Once upon a time maps were so valuable that pirates would count them as loot. If a ship captain had a quality map, it made the journey much smoother through faster arrivals, fewer expenses, and a lot less risk as they sailed around the hazards.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a map for the journey to healing? I would love to know how to feel better faster, while spending less money, and avoiding all the hazards waiting to prey on desperate people.
It would make a lot of things simpler if there was just one well worn route to healing, but there’s not. Because there’s no one destination. A life that feels good to live will be different depending on who you ask. So we are each out in unexplored territory, navigating the open seas through whatever tools we have, hoping they will lead us someplace safe.
We can’t claim there are cut and dry, right or wrong choices to make about our health, because there are so many variables involved in our decisions. Some practices that would be disastrous in one circumstance, would be the exactly right thing in another. Other practices might seem like the ideal, but it has so many barriers in the way that it could only ever be ideal in theory.
We all have different reasons for the choices we are making when it comes to our health. There is no right answer, there is only what works within a specific context and time. If it is not achievable in your current circumstances, it’s not the right goal and you have to find a different one until you find one that is within your power. No one can solve this problem for us, but we can get some support as we figure it out for ourselves.
Caring for yourself is a skill that has to be learned. Caregiving is a skill, it’s just that it’s been so devalued in our society that it goes largely unnoticed. Some people without those skills feel intense shame as if they are defective for not having them onboard like factory settings. But that’s not how any other skills work. We don’t expect to come to earth knowing how to garden or weld or teach elementary school students. Performing care tasks efficiently is a skill, and so it can learned.
In education, scaffolding refers to temporary supports that help someone as they are learning, until they develop enough skill to be self reliant. I’ve relied on this approach a lot through parenting a disabled kid. Very little physical ability came to Atticus easily. He has needed support while his muscles grew strong enough to hold himself, and while his brain mastered the motor plan. He has needed flexibility to find his own strengths he could rely on to compensate for his weaknesses. And he needed autonomy as he learned to be accountable and compassionate to himself. No matter what the experts said “should” be happening, Atticus was on his own journey to figure out what his unique body was capable of, and he needed support. He couldn’t get up on the bed the way the Physical Therapist showed him, but he did find a way he *could* get up on the bed, once he leaned in to his unique combination of skills and supports.
Being Atticus’s mom has taught me creativity. It has shown me that how you do things really doesn’t matter. It is THAT you do things that matter. None of us know what the top of our ability is, but we all have one. Atticus has taught me that instead of setting far off goals that are out of my control, I keep my eyes on the work in front of me and do the next thing that is in my power.
At Body Loyalty, we built a scaffold to help us as we are learning how to meet our care needs. The variables that determine what choices or actions will help us are so multifaceted that some stranger on the internet or expert you see for 15 minutes will never be able to find your solutions. It is up to each of us to become our own case managers and find the solutions that will work in our unique circumstances.
The Body Loyalty Scaffold offers you support in determining what works within the context of your life. People don’t have the time and money to try everything out there to see if it helps. But we can narrow things down and group them into categories to focus our efforts on what has the best chances.
The Body Loyalty Scaffold is divided into five pillars, each representing one aspect of your holistic health needs. Recovery, mental health, emotional health, physical health, and social health. Each of these areas need attention because each of them impact the other. Someone can be an ironman runner and still be miserable if they aren’t addressing their social health needs. Someone can be adhering to a very strict diet and still feel chronic pain that is a symptom of a mental health condition. For our best experience, we need to attend to ALL of our bodies needs.
Each of these pillars is made up of three categories: Marrow, Mind, and Muscle. The Marrows are the intentions behind our self care choices. They are the core of our efforts and a screening tool for predatory advice. If a diet plan feels like suffering, it is not the plan that will help you. A plan that is sustainable is one that feels like care.
The Minds are mindset approaches that offer a new way of thinking about your care needs. The way we have done things created these problems, so we need to find a new way of doing things. Standing up for your body needs in a world that doesn’t respect them takes mindful action and a whole lot of unlearning. The Minds help you rethink what you have been taught.
