The Power of Posture

http://tinyurl.com/655dcyk

This is an interesting account of a study which was carried out on the effect of posture on the sense of power that people felt in themselves. While it would be simplistic to conclude that posture by itself can solve all problems, it would equally foolish to go completely the other way, and insist that it has nothing to do with feelings of confidence or authority. The relationship between your feelings about yourself, your response to the things happening to you and around you, and the way you hold yourself, isn't a one way street. Each feeds into the other, creating a continuous cycle of stimulus and response; it may be a cycle that reinforces your feelings of inferiority and lack of control, or of power and the sense of being on top of things.

The study seems to suggest that the effect of posture trumps even that of being given a title of power such as manager, or of (relative) powerlessness such as subordinate. Regardless of the title they were given, people who had assumed postures of power responded with the power affirming options in situations that were suggested to them. Thus, given a choice of speaking up first or staying silent, those who had taken postures or power tended to choose to speak first, regardless of whether they had the title of manager or subordinate.

As the article suggests, parents, teachers and sergeant majors have always been nagging their charges to 'Stand up straight! Shoulders back! Stomach in!' and so on. The study seems to prove that they may have been right.

But of course, I have to have my Alexander take on this.

The people who have impressed me most are usually the ones who had the easy posture of power and kept it without seeming to try. Not push, not bluster, not an in-your-face aggression - but a comfortable easy sense of themselves. And they weren't all in positions of power, either.

Those who tried never seemed to pull it off, and more often than not, had to resort to bluster and shows of power to get things done. They may have got things done, but they didn't convince.

I've also met several people who were in positions of power, but had rounded, diffident shoulders and a hesitant gait. Some of them were looking for a way to get themselves into postures of power because they had been told that that was holding them back from progressing in the organisation.

I could see very well that there was no way they were going to force themselves into the kind of 'good' posture that would presumably bring them the rewards of high office. Holding oneself in a posture that is not natural to you is difficult - no, nearly impossible - and damaging. It only means you have an additional layer of tension over the one you have already accepted as natural.

Instead of adding to it, you actually need to let go of it, so that the natural dignity of the human body can reestablish itself.

This doesn't just translate into a posture of power in the board room - it translates into an unselfconscious grace of being that operates everywhere. The authority in the board room - if you happen to be in it - is just the cherry on the icing.