How Can We Improve Our Mood with Body Posture?

Our well-being and quality of life largely depend on the way we relate to our own emotions. However, this is a complex task that, in addition to requiring us to adopt certain routines, cannot take place if we maintain certain erroneous beliefs about our emotional side.

The first of these problematic beliefs is that we are condemned to experience emotions that, completely spontaneously, would appear in our consciousness in a way totally disconnected from our will and our interests; The truth is that although we cannot fully control what happens in our minds, we do have room for maneuver to influence how we feel the things that happen to us.

And the second of these beliefs is that emotions always manifest from the inside out, from our subjectivity to the objective actions and movements that are reflected in our body. In reality, in the same way that emotions have effects on our body and our actions, the same thing also happens in reverse: we can carry out actions that help modulate our emotional side. We will talk precisely about the latter in this article, focusing on How we can influence our emotions through body postures

How does our posture influence our emotions?

The nervous system is far from being a simple “control panel” from which orders are issued and all the processes that occur in our body are controlled. In the same way that the brain sends nerve impulses through chains of neurons to activate or deactivate muscles, glands and all kinds of organs, it is also constantly receiving a torrent of information from everything that happens inside us (or of what is registered by our senses).

That is to say, his work is not unilateral, but rather he participates in a perception-action loop that feeds on itself and that it does not have a clear direction: in the same way that, for example, the decisions we make affect the way we move, our way of moving leads us to register different stimuli and these new “inputs” influence our mental states.

This occurs both with biological processes that depend on our voluntary actions and those that are involuntary. For example, our nervous system is full of networks of neurons that send a lot of information to our brain all the time, and our muscles also have certain sensory structures that inform about the position of each of the parts: these are the muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs and joint receptors.

But These “inputs” are not simply information as we usually understand it; It is not only a material on which to make decisions and know from an intellectual point of view what is happening in our body. It also favors the appearance of one or other emotions. Something that makes sense if we take into account that emotions are ancient adaptive mechanisms that help us react to stimuli quickly and without having to think too much, something crucial for survival (we can’t always afford to spend several minutes thinking about what to do).

Thus, it is not strange that throughout our lineage, for hundreds of thousands of years, they have been “pre-programmed” in our nervous system. a series of predispositions to link a certain emotional state to certain positions of the body; It is something that helps protect us from dangers and take advantage of opportunities with maximum efficiency, without delaying too much.

The ways posture influences our emotions

The way in which our postures affect our emotional state can be divided into two categories.

1. Internal route

The internal route is what is produced in our own body That is, the one most influenced by the organic and by our biological predispositions.

2. Psychosocial route

The psychosocial route is based on the communication we maintain with those around us who can see us Specifically, it is based on non-verbal communication; the way in which we emit information through elements that cannot be expressed in words, combined with the way in which these facts are interpreted by others. Our postures transmit a message, and we record the way in which others receive that information.

How to improve your mood from your body posture?

Although each case is unique and it is generally recommended to go to psychotherapy to receive personalized training in emotional management, broadly speaking, these are the tips that you can apply to your life.

1. Avoid crossing your arms or clasping your hands in front of you if you want to relax

The fact of Crossing your arms or holding your hands below the sternum is linked to the expectation that something or someone may attack us; That’s why we use our arms to protect certain vulnerable parts. By doing this we may feel a little nervous at first, but we will quickly flow more with the situation as we see that there are no negative consequences for having adopted a more open stance.

2. Don’t tilt your body if you want to boost your self-confidence

In a similar way, if you do not want to stay tense, it is best to orient your entire body towards where your main interlocutor is If you offer your diagonal, your body will interpret that there is something you should fear from that person.

3. Stay straight

Without becoming obsessed with keeping your spine completely rigid (something not recommended for your health), at least try not to slouch too much This posture only serves to keep several muscle groups rigid at the same time in a totally unnecessary way, keeping active that experience that something bad can happen to you and negatively affecting your self-confidence both because of how you perceive yourself and how you feel. They perceive you.

Are you interested in starting a psychotherapy process?

If you are considering going to psychological therapy to learn to better manage your emotions, we invite you to contact us.

In Psychotools We serve people of all ages and we can help you both in the context of psychotherapy and through courses and workshops and training on topics such as Mindfulness or stress management. You will find our psychology center in the Vallcarca neighborhood of Barcelona, ​​or you can also opt for the online therapy modality by video call.