The Power Of Posture

Today I will talk a little about posture and the power it can give us to influence self-confidence in a given moment. The idea is that by adopting a better posture, besides being more comfortable and healthy, we can also increase our self-confidence, simply through the feeling that good posture can give us. I'll talk a little more about what good posture can feel like in the track. I hope it's useful!

Transcript

So hi there and welcome to the session today.

So today I'm going to talk very briefly about the power of posture.

So let's just jump straight in.

So you may know about a thing called hero poses already.

Now the idea of this is that you can sort of influence your kind of confidence and your perhaps self esteem in the moment by moving your body into a certain pose or a certain position.

So the idea behind this then is that confidence and to some extent your kind of mood can be influenced by physical pose and posture,

Okay,

By what you do with your body you can influence what goes on in your mind to an extent.

Now in the same way but maybe a little bit more subtly we can also use just simple posture to do this.

No poses,

No positions required,

Just posture.

So it's useful just to bear in mind how posture can be effective throughout your day wherever you are,

What it is you can sort of achieve by sort of adopting a sort of,

As it were,

Better posture,

A more sort of upright posture,

More comfortable posture,

Whatever,

How that can kind of affect you in different situations.

So when we talk about posture what is it exactly mean?

So generally sort of having your sort of growing tall through your crown to an extent and allowing your shoulders to relax down.

So being more upright but not in a kind of meerkat kind of way,

Not in a way that's straining or painful or difficult.

We're just talking about like I say just sort of bringing yourself more upright just to be able to have the body in a better kind of orientation,

In a better kind of position,

It's better for your spine,

It's better for kind of muscles and stuff like this.

So there's benefits as well to be honest.

But in terms of confidence and self-esteem and things adopting this more kind of upright posture can be really useful for kind of feeling sort of pride,

Kind of intrinsic pride as well,

An intrinsic kind of confidence and stuff.

Because when you're for example in a group of people,

Perhaps you don't know,

Perhaps you do,

If you're able to stand up kind of hold your chin up,

Hold your head high,

It gives you more of a boost,

More of a feeling of confidence of yes I am me and I am happy to be me and I am proud to be me.

Than if you're for example slouching or kind of biting your nails in the corner or something.

And so in that respect we can understand how posture can actually help to boost this kind of confidence in social situations and indeed in a load of different situations.

It may be useful here just to bear in mind how this kind of mechanism,

How kind of posture and so on can be effective throughout your day,

Wherever you are.

So in different situations just notice,

Even you know even if you don't want to practice it,

Just thinking when you're in a situation how would it be different if I had a more sort of upright posture.

Just thinking how it can be effective and hopefully being able to practice it as well and sort of experience how it's effective.

It's hard to describe kind of how effective it can be and in what ways and stuff because to an extent that depends on who you are and to an extent there's so many different ways it could be sort of useful and a useful tool for you that I can't really sort of outline them all here.

But I really do encourage you go out and try it for yourself.

Try adopting a taller posture,

A kind of better posture and do try this in different situations as well.

And if you don't feel comfortable doing it absolutely fine of course absolutely fine.

Just have a think in specific situations.

If I felt like I was standing tall,

Standing taller,

Keeping my sort of head up my chin up and everything,

How would I feel different in this situation?

Because it can really give you that confidence boost because of like I said that kind of pride element.

Suddenly you've gone from kind of showing yourself and others that you're kind of anxious or nervous or not very confident in yourself to saying actually no I have the confidence to hold my head up high.

I have the confidence to stand tall.

And that's the thing really it's really about showing the mind how you want to feel as it were.

Sort of fake it till you make it in other words.

So you can influence your confidence by kind of acting as though you are more confident than maybe you really feel.

And in that way you can kind of create this confidence where there wasn't maybe any maybe there wasn't much before.

Just by sort of showing the mind how things are or rather how you want them to be and how they then become.

So this is why posture can be a really powerful tool just for everyday kind of confidence even if it's only in one situation because it may not be you know it may not be possible all the time and it may not be effective all the time if there's something getting you down maybe if you have experienced anxiety or something maybe it won't quite work just changing your posture but in most situations most everyday situations hopefully this sort of thing will be able to help you with confidence.

So it doesn't need to be drastic as well you don't need to be sort of standing up like I say like a meerkat or a chicken or something just you know something is probably better in fact if it is kind of subtle.

A good example is imagining you have a thread attached to the top of your head just suspending you like this.

So not stretching or straining yourself you're not kind of trying to grow really tall through the crown you're just imagining you are kind of suspended from this thread.

This is the technique that I use most of the time when I'm trying to practice this posture confidence sort of thing.

So just then as you have the thread suspended from the top of your crown just relaxing shoulders down relaxing the rest of the body down while you keep that crown tall but relaxed.

Okay if you are experienced with meditation you may be familiar with the kind of meditation posture alert but not straining but not going to sleep either.

So that kind of nice balance of alert and ready and upright but not straining and not falling back down to slouching and going to sleep and everything.

So that's a good kind of example of the balance we're looking for here.

So do try this see what effect it has for you.

You know see if other postures work better other you know maybe different different sort of techniques similar to this you could maybe find from this kind of understanding of posture and things.

And of course you know as I say try other techniques and visualization aids as well if if they seem to be helpful and if they seem to work for you.

So with that I hope this brief little talk today can be of help to you.

I hope it can sort of help gain insight for you into something perhaps you weren't so familiar with before.

And yeah I hope it can be helpful in your kind of day to day life.

So with that said thank you very much for coming and I'll see you next time bye bye.