by BabyCenter Guest Blogger posted in Life

By Tasha Lansbury
How we hold ourselves in our bodies really does affect how we think and feel.
When things get stressful in your household; the kids are cranky, dinner is late, the dog threw up on the rug- you know, a usual day-- notice your posture.  If it?s scrunched, tight or pulled in, your ability to deal with that stress will be compromised.  By opening your chest, relaxing your shoulders and uplifting your spine, you open, relax and uplift your mood.
There is a mountain of research and evidence showing how the body is leading and shaping our thoughts and feelings- not the other way around.  Amy Cuddy, Harvard professor and social psychologist, details this eye opening and mind blowing research in her book ?Presence.?  ?How you carry yourself-your facial expression, your postures, your breathing-all clearly affect the way you think, feel and behave.?
Cuddy discovered that slumped postures negatively affected people?s problem solving and increased their self-deprecating thoughts such as ?I?m useless and ?I lose confidence easily.?
One of my clients, who I?ll call Seline, is in the sandwich generation.  She is raising her own children while taking care of an aging and increasingly dependent parent.  I once saw a cartoon in the New Yorker of a guy with a baby in a carrier on his back and his father in a carrier on his chest.  This is Seline?s situation. She is overwhelmed by the demands of her family, managing a househ...