In this essay I will explore the inherited regulation technologies from mesoamerican pre-colombian indigenous society that are still practiced today, and apply these tools to a specific use-case for a latina waitress wanting to ask for a raise.

Part 1: The Predictive Organ

My host in Medellin is arranging for me to meet with one of her friends who is a poet. She is discussing the schedule that works for both of us. I should be excited, it is a rare opportunity. It would be good for me to focus on my writing career, after weeks of having a difficult experience with being catcalled and objectified in the streets of Medellin. But instead, I dread it. I want to go shopping, wear something nice and wander the city. I think what I want is more attention. I ask myself, why does it feel more comfortable, desirable, even morally correct, to go back to a situation that had been traumatic, rather than to choose a clearly more exciting and dignified and healthy activity? I try to remember my initial enthusiasm for writing, but it seems like another lifetime ago. I think about the difficulty of breaking maladaptive habits, trusting others after betrayal, the desire to stay the same, even if it means staying in bad relationships, bad habits, sleeping habits, eating habits etc. Shouldn’t I be seeking a better life, should it not find that attractive?

What makes these traumatic and negative habits more attractive to our minds and egos? Why does the human body do this, when the better option is so obvious and objectively more attractive?

According to Predictive Processing Theory (Friston, Clark, Hohwy), the brain’s top function is to minimize “prediction error” at all costs. The entire nervous system acts like a Bayesian inference machine (something that takes a probability formula and automatically applies it over and over again). Its purpose is to reduce surprise, reduce metabolic demand, and increase survival. 

When there is a mismatch between predicted input and real output, the level of mismatch uses energy in calories. Predictable environments lower free energy and conserve calories whereas unpredictable environments raise consumption. The brain prioritizes energy consumption by survival; it already takes up 20% of total caloric consumption, disproportionate to its 2% body mass. Higher-order processing (planning, social cognition, self-reflection) consumes disproportionately more glucose than lower-level processes (reflexes, threat detection).

What was happening in my body was that due to surviving trauma, my brain was optimized for surviving that pattern. Adrenaline and survival necessitated that my brain synapses and reflexes adapt quickly in those situations. That means I got ‘good’ at it. It doesn’t necessarily mean I know how to leave a bad relationship. It is survival in the sense of knowing how to merely exist in that situation. Even if the person is staying there, the brain considers survival to be different metrics than we see for the persona as a whole. For the brain, survival is existence, even if it is painful for the rest of the person. For the brain, as long as it can correctly predict reality, it feels good. If I know I will be insulted tomorrow, and if I am indeed insulted tomorrow, the brain is happy, it has made a correct prediction. The easier the prediction is, the better it feels, and trauma makes this easy to predict. Think of a person who has been betrayed, and now suspects that everyone will betray them. Their brain has adapted with incredible sensitivity to that stimulus. It has been optimized. To leave that state of optimization and enter a situation that is less predictable, even if desirable for the person’s overall well-being, feels incredibly high-caloric and unattractive to the brain. 

To measure this in quantitative terms, let us compare the metabolic costs of survival vs socializing. 

The flight-or-flight state is metabolically “cheap”. When you’re in danger, your brain shuts off complex reasoning (PFC suppression), emotional nuance, long-term planning, social interpretation, interoception, empathy, and curiosity. This activates the amygdala, brainstem, and the sympathetic nervous system. These systems are fast and energetically efficient. They cost about 5-8% above baseline metabolism. Clearly, danger mode is computationally simple. It is designed to conserve energy for survival, not complexity. 

In contrast, in a socially safe environment, your brain must activate the prefrontal cortex, insula for interoception, temporoparietal junction for mentalizing, mPFC for self-other modeling, ACC for emotional attunement, and the ventral vagus nerve for regulation. This costs a roughly +20-25% metabolic increase compared to baseline. This is why new social spaces feel taxing, vulnerability feels tiring, and stable environments feel harder than dangerous ones. Building a community requires energy and regulation requires sustained caloric input. Safety mode is computationally complex. Your brain must process nuance, meaning, connection, and prediction simultaneously. 

A traumatized brain is over-trained in danger prediction, so the danger environment is cheaper, faster, and predictable, even if it is harmful. This is not a choice, but computation on energy.

