Wouldn’t it be beautiful if there was always a right answer when it comes to caring for our bodies? It would certainly be convenient if there was one right choice to make that would guarantee us health and vitality, but it just doesn’t exist – no matter how certain the sales person is – and when you think about it, it’s illogical. How can there be one right choice when our bodies are different by the day?
When my son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, we started attending a ton of therapy together. Physical, occupational, speech, art, music, equine, I threw every approach at him to get the best results possible. It was an educational experience I found astonishing. There are so many body functions you don’t even think about until they become a problem for you or someone you love. Can his ankle flex up? Can his ankle flex down? What degree is his hip rotation? Can he grab small items with his thumb and forefinger? Can he transfer food from one side of his mouth to the other? The level of granular detail required to support his own pace of development was staggering to me. So many little milestones I had never been aware of when they weren’t problems for me, and so many more little milestones I only discovered by realizing how unimportant they were.
Cerebral Palsy is so different in every person who lives with it that treatment for Cerebral Palsy ends up consisting of a lot of experimenting to find out what is achievable, and how that can be used to get to the next achievement. Atticus might not be able to get from the floor to the bed the same way I do, but there IS a way, and we had to experiment, iterate, practice, and experiment again in order to find what is possible for him. Sometimes he just needed a little more time, sometimes he needed an accessibility device, and sometimes we realized that whatever function was out of reach wasn’t necessary to live a good and fulfilling life.
These same lessons are applicable to everyone with a body, not just people with CP. Each of us has different skills, physical makeup, talents, interests, experiences, resources, and needs, but to fit into society we often have to pretend like we don’t. We bear the shame of our differences and think it is our unique problem when really it is just how being a human being works.
Your body needs will change again and again throughout your life, as will the circumstances you live in. The only way to find body loyal solutions is to keep experimenting and to pay attention to the results you get.
What worked for you as a kid won’t work for you as an adult. What worked for you at 25 isn’t going to necessarily be the thing that works for you at 45. Our bodies are in a state of constant flux between growth and deterioration, so the whole time we are here we will have to keep learning what care needs we have, and what ways of meeting them are accessible to us.
The only way to find the solutions that will work in your life is trial and error. For every phase of life you are in.
I started conducting experiments for myself one day after an intense visit with my therapist. She recommended I get myself a little treat on the way home, and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted. At that point in my life I had no idea what my preferences were. I had spent too much time being denied, being afraid, trying to please. When it came time to actually honor my preferences, they weren’t there. I had to discover them, and experimenting was the way.
Inspired by the Julia Roberts movie “Runaway Bride,” I started by giving myself an egg taste test. Just like in the movie, I sat down with a whole bunch of egg dishes to decide what I preferred. I came out with an answer – Jacque Pepin style scrambled eggs with fresh tomatoes – and with a new method to finding solutions in my life. It doesn’t matter what method anyone else says is the best, it matters whether or not it works for you.
“Conduct Experiments” is a principle of Body Loyalty that encourages people to make their self care choices based on what yields them individual positive outcomes, knowing that trial and error will always be part of the process as body needs change. It is the mindset shift that will help you deal with your emotional health as you strive for Self Acceptance.
There is no need for shame over your body needs, and abandoning shame will improve your emotional health. If you accept your physical form, accept your neuro framework, accept your body needs, you can find your own solutions that work with the resources you have, and you never again need to listen to someone who wants to shame those differences.
You can conduct experiments to discover your preferences in all areas of your life. What is a texture you love feeling? What clothing feels good or expresses your personality? What sleep hours give you the most rest?
The experimental process – the scientific method – works like this. You observe something, like, say, a twitter thread on walking. You research the topic enough to develop a hypothesis, like, “Walking might be good for me.” You test that with an experiment, like going for a walk, and then you analyze the results. For you the result might be, “walking is indeed good for me.” For me the result might be, “walking when the temperature is over 80 is not good for me.”
In experimentation, trial and error is part of the process, so there is no failing. If you try and implement some practice, and it doesn’t work out, it’s not a failure. It’s valuable data. That practice, in that way, isn’t the solution to your problem.
So when you get motivated to try something, and it doesn’t work out, you are not the failure. That same intervention might work for someone else, it might even work for you down the road once you have some more experience, but these practices exist to serve us, we do not exist to serve the practices. That intervention, whatever you experimented with, was what failed, not you. Your experiment was successful.
I really admire the work of adrienne maree brown and in her book Emergent Strategy she writes about how change happens. She emphasizes that change is non-linear and iterative. Which means that it is not a straight line from where you are to where you are going, and you can only get there by trying, failing, and changing your approach.
She writes, “If we release the framework of failure, we can realize that we are in iterative cycles, and we can keep asking ourselves – how do I learn from this?”
If you approach your care choices with the spirit of experimentation and learning, there is no such thing as failure. It’s all just data to inform your next iteration.
Some of us have life experience that skews the data we get. If you grow up in an environment where you are degraded and neglected, you will often think the whole world is degrading and neglectful, even when that’s not true. If you have a history of trauma, you can become wired to weight threats more heavily than might be accurate. Data sets get tainted in experiments all the time. The answer to that is more experimentation and “peer review.” Trusted friends, therapists, and loved ones can help us refute this tainted data set, and then we can experiment to see if what they say is true. My adult experiments have shown me that the data I collected as a child was not representative of how the world is guaranteed to be.
The results we are looking for from our experiments are not numbers. They are feelings. Numbers are just a fraction of the picture when it comes to our bodies, and not a good goal by themselves. Numbers reflecting a low blood pressure aren’t good out of context. If they come because you stopped hydrating, no matter how low the numbers, you will not feel good. If your weight decreases but it costs you your hair, your healthy relationships, your joy, that is not a good result.
I’m someone who can fixate on numbers in ways that become destructive to me, so I try to never use them on my body. They don’t mean anything for my purposes anyway. Numbers to describe the body are only meaningful in a doctor’s office. Otherwise, numbers become a way to try to dominate the body. Numbers can become an arbitrary benchmark that is just proof of being able to bring your body under your control. But the body can never be controlled, so trying only brings rebellion. Nature works in partnership, so work in partnership with your body by observing sensations and making changes that support your overall experience.
We cannot always choose the option that is best for our bodies. A lot of things are out of our control. But when we can, where we can, we can determine the body loyal choice and make that. Research the argument, investigate the pros and cons, and determine what is more resonant to your experience. Then conduct an experiment to see if that is your solution. And if it’s not? The intervention failed, the data is acquired, and it’s onward to the next experiment until you find the solution you need for your body and your circumstances.