Regulation of the Speed of Automation

What is possibly an evidence based strategy that we can consciously adopt to downregulate the speed of automation in our life?

In deep sleep, life runs purely like an automatic machine. Because of an absence of manual override, this state is perfectly suited for understanding automation in human life. There are some measurable biomarkers of the speed of automation in deep sleep; here is a list:

  • Our heart is pulsing and circulating blood,
  • Our lungs are breathing air in and out,
  • Our digestive system is digesting food,
  • Our excretion system is accumulating waste and interrupting our sleep for its disposal,
  • Our sleep is also interrupted by dreams arising out of random bubbling up of unconscious experiential memory inherent in our genes,
  • Our metabolic system is creating energy using nutrients from food that we ate and oxygen from the air that we breathe,
  • Our endocrine glands secrete hormones causing our brain to reconnect its neural circuits determining our thought process,
  • Our immune system runs to protect our body from harmful microorganisms like bacteria and viruses,
  • ...

There is so much going on in deep sleep, but in real time our mind is totally unaware. The lack of awareness results from our body-mind complex unconsciously processing their operating information stored by nature in our genetic memory. Mind runs the body from its interior and the innermost parts of our body are the genes at the core of every cell. Deep sleep is also the period of deep rest and recovery because of conscious disconnect of our mind from our genetic memory.

Nature designed our autopilot in such a way that the essential life processes can protect us in the worst possible scenario to which we can be exposed: the scenario of fight or flight when faced with impending death by predators lurking around in our immediate environment, which has not always been civilized.

One side effect of such a design is that the breakneck speed of an ever readiness for a worst case scenario kills us slowly with afflictions, disorders and diseases of all kinds. We can escape such a fate with conscious down regulation of the speed of life in ordinary circumstances with no or little fatal probability.

How do we consciously down regulate the speed of life? We cannot exercise conscious regulation of our essential life processes such as beating of the heart, circulation system, digestive, metabolic or endocrine system. Breathing is the only ordinarily automatic life process which we can choose to regulate with our own volition. Our body-mind complex is built in a way that direct regulation of one autonomic process amounts to an indirect regulation of them all.

In autonomic breathing, we inhale when our brain stem senses a lowering of the blood pH caused by an accumulation of carbon dioxide. That signals the diaphragm to move downwards towards the abdominal cavity expanding the lungs to suck air in, increasing the pressure of air in them. This pressure is relaxed with an exhalation with the lungs pulling the diaphragm upwards towards them into the chest cavity. For breath on autopilot, the downward and upward movements of the diaphragm are small resulting in shallow and fast breathing.

When we consciously regulate the speed of breathing, the prefrontal cortex of our brain, which is the thinking part of the brain, enables deeper downward and upward movements of the diaphragm making us breathe slowly and deeply. Thus taking our breath off of its autopilot amounts to taking life off its autopilot.

In our daily waking state, life on automation is like sleep walking — a disaster. In waking life, ordinary autonomic breathing makes for mere survival while practicing conscious regulation of breath regularly can make for quality life of deep relaxation, health, happiness and harmony in interpersonal relationships.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

Carl Gustav Jung