There are clearly costs to the organism when staying in dangerous environments. Chronic stress and hormonal imbalance will kill the individual over time, if not the immediate threats itself. But then why does the brain not take account for these other factors coming from other parts of the body, from its thyroid that produces hormones or the kidney processing toxins? The brain is not democratic. It is simply one organ in a system trying to cooperate. 

This is a jarring notion, the idea that the brain, in terms of survival, is only a member of a democratic body, and not the boss in charge. Our beliefs around the brain being the master of the body come from generations of Western intellectual thought. But what about other intellectual disciplines? If there is a superior non-brain focused adaptation of survival, what are those? Do ancient indigenous practices have more effective nervous system regulation technologies?

Across Mesoamerica, including the Chorotega, Indigenous practices implicitly activated:

1. Parasympathetic Regulation

• slow communal rhythm
  
• shared meals
  
• collective labor
  
• multi-generational caregiving
  
• predictable daily cycles
  

→ activates the ventral vagal system

→ lowers cortisol

→ increases oxytocin

→ builds safety memory

---

2. Somatic Discharge

• dancing
  
• drumming
  
• ritual movement
  
• sweating
  
• fasting
  
• hot springs / river bathing
  

→ moves adrenaline and cortisol through the muscles

→ completes threat cycles

→ prevents trauma freeze

---

3. Predictable Social Structure

• clear roles
  
• predictable rituals
  
• seasonal rhythms
  
• shared childcare
  
• communal decision-making
  

→ reduces prediction error

→ stabilizes the prefrontal cortex

→ decreases metabolic load of social processing

---

4. Environmental Co-regulation

• barefoot contact with earth
  
• immersion in nature
  
• temperature variation
  
• natural light cycles
  
• clean sensory environments
  

→ regulates circadian rhythms

→ decreases cortisol

→ increases HRV

→ supports immune system

What is interesting is how much of these technologies are still practiced today by modern latino cultural habits. There are many modern equivalents, these are some examples:

“The gathering of tías, uncles, cousins”

→ attempts to restore co-regulation

→ partial activation of ventral vagus

→ shared emotional load

Cooking and eating together

→ oxytocin release

→ rhythmic body cues

→ hunger-satiety co-regulation

→ predictable ritual

Soccer, dance, music

→ somatic discharge

→ communal rhythm

→ adrenaline cycling

→ emotional synchronization

Neighborhood gossip

→ primitive threat-mapping

→ attempt at restoring informational predictability

→ communal safety calibration

Drinking together

→ DYREGULATED attempt at:

• numbing hypervigilance
  
• bonding
  
• synchronizing state
  
• reducing social anxiety
  

Alcohol replaces the ritual the body is missing as a compensatory nervous-system behavior.

Shade seeking – when people sit in clusters in shade, under a tree, doorway or porch.

• reduces sensory load
  
• grounds the body temperature
  
• slows breathing
  
• creates micro-social safety
  
• softens hypervigilance
  
• mimics ancestral meeting under trees
  

Slow coffee, unlike the American ‘coffee to go’ but the practice of drinking slowly and talking without rushing.

• rhythmic sipping regulates breath
  
• conversation synchronizes nervous systems
  
• gives predictable social structure
  
• induces oxytocin without vulnerability

Slow, aimless street walking in pairs, walking around the block chatting, “Paseando”

• bilateral stimulation (like EMDR)
  
• movement discharges excess cortisol
  
• no eye contact needed → less social pressure
  
• walking side-by-side is naturally regulating
  
• culturally normal and low-effort

Listening to music in a shared space, not necessarily active dancing but just listening

• rhythmic audio is ancient regulation
  
• predictability of beat reduces cognitive load
  
• communal sound = co-regulation
  
• activates midbrain auditory circuits (safety cues)

Shared meals that are not rushed. In America and Asia, particularly in cities there is a rise of people living alone and eating alone. Eating together is one of the strongest human regulators.

• chewing signals safety
  
• co-eating synchronizes vagal rhythms
  
• predictable social roles reduce anxiety

Being outside of the house but not going anywhere (sitting on the porch)

• semi-social exposure without pressure
  
• predictable environment → low cognitive cost
  
• sunlight regulation
  
• passive participation in community rhythms
  

Micro service or help. Tiny tasks that people do for each other automatically, like offering a drink of water, a seat, a cookie, or helping to fix something small. Acts of service activate the caregiving circuit, creating oxytocin and immediate down-regulation, and restores a feeling of agency.

