si dawson

I was catch­ing up on some light read­ing this morn­ing — read­ing The Econ­o­mist (the fun­ni­est mag­a­zine I know), when I came across this arti­cle, which points out that phys­i­cal dis­plays of pride & shame are hard­wired at an evo­lu­tion­ary level. Ie, they're not learned behav­iours. This was dis­cov­ered by watch­ing ath­letes that were blind from birth — and thus had no chance to watch oth­ers & learn patterns.

So, when shamed in loss, their pos­ture slumps, they hide their faces & nar­row their chests.

In vic­tory, they raise their arms, expand their chests, & tilt their heads back. Like this:

(although I sus­pect the shirts off & veiny thing is optional)

I found this inter­est­ing because one of the sub­tle things we learn at Aikido is to expand our chests & keep our heads up. I'd always fig­ured this was just a pos­ture thing — if you look down, it pulls ten­sion into the shoul­ders & you go off bal­ance. Expand­ing the chest leads to a more open­ing feel­ing, expan­sive rather than con­tract­ing energy, and so on.

But per­haps there's more to it than that?

There have been many stud­ies, going back to Riskind (1984) and per­haps ear­lier that link pos­ture & depres­sion. It's com­mon knowl­edge that you can cheer your­self the hell up just by adjust­ing your pos­ture (eg, this,or this)

but just how far can you take this?

So I thought hey — let's give this a shot. I went for a walk in full on vic­tory pose. Chest opened & puffed out (almost), head tilted slightly back — although not so far I fell over. Umm, no, I kept my arms down. Don't need to get arrested for being a com­plete loony (it's sup­posed to be a secret — don't tell anyone)

The funny thing is, I was already feel­ing pretty incred­i­bly good this morn­ing. Con­fi­dent, happy, on top of the world. The sun was def­i­nitely shin­ing on planet Si.

Now, when I walk I have a real ten­dency to get thought­ful, and thus look down. And yet after a 20 minute walk around town, con­sciously adjust­ing my pos­ture any­time I felt it slip back ..I felt.. how could it be.. even more incredible?

I don't know how that's pos­si­ble, but I highly rec­om­mend giv­ing it a go — par­tic­u­larly if you're already feel­ing a bit beneath the weather to start with.

I'm also begin­ning to think that part of the rea­son for doing it in Aikido is a com­bi­na­tion of these two quotes from the founder, Mori­hei Ueshiba:

"A good stance and pos­ture reflect a proper state of mind."

and

"Aikido can be summed up like this: True vic­tory is self-victory"

Ie, per­haps it's inter­nal, not exter­nal vic­tory that really mat­ters in the end — and by adjust­ing your phys­i­cal pos­ture, you ensure men­tal & spir­i­tual victory.

This whole brain/mind/body con­nec­tion really is an incred­i­bly inter­est­ing thing.