Embodied Praxis 2025: The Sense of Agency
My limited series about embodiment recently touched on interoception and proprioception and the gap between a conceptual or scientific understanding of embodiment and what it looks like as a practice.
Today, I’d like to explore our sense of embodied agency not only in its personal sense but, importantly, its collective one.
What Body Agency is + Why It Matters
In its formal definition, agency refers to the sense that we can act in a way that matches our intentions.
It includes forming an intention, choosing from alternative actions, taking action, and evaluating the outcome of our actions.
(If you’d like to read more about body agency, and particularly how it relates to depression, check out this piece from 2023.)
The concept of an intention may seem conceptual. And yet, intention is a deeply embodied experience—and so is agency as a whole.
In fact, agency originates not in the thinking regions of the brain, but in those dedicated to movement, particularly the motor cortex. When researchers work to restore action in people with tetraplegia, for example, they locate electrodes deep in the primary motor cortex.
My experience as a longtime psychologist and a movement guide points to the insight that many illnesses—think anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, trauma, ADHD, and more—aren’t brain anomalies or cognitive issues but diseases of disembodiment.
And agency lies at the heart of these illnesses.
It also plays a key role in neurological diseases, particularly the way they interrupt the connection between intention and action.
Body Agency and Emotional Health
Consider the link between Parkinson’s disease and depression, for example.
We know that people with Parkinson’s often experience severe depression. And we know that depression is also, like Parkinson’s, a movement disorder. (For more on depression and movement, check out this piece from last year.)
People with Parkinson’s have difficulty with internally generated movements, actions that they initiate in the absence of external cues. Similar findings occur in people with depression, who select actions more slowly, move more slowly, experience disturbances in gait and balance and other proprioceptive skills, and who also exhibit fewer self-initiated movements.
This movement issue in both Parkinson’s and depression involves not just brain regions that regulate movement, but also neuromodulators like dopamine.
In fact, researchers discovered a new specific subtype of dopamine neuron, located exactly where neurons first begin to degrade in Parkinson’s Disease. What’s more, this neuron subtype does not become active in response to reward or motivation, but when the body moves.
This is big news. It means that dopamine controls not just reward and motivation, but movement.
It explains why Parkinson’s Disease involves the loss of dopamine neurons and depression, yet also impacts the body’s movement—and also why movement (and specific types of remedial movement) mitigates the symptoms of depression.
And dopamine is also a central factor in our sense of agency.
And then there’s the menopause transition, which can lead to a loss of self and bodily self that many healthcare professionals mistake for depression.
In perimenopause and beyond it, a dip in estrogen influences dopamine generation, secretion, and reuptake in the brain. The loss of estrogen is concentrated in the prefrontal cortex, among other areas. This can result in symptoms of ADHD, including difficulties with motivation, inhibition, planning, working memory, and attention.
It can also spur a reluctance to move, thanks to the newly discovered dopamine neuron mentioned above.
Health professionals who specialize in menopause tend to focus on loss of libido. And yet, what I hear most from women going through perimenopause eclipses sexual desire. They experience a big dip in their global sense of desire: the ability to have and get excited about new ideas and initiatives, to take action to see them through, to experience ease and fluidity in areas of emotional friction.
And this relates directly to our global sense of agency.
Trauma, particularly interpersonal violence, entails a situation that by definition compromises our sense of agency. As neuroscientist-clinician Ruth Lanius has described, in physical and sexual assault, perpetrators deploy “somatosensory restraint,” which thwarts our natural fight-or-flight response.
The dopamine dip that people experience in perimenopause also affects people with PTSD, which correlates both with an earlier menopause transition and also with an already low dopamine state. In PTSD, we can see that somatosensory restraint and a tonically low dopamine state both attack our intrinsic sense of agency—and through it, our sense of self and of well-being.
So far, we’ve taken a quick look at our personal sense of agency. But as with all our other inner senses, agency is also inherently social and political.
Our Social Sense of Agency
The field of social agency studies the way social factors shape our personal and group agency, and the way our expression of agency shapes our social system in return.
