Let's Stop Outsourcing Our Agency

“There is a dynamic reciprocity between the receptive and the active, each reflecting the other, and at the centre between them is our agency. Choice, and the lucidity to make choices, is where the real magic lies."  - Toko-pa Turner, Belonging

I've been reading the book Your Attention is Sacred - Except on Social Media by Amelia Hruby. I got the book a while ago to support Amelia's choice to self-publish outside of the Amazon monopolies and hadn't read it yet (mostly because my reading time is limited). When an online asynchronous book club around the book was hosted by the incredible Jess of Wild Wellness, I felt called to join. While I'm not on social media at all, I do have a relationship with my phone and technology that doesn't feel healthy or nourishing. What I found in reading the book and connecting with the amazing humans in the book club was a beautiful reframe on attention and agency that I, of course, brought into my understanding of bodies and our healing process. 

In Amelia's book she looks at the etymology of agency, which is the ability to drive. She then asks: in a world that has developed because of the oppressive powers of colonialism and capitalism, to keep us from having agency, how do we regain and retain that agency? 

To help answer this question, Amelia offers the reflection that our agency and attention are "deeply intertwined". She invites the idea that a path towards agency is through the choice of where we place our attention.  Attention is etymologically us tending or stretching towards something. Thus, "As we stretch towards something (with our attention), we draw it and ourselves forth (with our agency)."

Following Amelia’s path in my work on expanding medical agency: if we are wanting to bring our bodies into our experiences in medical settings then we must first bring our attention to our bodies. We can't connect with or identify the many choices we have if we haven't connected with the knowledge our bodies hold or the wisdom of the generations of peoples who came before the western-medical complex.

One of the fabulous people in the book group noted, if the root of attention is to tend, then perhaps we could reframe the word as a-tend-tion. I loved that idea! Bringing attention to our bodies as a way of tending to our bodies. And, since our body's communications ("symptoms") are our body's way of asking for tending -

As we follow our body’s communications and connect to them with curiosity we are bringing a-tend-tion to our bodies and building embodied agency. 

Now, I probably could have said, to have embodied agency, agency built around a presence and awareness in our body, we must have awareness and presence in our bodies without following the etymological path of attention and agency through the last several paragraphs…but what fun is that?

So, to move towards embodied agency in medical settings, which are often designed in ways that suppress our bodied presence, messiness and wholeness, it is important that we practice being with our bodies in safer places. As my 13 year-old recently said when leaving a difficult dentist appointment, “I can do hard things, and it is important to practice those in moments when the stakes aren't as high.” (These young humans are so wise!!!) 

So how do we practice being in our bodies? 

There are many ways to practice being in and with our bodies...somatics, embodiment, many (but not all) forms of yoga, joining my Creative Body Conversations drop-in gatherings…

And how do we bring our presence and agency into medical settings? 

Firstly I think it is essential to remember that you are NOT broken or wrong. You don't need to be fixed. Your body is always working to take care of you and having support in that process can be important and valuable. Ideally your medical provider is there to help you find your path towards thriving. 

Secondly, you can check out my new free resource: You Are the Expert on Your Body: A Support Kit to Help Retain Agency in Medical Settings.  Please follow this link to access the kit. The form adds you to my newsletter list, which you are already a part of (unless you had this email forwarded to you...in which case "hi! I'm Kaeri. :)" ). I'm still asking you to fill out the form as it is helpful for me to see how many people are accessing and engaging with the kit. 

As we bring a-tend-tion to our bodies it is then that we are able to offer ourselves more choice and true agency. That is what I mean by embodied agency. Agency based in our presence, based in a belief in the wisdom and care of our bodies and knowing that when we offer deep listening to our bodies we can be with them in curiosity and we will notice earlier when there are things that may benefit from western-medical tools. Our bodies know how to take care of us, are very practiced at doing so, and sometimes benefit from western-medical tools. However, western-medical labels and tools are not more valuable than our body's knowing. 

In an effort to keep this from going too long, I’ve decided to end here. I have (many) more thoughts, specifically around choice as an embodied experience and how that a full-body honoring is essential to embodied agency. Stay tuned for more of my musings…