Attention deconcentration

I was reading about the phenomenon of attention deconcentration in an old New Yorker article about free diving, "The Deepest Dive," unfortunately not available in its full form unless you are a subscriber. Here is the relevant portion:

To still the unbidden apprehensions that might interfere with her dive -- what she describes as "the subjective feeling of empty lungs at the deep" -- Molchanova uses a technique that she refers to as "attention deconcentration." ("They get it from the military," Ericson said.) Molchanova told me, "It means distribution of the whole field of attention -- you try to feel everything simultaneously. This condition creates an empty consciousness, so the bad thoughts don't exist."

"Is it difficult to learn?"

"Yes, it's difficult. I teach it in my university. It's a technique from ancient warriors -- it was used by samurai -- but it was developed by a Russian scientist, Oleg Bakhtiyarov, as a psychological-state-management technique for people sho do very monotonous jobs."

I asked if it was like meditation.

"To some degree, except meditation means you're completely free, but if you're in the sea at depth you will have to be focussed, or it will get bad. What you do to start learning is you focus on the edges, not the center of things, as if you were looking at a screen. Basically, all the time I am diving, I have an empty consciousness. I have a kind of melody going through my mind that keeps me going, but otherwise I am completely not in my mind."

This passage in the article intrigued me because it reminded me of playing games to see how far I could expand my visual focus. On the diver Molchanova's website, she mentions that although it is rare for most people to have stumbled upon this experience, people who are subject to persistent stress factors typically have, such as hunters or fighters or other activities where quick decisionmaking is necessary and "emotional reaction in critical situation can lead to the wrong decisions and panic." I feel like I frequently will do this, or try to at least go that direction with my focus. I will do a more toned down version in big crowds, like at an airport. I've heard another practioner refer to something similar as "situational awareness." When I get closest to the idea of deconcentration, I am so hyper aware of all of sensory inputs that I reach a sort of ecstasy. It's very pleasurable.

I'm curious, have the other sociopaths experienced something similar to attention deconcentration?

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