Dissolving Pain

IN CHAPTER 1, I mentioned my early experiments at the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. In the 1960s, as an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, I was searching for a way to help people enter an alpha state (the EEG signature of diffuse-immersed attention) for the relief of stress. I experimented often on myself trying to produce more alpha activity.

After twelve sessions of almost two hours each, engaging in futile attempts to get my alpha to increase, I gave up and accepted the fact that it was simply impossible for me to create alpha on demand. Ironically, the second I gave up and accepted my failure, the EEG registered a significant increase in alpha amplitudes and duration. I realized I had been trying too hard. By surrendering, I slipped into the effortless, interested attention that had eluded me all along.

Earlier in the book, I mentioned how my muscles softened, arthritis pain, tensions, and mild anxiety dissolved. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Chronic anxiety and pain are not the natural state of human beings or necessarily the result of a brain that is somehow fundamentally flawed—they are the result of “operator error.” When people learn to operate their central nervous system the way I believe it was designed to be used, through voluntary changes in attention, mind and body systems don’t break down as often and become more stable and resilient. We know we can—and must—maintain our own health with nutrition, exercise, and diet, but we must, most critically, maintain it through the way we pay attention.

Remember that after my training, I perceived larger scenes without overfocusing on any one element and with much less effort? It wasn’t just visual. It’s hard to describe, but my awareness of the room I was in, my sense of it, was also much bigger and much more vivid. Sometimes I filled the room up with my awareness. It was my first glimpse of Open-Focus attention.

My production of alpha during the session caused a multisensory attention shift from a narrow-objective attention to a wide, diffuse one and moved me from an attention state in which I felt separated from experience to a more sensitive absorption with the world around me. Second, the EEG showed that when we attend in full Open Focus, not only do we produce alpha but we produce a very specific kind, called phase-synchronous alpha.

Synchrony means that a very large number of cells are working rhythmically together—an especially powerful type of synergistic neural activity. The effect of synchrony is greater than the sum of its parts. A laser beam is powerful enough to use as a cutting torch, yet it is only light. But it is powerful because the light waves are in phase, meaning their waveforms are increasing and decreasing in unison. Dr. William Tiller, a professor emeritus of engineering at Stanford, writes, “If we could somehow take the same number of photons emitted by [a 60-watt] lightbulb per second and orchestrate their emission to be in phase with each other . . . the energy density at the surface of the lightbulb would be thousands to millions of times higher than the present photon energy density at the surface of the sun.”

A number of published studies of veteran meditators have demonstrated that alpha synchrony can greatly diminish or eliminate many different kinds of pain. In 2009, researchers published a study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine involving thirteen meditators and thirteen individuals who didn’t practice meditation. They pressed a heating plate to the legs of both groups and found that the meditators, even when they were not meditating, could tolerate heat up to the maximum of 53 degrees Celsius (127 degrees Fahrenheit), while the nonmeditators could only tolerate temperatures well below that.

In another 2009 study in the journal Pain, scientist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte found that just twenty minutes of meditation for three days can reduce a subject’s perception of the intensity of pain, even in subjects who have never meditated before.

Other studies, including one published in the journal Science in 1978, have shown alpha enhancement to be effective for different kinds of emotional pain, from anxiety to depression.

After I realized the tremendous potential of in-phase alpha, the focus of my research shifted to finding a way to help produce those brain waves as quickly as possible and on demand. It had taken me twenty-four hours over twelve days to learn how to let go and increase alpha amplitude and duration. That was too long for it to be effective as a therapy. Many people would end participation before they experienced relief from stress and pain. Besides, there was no way to verbally instruct someone in how to do it. It took experience, trial and error.

In 1971, I exposed student volunteers to a number of stimuli as their EEG was monitored to see which ones produced the most phase-synchronous alpha. Some were asked to visualize peaceful pastoral scenes and other relaxing imagery. One day I introduced a twenty-item relaxation inventory to undergraduate students. During the first few questions—imagine a waterfall or a dewdrop on a rose petal, for example—their EEG manifested little change. Then, in the middle of the inventory, the students were asked, “Can you imagine the space between your eyes?” Boom. Their brains produced abundant phase-synchronous alpha. The second question was, “Can you imagine the space between your ears?” Again, instantly abundant high-amplitude alpha appeared. No other question or imagery brought about such profound changes in the EEG as the experience and awareness of space, nothingness, or absence.

During further research, I found that using this “objectless imagery” almost always elicits large amplitude and prolonged periods of phase-synchronous alpha activity very quickly. In other words, experiencing space is a shortcut to alpha-wave activity. Nothing is far more than nothing. “No-thing” is a robust healer of the human central nervous system and critical to our health and well-being. Space is unique among perceptions because space, silence, and timelessness cannot be grasped fully by our attention as a separate object.

The awareness of space slips through and permeates your senses. Seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling, and thinking of space, bathing in it on every level, while experiencing a sense of timelessness, is a powerful way to relax the nervous system, the most powerful and most rapid way I know.

