1. How can posture affect your mood?
How you hold your body can change how you feel in less than 1/40 of a second.
If you hold and move your body the way you want to feel, your body's chemistry
can change in a fraction of a second. Your posture and movement create a
message that acts like a doctor's prescription. The message goes to your neural
synapsis to the brain's pharmacy. The brain notes the posture and movements and
creates chemicals that match and send them out into your bloodstream, so you
begin to feel chemically how your body language is held or moves. For example,
if you drag around head down feeling tired, you will get the chemicals that
make your feel more tired. You think your
body language reflects your fatigue and lack of energy, but you can change your
energy by how you hold and move your body. I have been writing about the
biochemistry aspects for over 30 years.
2. What about posture is related to mood? Typically, we think, "I feel
some emotion and my body language reflects that emotion." But the inverse
is also true. You can change your body language/posture and change how you
feel.
3. What can
good posture do for your mood?
Keep your body language/ posture "Up." Up energetic body language is
beautifully symbolic–you go up when you're feeling up. In addition, body
language brings your posture up to allow more deep full lung capacity breathing,
with gives you more oxygenated blood, thus, more energy. Though the steps may
seem wacky, if you feel sluggish and just want to lay down and take a nap,
these methods can charge you up very quickly.
4. What does bad posture (describe bad posture) do for your mood? Bad downward
posture brings your energy down. Bending over your electronic device, bring
your head, neck and shoulder downward. Bringing down your energy. Even with the
cocaine-like hit from social media, new information charges, and social likes,
you stress your body when you are bent over. In fact, the charges we get from
staying connected to social media and the downward positioning of the body
focused on the device create an odd mismatch in the brain. (I can explain that
further if you are interested.)
5. What's the relationship between the way you carry yourself and
mood?
Youthful, energetic, self-confident posture is UP.
So, the body is held up--the head, the shoulders, and the chest are all up
6. What are tips for improving this connection? Try any of these postures and
movements anytime to recharge your batteries and feel UP with energy. Your
gestures move up, your head comes up, your chest goes up and out, your
shoulders come back and up, and your step upwards. Think and act "UP".
Your body moves upward when you are happy, joyful, and excited. Think of how
children skip and move up when they are happy and bring your head your, gesture
your upper chest, and walk upward to convey energy and happiness when you enter
a room. Notice how you greet or begin every interaction and how you end or say
goodbye
I am a researcher and writer on
nonverbal communication and hold a degree with an emphasis in nonverbal communication.
I coined the term "UP" body language, which is now used in scientific
references about this kind of body language.
