A Surprising Way to Lift Your Mood and Boost Your Energy
This week’s Better You, Backed by Science is about using your body to shape your state.
If I was to think of some techniques that deliver the most gains from the least amount of effort, the power of using your body to shape your state would most definitely be in my top 3.
I first learned it a few years back at what was just the right time in my life.
I’d come across research on power posing. It’s where you stand like Wonder Woman or Superman, or something along those lines – upright stance, open posture – and it lowers stress hormones and bolsters confidence.
I was writing a book about self-love at the time (I Heart Me: The Science of Self-Love), and to be perfectly honest, the book was an experiment on myself… because I needed it. Despite appearances, I (like many people) was privately struggling.
The first real game-changer on what became my ‘self-love journey’ was learning about the incredible effects of taking control of your posture.
The body knows and shows
The body almost always reflects how we feel. You feel happy, you smile. Stressed, you tense. These are obvious.
What’s less obvious, but just as true, is that when we feel small, we close our body in – essentially making our body smaller. When we’re self-conscious, we keep our head down, averting our gaze. When we lack confidence, we pull our shoulders in, round our spine, and kinda fall back on our hips.
The power of switching
But it goes both ways. In science it’s known as bi-directional.
Just as the body reflects how we feel, we can use our bodies to shape the way we want to feel.
Standing taller makes you feel ‘taller’ – in the self confidence sense. Intentionally smiling can lighten your mood. Walking upright and more slowly can help you destress and feel calm.
Sitting upright with your back straight can give you more energy, just as slouching can drain your energy.
A sitting upright vs slouching experiment
Researchers in New Zealand actually did this as an experiment. They enlisted office workers for it.
Half were randomised to sit slumped for 20 minutes while the other half were asked to sit up straight for the same period (the researchers taped them to the chair… seriously).
Amazingly, after 20 minutes, those who had been sitting up straight had more energy, felt more positive, were less stressed, and felt they had more self-esteem.
When doing a written test, those who sat upright even used more positive words, while those who sat slumped used more negative language.
A similar study with people suffering with depression found that sitting upright reduced fatigue, boosted mood, and reduced self-focus.
And a study of people walking in an upright vs slumped manner found that those walking upright felt more positive, had more energy, felt a greater sense of power, and even had lower blood pressure.
So, if I could offer you some science-backed advice today, it would be this: notice how you move and hold your body as often as you can, and repeatedly make tweaks and adjustments so that your body is helping you to feel the way you want to feel on a consistent basis.
If you keep this up for a while – this is the key – you’ll find that moving and holding your body the way you want will become a habit, and so too will the feelings consistent with it.
You can use this to literally wire-in more confidence, self-love, lighter mood, or anything else you want to use your body to create.
Try This
💡1. If you sit at a desk and tend to slouch, try the 20-minute sitting upright experiment for yourself.
If you need to, secure your back to the chair with kinesiology tape like the New Zealand researchers did, or use a belt, scarf, or something else. Set your watch. Then notice how you feel afterwards.
💡2. Set a series of reminders on your phone (at least every couple of hours) throughout the day to remind you to check your posture. If you find you’re slouching when the reminder pings, or your body is saying, ‘I don’t feel confident’, ‘I feel self conscious’, ‘I’m stressed’, ‘low mood’ or something else, then just adjust your posture right away to one consistent with how you want to feel.
Want to explore more?
🎥 Watch my new YouTube video where I further explore the power of posture to shape how we feel.
References (if you’re curious)
Power pose study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20855902/
Upright vs Slouching study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25222091/
Posture and depression study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27494342/
Walking upright vs slumped: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30261357/
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