For example, can you imagine feeling the space in the whole room you are in right now?

I discovered the robust effects of the awareness of space on the central nervous system on my own, with the help of brain synchrony, but I was certainly not the first to discover these effects. There are numerous examples of space and nothingness as a component of meditation. The Japanese have a philosophy of ma, cultivating the awareness of objects as well as the space between them. One Eastern mystic, Master Hakuin, wrote that it was important to “attain a state of mind in which even though surrounded by crowds of people, it is as if you were alone in a field extending for tens of thousands of miles.” All of these different approaches probably yield slower cortical rhythms and dial down the central nervous system.

Work by several researchers, meanwhile, would later show that phase-synchronous alpha is the hallmark of veteran meditators. What I’d done, in effect, was discover the physiological outcome or essence of Eastern meditation practice, and described it in the language of Western psychology and science.

Since a sustained awareness of space is key to Open Focus, I recorded a series of exercises to guide people through different kinds of objectless space imagery, asking them to imagine space extending to the walls, ceiling, floor, and beyond in every direction, or asking them to imagine space in and around their eyes, neck and head, and hands. Or asking them to imagine space in, around, and through their pain. When people imagine space, and center their awareness on it, the brain responds immediately, dropping into whole-brain synchronous alpha.

It’s more than just a general response. When we imagine space around specific parts of the body—the stomach, for example—it targets the release of pain and tension to the specific area, as well as providing a general release.

Add neurofeedback equipment—sensors placed on the scalp that detect when the brain is producing alpha—and people can change very quickly. In the 1960s, I designed a feedback system with five sensors on the scalp connected to a device that “rewards” people with light and sound feedback when they produce phase-synchronous alpha. With this feedback, people quickly learn to produce alpha activity, whereas some meditators might take years to accomplish this.

What is the physiological mechanism that explains why imagining space and silence has this sudden and powerful effect on the brain? Part of it may be that the brain is very busy when it is making sense out of the objects in the world. When it is processing sense objects—either physical or imagined—it uses desynchronized activity in order to make that processing possible. Electrical signals that bind together different regions of the brain move at speeds exceeding a hundred miles an hour.

When the mind is asked to imagine space, however, there is “no thing” to grasp, objectify, and make sense of, and the brain is allowed to quit its rapid processing and take a vacation. Cortical rhythms slow quickly into alpha, and a racing brain and mind become a stress-reducing brain and a quiet mind. Space seems to reset neural networks affected by stress, returning them to their original, fully balanced functioning.

When we are well trained in flexible attention, we can readily move into alpha activity when emergency functions aren’t needed, just as the cat does after its hunt. The cat fixes on a single object of prey, or chases that object down and kills it, if need be, in narrow-objective focus. During the hunt, the mouse is foreground, and everything else is relegated to the periphery or background of attention. Narrow focus played its role—it induced a surge in adrenaline, increasing blood flow to the large muscle groups and increasing heart rate to support stalking, chasing, and the takedown.

When the chase ends, the cat’s attention moves out of narrow focus toward a diffuse focus in which there is no longer a strong distinction between figure and ground, breaking with emergency function. The cat is now resting in every sense of the word, seeing everything equally and simultaneously. This diffuse-immersed attention represents not only a break with emergency function but a process the cat can engage to actually reverse the effects of stress from the hunt.

Exercise

Localizing Pain

This exercise is designed to help you discover where in your body the worst of your pain is located. By finding its exact location or center, you take a powerful step toward being able to merge with it and dissolve it, using the “Dissolving Pain” exercise, as well as the other exercises that follow it. If you already know where your pain is centered in the body, it is not necessary to do this exercise.

Remember to allow fifteen seconds between the end of one question and the beginning of the next question.

Guiding Questions

Can you imagine already being more fully in Open Focus than you ever have been?

Can you imagine experiencing all your senses simultaneously and equally, centering your attention upon feeling the presence of your body and mind, and the space they occupy, and the three-dimensional space around them, to infinity in every direction?

Can you imagine resting in all your feeling experience in this moment?

Can you imagine scanning your present experience for any current feeling, emotion, sensation, pain, or attitude? Examples include tension, impatience, annoyance, fatigue, boredom, confusion, restlessness, anger, fear, loneliness, guilt, depression, anxiety, or any other feeling that is present in this moment at any level of intensity.

Can you imagine choosing the most intense present feeling and centering your attention upon this feeling? If anxiety, for example, is the most intense experience, then the causes of this anxiety or your reactions to this anxiety are not the same feeling as the anxiety itself. For example, the reactions of bracing, tensing, sweating, a pounding heart, or hyperventilation, if present, are not the feeling of anxiety itself. Center your attention only upon the feeling of the most intense anxiety itself, and imagine feeling precisely where it is located in your body.

