Of Posture and Power

Some will argue that power holds an important place in our lives, as we are somehow all involved in a social game where hierarchy is present.

That being said, although we can quite easily identify power by wither referring to people or organizations, it might be more difficult to answer the following question:

Where does power come from?

 Some will say power comes from money or fame. But can there be more to it than that? It turns out that that you can feel more powerful by improving your posture!

When looking at various species, body posture is often the primary representation of power. It was recently shown that expansive postures have a direct impact on our capacity to feel powerful. Carney, Yap and Cuddy showed that expansive postures increased feelings of power and appetite for risk. To add to this, these postures were also shown to alter hormonal levels. Expansive postures led individuals to experience elevated testosterone levels and decreases cortisol.

Where this matters is that high testosterone and low cortisol has been consistently linked to disease resistance and leadership abilities.

At Stanford, Gruenfeld and Guillory concluded that not only do expansive postures predict power-related behavior, but also it might actually be the closest correlate of these behaviors.

These studies show the intricate link between posture and power. One could argue that they are just about the same! How cool is that that we can improve posture so simply with Posturology?

For more information on how you can be more powerful, feel free to contact me.