Quantum


HEALTH


Issue 8 December 2010


Body Posture


Remember when your parents or teachers admonished you to sit up straight? You might have felt that they were nagging you, but they were actually giving you good advice. Science has shown that simply by taking a few deep breaths, straightening your spine, squaring your shoulders, and lifting your chin, you can change a negative, dejected mood to one that is more confident, positive, and hopeful. Research reveals that when test takers or job applicants who were sitting at desks straightened up and improved their sitting posture, they reported feeling less stress, increased energy and alertness, and greater self- confidence. Most important, their performance improved.


Want to raise your sense of self-esteem and enhance feelings of power and confidence? Then make a fist. While this is an aggressive body posture that may send the wrong signal to those around you, making a fist, at least for men, shifted their moods and made them feel better about themselves. However, researchers at Hobart & William Smith College in New York found that simply folding your arms across your chest induces many of the same feelings, and also increases your will to succeed and your perseverance at sticking with difficult or challenging tasks.


When you’re around negative, complaining or insulting people, don’t just stand there and take it! Find a way to lower your physical profile. Researchers at Texas A&M University found that the way people react to insults changed according to their body position: those standing up experienced high stress levels and feelings of wanting to attack the person insulting them, whereas those reclining or laying down took the insults more in stride, experiencing less stress and fewer aggressive feelings.


Nobody likes a scowling face, least of all your immune system. No matter how down you feel, you can lift your mood and strengthen your immune system by smiling—even if you have to at first fake that smile. Smiling activates many types of large and small facial muscles and nerves,


44 Quantum Health


and when their state changes, so does your brain chemistry. Smiling—and its more robust cousin laughing—increases the level of the “happiness hormones” such as endorphins in your system, and reduces the level of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. People who smile and laugh—and generally have an optimistic attitude—have greater resistance to all kinds of maladies, from the common cold to chronic disease, because their immune system creates more antibodies and greater quantities of T cells and other disease-fighting immune cells. In fact, a British study by a foundation focusing on dental research has found that you would have to eat 2,000 chocolate bars to get the same brain lift as only a few minutes of smiling provides! Even a fake smile has been shown to increase positive feelings and enhance immune response. An added benefit of smiling is that it attracts people, and so increases your chances of making friends and of leaving a good impression, such as during a job interview.


Body posture can also help you more easily enter heightened or ecstatic states of consciousness. To do so, practice the many asanas of yoga (asana is the Sanskrit word for “posture”), adopt one of the ritual body positions depicted in ancient paintings and statuary, or use the sacred hand positions called mudras. Many researchers, most notably the late Dr. Felicitas D. Goodman, have shown how adopting these body postures stimulate shifts to more transcendent states of consciousness.


Breathing Patterns


The aphorism that “laughter is the best medicine” may be truer than we know, and not just for the reasons discussed above. There’s nothing like a good belly laugh to clear your head, recharge your energy and improve your mood. The reason has more to do with your breath than it does with your belly.


Not many of us think about breathing; it’s something we just do. But the way we breathe has a profound effect on our health. Breathing experts claim that up to 80% of us don’t breathe in a way that optimally maintains health. We are


www.quantumhealthmagazine.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68