Stress, anxiety, depression – more and more people are beginning to experience these mental health issues. These can all impact daily life and make things more difficult. However, in this post, I am going to talk about some simple, quick and effective ways to help some of the symptoms that come with these. When we have negative thoughts or feelings, this can trigger physiological changes. Most obviously, is the stress response, where we get an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, sweating etc. But it can also lead to a change in our body language, posture, facial expressions, which can further affect our brain chemistry and mood.
Your mind and body are connected, as part of the same system.
When someone is sad, anxious or stressed, how do they look? What body language do they take on? Where are they looking? What are their facial expressions? What tone of voice do they use?
Sad people might be hunched over, looking down, solemn or somber look on their face, low in energy, stressed people might have their head in their hands, talking quickly with a tense voice, do they not?
Let’s flip that now.
Imagine a happy person, or a confident person. What is their body language saying? How are they stood/sat? What are their facial expressions?
Usually they are stood (or sat) straight, smiling and relaxed, opening their body language to the room and those around them. Confident people tend to have their head up, shoulders back, feet wide apart and taking up space in the room with their physical body, as well as their gestures.
Studies show when people who do not experience anxiety, mimic the physical characteristics of an anxious person, shoulders hunched forward, arms held in front of them, head down with short, shallow breathing, their levels of cortisol and adrenalin increase. Whilst mimicking the physiology of someone confident. Shoulders back, feet apart, chin up with low deep breathing, reduces stress chemicals and increase the levels of serotonin. A neurotransmitter (brain chemical) that makes us feel happy. Thus by taking on the physical characteristics of confidence, we can trick our brains into producing the necessary brain chemistry to we feel confident.
By changing whatever state you physical body is in, you can change your emotional state. This is often why if people are stuck with an idea or problem and they go for a walk, they come up with a solution. Moving your body will change your thoughts.
Here are a couple of exercises you can do to demonstrate how physiology affects psychology.
Changing Your Physiology & Body Language
- Identify and name the negative state that you currently find yourself in (e.g., depressed, anxiety, unhappy, disheartened, unmotivated, etc.). Write it down.
- Scale on the 1-10 scale, where 10 is high and 1 is low, how strong that feeling is now.
- And when that thing happens, what happens physically to your body?
Get into that physiological position now – body language, facial expressions, posture. Hold for a few seconds. - Keep your position the same but start smiling.
- Notice how negative feeling reduces. Re-scale that feeling.
- Go back to your negative position again and hold for a few seconds.
- Jump up and down and raise your hands 5 times.
- Again, notice how you feel different now. Notice if the feeling has gone down. Rescale the feeling.
Now we are going to do another exercise, but this time we are going to focus on getting into a positive state, instead of getting out of a negative state.
Physiological State Change Exercise 2
- Make a list of desirable states. For the sake of simplicity, Self Confidence will be used in this exercise as the desirable emotional state.
- Ask yourself these questions, then “act as if” and perform the suggested actions:
How would you move if you were extremely Self Confident?
If you struggle to think of your for this exercise, you can think of someone else who is confident, and think about what they do, how they hold themselves, and speak, that makes them confident.
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- How would you sit and stand? How would your posture be if you were extremely Self Confident?
- What kind of mannerisms and gestures would you employ if you were extremely self confident?
- What kind of voice tempo and pitch would you use if you were extremely self confident?
- How would you breathe if you were extremely Self Confident?
- Turn away from the mirror and practice these movements for a couple minutes (ensure that you are fully engaged).
- Notice how it feels to move your body Self-Confidently.
- Perceive how your frame of mind starts imitating the given state that you are practicing (Self-Confidence in this example).
- Notice what thoughts you have when you are confident.
- Notice what beliefs you hold when you are confident.
- When your mind has fully translated and become one with the positive physiological movements that you are performing, then and only then, mentally imagine that such state has increased exponentially. At the peak of its intensity and in the pinnacle of the experience create a unique physical stimulus (in Neurolinguistic Programming this is called physical anchoring -e.g., touching your right thumb with your right forefinger )
This exercise should not take more than 3 to 5 minutes to complete. Practice the full exercise for 21 days. After doing it for 21 days or so, anytime you fire the physical anchor you will immediately enter the desired state.
Smile Therapy
What is Smile Therapy?
Beloved Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh once observed, “Your joy can be the source of your smile, but sometimes, your smile can be the source of your joy.”
Researchers have found that the mere physical act of smiling—even when done in the absence of the positive experiences—activates the pleasure areas in the brain.
The physical act of smiling triggers the release of neurotransmitters in the brain, including: serotonin, which is associated with reduced stress, and dopamine, which increases feelings of happiness, and endorphins, which are the body’s natural pain relievers.
Just like mimicking physiology, smiling can also trick your brain in to thinking you are happy. Research has shown that even forcing a fake smile can legitimately reduce stress and lower your heart rate. If you want to give this a go, it is important to know that all the research that suggests the positive impacts of smiling, ask participants to use a ‘Duchenne Smile’ – which I will explain below.
Before that, I wanted to say mention that I have even heard of psychologists prescribing their patients ‘Smile Therapy’, where they ask their patients to stand in front of a mirror and smile for a few seconds, 3x a day for at least 5 days a week, for 3 weeks.
The Duchenne Smile
The duchenne smile, is one that communicates real joy. It is the type of smile when the corners of your mouth and cheeks lift and your eyes crinkle in the corner. Smiling with your eyes and your mouth can lift your mood, calm you down, and help you forge connections with other people.
Researchers found that asking participants to hold chopsticks in their mouths, between their teeth, produced a Duchenne smile.
So begin to notice the impact that your physiology has on your mood and your thoughts. Use this to your advantage. Change your physiology and change your state.
If you are interested in learning more of these techniques and booking in for a therapy/change work session with me, contact me here: https://isabel-leming.co.uk/contact-2/
References:
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612445312
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.1993.tb00576.x