Social agency impacts myriad aspects of our lives, from completing a task together to large-scale protests, from social inclusion to oppression, and from prosocial action (the kind that benefits humanity) to antisocial action.
Social agency also refers to the way we experience and express power: within ourselves and our social groups and between us and others. It speaks directly to our capacity to embrace our own sense of power and self-determination and, at the same time, uphold them in others.
And it has to do with whether, in dyads or families or collectives of every size, we express collective power or wield power over others by diminishing their own sense of power and agency.
In the United States right now (and elsewhere), we see these questions being enacted in geopolitical terms.
The Trump administration deploys power (read: aggressive agency) as its primary weapon of choice.
We see this in the scaffolding and structure of relationships themselves, where the administration enforces subservience rather than choice and surrender rather than collaboration.
This extends to foreign policy. The U.S. president and his cabinet now use economic and military threats (e.g. tariffs and invasion) to illegally annex sovereign (read: agentic) nations, including Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Ukraine.
We see this in domestic policy as well. The U.S. administration has bypassed Congress to strip labor protections from civil servants across the federal government. They have canceled more than $12 billion in federal health grants to states; the funds have been used to track infectious diseases, mental health services, addiction treatment, and other urgent health issues. They have broadened attacks and retaliation against lawyers and law firms that Trump dislikes.
They have reprised the “Alien Enemies Act” of 1798, a wartime authority that allows the president to deport or detain the natives and citizens of an “enemy nation.” This “power over” poses a severe risk of abuse and human rights violations.
They have detained and deported U.S. citizens, people in the U.S. legally, and people entering the U.S. from other countries, without cause. (For more about why these “deportations” are alarming, read this piece on The New American Gulag.) By calling many of these people “terrorists,” they are manufacturing consent—a passive sort of agency—for future injustices.
To remain passive in the face of these injustices is to forfeit our personal and collective agency.
And in June of 2022, in a devastating decision that will reverberate for generations, the U.S. Supreme Court abandoned its duty to protect fundamental rights and overturned Roe v. Wade, ruling that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion. Many states followed suit, and now severely restrict a woman’s right to her body, to express agency in her own care.
But that’s not all.
In authoritarian regimes such as the one we’re hurtling into, ruling parties often use other citizens or institutions to monitor and report anyone who counters their own will.
We see this in Texas, for example, where the state law that bans abortions after only 6 weeks of pregnancy, when most people don’t know that they’re pregnant, includes an enforcement measure. Residents of Texas can sue clinics, doctors, nurses, and even people who drive someone to get an abortion, for at least $10,000.
The administration is also using Jewish people as scapegoats to deport citizens who oppose the genocide of Palestinians and support Palestinian self-determination sovereignty. They are using Jewish people and the notion of “antisemitism” to establish a fascist regime in the U.S. and to abduct and deport anyone who disagrees with the administration. This, as many Jewish people (like me) recognize, violates our shared humanity and agency. It violates the tenets of the Jewish faith. And it will ultimately backfire, as scapegoating of Jewish people always does, in worsening real antisemitism.
One of the most insidious and often hardest to spot incursions on our collective power and agency is the illusion that allowing others’ agency to be compromised won’t affect us in the end.
We’ve made that decision over and over again to our own detriment.
We Were Built for Collective Agency
In his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, renowned and expert on authoritarianism scholar Timothy Snyder discusses the principles for resisting this turn toward authoritarianism.
The first lesson: don’t obey in advance.
While that resonates for me, it also confines us to behavior we need to inhibit or avoid, without pointing to what we can do.
The ability to collaborate, coordinate actions, and adapt our behavior to that of others to achieve collective goals is universal. Individuals across multiple species do it, from humans and primates to wolves, lions, and dolphins to simple organisms like insects, viruses, and bacteria.
Collaboration has social, cultural, and evolutionary benefits. It enables others, and to achieve goals that would be unattainable for individuals acting alone.
In these times, it’s helpful to remember that these forms of oppression do not determine our personal or collective agency.
The term agency comes from the Latin agere, “to set in motion, drive forward, or perform.” But it is also the root for terms like agitate, activate, and activism.
