Raise your hand if you have terrible posture. Yeah, me too. Don’t feel bad, we’re not alone. According to the Arthritis Disease Center, more than 31 million Americans complain of lower back pain and more than half of those cases are attributed to prolonged poor posture.
Posture doesn’t just affect us physically. Poor positioning while sitting and standing can guide the way we think as well. It can even affect the level of success we achieve.
Here are 4 amazing things that happen once our posture improves:
1. When we sit up straight, we are more likely to remember positive memories or think of something positive in general.
2. Another finding is that if we skip during breaks, we can significantly increase our energy levels. A slow, slumped walk on the other hand, can do the exact opposite and drain us of our energy.
3. The study also found that those who were most affected by depression before the study found their energy drained more than others.
4. Lastly and most importantly, posture also changes our hormones. Standing tall literally makes you more powerful.
RELATED: Straighten Up! How Bad Posture Hurts Your Health
Here’s how:
By now we’ve all heard Amy Cuddy’s incredible Ted Talk. In it, she lays out how body positioning triggers certain emotions in your mind, as well as in the minds of those who are looking at you.
If you are curved in stature, it’s more likely that the person(s) you’re speaking to will disregard what you’re saying since you don’t LOOK confident. That impression may be further from the truth, but as we know, in most cases, perception is our reality.
Columbia and Harvard Universities researched this phenomenon and found that body language symbolizing power can affect our