Is it possible for you to imagine feeling that portions or percentages of this experience are localized in specific regions of your body? Can you, for example, sense whether half or two-thirds or even all of your most intense experience is localized in one or more specific regions of your body? If, at any time during the course of this exercise, you feel that all of the most intense experience is felt in one or more specific parts of your body, then practice one of the “Dissolving Pain” exercises to diffuse the most intense of your localized experiences.

Can you imagine that the unlocalized portion of the most intense experience may be free-floating in space, or may be an all-over-body feeling in space, or may be sensed as a feeling in mind-space?

Can you imagine that if you cannot successfully localize your pain in your body, then it is considered unlocalized?

Can you imagine maintaining a feeling of space, surrounding and permeating mind and body, extending to the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room you are in, throughout the exercise?

Can you now imagine centering your attention on the unlocalized experience while letting the body-localized portion of this same experience remain present in the background of your attention?

Is it possible for you to imagine basking in the feeling of your unlocalized experience in a more absorbed way and more sensitively? As you do so, can you now sense where some or all of your pain experience is located within your body?

Can you imagine sensing what percentage of your most intense experience remains unlocalized at this moment?

Again, can you imagine merging with and bathing in the feeling of this remaining unlocalized experience even more subtly and completely, while sensing where this feeling is located in your body during this merging process?

Again, can you imagine feeling what percentage of your most intense experience continues to remain unlocalized?

Can you imagine more totally immersing yourself in and merging with any remaining unlocalized experience, while at the same time sensing where this unlocalized experience is centered in your body?

Again, can you imagine feeling the percentage of your most intense experience that still remains unlocalized?

Can you imagine rating on a 0–10 scale how intense the unlocalized experience is compared to the possible presence of the same feeling in your feet?

Can you imagine rating which is stronger, your unlocalized experience or the possible presence of the same feeling in your legs?

Can you imagine rating the strength of your unlocalized experience as compared to the present feeling in your hip joints and buttocks? Which is stronger?

Can you imagine rating the intensity of your unlocalized experience as compared to the present feeling in your lower GI system and lower back? Which is more intense?

Can you imagine rating the intensity of the unlocalized experience as compared to the present feeling in your lower abdomen and reproductive organs?

Can you imagine now rating the intensity of the unlocalized experience as compared to the feeling present in your stomach and waist region, including the feeling present in your middle back?

Can you imagine now rating the intensity of the unlocalized experience as compared to the same feeling present in your solar plexus and diaphragm?

Can you imagine rating the intensity of the unlocalized experience as compared to the feeling present in your rib cage, heart, chest, and upper back?

Can you now imagine rating the unlocalized experience as compared to the feeling present in your respiratory system, including the feeling present in your nose, sinuses, pharynx, larynx, trachea, bronchial tubes, and lungs?

Can you imagine rating the intensity of the unlocalized experience as compared to the feeling present in your hands and arms?

Can you now imagine comparing the intensity of the unlocalized experience to the feeling in your shoulders?

Can you imagine comparing the intensity of the unlocalized experience to the feeling in your face and eyes?

Can you imagine comparing the intensity of the unlocalized experience to the feeling present in your head?

Can you now imagine comparing the intensity of the feeling in your hands to the intensity of the feeling of presence of your feet?

Can you imagine comparing the intensity of the feeling in your arms to the feeling of your legs?

Can you imagine comparing the feeling in your hips to the feeling in your shoulders and sensing where these feelings are more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine comparing the experience of your lower back to that of your middle back and sensing in which place the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine comparing the feeling in your buttocks to that in your reproductive organs and sensing where the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine comparing the feeling of intensity in your stomach to that in your solar plexus and sensing where the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine comparing the feeling in your chest to that in your upper back and sensing in which of these body parts the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine now comparing the feeling in your heart to the feeling in your throat and sensing where the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine now comparing the feeling in your neck to the feeling in your jaw and sensing where the feeling is more clearly similar to the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine now comparing the feeling in your mouth to the feeling in your eyes and sensing where the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine now comparing your face to the sides of your head and sensing where the feeling is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Can you imagine comparing the feeling present in the top of your head to the feeling present in the back of your head and sensing which of these two feelings is more intense than the unlocalized experience?

Once again, can you imagine feeling how much of the original pain experience is localized in your body? Is 100 percent of it now localized in your body, or does some of it remain unlocalized, that is, in your mind?

Can you now imagine centering your attention on the most intense body-localized portion of the chosen experience, sensing its shape and the space around it, and the space it occupies, while feeling the space in the whole room?

Can you imagine what it would feel like if this awareness, which is you, was already merged with the body experience, feeling this experience from inside the space that it occupies?

Can you imagine feeling the most intense experience, which is now localized in one or more parts of your body?

If less than 100 percent is localized, then can you imagine repeating this exercise once or twice in order to fully localize your chosen experience in your body?

If all or most of your chosen experience is localized, then can you imagine using the “Dissolving Pain” exercise to dissolve your localized experience?