In fact, intuitive knowledge and research tell us that working against strong forces can actually increase our sense of agency. All powerful social movements have done this, including the U.S. civil rights movement. We even see this insight reflected in science. One study asked participants to pull stretch bands with varying degrees of resistance. As effort increased, the brain’s experience of agency grew, too.
The bottom line: We were designed for collective action, even if it doesn’t seem to come naturally.
Reflection Questions for Personal + Social Agency
The following are several nodes of inquiry that you can employ throughout the year as you consider your relationship with agency, global intention and desire, and activism. Feel free to modify them, and of course to add your own.
What intentions am I cultivating, both for myself and the collective in which I act, in this moment?
Am I more comfortable with “power with” or “power over” structures? What are the influences that have trained me to be so, and how might I “take the reins” to share power?
Have I been trained that I’m supposed to “manifest” my intentions individually, almost by magic? If so, how can I excavate that from my sense of internal and external power?
In what ways do I feel comfortable in collectives? In what ways do I feel less so?
What forms of collective agency (i.e. community organizations, protests, and other collectives) do I participate in? What forms would I like to participate in, and what are three steps I can take toward doing so?
Do I uphold the unconditional right to sovereignty, agency, and self-determination for all other people? If not, what gets in the way?
Do I believe in the power to resist oppression? How can I cultivate more power in this kind of activism?
Sources:
Agency originates not in the thinking regions of the brain, but in those dedicated: Serino, A., Bockbrader, M., Bertoni, T., Colachis Iv, S., Solcà, M., Dunlap, C., Eipel, K., Ganzer, P., Annetta, N., Sharma, G., Orepic, P., Friedenberg, D., Sederberg, P., Faivre, N., Rezai, A., & Blanke, O. (2022). Sense of agency for intracortical brain-machine interfaces. Nature human behaviour, 6(4), 565–578. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01233-2 See also: Schwartz A. B. (2016). Movement: How the Brain Communicates with the World. Cell, 164(6), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.02.038 See also: Hochberg, L. R., Serruya, M. D., Friehs, G. M., Mukand, J. A., Saleh, M., Caplan, A. H., Branner, A., Chen, D., Penn, R. D., & Donoghue, J. P. (2006). Neuronal ensemble control of prosthetic devices by a human with tetraplegia. Nature, 442(7099), 164–171. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04970
When researchers work to restore action in people with tetraplegia: Nuyujukian, P., Sanabria, J. A., Saab, J., Pandarinath, C., Jarosiewicz, B., Blabe, C. H., Franco, B., Mernoff, S. T., Eskandar, E. N., Simeral, J. D., Hochberg, L. R., Shenoy, K. V., & Henderson, J. M. (2018). Cortical control of a tablet computer by people with paralysis. PLOS ONE, 13(11), e0204566. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204566 See also: Brandman, D. M., Hosman, T., Saab, J., Burkhart, M. C., Shanahan, B. E., Ciancibello, J. G., Sarma, A. A., Milstein, D. J., Vargas-Irwin, C. E., Franco, B., Kelemen, J., Blabe, C., Murphy, B. A., Young, D. R., Willett, F. R., Pandarinath, C., Stavisky, S. D., Kirsch, R. F., Walter, B. L., Bolu Ajiboye, A., … Hochberg, L. R. (2018). Rapid calibration of an intracortical brain-computer interface for people with tetraplegia. Journal of neural engineering, 15(2), 026007. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/aa9ee7
People with Parkinson’s have difficulty with internally generated movements: Hess, C. W., & Hallett, M. (2017). The Phenomenology of Parkinson's Disease. Seminars in neurology, 37(2), 109–117. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0037-1601869
Similar findings occur in people with depression: Hoffstaedter, F., Sarlon, J., Grefkes, C., & Eickhoff, S. B. (2012). Internally vs. externally triggered movements in patients with major depression. Behavioural brain research, 228(1), 125–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2011.11.024 See also: Paquet, A., Lacroix, A., Calvet, B., & Girard, M. (2022). Psychomotor semiology in depression: a standardized clinical psychomotor approach. BMC psychiatry, 22(1), 474. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-022-04086-9
