JOANNA CAREW

The body-mind connection has an enormous role to play in signalling to our brains how we are feeling. By simply paying attention to our body posture we can hack our brains into believing we are feeling something we’re not!

I have been learning about the body-mind connection and the power of presence whilst I’ve been looking at managing my social anxiety. One of the most accessible academics on the subject is Dr Amy Cuddy.

The TED Talk

Dr Amy Cuddy shot to fame 12 years ago with her TED talk: “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are”. It is well worth a watch as she introduces power posing, and how we can use our bodies to change our mental state in a matter of seconds.

Interviews are a great example, and having watched the TED talk I bet you will be one of millions who nip to the loo prior to their interview, and stand in the cubicle in a Wonder Woman pose. Your brain will get the message that you’re feeling confident, and when you enter the interview moments later you’ll appear calm and in control of your nerves.

I was taught about Dr Cuddy’s power posing whilst an undergrad at Newcastle University and I tried it out during solicitor training contract/vacation placement interviews. It helped enormously, and sure enough I smashed 3 out of 3 interviews.

That was back in 2019, and then for some reason I forgot all about Dr Cuddy, power posing, and the body-mind connection …

… that is, until a couple of months ago when, fed up with crippling social anxiety, I went on a learning rampage to find techniques to manage it.

Diary of a CEO (DOAC) Podcast

This can be a great starting place when tackling a self-development problem as, love him or loathe him, Steven Bartlett, has interviewed some of the world’s greatest thought leaders over the years!

So, I turned to the DOAC archive to see who had been speaking about anxiety, social psychology, and body language. Like a bolt from the blue I found Dr Amy Cuddy again! She had done a DOAC interview in August 2023, amazing!

Upon listening I caught up with Dr Cuddy’s career, the global popularity of her TED talk, and discovered she’d written extensively on the subject. Kicking myself for having forgotten about the body-mind connection I headed straight to Audible and started listening to her book, Presence.

Presence

There is SO MUCH in this book!

It is incredibly interesting how when you suffer with anxiety – as I do – you physically diminish yourself.

Here are some power and powerless poses set out in the book:

I am such a habitual #10 poser; ankle wrapping. In fact when I noticed this behaviour trait, I realised that I do it all of the time, almost double-wrapping when I am really anxious. Now, I body scan, and quickly adjust my pose to stop signalling to my brain that I feel distressed.

Equally, when I met my husband I was a starfish in bed, but as the power dynamics shifted and the relationship became toxic, I took up less and less space. In recent years you’d find me sleeping in a tight ball, only indenting a tiny space on my bed. Now, I am forcing myself to starfish again and, if I wake having slept in a ball, I stretch out for a minute before getting out of bed so as to make sure I start my day feeling powerful and de-stressed.

Important! Please don’t think the message is to romp around like a silverback gorilla. It isn’t!

As humans we interact with others based on the signalling they omit. If we uptake overtly powerful body language it can actually be detrimental.

For example, Dr Cuddy reported overly dominant poses from interviewees as diminishing the interviewers’ beliefs in their authenticity and like-ability.

Hence choosing the time and place for power posing, such as popping to the loo before an interview, and making subtle adjustments to our postures, can be far more effective when interacting with others.

Presence + Yoga

As Dr Cuddy is a scientist she backs up her ideas with evidence-based studies. So, you can deep dive into the tonnes of references she includes in her book.

She discusses so many brilliant aspects of the body-mind connection. However, I was particularly interested in her writing about presence, yoga, and how it is being developed as a post-traumatic stress (PTS) treatment. Unfortunately, I suffer with PTS, which is one of the root causes of my social anxiety, therefore I wondered if yoga might prove useful to me … and it has!

Yoga breathing and movement are both beneficial in PTS treatment:

Yoga breathing, with short inhalations and long exhalations, rebalances the autonomic nervous system: slowing the sympathetic nervous system (triggered in fight or flight stress responses), and boosting the parasympathetic nervous system which calms and relaxes the body.

Yoga movements are akin to holding many different power poses, that are open, strong, and work the body-mind connection.

In fact, yoga-PTS studies have been shown to offer enormous recovery potential for patients, and appear to have lasting success too. Check out Kelly McGonigal for more on this.

For me, I now attend yoga classes twice weekly, and I can feel a huge difference in my anxiety levels. My breathing is a work in progress, I have been stress-hyperventilating for a lifetime, and previously trying to control and slow my breathing caused me enormous anxiety. Now, doubling-down on my efforts, I am finding success, and starting to take the practice into stressful occasions.

Presence and Social Anxiety

So am I having any joy in managing my anxiety?! I don’t have a magic wand, but YES!

As an example: last week I went to dinner with a group of people I’d never met before. My idea of hell! I power posed before heading in. Then was careful to slow my breathing and hold open postures whilst I stood around talking.

When seated I body scanned and found my ankles wrapped and I that I was holding my neck (another guarding behaviour), so I readjusted myself, placing both feet firmly on the floor and took my hands away from my neck.

If I was asked to place a measurement on it, I’d say I was probably about 50% calmer than my normal. Which is pretty awesome this early on!

Finally … Will you Share your Experiences?

It’d be great to hear from other social anxiety sufferers, so many of us suffer, and hide it like swans, paddling furiously away but appearing somewhat serene to the outside world.

What do you do to cope? Have you come across Amy Cuddy before today? What do you think about the body-mind connection? Do let me know, it would be great to pool knowledge and experiences here!

As ever, thank you for reading, and sending you lots of love for the week ahead xxx