Your Posture Might Be Affecting Your Mental Health

How you hold your body can tell the world a great deal about your state of health. The strength of your bones and muscles can have a huge effect on the positioning of your spine and if you’re looking for a way to improve how you carry yourself, then exercise is a great place to start. How does your mental health figure into the whole equation, though? Your state of mind might be something that lies within but it can show up on your body a whole load of different ways. Want to know how the world really sees you? It’s all in your posture.

1. Stress

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The more stressed that you feel, the more that it can show up in physical ways. If you continue to hold your body in a slouched position, you can experience a 10% drop in your levels of testosterone and a 15% increase in your levels of cortisol. Essential to your mental health, these hormones can lead to feelings of stress and depression when they are unbalanced. When you open up your shoulders and straighten up your spine, you can feel better equipped to deal with moments of anxiety and tension. Sometimes, it is all in the way you carry yourself.

2. Pain and Fatigue

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Everyday factors like work, family life and health can get in the way with how you’re feeling and when things get off balance, you might feel less than your best. It turns out, however, posture might too play a significant part in your energy levels. If you suffer from consistent feelings of tiredness, stiffness and pain, your posture could be playing a major role in the equation. Poorer posture leads to your muscles working even harder than normal in order to keep you upright. When you focus on how you’re standing, you can save more energy and feel better by the end of the day.

3. Confidence

(source: psychologyformarketers.com)

Physical and mental health are often strongly interlinked and when one is a little off, the other can suffer as a result. When you carry yourself with poorer posture than normal, you can experience a dip in your levels of confidence and self esteem. Expansive postures are often seen as being more powerful and when you adopt more open poses, you are more likely to increase your own feelings of power and as a result, your levels of confidence. Even if you don’t feel at your best, carry your body with pride. Doing so can make all the difference to how you feel.