YOU ARE WHAT YOU FEEL

Perhaps it is the knowledge of this linking of posture to emotion that makes an army direct its soldiers to stand straight and stiff.  The hope is that eventually they will become immovable and determined. Certainly the cliché of the old soldier with the 'ramrod up his back' and a rigid personality to go with it has some truth. Lowen feels that retracted shoulders represent suppressed anger, raised shoulders are related to fear, square shoulders indicate shouldering responsibility, bowed shoulders carrying a burden, the weight of a heavy load.

It is difficult to separate fact from literary fancy in many of these suggestions of Lowen's, especially when he states that the bearing of the head is a function of ego strength and quality. He speaks of a long, proud neck or a short, bull neck. Nevertheless there seems a great deal of sense in Lowen's relation of emotional states to their physical manifestations. If the way in which a person walks, sits, stands, moves, if his body language indicates his mood and personality and ability to reach others, then there must be ways of causing a person to change by changing his body language.

Schutz, in his book Joy, notes that groups of people often sit with arms and legs crossed to indicate tightness and withdrawal, resistance against anyone else reaching them. Asking such a person to unlock himself, uncross his legs or arms, Schutz believes, will also open this person to communication with the rest of the group. The important thing is to know what the person is saying with his crossed arms and legs, what message he is sending. It is also important for the person himself to know what message he intends. He must be aware of the reasons for his own tension before he can break it.