The Muscles are the actions we take. They are the actual behavioral strategies we spend our time on. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the landslide of wellness advice coming from every outlet, feeling like unless you are doing EVERYTHING, FOREVER, then there is no hope. But you don’t need to do everything, you just need to do something that addresses each of these areas of need. Whatever fits into your life, abilities, experience, priorities, resources, etc. You do not have to become a different person entirely before you start seeing results. You just have to do what you can.
Really, this is all just a way for me to teach you how to build accommodations into your life. As the disabled parent of a disabled kid, our whole world revolves around accommodations. I have learned how to say, “Welp, that way doesn’t work. Let’s find a new way. What is the actual problem we’re trying to solve here, and what’s another way to get there?” The diet and exercise programs we were taught “work,” don’t. But we need food and movement, so we have to find a new way. What’s the actual problem we’re trying to solve here? Improving our health and living a life that feels good to live. Almost none of the diet plans we’re sold are going to meet that standard.
Your limitations might not rise to the level of clinically significant, but you do still have them and ignoring them is causing you suffering. It could be as simple as needing more sleep or as complex as ignoring symptoms that need to be treated. When you are taught your whole life that body needs are shameful, you feel shame every time you have a body need.
This wellness journey is like we’re all truckers out on the interstates. We’re going different places at different rates, we started at different places with different goals, but the roads we travelling on are the same. A helpful map for a healing journey can’t function like a GPS with turn by turn directions. It needs to work more like an old Thomas Guide – a giant book of maps with all the streets labeled and you had to find the route yourself. Taking someone else’s directions can only take you where they’re going. Which is probably very different from the place that is best for you.
Taking care of yourself is a skill that must be practiced, so instead of thinking of habits or goals, I think in terms of practices. I have a Rest practice. A Breath practice. Awareness, Reflection, Nourishment, Movement, and Caregiving practices. My needs, abilities, and resources change daily, and practices can reflect that. A habit requires repetition and perfection that is not in line with the variables of real human bodies. These practices can look very different depending on the person they are serving.
Let’s make up an example: Rachel is a 35 year old mother of 3. She works from home during the school day and then drives the kids to and from practices until 8. She usually eats on the run, and never has an hour at a time for a workout. For her, a rest practice might mean a nap in the car during a practice. Breath practice might be some calming breaths while she tries to avoid snapping. Awareness can be mindfully noticing her thoughts as she’s driving, and Reflection could be sharing with close friends. She could put some resources into learning to meal prep for a Nourishment practice, and walk around the neighborhood during a lunch break to practice Movement. Heaven knows mothering provides lots of opportunity for Caregiving, so that one wouldn’t require much at all.
What matters isn’t perfection, it’s that we’re doing SOMETHING. As we do that something, it becomes easier and doesn’t take up the same amount of time and effort. Then we can find a new goal, once we’ve got a strong foundation underneath us and the taste of some success spurring us on.
Another example: Roger is a 64 year old executive, married and empty nesting after his kids have grown. For him, a Rest practice might mean cutting back on hours at work and turning his phone off at bedtime. A Breath practice could be 10 minutes of breathwork before he starts his work day to give his brain a boost. Awareness could be therapy, Reflection a memoir project, Movement a regular golf game, and Nourishment a diet prescribed by his dietician to control his cholesterol. For Caregiving, maybe Roger schedules regular time with grandkids, or maybe he gets a dog or takes up gardening.
The options are as variable as the lives we’re living. What we’re actually trying to accomplish can be accomplished a lot of different ways. Accepting that and building that fact in to our processes dissolves a lot of shame.
Exploring the unknown through trying new things and holding on to hope that something will work requires vulnerability. Being wounded in a way that needs healing also renders us vulnerable. Seeking medical care, looking for a solution to emotional pain, searching for people who will be your supportive community, it all makes us incredibly vulnerable. Which is just when the wellness predators smell blood in the water. A map for healing needs to be marked with big letters that say “Here Be Dragons.” But if you stay on the marked path, looking out for landmarks to keep us on the right roads, you can explore solutions without becoming prey. You can develop the strength and skill you need to navigate these treacherous roads with safety, and also with joy.