing to keep this pain going?
What you'll discover is a whole host of ways that you keep returning to the conditions that generate your pain, or undoing the conditions that relieve your pain, or ignoring obvious commonsense realities about your pain. For me, it was one thing after another. Meaning, the mind (disconnected from its feeling nature, and connected to ego) endlessly generates excuses about why and how you can never actually be out of pain for very long.
When I started working with Open Focus I noticed an immediate shift in my pain levels. Way down. Yahoo! What came next was a surprising discovery that many of the ways I was self-tuning, though inherently and even profoundly helpful, were actually keeping the pain going as well. For instance, I would get a terrific insight about a new way to access fascia release, or breathe, or let go of a misconception... and then it would quickly get taken over by the ego in me. The result: more pain, even from using good techniques!
To date, the biggest gift I've received from my Open Focus work is that I have proven to myself, absolutely, that by shifting my focus from objective and narrow to immersed and diffused (terms Fehmi uses to describe different ways to focus) IT DOESN'T MATTER IF this or that physical and/or emotional condition is present. My fascia can be stuck, I can be tired and tense, I may not have stretched lately... and when I am willing to bring space into my perception--into my body and being--a shift occurs out of pain and into comfort.
To realize and really be able to perceive how most of my pain experience begins and ends in my mind, not my body, is humbling. And heuristic: now I can do something, for real, about it; now I can heal myself.
Working with a pain condition using Open Focus exercises gives grounded reality to the concept that "it's all about what you focus on." And again folks, I don't mean, think positive. I mean, wake up and be OK with what is--with all of it. Fehmi talks about how Open Focus teaches us "attentional flexibility." This is the ability to shift one's focus, as is appropriate to the situation at hand, rather than be stuck in the habit of narrow focus (a fight or flight state, basically). Doing Open Focus I can now feel my brainwaves coming into synchrony and let me tell you, that feels GOOD.
The act of consciously bringing space into the body and being is remarkably freeing. Literally, the areas that hurt are constricted. Bound up, stuck, black holes of energy, so overstimulated to become numb… these areas breathe a huge sigh of relief when you choose to allow light (i.e. space) in. When Dr. Fehmi talks about immersing my focus in the pain, my first reaction was “NO—that is bad, wrong and shameful.” (Wow: releasing pain is wrong. Hmmm, I wonder if that misconception could possibly contribute to prolonged pain.) Open Focus is all about bringing space into the body, about feeling space. And yes, space feels very, very GOOD, particularly where there hasn’t been much of it, for a long, long time.
Openly focused on loving it All,
Laurel
