Posture and Movement Mirror Psychological States
Embodied Movement
The notion of embodiment is a complex and mostly unconscious process resulting from the blending of multisensory neural inputs. Embodiment includes not only the experience of self-identification with one’s body, but also to the incorporation of tools into the sense of an extended body-self as well as the use of prosthetic body parts. The process of embodiment results from both higher order cognitive processing—a “top-down” process—and a “bottom-up” process of sensory-motor and other sensory flows from the body boundary up to the highest cortical centers (Giummarra et al., 2008).
Proprioception refers to the sense of knowing where the parts of one’s body are in space in relation to the body as a gestalt. Proprioceptive neural flow originates in the receptors of the muscles, joints, tendons, and the skin and is processed by the multisensory neural circuitry in the PPC. Proprioceptive neural activity is stronger during active movement and weaker during passive movement. It provides feedback on the body’s own actions as it combines sensory experience from the skin, viscera, muscles, and joints with motoric information of limb position and movement. Motor activity and response include the experiences of effort, force, and balance.
To give just one simple example of the complex nature of the multisensory experience of embodiment is to superficially analyze a person standing quietly upright in space. To maintain an erect body posture requires the integration of afferent information including visual, somaesthetic, proprioceptive, balance, and hearing with efferent motor responses to make instantaneous but very miniscule adjustments of the eyes, head and neck, trunk, and limbs. All this information is processed in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC), especially in the sub-regions of the superior parietal lobule, parietal-insular region, and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). The neurons in the TPJ integrate passive movement and electric and pain responses, auditory input, and vestibular experience. Neurons in the PPC and the premotor cortex (PMC) process sensorimotor signals into a spatial reference to the body. The conversion of these signals into conscious experience directs the coordinated movement of the head and limbs in relation to the space around the body (Giummarra et al., 2008).
In its simplest form, moving a limb to a target destination in the immediate environment—such as picking up a glass of water—means knowing what muscles to move, adjusting the positions of all joints in space, and contacting the target by having a spatial image of the body in relation to the target. To do this, the brain requires a map of the proprioceptive, kinesthetic and visual properties needed to accomplish the task. These skills are founded in infancy and continue to be refined into childhood and adolescence.
Body experience comes from a spatial map of the body. This idea was first proposed by the German physiologist, Hermann Münk (1839-1912) in 1890 and the French physician, Pierre Bonnier (1861-1918) in 1905. It was then later elaborated by the neurologists, Henry Head (1861-1940) and Gordon Holmes (1876-1965) in 1911. It was Head and Holmes who theorized a brain activity they called the “body schema.” The idea of “body image” by Paul Schilder (1886-1940), a Freudian neurologist, who fled Nazi Germany to work at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Today, the two concepts are thought to be flipsides of body experience with bottom-up sensory processing creating the experience of the body and a top-down, cognitive understanding of body experience producing the body image. This includes an emotional evaluation of the body including beliefs, judgments and attitudes (Gallagher & Cole, 1995; Vallar, 2024).
So the brain orients, adjusts, and moves our body in relation to a neural maps of our body in space.
The Somatosensory System
The somatosensory system is central to most of our perceptions and behaviors. It provides information about body posture and body part location. It informs and guides the sense of touch that allows us to recognize objects. It gives us the experience of being touched, being stroked, or being in pain. It is the essential mechanism for all motor activities. And, lastly, and perhaps most profoundly, somatosensory experience helps form our sense of embodied self.
Functionally, the somatosensory system subserves perception and action. Structurally, these two functions are controlled by two separate neural streams:
- the first projects from the anterior parietal cortex (APC) to the posterior insula and are involved in perception and recognition
- the second terminates in the PPC and helps determine physical actions.
Initial processing of sensory information in the APC yields simple awareness such the location of the stimulus and its duration while further processing tells us the direction and velocity of the object being watched or touched and then, finally, higher order processing gives us information about the shape of an object, which is then related to our own body.
Most somatosensory information enters the cortex via the ventral posterior lateral nucleus of the thalamus and projects to the APC. Conclusions drawn from the lesion and neurophysiological literature indicate that the APC processes the physical stimuli and its relation to the body part being stimulated.
Beyond the APC, cortical processing areas include the secondary somatosensory cortex (SII), the insula, and the PPC. Major neural outputs from the PPC reflect to the SII region, premotor cortex, limbic system, and the superior temporal sulcus (Dijkerman & De Haan, 2007).
The Vestibular System
It is commonly known that the vestibular system controls balance, posture, and eye movement (Berthoz, 1996), but it also influences bodily perceptions ranging from low-level sensations such as touch and pain to higher-order experiences such as the experience of being embodied. It anchors the sense of body-self by integrating the visual and spatial inputs. More, it is involved in the sense of body movement and perception of external movements (Lopez, 2015). The vestibular input maps somatosensory sensations and so plays a central role in the experience of spatial cognition and body orientation. It thus helps to contribute to the sense of being an embodied self (Ferrè, Vagnoni, & Haggard, 2013; Mast et al., 2014). Vestibular disorders such as vertigo, imbalance, and blurred vision cause very unpleasant distortions of body experience (Lopez, 2013).
