Can Posture Make You Feel Better?

When you change your posture, you can change your mood. Someone who feels down tends to slump. Someone who is happy tends to sit up straighter, walk more upright with the head held up, looking forward instead of down.

If you have been paying attention, you know this already. Posture tends to be a reflection of mood.

What you might not have realized is that it goes the other way too: You can change your posture and it will influence your mood. Experiment today and find out for yourself.

One thing you'll discover is that when you slouch or slump, it is harder to take a deep breath. And the way you breathe influences your mood, too.

When you change anything physical, it might potentially change your mood. A researcher told his volunteers to rate how funny a series of cartoons was in their opinion. They looked at a cartoon, and marked its score, picked up another cartoon, and marked its score, etc. Half of them were told to keep a pen between their lips. The other half was told to keep the pen between their teeth.

The ones with the pen between their teeth rated most of the cartoons as funnier than the other group. Their mouth was in a sort of smile and it changed how amusing the cartoons were to them. Interesting, eh? When you want to raise your mood, your body posture, the look on your face, and how you breathe, are easy things to change without having to even stop what you're doing.

Adam Khan is the author of Slotralogy and co-author with Klassy Evans of What Difference Does It Make?: How the Sexes Differ and What You Can Do About It.