A moment to understand · Open Focus and pain
Make room around the hurt.
When something hurts, attention narrows onto it and the body braces. Les Fehmi's Open Focus method asks you to do the opposite: widen your awareness until the pain sits inside a much bigger space. This short video shows the idea. Below it is what that looks like in practice, and an honest look at the evidence. 49 seconds, narrated, with captions.
Part of A moment to understand. New to the idea? Start with what Open Focus is.
Why pain narrows attention
Pain is built to grab you. It is the body's alarm, so it is no surprise that attention snaps onto it and the muscles around it tighten. That response is useful when you have just touched a hot stove. When pain sticks around, the same narrowing and bracing can keep the stress response switched on, and pain and tension can feed each other.
Widening instead of fighting
Fehmi's suggestion was to stop treating pain as something to push away. Instead you let your attention open until it includes the space around your body, the space inside it, and the sounds in the room, and then you let the pain sit inside that wider field. You still notice it. You just stop gripping it. People who practice this often describe the sensation as softening, losing its sharp edges, or breaking up into smaller, changing parts.
- 1. Widen firstBefore turning toward the pain, open up: feel both hands at once, then the space between them, then the sounds around you.
- 2. Include the painLet the pain be one part of that wide awareness, alongside everything else, rather than the center of it.
- 3. Feel the space in itImagine the area that hurts as roomy and porous, with space running through it. Notice what changes, if anything, without trying to force a result.
The Space Between has a guided version of this, Dissolving Pain, that walks you through it step by step.
What the evidence supports
The video describes Fehmi's model, in which open attention brings alpha brain waves into a calmer, more synchronized state and the pain loosens its hold. That is his explanation, drawn from his clinic's EEG work. It has not been tested in controlled trials, and nobody's brain waves were measured in this video.
What is better established is the general principle: pain is shaped by attention and stress, not only by what is happening in the tissue. Attention-based approaches, such as mindfulness programs, have been studied in controlled trials for chronic pain and show small to moderate benefits on average for some people. Open Focus belongs to that family, but it has not been studied as rigorously itself. Treat it as a practice worth trying, and keep working with a clinician on the cause of the pain.
Transcript
0:00When we feel pain, our natural instinct is to narrow our attention and tense up against it, amplifying the stress response.
0:08Open Focus shifts your awareness from a tight spotlight into a soft panoramic floodlight.
0:15By sensing the space around and within your body, your brain enters a calm, synchronous alpha wave state.
0:23Instead of fighting the hurt, you observe it objectively within a vast open field of awareness.
0:30Without the tension of narrow focus holding it together, the pain loses its density, softens, and dissolves, creating space to heal.
Sources
- Fehmi, L. & Robbins, J., 2010. Dissolving Pain: Simple Brain-Training Exercises for Overcoming Chronic Pain. Trumpeter Books. The method this video is based on.
- Fehmi, L. & Robbins, J., 2007. The Open-Focus Brain. Trumpeter Books. The background on Open Focus and alpha synchrony.
- Fehmi & Shor, 2013. Open Focus attention training. Psychiatric Clinics of North America. Fehmi's overview of attention training for stress and pain-related symptoms.
- Hilton et al., 2017. Mindfulness meditation for chronic pain: systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Controlled-trial evidence for attention-based practice in chronic pain, with modest average effects.
Open Focus is a trademark of its owners. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by them. It is general information, not medical advice. Written by Matt Knapp, who runs a brain health program at a medical practice in Ellicott City, Maryland, and builds these apps on the side.
Try the guided version.
Dissolving Pain on The Space Between is free, runs in your browser, and needs no account.
The Space BetweenDissolving Pain, a guided practice · spacebetween.app
More subjects: A moment to understand · All four apps: knapp.build/brain