Did you know that blind athletes, even if they’ve been blind since birth, upon learning of a victory, will assume the following pose:

How does the body know that this means exhilaration, excitement, and victory, without ever having seen or learned it?

Let’s investigate…

Whether you’ve won a race or the lottery, whether the team you’re rooting for just scored the winning touchdown or whether you’ve just stepped on the moon, the body assumes this familiar form. You can see it in your politicians, your performers, your neighbors.

The first place to begin understanding why this shape is associated with intense happiness is purely physical – breath. When we are in a state of excitement, the heart rate quickens and the breathing volume increases. Raising the hands above the head expands the rib cage, allowing for greater air volume to move through the lungs. The body gets the breath it’s asking for. Your physiology adapts itself to support a particular emotional state. This connection blows my mind.

Given that state of mind is reflected in the shape of the body, as we’ve seen in the example above, what if the process could be reversed? What if you could change the shape of your body to create different, better, states of mind?

Wanna play?

Please stand up. (Yes, you.) Let your shoulders slump forward and your belly pooch out. (Don’t worry… no one’s watching.) Tilt your head downward.

How do you feel?

Now, stand up tall by pressing the floor away with your feet. Broaden your chest and take a full, deep breath. Gaze slightly above the horizon line. How does this one feel?

For nearly every human being the transition from those two postures is the journey from sad to happy. Did you feel the difference?

[Side note: Why would that particular form be associated with sadness? Let’s break it down. Hunched shoulders compacts the chest, making it very difficult to take a full breath. This slows down the metabolism, which slows down mental acuity. Caving in the chest also carries an energetic component – it represents an armoring or protection around the tender heart-space. It says to the world – Don’t go there.

This is why depression is a vicious cycle… the more you feel sad, the more you will look sad, the more you will create the conditions to feel more sadness, and block what is needed to break out of the sadness.

Are you having a hard time breaking out of that cycle? I can help.]

Sales-people and telephone service folks are commonly trained to smile when they are talking to customers. The person on the other end can’t see them, but can certainly FEEL them differently. Try it for yourself.

This is just the beginning. Your body’s vocabulary is as extensive as any written or spoken language. Maybe even more so. Perhaps you are familiar with several common cues, like being able to tell when someone is open to you, or closed, when someone feels powerful, or bashful. Maybe you even recognize that a woman playing with her hair indicates sexual interest, connecting us to the animal kingdom where a shiny coat was one of the clearest signs of health. But did you also know that a man who is interested will fiddle with his socks?

There’s almost no limit to what the body’s language can describe. From the upper back, we can understand someone’s relationship with people, and from the lower back, their relationship with money. The hips describe trauma and the thighs, anger. Even the face is a complete roadmap to your digestive systems, your elimination systems, even your sexual appetites.

Your body is speaking to you, to me, and anyone else who’s listening. Knowing what it’s saying can be the first step in not only communicating who you are, but in creating who you want to be.

Interested in working to align your physical body with your desired states of mind? Let’s do it.

Craving some visuals? Check out the talk I did on this topic, here.

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