Transforming Thoughts with Postural Awareness to Increase Therapeutic and Teaching Efficacy

Abstract

This article suggests that clinicians as well as educators should employ simple and quick posture comparison techniques to shift awareness, elevate mood, and support cognitive function. The report examines the impact of a short somatic involvement technique that involved changing one's body posture to reduce the effect of selfevoked memory of stress. Group observations of 90 men and 55 women, mean age 22.5 years, suggest that people were able to reframe stressful memories much more easily when in an upright posture compared to a slouched posture. They reported a significant reduction in negative thoughts as determined by a single factor ANOVA, F(1, 285) = 42.92, p = .001; and anxiety and tension as determined by a single factor ANOVA, F(1, 287) = 62.38, p = .001. We suggest that therapists and clients get up out of their chairs and incorporate body movements when either the therapist or the client feels stuck, in order to reduce rigidity and increase openness of thoughts and emotions facilitated, which may increase educational and therapeutic goals with sustained benefits outside of the classroom or clinic.

“A Little Superpower That I Know is There”: Exploring the Meaning and Role of Prāṇāyāma in the Wellbeing of Adults in Mid-life

“…These effects are also evidently bidirectional, for example, while Philippot et al (2002) recognised emotions affect respiratory rates, their second study suggested breath patterns can account for 40% variance in fear, anger, joy and sadness, concluding changing breathing patterns can alter emotions. Breath quality is also influenced by body posture, in turn signalling particular emotional states to the mind (Peper, Harvey, Cuellar, & Membrila, 2020;Peper, Harvey, & Hamiel, 2019;Peper, Lin, Harvey, & Perez, 2017). With increasingly bad postures from ever-rising technology-filled lifestyles, how one breathes matters.…”

Using bodily postures to reduce anxiety and improve interoception: A comparison between powerful and neutral poses

“…Individuals in an upright posture reported fewer words relating to fear than individuals in a slumped posture. Furthermore, research by Peper et al [ 21 ] showed that individuals who adopted an upright bodily position, took a breath, and then reframed their negative thoughts were significantly more successful in reducing their anxiety compared to individuals who reframed their negative thoughts without adopting an upright bodily posture. However, the evidence regarding anxiety and posture remains mixed.…”

“…One reason therefore could be that the design of the experiments and the chosen outcome variables varied greatly between the studies. For example, they focused either on a specific type of anxiety, such as social anxiety [ 24 ], anticipatory anxiety [ 16 ] or anxiety in general [ 21 ], or measured anxiety whilst the posture was adopted [ 25 ] or after a performance task in which the posture was no longer held [ 24 ]. Also, the manipulations of the postures differed in regards to their focus on the whole body [ 16 , 22 ], the upper body [ 20 , 21 , 26 ] or only parts of the body [ 25 ].…”

Reduce Anxiety

“…Prior research (cf. Peper, Harvey, & Hamiel, 2019) suggests transforming "hopeless, helpless, depressive" thoughts into "empowering" thoughts has enhanced efficacy when a person first shifts to an upright posture, and then begins slow diaphragmatic breathing, before finally reframing their hopeless, helpless, or negative thoughts into empowering or positive thoughts. Participants were able to reframe stressful memories much more easily when in an upright posture compared to a slouched posture.…”