The balance between the three elements of this physiological neurology
The ANS and flight-fight and rest mode.
We constantly work with trying to find the balance of these mechanisms in our work within business. Our (global) workforce is constantly in overdrive, and this is seen and acknowledged to be the norm.
The SNS response is constantly ‘on’, it could be said to be like the fuel line to the muscles and blood vessels to promote the three ‘f’s – flight – fight -..ing – and in our business competitive world the general ethos is work, work, work–(hence ‘stress’–Hans Seyle wrote the initial treatise that revolutionized our understanding in modern medicine, and true osteopathic medicine is about therapeutic intervention to reorganize the physical somatic structures that cause constant internal stressors upon the ANS, and thus quieten and put back into balance the ANS.)
Dominant PSN, which tries to rectify too much gain in the SNS
Stress is simply being ‘on’, and it is governed by our left brain, strangely enough, not the right. So it’s ‘male’ directed rather than mediated by our global big picture intuitive gestalt right brain. This gift which is our right brain is not listened to, as this is more ‘feminine’, if we care to gender it, the brain, looks after our parasympathetic self; the three ‘R’s – rest, repair, re-organize. It now has the job (due to our evolution ‘up’ from the great apes and mammals), to take care of the body. In most victim animals as against carnivores, the flight-fight response goes back into balance within a minute and a half or so, so our human-animal self knows how to do this. However because we have a neocortex gracefully enclosing our mammalian brain, this historical automatic (hence autonomic) understanding has been regulated to the second position. So instead of our hypothalamus and midbrain taking autonomic control–like a computer cleaning its cache at night time–we over-ride the autonomic mechanism through our human brain rather than letting the animal and vegetative brains settle down, and simply eat, and allowing the switch over from ‘doing’ to ‘digestion’ to take place. It’s our human doing that is the cause of all of this. We don’t chunk up into ‘being’ as in a ‘true and noble creature’ that is a human being, but merely act as humans in a constantly active state.
Dhikr
Is the science of Remembrance. It is the inner repetition, constant remembrance of the Creator. It takes the monkey in us (left brain) from its constant chatter into being re-directed towards the One, the true Self and state of being, and towards union. It helps to bypass the constant drive in us, in our busy world, and the constant cortisol, epinephrine, etc., producing (fueled or pumped up) state into quietness. As the left brain aspires to elevate itself to Remembrance, the right brain always remembers its origin, then can express itself, and brings the system back to yin, or parasympathetic dominance, as well as exalting in the fact that the left brain is attempting to Remember what it has lost.
“The feminine yearns to find its origin, the masculine what it has lost.”
“La Allahu illalah / God God God / Brahma Brahma / om shanti”, are repetitions that can help; but there are no rights or wrongs, good or bad terms–I guess it is anything that will help tune down the left brain into single-mindedness.