Psychological Aspects of Posture
Collapsing Structure Balanced Structure
Posture and Self-Experience
Round movements and broad gestures signify warmth, inclusion, inclusion/closeness, and caring. Angular or diagonal movements express anger, irritation, tension, and body boundary exclusion/separation (Crawley & Riggio, 2024). One example, which goes back to the beginning of this discussion, is the oral body structure as an example of how the psyche manifests in body form. This originally comes from the work of somatic clinical psychotherapy work of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) and one of his successors, Alexander Lowen (1910-2008). It is sometimes known as a collapsing structure. The posture appears weak, unsupported, and, like an old, decrepit barn, it looks half-way collapsed. The person appears depressed, exhausted or defeated. Likewise, a body posture that indicates immobility via hyper-muscular tension is termed a rigid structure and implies an equally hard attitude, stubbornness, and intolerance.
The study of consciousness and emotions has been going on for more than a century, and it is now a generally accepted rule that the body and consciousness are united in a dyadic feedback loop. One key research study showed that when people are asked to behave as if they felt happy, they report feeling happier. When they fake anger, they become angry. Several experiments have demonstrated that this effect occurs for facial expressions of these emotions and others as well (Duclos et al., 1989; Kozak, Roberts, & Patterson, 2014). This is known as facial feedback and it is a very real phenomenon although its effects are relatively mild (Coles, Larsen, & Lench, 2019). Posture also influences how we think, feel, perceive, and act. That posture via body feedback has the same effect on mood, energy level, motivation, and self-confidence has also been known for a long time (Briñol, Petty, & Wagner, 2009; Riskind & Gotay, 1982; Veenstra, Schneider, & Koole, 2016). And is this not the essence of the James-Lange theory? (Averill, 1992; James, 1890).
Posture and Gender
Posture is an essential aspect of the human bilateral/bipolar upright form. It indicates many things about a person including mood and personality and gender. A study of people’s sitting postures in public—in this case the Amsterdam Metro subway—showed that men more often sat in a wide position, while women more often displayed a closed sitting position. Judges rating the gender of photographs of men and women considered the wider sitting posture more masculine and the closed posture more feminine (Vrugt & Lyerink, 2000). (This may or may not justify the phenomenon of “manspreading” as more research is needed.
More so, as men and women differ in anatomical form so too do they exhibit different movement patterns. Men tend to fidget more than women. Women are better listeners than men and nod more in conversations (Anderson, 2008). Then there is the woman’s walk. Men are visually attracted to the movement of women’s bodies. When a woman wants to be noticed by men she often engages in “parading” or procepting which means she straightens her posture, exaggerates the swaying motion of her hips, tightens her stomach, and pushes her breasts out. Women who walk this way are approached by men more than other women (Moore, 1985). The swaying of the hips accentuates the waist-to-hip ratio thus drawing attention to that area (Doyle, 2008). This “sexy” walk tends to occur more often in women when they are ovulating (Guégen, 2012). On the other hand, women suffering with dysmenorrhea have difficulty maintaining postural stability (Keklicek et al., 2021).
Dominance and Power
Like the tip of an iceberg, posture indicates deeper body experience and so reveals some clues about a person’s personality, mood, and possible behaviors. Current research indicates a distinction between a posture and assuming a pose. While both are related, posture changes occur on the vertical axis for positive experiences but posing demands adjustments in both the vertical and horizontal axes. Power poses are characterized by expansiveness in space while those in lower social rank tend to be more slumped and contracted. Straight spines are associated with postures of prestige (Kömer & Schütz, 2020).
Closing Thoughts
Posture is both mind and body. It transcends mind-body separation. Posture defines how we move, stand, dance, and walk; how we speak and feel; how we perceive and even think, and our general attitude towards the world. Posture shapes the body-self. One of the many things I have learned from studying the bodymind is that you have a posture or your posture has you. Also, posture is a visible expression of the unconscious mind which is another way of stating a principle of Somatic Psychology that the body is the unconscious. Another principle is Every body is an experiential body meaning that what you feel is who you are. This hearkens back to Aristotle’s belief that the form of the body is the soul. It’s all of one piece in my mind. The problem is that most of us live our daily lives out of awareness, treading a hamster wheel of habit, and not even fully inhabiting our bodies–living in “absent bodies,” as Leder (1990) put it so well. We function on “automatic” for the most part and, as posture is an unconscious function, we lose contact with how we are holding ourselves; a fact long known to dance and movement therapists as well as clinical somatic psychotherapists, and bodyworkers (Kodish, 2004).
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
References
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