In fact, researchers discovered a new specific subtype of dopamine neuron: Azcorra, M., Gaertner, Z., Davidson, C., He, Q., Kim, H., Nagappan, S., Hayes, C. K., Ramakrishnan, C., Fenno, L., Kim, Y. S., Deisseroth, K., Longnecker, R., Awatramani, R., & Dombeck, D. A. (2023). Unique functional responses differentially map onto genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons. Nature neuroscience, 10.1038/s41593-023-01401-9. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01401-9
This movement issue in both Parkinson’s and depression involves: Mehta, M. M., Na, S., Gu, X., Murrough, J. W., & Morris, L. S. (2023). Reward-related self-agency is disturbed in depression and anxiety. PloS one, 18(3), e0282727. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0282727
It explains why Parkinson’s Disease involves the loss of dopamine neurons and depression: Azcorra, M., Gaertner, Z., Davidson, C., He, Q., Kim, H., Nagappan, S., Hayes, C. K., Ramakrishnan, C., Fenno, L., Kim, Y. S., Deisseroth, K., Longnecker, R., Awatramani, R., & Dombeck, D. A. (2023). Unique functional responses differentially map onto genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons. Nature neuroscience, 10.1038/s41593-023-01401-9. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01401-9
In perimenopause and beyond it, a dip in estrogen influences dopamine generation: Dumas, J. A., Makarewicz, J. A., Bunn, J., Nickerson, J., & McGee, E. (2018). Dopamine-Dependent Cognitive Processes after Menopause: The Relationship between COMT Genotype, Estradiol, and Working Memory. Neurobiology of Aging, 72, 53–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2018.08.009
As neuroscientist-clinician Ruth Lanius has described: Kearney, B. E., & Lanius, R. A. (2022). The brain-body disconnect: A somatic sensory basis for trauma-related disorders. Frontiers in neuroscience, 16, 1015749. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.1015749
PTSD, which correlates both with an earlier menopause transition: Nishimi, K., Thurston, R. C., Chibnik, L. B., Roberts, A. L., Sumner, J. A., Lawn, R. B., Tworoger, S. S., Kim, Y., Koenen, K. C., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2022). Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and timing of menopause and gynecological surgery in the Nurses’ Health Study II. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 159, 110947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2022.110947 See also: Otago, U. of. (2022, March 28). Study Reveals Link Between Early Menopause and History of Sexual Abuse. https://www.otago.ac.nz/news/newsroom/monday-28-march-study-reveals-link-between-early-menopause-and-history-of-sexual-abuse
This dopamine dip in perimenopause also affects people with PTSD: Seidemann, R., Duek, O., Jia, R., Levy, I., & Harpaz-Rotem, I. (2021). The Reward System and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Does Trauma Affect the Way We Interact With Positive Stimuli? Chronic Stress, 5, 2470547021996006. https://doi.org/10.1177/2470547021996006
Social agency exists on a continuum: Silver, C. A., Tatler, B. W., Chakravarthi, R., & Timmermans, B. (2021). Social Agency as a continuum. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 28(2), 434–453. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01845-1
They have canceled more than $12 billion in federal health grants to states: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/health/trump-state-health-grants-cuts.html
They have broadened attacks and retaliation against lawyers and law firms: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/trump-memo-lawyers.html?smid=url-share
They have reprised the “Alien Enemies Act” of 1798, a wartime authority: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/alien-enemies-act-explained
And in June of 2022, in a devastating decision that will reverberate for generations: Supreme Court Case: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. (n.d.). Center for Reproductive Rights. Retrieved March 13, 2025, from https://reproductiverights.org/case/scotus-mississippi-abortion-ban/
Residents of Texas can sue clinics, doctors, nurses, and even people who drive: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-abortion-law-bounty-hunters-citizens/
Research shows that working against resistance can increase our sense of agency: Demanet, J., Muhle-Karbe, P. S., Lynn, M. T., Blotenberg, I., & Brass, M. (2013). Power to the will: how exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency. Cognition, 129(3), 574–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.020
In his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny/