What is Whole Body Decision Making?

Oct 13

Whole Body Decision Making is having access to the wisdom in every part of you: your brain, your body, your history, your spirit, your energy field. The more fully you are connected to that, the more present you can be to your priorities for how you spend your time and energy. And the more effectively you can discern and filter which resources and support you may need at any time. There are many ways to communicate with and honor all the parts of you so that you can make decisions that are informed by your body and your brain, your intuition and your intellect, your feelings and your thoughts. They all start with curiosity and a willingness to listen.

An example from my life:
I'm walking to work on a Vermont Spring day and I can feel a new looseness in both knees as I stroll along in my big rubber boots on the uneven surface. I check in and I know it's not the weakening of my muscles because I have ALS. I don’t have ALS.

’Not yet’ says my brain. ‘OK’ I reply ‘I hear you. There are no guarantees.
I don’t have ALS now and I don’t plan on ever getting it’.

I can feel in every cell that what’s happening in my knees is part of a complete re-organization of my relationship to the ground, to being here, on the earth, right now. At the same time, it’s a change in the relationship between the right and left sides of my body, a letting go of deep patterns of compensation, particularly within my legs as relates to them connecting to the ground and carrying me forward into this life I have chosen.

I check in with my brain, ‘Are we sure this isn't ALS?’
My brain smiles at me and says, ‘You can't catch me with that one’.

Then I check in with my ALS gene and I feel the peace of a loving connection. Now I can just breathe into my knees as I walk. I thank them for holding me up all these nearly 60 years. I honor their need to disconnect me from the ground in the past, to be part of an intelligent network of decisions made to dissociate me from my physical self so I could preserve my life and my sanity. I breathe the cool Spring air in and out. I have lived through everything that ever happened to me and I am safe now. This makes me laugh with my whole body.

*If someone had told me, when I was in my 20s, that I would be talking to different parts of my body (and telling people about it!!), I would have assumed that I had finally gone over some edge and ended up in a psychiatric ward.

When I learned that I had the ALS gene, I was in shock. I had worked so hard and grown so comfortable with trusting my body and this news knocked me flat. ALS had already caused the deaths of my father and youngest brother and had recently struck yet another brother. There was no cure and no treatment.

I was very, very lucky to have already learned so much about listening to my body. I had faith in my ability to breathe my way through any kind of feeling or sensation and in my body’s ability to let them go. As a therapist and in my classes, I had been teaching other people how to release the stories and feelings that were stuck within them, to calm their nervous systems and to befriend and integrate parts of themselves that had been frozen in time by trauma.

So when my ALS gene and I officially met, I had a fair bit of useful experience and a good size bag of tools as I began several years of working through anger, shock, grief and despair… but mostly fear. For all that time, I had pain running down my entire right leg, causing cramping and often making me limp. I would listen to the pain and make space to allow whatever feelings were there by breathing and shaking or whatever I felt I needed. I rode my bike like a demon (my apologies to anyone I scared on the bike path). I smashed waves from my paddleboard and let myself hate ALS and this f-ing gene. I cried and screamed alone in my car with the windows up. I shook with fear and was sometimes literally paralyzed with terror. I grieved and worried so hard for my kids. I raged at God and the Universe.

Why now when I finally had the happy life I had worked so hard to create?

Why had I ever trusted that it would be worth it to live through all that trauma?

When each storm of feelings passed, I was cleaned out, leg pain gone or at least decreased. I would remember that being with whatever feelings came up, without denying them or trying to explain them away, was the most efficient way to find clarity and peace. And then I could hear the rational voices from my brain telling me what I already knew. ALS causes weakness not pain. The pathway of the pain down my leg was following the Kidney channel in Chinese Medicine which drains fear out of my body. I don’t have ALS. I’m just scared. I can do this.

I live very close to a big beautiful lake which provides all of our drinking water. I spent days up to my neck in it’s cool water during a June heatwave when I was 8 months pregnant with my first child. My boys and I picnicked and swam at the beach at the bottom of the road as often as possible. In the midst of what felt like another full time job of draining fear out of my body, I was invited to a conference happening locally to present research on the high prevalence of Sporadic/non-genetic ALS in populations around lakes in my area, including ‘mine’.

This, quite simply, put me over the edge.

For a few weeks, I was convinced that I had to move my family as quickly as possible because I had the ALS gene and now we were also drinking ALS and swimming in it. My head was spinning. Could I leave a successful practice built up over 15 years and start over? How would I afford that? What if I got sick and couldn’t work at all? Could I uproot my kids from their schools, our close and loving neighborhood and amazing supportive community?
What about their father?! Could I move our kids away? Would I do that to them?

I sat with and breathed into the whole big mess, all the questions, all the feelings. I rode my bike. I did lots and lots of yoga. (So much gratitude to the instructors who patted my back and left me be when I couldn’t do more than weep quietly in child’s pose). I breathed and cried and raged. I talked with my sisters. I didn’t paddleboard. I worked with my clients and it was a relief to focus on their lives instead of mine. Eventually, the same rational voices from inside spoke up…read the research, breathe, look at the sources, breathe, take your time, make lists, look at what you have the ability to change, sleep on any decisions.
I can do this.

We didn’t move. My right leg finally drained out that giant reservoir of fear, stopped hurting and I started walking normally again. I reviewed my will and created an Advance Medical Directive. My body released layers and layers of shock. I decided that I would love my ALS gene just as I had come to love and trust every other part of me. This gene had always been inside of me so why would I treat it any differently? With every day of accepting it as part of me, I have come to trust more deeply that it is here in my life to teach me. I paddleboard and swim where and when it feels right to do so. I appreciate my life every day. I’m not afraid of ALS anymore…or anything else.

I did it.

I am not a rocket scientist, I don’t have a PhD and I am not superhuman.

I was parenting two young kids and running a business while I felt all these huge feelings and deeply hard shit. I called in help where I could and kept functioning as best as I could and I'm here on the other side of it. I didn't blow up any relationships, go bankrupt or kill anybody. Not even when my ex-husband suggested, on the school stairway enroute to our son’s teacher conference, a week after I got my positive gene test, that I should give my house to him and his wife so our kids could keep on living in it when I…um…died.

I found space inside me to breathe and remind him that I didn’t have ALS, just the gene. I calmly reminded him that I had a lawyer and a financial advisor, both of whom I trusted and was already consulting. Later, I repeated this conversation to my sister and we both had a LOT of feelings about it. After that, I could feel what I already knew. My ex is a good father and he really loves our kids. He can be impulsive and, back then, he had really awful timing. I realize now, of course, that he was shocked and scared and worried for our kids too.

Trust me, you can have feelings and still be a rational person. You can feel your feelings and not derail your life. There are many, many safe ways to honor all of your feelings which don’t require advanced degrees or complicated processes. Most just require some time and attention and they become easier with practice. Being with whatever feelings come up, without denying them or trying to explain them away, is the most efficient way to find clarity and peace. And then you can hear the rational voices from inside you telling you what you know. And your brain can know that it is not alone and doesn’t have to be in charge of everything all the time.
Brains appreciate this.

As we develop the skill of listening to ourselves, we can know when it's safe to let our feelings out, just as we knew when it wasn’t safe to let them out. As you build that trust in yourself and keep on building it, you will get to the place where you don’t have to turn your feelings inward, building up stress and creating conditions for ill health and disease. Simultaneously, you will decrease your reactivity so you are not exploding your feelings outward into the world, complicating your life by causing more pain and anguish for yourself and for others.

Kate Kennedy

What is Whole Body Decision Making?

Making Space Within