Non-malicious gossip, functioning as “social weather report”

• updates threat-maps
  
• reduces uncertainty
  
• provides predictability about the social field
  
• gives shared meaning
• In evolutionary terms, this is “distributed vigilance”

Doing nothing together (is not something that is possible in western culture)

Communal rhythm that includes tapping on tables, humming, kids bouncing balls, someone idly drumming a bottle. Rhythmic predictability is a safety cue and synchronizes heart rate through entrainment

“I’ll go with you” culture, accompanying someone on an errand increases oxytocin and reduces hypervigilance

Family telenovela watching regulates through predictable plot structures, collective emotional processing, and shared reactions.

Cooking in pairs

Asking ‘todo bien’ as a check-in ritual signals predictability, belonging, and shared voice rhythm.

If latino culture is so regulating, then why are many communities trapped in dysregulation? I believe capitalism has inserted itself with its presence as enough of a disturbing force to limit or pause or worsen regulation.

What I have just presented is a map of cultural technology that has a clear physiological purpose. The value of this description is to validate latino cultural practices against the western, capitalistic, high-productivity one that often clashes in high-contact towns like Nosara. In smaller rural towns, or areas without much foreign contact, there is no lack of legitimacy around Tico cultural practices but the proximity to foreigners can induce feelings of shame. In comparison to the fast-paced western lifestyle, suddenly the same exact behaviors become embarrassing, unproductive, small-town, poor, unambitious or unprofessional.

The purpose of this essay has been to re-legtitimize the cultural practices of latinos as a possible superior regulatory technology, not only for social regulation, but for survival itself. Many studies have been unable to prove why impoverished communities express higher levels of joy and celebration (through parties and reggaeton for example) than compared to affluent societies in the north with higher rates of depression and suicide. I argue that understanding the body as a democratic system not run by only the brain bridges this gap in understanding, and re-legitimizes many survival practices of pre-colombian societies. These ancestral nervous system technologies embody collective intelligence, resistance to trauma, and support community-based cognition.

Part 2: Application

In application to the real world, I imagine how this knowledge will affect one specific hypothetical situation. I imagine a young latina woman asking her western boss at a cafe for a raise. She does not have the same ‘productivity habits’ that the boss understands, yet has relational instincts that tourism industries desperately need.

in the western, productivity-focused hierarchy:

• emotional intelligence is undervalued
  
• warmth is seen as “personality,” not skill
  
• presence is not monetized
  
• stability is invisible
  

Her possible competition, other western workers show “leadership” traits:

• ambition
  
• assertiveness
  
• individual confidence
  
• speaks loudly
  
• self-advocates
  
• brags about side projects
  
• is confident even when incompetent
  
• treats the café like a stepping-stone

the Western “leadership” model is built on:

• abstraction
  
• self-promotion
  
• individualism
  
• performance
  
• ego
  

She may feel that that is the only path to a promotion and that she has nothing to offer. 

Her actual strengths:

• she reads customers’ emotions instantly
  
• she builds trust without trying
  
• she makes people feel safe
  
• she creates warmth just by showing up
  
• she knows how to regulate group energy
  
• she can sense tension in coworkers
  
• she de-escalates without training
  
• she intuitively keeps community structure intact
  

These are leadership skills, but she does not know they are leadership skills when measured from a western criteria. Her own cultural strengths are invisible to her.

She can hold space.

She can regulate a room.

She can feel subtle dynamics.

She can read energy.

She can anticipate needs.

These are the exact skills of:

• managers
  
• leaders
  
• supervisors
  
• community organizers
  
• hospitality experts
  

I think most of the time, these comparisons to western leadership markers are not articulated but felt as shame, when an individual goes home, cooks with her family, sits with nieces on the porch. At the moment she is regulated, but the cultural shock around westerners creates a sensation of ‘otherness’ and social isolation when she attempts to penetrate the opportunities  that exist in the ‘other’ world. I hope this explanation helps to bridge the gap between the pre-colombian, pre-capitalist culture and the modern one we are all thrust into. It is not a matter of stopping the speed of modernity, but of getting on that train, not through forced confusion but with control and clear understanding.

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