Positions For Success | The BodyMind Connection
How you occupy your body affects whether you feel powerful or timid, hesitant or confident, clear or confused. To make use of BodyMind awareness in a professional environment, there is a little more to it than simply placing your body in certain positions, although that alone can affect how you feel, and, actually change your biochemistry. Position yourself for success with these 5 tips!
1.) Feel Your Feet
Why feel your feet? Because feeling your feet on the floor, even through your shoes, is grounding — it helps you feel your connection to the ground. This is stabilizing and literally gives you a foundation to stand on. During a review or an interview for example, even while you’re sitting down, feeling your feet on the floor can make a huge difference for you in your clarity and self-confidence. Try it. When you’re sitting, all the places where gravity affects you, your seat on the chair, your back against the chair back, even your arm resting on the desk or on your leg will also help ground you if you pay attention to them.
Start to make a practice of feeling the connection between your feet and the floor wherever you are — standing around with your colleagues, sitting at your desk, walking through a market. At some point, stand in place and feel where your weight is distributed — back on your heels, in the middle, on your toes or the balls of your feet. Wiggle your toes around, feel the difference between the different parts of your feet. Try shifting your weight side to side on your feet, too, just to get a really solid sense of your whole foot on the floor. Most people I’ve looked at tend to stand with their weight back on their heels, and when that happens, leaning back feels straight. So straight will feel like leaning forward at first. So really pay attention!
Once you are familiar with feeling your feet on the floor, check in often. Notice where your weight is resting on your feet. If the predominant feeling is your heels, your weight is back. Try shifting your weight slightly toward the balls of your feet and notice what that feels like. MEMORIZE that feeling! Because that is precisely where you want your weight to be when you wish to both feel and come across as confident. If you feel your weight all the way forward on your toes, back up a little! Your toes probably have to scrunch up to balance with your weight so far forward and you want those little toes to be relaxed, and fully flat on the floor.
To step into a leadership role, to lean into your career and to move ahead professionally, keep your weight absolutely centered or slightly towards the front of your feet — this literally helps you to move forward physically, and it affects how you feel about yourself, whether you feel yourself holding back or moving forward. Under more ordinary circumstances than a job interview, you’ll want to find center — with your weight evenly distributed between the back and front of your feet. But for now, practice and memorize a posture with your weight towards the balls of your feet. You want this to be your default, and when we’re on the spot, we do what we practiced. You want to look ready and proactive, not unsure and held back.
2.) Lengthen Your Spine
Feel your spine. Feel the curves, places of tension, pain or effort or ease. How you hold your spine plays a huge role in how other people perceive you, and also in how strong and competent you feel. Stretching your spine to its full length elevates your power hormone (testosterone) and diminishes your stress hormone (cortisol). Letting your spine collapse does the opposite.
So stand tall. Stretch your spine up so you are as tall as possible. This is important whether you are 6’7” or 4”10”. It may make you feel like you’re looking at the world from new heights — and in fact, unless this is your habit, you quite literally are.
Think about increasing the spaces between your vertebrae and ribs. You know how the coils of a Slinky separate when it’s stretched? Imagine that your ribcage is like a Slinky and your ribs stretch apart in the same way, as you lengthen your spine. And don’t forget those abdominal muscles! Tighten your abs to stabilize your spine. You want everything lifted, but not thrust out to the front.
At this point, be sure to breathe! Holding your breath will not help you lengthen your spine.
Place your hand at the base of your skull and lift the base straight up, so you feel the back of your neck long and the base of your skull lifts, rather than your chin or forehead tilting up. You want to lengthen the back of your neck, not the front, and I admit — this might be pretty uncomfortable (well ok, very uncomfortable) at first, but it’s extremely important.
This may feel like you’re tilting your head down because people often want to lift their chin to lengthen their neck. The problem with that is that lifting your chin lengthens the front of your neck, and we want to lengthen the back of your neck to keep you long and tall.
3.) Lift Your Sternum
What does ‘lift your sternum’ even mean? First, you need to find your sternum, also called the breastbone. It’s the flat vertical bone in front of your chest that your ribs attach to. In the image below, the green, blue and purple parts are different sections of the sternum, but it is one bone. There is a small amount of movement there where the ribs attach, and your sternum can also move forward when your rib cage expands and it can withdraw towards your spine when your rib cage collapses, so try doing that, too. Exaggerate the lifting and collapsing if necessary, to be able to feel some of this movement.
To get a sense of this, pretend there is a grappling hook in your sternum. Imagine you are facing the sun and the grappling hook is pulling your sternum up and out toward the sun. Expansively, but without throwing your back into an arch. Easier said than done. Yet when you get the hang of this, you will be surprised how much it affects how you feel.
4.) Breathe
Now I know you’re probably thinking that we already talked about your breath. This first point is to simply remind you to breathe at all. A lot of us tend to hold our breath when we’re concentrating on something, or trying something out that’s unfamiliar. Like paying attention to our body, right? This can be very awkward for a lot of people, but the payoff is truly worth it. So when you check in with your body, your feet, your spine, and torso, also check to be sure you’re breathing.
For now, just stand there or sit and feel what your torso feels like to you. See what you notice, what stands out such as movement, ease, or tension. Without trying to breathe any particular way, see if you can hone in on what your torso feels like as your body breathes on its own. Just let your breath happen. Your rib-cage expands in all three dimensions with every breath you take. See if you can feel that. Find out how large your torso can expand as you breathe in. As you breathe out it will get smaller.
But here’s the thing — breathing doesn’t expand your torso a huge amount. Ideally, when you inhale your belly pushes out, causing your diaphragm to pull air into your lungs. Exhale and your belly softens again. This is called belly breathing. If you place your hand on your abdomen as you inhale and then exhale you will be able to tell whether you are belly breathing. If your abdomen doesn’t push out when you inhale, you aren’t belly breathing. But you can — and it’s worth the effort.
You can intentionally expand your ribcage and then try keeping your ribs expanded even as you breathe out to feel and appear more expansive because this — expands — you. But remember, it’s movement at the abdomen that is most important in breathing.
5.) Walk Big and Slow
Be conscious of how you walk especially as you enter a room. Different sizes and speeds of movements affect you in different ways and convey different messages to others. Your options include Big and Fast, Small and Fast, Small and Slow, and Big and Slow. If you try each of these you’ll experience the differences, but even if you just imagine — think of someone walking very fast, taking tiny steps. It causes a kind of frantic intensity. Big and fast movements can seem aggressive. Small and slow movement feels timid, even fearful. But big and slow — large, slow steps and movements convey a sense of assurance and calm. As you enter a room, walking big and slow will help you to both feel and appear calm and confident.
Now for the easy part:
All of these suggestions may seem like a lot to take in. How will you ever remember all of it especially when you’re under pressure? Well, here’s the thing. You won’t. But go through each of these different ways of being in your body, and as much as possible practice, practice, practice. MEMORIZE what they feel like, then you won’t have to think about all the different parts. Your body will remember. You may have to direct it to “Take up space,” or whatever words work for you. Remember: Feel your body. Feel your feet on the floor. Take up space. Breathe. That’s it!
