How Does Body Posture Affect Emotions?
-
Posture Conveys Emotions
-
Your body postures or gestures (both conscious and unconscious) communicate your feelings and emotions. When you put your head in your hand, you communicate boredom. When you arch your back, you show confidence. When you gesture with open hands, you convey openness and sincerity. When you hide your face with your hands, you demonstrate guilt or shame. Putting your hands on your hips shows you have confidence. If you sit straight back, with your head erect, you show interest and attention, while rubbing your nose is a gesture of doubt.
These postures, whether made consciously or unconsciously, involve the nerve pathways concerned with posture, coordination and equilibrium, regulated in the cerebellum. Socially, negative postures affect your relationships with people. When your relationships are strained, you strain your emotions. You feel ill at ease with yourself and with other people. Likewise, people will react the same way toward you, because humans tend to socialize with people they deem to be confident and mature.
Posture Projects Health
-
Posture is important in determining not just how you look; it can also indicate your state of health. Poor posture may be a sign there is something wrong with you. You may be rundown, tired or emotionally upset.
Our skeletons and muscles do their best work when they support our vital organs properly. If we sag, our poor posture pushes these organs out of their proper positions. We put our muscles under a strain, which is the opposite of their original design. Stretched muscles and displaced organs tire more quickly and work less efficiently. The whole body is affected physically, mentally and emotionally.
You may want to dismiss seeing a doctor for your posture, because you know it is just "how you are," but your body may be trying to tell you that you are not in the best of health. The earlier you decide to correct your posture, the earlier you will feel the benefits.
Correcting Poor Posture
-
If you change your physiology, you change your emotional state. Start by getting yourself "grounded." Plant your feet firmly and then work your way up.
Engage your muscles, from the buttocks, to the stomach, to the lower back. Work your way to the upper back. When you arch your back, your head should naturally align itself with your spine. Your body will find its natural center, and all your weight distributes itself evenly from top to bottom.
Always correct your posture when you feel you are slouching. The more you accustom your body to correcting itself, the more natural it becomes for you to sit, stand and walk in the proper posture. When your body becomes better accustomed to the correct posture, you will feel more alert, more socially active, more confident and more emotionally stable.
-
