How your posture reflects your history and expectations

The way we stand, we sit and we walk, may be unconscious to us but holds our entire history of relationships and experiences. Maybe we hold ourselves upright, chest open, shoulders relaxed, steady footing, long spine, open face, soft jaw, denoting confidence, open-ness and hope. Maybe our shoulders are curling in, our legs and our walk are heavy, our pelvis tight, our chin pointing downwards, denoting protection, deflation, caution.

We can ask ourselves the question, what does my posture say about where I have been, what my experiences have been, how I have responded to them and what I am expecting from life and others.

This can give us a lot of information on how we 'body forth' in the world, and explain chronic tensions and pains but also our mood and frame of reference.

How we hold ourselves started somewhere; maybe it was a traumatic event we could not defend ourselves in. Maybe chronic disappointments in caregivers and relationships, keeps us from reaching out and we hold tension in our reaching arms.

Maybe being seen has been dangerous and we want to make ourselves as small as possible, no matter how much we really need to be seen.

All this is held in our unconscious mind. We can bring awareness to it now, understand the meaning of the posture and how it supported us before even as a defense.

Then maybe we can begin to experiment with changing things a little bit, just to see what else changes in our body, our sensations, our mood, our internal dialogue.

Not to run away, but to add options and understanding.

We can also feel more empowered, knowing that we can change how we feel, we can change what he expect and how we protect ourselves and our boundaries and bring forward different new experiences which can begin to slowly and gradually update our expectations and our world view. Starting from a posture.

If you press your feet firmly on the floor, you may find a bit more length in your spine and from this grounding and lengthening, can come equanimity and growth.

#embodiment #bodypsychotherapy #resilience #traumatherapy #somatictherapy