Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body »

Jim Robbins is an award-winning journalist and science writer, with frequent contributions to the New York Times, Smithsonian, Scientific American, Discover, and Psychology Today. In connection with his reporting, he has appeared on ABC’s Nightline and on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.

This breakthrough book presents a disarmingly simple idea: The way we pay attention in daily life can play a critical role in our health and well-being. According to Dr. Les Fehmi, a clinical psychologist and researcher, many of us have become stuck in “narrow-focus attention”: a tense, constricted, survival mode of attention that holds us in a state of chronic stress—and which lies at the root of common ailments including anxiety, depression, ADD, stress-related migraines, and more. To improve these conditions, Dr. Fehmi explains that we must learn to return to a relaxed, diffuse, and creative form of attention, which he calls “Open Focus.”

This highly readable and empowering book offers straightforward explanations and simple exercises on how to shift into a more calm, open style of attention that reduces stress, improves health, and enhances performance. The Open-Focus Brain features eight essential attention exercises for improving health, along with an audio CD in which the author guides the reader through fundamental Open-Focus exercises that can be used on a regular basis to enhance our health and well-being.

Dr. Fehmi writes, “Everyone has the ability to heal their nervous systems, to dissolve their pain, to slow down and yet accomplish more, to experience the deeper side of life—in short, to change their lives for the better dramatically.” At last readers can learn the techniques that Dr. Fehmi has offered to thousands of clients—the same drug-free, safe, and effective techniques that have led to remarkable and long-lasting results.

The Open-Focus Brain offers readers a revolutionary, drug-free way to:

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alleviate depression, anxiety, and ADD
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reduce stress-related chronic pain
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optimize mental and physical performance

Includes a 60-minute audio CD:

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essential attention exercises from the book, led by Dr. Fehmi
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listeners learn how to "train the brain" to reduce stress, anxiety, chronic pain, and more
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safe and effective techniques used in Dr. Fehmi's clinic for decades

Publishers Weekly

Alongtime clinician and researcher in biofeedback, Fehmi (with the assistance of science writer Robbins, author of A Symphony in the Brain) advances his program for learning to relieve stress by attaining what he calls open focus-a more diffuse, flexible form of attention that, paradoxically, allows one to focus better and in a more relaxed way. According to Fehmi, most of us habitually operate in a narrow-focus stress mode that results in anxiety and a host of physical problems, including digestive upsets, rashes and migraines. Fehmi draws on his experience with neurofeedback (brain-wave biofeedback) to explain how we can shift our brain waves to attain open focus. These mental techniques help you to experience your body and even your heart in a new way and change how you perceive the space around you. Fehmi grounds his plan in research and patient anecdotes showing the techniques can reduce pain and improve relationships and athletic performance. Fehmi acknowledges the results of open focus are similar to those from meditation, but even readers skeptical of Eastern spirituality may find Fehmi's science-based program useful. (The accompanying audio CD was not heard by PW). (July 10)

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

1 An Addiction to Narrow Focus 11

Exercise: Expanding Your Awareness of Visual Space 25

2 Sweet Surrender: Discovering the Benefits of Synchronous Alpha Brain Waves 29

3 The Full Complement of Attention 41

4 What Lies Beneath: Anxiety 55

Exercise: Head and Hands in Open Focus 63

5 Dissolving Physical Pain 71

6 Dissolving Emotional Pain 79

Exercise: Dissolving Pain 92

7 Love Is a Way of Paying Attention: Open-Focus Tools for Relationships 96

Exercise: Heart-Centered Open Focus 105

8 Peak Performance 113

9 Living in Open Focus 127

Exercise: How Am I Now Paying Attention? 139

10 Attention and Psychotherapy 142

Exercise: Thinking in Open Focus 149

Exercise: Seeing in Open Focus 156

Conclusion: Thoughts on the Evolution of Attention 167

Epilogue 175

Notes 177

Index 185

About the Authors 191