2. Sympathetic and parasympathetic

From Seitai, I learned that life consists in holding of and looseness. When our organism is flexible, we can overcome great difficulties with ease, and front the most challenging circumstances. On the contrary, when we lose our flexibility, the smallest difficulty can get us into trouble. The ArtP4T will gove you useful tools to use your time at your best without losing your flexibility.

Our nervous system is what links our brain to the rest of our body. The somatic nervous system answers to the external stimuli we receive while the autonomic nervous system regulates the internal body functions. This can be divided in two subsystems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system (all this is standard knowledge in anatomy since many decades).

While both subsystems control the same body functions, they have opposite effects on them: the sympathetic system prepares the body for intense and rapid physical activity (fight-or-flight); on the contrary, the parasympathetic system relaxes the body and inhibits or slows many high energy functions (rest-and-digest).

The sympathetic system is in function when we are conscious. In their recent book Consciousness, Gerard Edelman(*) and Guido Tonoli, two of the most influent neuroscientists of our time, say:

Consciousness abhores holes or discontinuities… The drive to integration is so strong that… apparently, the feeling of an absence is far less tolerable than the absence of a feeling… [while] the ability to differentiate among a large repertoire of possibilities constitutes information, in the precise sense of ‘reduction of uncertainty.’

The sympathetic system can distinguish in milliseconds what to do (differentiation) so to make sense of our world perception (integration) and to avoid the horror vacui. It is focused on goals, gains and results. As we will see in details in the next Chapter, a clear language in describing your tasks is fundamental to accomplish the double-sided need to differentiate and integrate.

The sympathetic system is typically in function when we work but also during R.E.M. sleep. It is powerful, but it drains energy, and therefore we need to rest, stay calm and relaxed, to recover energy.

It is here that the parasympathetic system becomes important. When we sleep deeply, we recover energy naturally. Unfortunately, many people I know sleep badly because they get too stressed during their working times, quite often too long. Hence, the sympathetic system cannot make a step backwards, letting the parasympathetic system do what the body need: relax and recover flexibility.

You know exactly how it goes. Just five minutes more of work. You do not feel pain, or tiredness. You fell invincible. Then you suddenly stop. More than one hour of extra work passed. Your back hurts, now. You feel that your eyes are heavy for so many hours in front of a screen. Your body is rigid like a robot. The morning after you realize that the amount of work done in almost two hours in the evening yesterday you could have done in twenty minutes if you were fresh.

Sounds familiar?

This is exactly what any of us should avoid. We think we are fast, but in truth over working is getting us slower and slower. And the ArtP4T can help you in this respect. Let us see how.

In the sci-fi movie Men in Black III, the young Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) tells Agent J (Will Smith) that they need a cake. Agent J protests, as there is almost no time left to save Earth from an alien invasion. Apparently, that cake in the bar is the most silly move you can have in such a situation. The truth is that the two agents are stuck. They do not know what to do exactly in order to find the alien responsible of the invasion. What they need is to stop and breath calmly, giving themselves a pause for thinking. And suddenly the right thing to do comes into mind, clear as daylight, no doubt.

This kind of Aha-Erlebnis – non-trivial, lateral problem solving – can emerge to consciousness only if we let our parasympathetic system some space for work. Of course, we are still doing things, so the sympathetic system is at work. But out of the emergency condition, your breath rhythm is slower, your heart beat too, and therefore your mind is fresher and you see and hear things that you could not notice in the emergency phase. Let me be very clear in this point. Emergency is a fundamental resource we have to front dangerous situations. I use it too, sometimes. But I do not abuse, because is energy-consuming: when it ends, you need to rest longer than usual. I mean, it is not something that let you spare time. People who can work only under the pressure of emergency should reflect if they are happy about their working style or not. I think they are not. If I am right, please go ahead and read the next Chapter.

(*) Unfortunately Edelman (1929-2014) passed away recently.