“Optimizing Performance and Function” 13 – Feeling in Open Focus 14 – Listening in Open Focus 15 – Thinking in Open Focus 16 – Seeing in Open Focus 17 – Racquet Sports Training 18 – Independent Practice of Open Focus
Seeing in Open Focus – Level #3
“Seeing in OPEN FOCUS” (52 minutes) – This program emphasizes seeing as a central experience among the many simultaneous senses to which we may become aware. Our habit is to ignore one or more sensations in favor of other sensations during much of our waking life. Thus, including seeing, and centering seeing, in our awareness during practice pays significant dividends. This exercise and the others of this type (13, 14 & 15) is considered by many of our clients as being particularly effective in facilitating the release of stress and promoting OPEN FOCUS.
Thinking in Open Focus – Level #3
“Thinking in OPEN FOCUS” (32.04 minutes) – This program emphasizes
thinking as a central experience among the many simultaneous senses to which we may become aware. Our habit is to ignore one or more sensations in favor of other sensations during much of our waking life. Thus, including thinking, and centering thinking, in our awareness during practice pays significant dividends. This exercise and the others of this type (13, 14 & 16) is considered by many of our clients as being particularly effective in facilitating the release of stress and promoting OPEN FOCUS.
Feeling in Open Focus – Level #3
“Feeling in OPEN FOCUS” (31:30 minutes) – This program emphasizes feeling as a central experience among the many simultaneous senses to which we may become aware. Our habit is to ignore feeling in favor of other sensations during much of our waking life. Thus, including feeling, and even centering feeling in our all around awareness during practice, pays significant dividends. This exercise is considered by many of our clients as being particularly effective in facilitating the release of stress and promoting OPEN FOCUS. Listening to this program while walking or otherwise exercising has been found to be particularly effective.
Open Focus Level 2
Alleviating Stress Related Physical & Emotional Pain”
7 – Dissolving Pain & Other Experience
8 – Joint Space in Open Focus
9 – Heart Centered Open Focus
10 – Localizing Feeling, Emotion & Pain
11 – How Am I Paying Attention?
12 – Transfer of Open Focus to Daily Life
Transfer of Open Focus to Daily Life – Level 2
“Transfer of OPEN FOCUS to Daily Life” (28:58 minutes) – This program helps develop an OPEN FOCUS in short period of time and then proceeds to describe or mention various situations in the lives of most people in which one can imagine using OPEN FOCUS to enhance productivity and a sense of well-being. This tape represents a method for effortless programming of oneself to enter into OPEN FOCUS, to release habitual narrow focused, objective styles of attending, in every day life.
Localizing Feeling, Emotion and Pain
“Localizing Feeling, Emotion & Pain” (27:04 minutes) – This program helps one localize feelings and emotions that one ordinarily experiences as occurring in the mind, or all over, or everywhere. Once body localization is established, alternating attention styles easily clear emotion or feeling by using one of the dissolving pain exercises. Dissolving pain is not difficult after pain, emotion or feeling is fully localized.
Heart Centered Open Focus
“Heart Centered OPEN FOCUS” (26:08 minutes) – The heart referent in this exercise may be viewed as one of many possible referents, e.g., other body parts, functions, feelings or body locations. When you hear the word heart, for example, you may wish to substitute other words such as navel, throat, etc., or localized emotions such as fear in the chest,sadness in the jaw, etc. This program emphasizes a body location or body structure or feeling or function as a repetitive referent among the many possible simultaneous senses and sensations with which we can become aware. Our habit is to ignore certain sensations during much of our waking life. Thus, centring upon a here-to-fore neglected referent in our multi sensory awareness during practice can release tension and improve function.
Joint Space
“Joint Space” (25:04 minutes) – This program begins with a heavy emphasis upon developing an experiential space in which subsequent sensations will be experienced.
These subsequent sensations are related to the individual joints of the body. Attending particularly to joints facilitates the release of much unconscious stress and has been helpful for a diverse population and has been found to be particularly helpful for persons experiencing joint pain.
Dissolving Pain and Other Experience
“Dissolving Pain and Other Experience” (29:22 minutes) – This program is
designed to facilitate the management of all types of conscious experience through control of attention. This tape may be used specifically to dissolve or diffuse unpleasant mental or physical experiences. The approach to physical pain presented on this tape is based on the finding that attentional alternation between a narrow focus upon an objectified experience and melting into and merging with that experience, and then bringing it into an on-going OPEN FOCUS, often leads to the reduction or dissolution of the experience. Integrating a focal physical or emotional pain into the flow of on-going OPEN FOCUS results in the diffusion of its intensity and judged
importance or affect. Here, and on the exercise, the word “pain” is used in its most general sense and is meant to include experiences of all kinds. In addition to sharp and dull pain, other forms of experience may be dissolved, such as fatigue, depression, anxiety, guilt, tension, anger or other emotions, body feelings, obsessive thought patterns, compulsions, and mental attitudes or states of mind. The basic notion here is that pain and other forms of “disease” and tension are maintained because of a fixation or rigidity of focal attention either upon or directed away from
the experience. This “Dissolving Pain” exercise is designed to provide an opportunity to practice attentional flexibility and to dissolve an existing fixation or focal attention, thus, reestablishing the flow of on-going experience, called OPEN FOCUS. In fact, the techniques used to dissolve pain may be used to dissolve all experience including space and time. This state of unselfconsciousness is often readily achieved during practice. It may be observed retrospectively only as an awareness that the practice period had passed in what seemed like less time than was actually expended. Thus, this sense of rapid expenditure of time, or absence of a sense of time, may be used as an index of the quality of one’s practice. The efficacy of Tape #5 or CD #5 improves as facility and depth of OPEN FOCUS (as guided by Tape #’s 2, 3, 4, 5 or
CD’s #’s 2, 3, 4, 5) is developed.