Improving Posture Will Improve Your Life
Why feeling taller tricks your brain into making you feel more confident and why your smartphone addiction might be making you depressed?
The next time you’re feeling sad and depressed, pay close attention to your posture. According to cognitive scientists, you’ll likely be slumped over with your neck and shoulders curved forward and head looking down.
While it’s true that you’re sitting this way because you’re sad, it’s also true that you’re sad because you’re sitting this way. This philosophy, known as embodied cognition, is the idea that the relationship between our mind and body runs both ways, meaning our mind influences the way our body reacts, but the form of our body also triggers our mind.
This isn’t just about displaying confidence to others around; this is about actually changing your hormones–increased levels of testosterone and decreased levels of cortisol, or the stress hormone, in the brain.
“The brain has an area that reflects confidence, but once that area is triggered it doesn’t matter exactly how it’s triggered,” says Richard Petty, professor of psychology at Ohio State University. “It can be difficult to distinguish real confidence from confidence that comes from just standing up straight … these things go both ways just like happiness leads to smiling, but also smiling leads to happiness.”
When it comes to posture, Petty explains that the way we ultimately feel has a lot to do with the associations we have with being taller. For example, if you take two people and you put one on a chair that’s above the other person, the one that’s looking down will feel more powerful because “we have all these associations” with height and power that “gets triggered automatically when certain movements are made,” he says. The function of your body posture tells your brain that you’re powerful, which, in turn, affects your attitude.
The increase of collapsed sitting and walking–from sitting in front of our computer to looking down at our smartphones–may very much have an effect on the rise of depression in recent years.
“Emotions and thoughts affect our posture and energy levels; conversely, posture and energy affect our emotions and thoughts,” says one of Peper’s studies from 2012, and two minutes of skipping versus walking in a slouched position can make a significant difference on our energy levels. Like Cuddy, Peper’s research finds that it only takes two minutes to change your hormones, meaning you can basically change the chemistry in your brain while waiting for your food to heat up in the microwave.
Since posture affects our mood and thoughts so much, the increase of collapsed sitting and walking–from sitting in front of our computer to looking down at our smartphones–may very much have an effect on the rise of depression in recent years. Peper and his team of researchers suggest that posture is a significant contributor to decreased energy levels and depression. Slouching is also known to result in frequent headaches and neck and shoulder pains.
Large body postures change brain and body chemistry. When people sit or stand with their bodies taking up space, arms expanded, legs open, they produce more testosterone and less stress hormones.
What do you think? Have you tried to improve your posture to see how it can effect your life & health?
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Source: https://www.fastcompany.com