I love getting together with my Body Harmony friends and colleagues to exchange sessions and discuss the nitty gritty and fine details in our work. It is here that I can indulge myself in exploring the specifics of what it is we do when we are doing Body Harmony. But how can we market our knowledge and offer it to a more general public?
I have the opportunity to write articles in a Swedish magazine a couple of times a year for their ”wellness page”. This magazine is distributed to Swedes living on the south coast of Spain. Below is my latest article translated into English. My aim was to interest people about body language and of course to market my business.
Thanks to Susy Joy for editing my translation.
How we feel is reflected in our posture and in our way of moving. Could it be that our movement pattern also creates our inner world of emotions and moods?
Most of us have sat in an outdoor cafe and watched people pass by. And maybe imagined how they feel and what they have been through. We see some who walk with resilient steps and others who hesitantly put their feet in the ground. Some passers-by have let their chests collapse and others look like they took a deep breath in but never really breathed out. We see men and women who walk with their heads held high and meet our gaze and some who bend their necks and mostly look down towards the ground.
Body language or the language of the body is an important part of our communication. We communicate with our surroundings through how we move, our posture and not least of all, our facial expressions. Research shows that the words we speak are a much smaller part of the message than what our body language expresses. Simply said, we communicate with our surroundings to a very large extent through body language, whether it is conscious or unconscious.
But what is perhaps even more interesting is that our brain also interprets our own body language. The brain that gives us positive and negative thoughts interprets our sensory impressions into emotions and moods. There are, among other things, classic psychological experiments showing that activating the muscles we smile with give us a more positive view of what we are currently doing.
So the people who pass your outdoor cafe all have their history and their personal body language and it is human that we read each other through body language. As long as our imagination does not go too far and give other people labels that may not be in line with reality…
Sometimes we have days when we feel that “we sold the butter and lost the money”. (a Swedish saying!) Life simply feels daunting. If we want to change that, we can use the brain’s ability to read our own body language through the following procedure.
Think of something you think is really positive. Maybe your first love, a big win in the lottery or the tastiest food you know. Let your thoughts turn into wonderful emotions that can be spread throughout your body. Let your whole posture and the way that you move reflect how you are when you are happy, successful, satisfied, grateful or anything else that you find desirable. Notice how your body responds to your emotions and continue to move your body in that way. Maybe you have a more bouncing gait, a warm feeling around the heart, freer breathing or you gently straighten your back. Then your brain can register this and actually change your emotional state.
