How are you standing/sitting right now? Are you hunched over your phone, laptop, tablet or is your spine straight like there was a thread binding you to the center of the earth and straight up to the infinites of space? Are your shoulders back allowing you to expand your lungs and breathe properly or are they drooping forward as a starting point of crushing everything in your body? Try to speak in the position you’re right now and then straighten up, push your shoulders back and lift your chin. Speak now. Do you notice the change in power of your voice? Stand like this for a few seconds. Can you feel your mood, motivation and self-confidence start to change? This is the serotonin boost affecting your perceived place in the hierarchy in the matter of seconds as well as shaping all real hierarchies out there.

What about lobsters? Should you go out and treat yourself to a lobster dinner right now for figuring this out? Well if you wish and lobster is your thing go but they earned their place heare because they are a third of a billion years of evolution down the scale displaying the same mechanism in the lobster hierarchies. If there were two lobsters having a go at each other in the eternal lobster war for dominance, the one who won will display it by stretching out and making itself look bigger, and the one that lost will scrunch itself and try to look as small as possible. They do this as a direct consequence of serotonin release due to the outcome of the fight and the effect is measurable. The lobster that won has more chances of winning the next time as well due to its confidence, the lobster that lost has a lesser chance losing the willingness to fight by the lack of serotonin. But enhance the serotonin levels in the lobster that lost and he’ll stretch out and fight again and most likely win. It’s a feedback loop of the brain biochemistry, behavior and body posture that works both ways and is fully applicable to the human realm; there are some system loops that will be engrained in us forever no matter how much time passes on the evolutionary time line. The difference is that the defeated lobster needs to have its serotonin levels enhanced chemically because it cannot be forced to change its posture by pure reason, but you can decide to straighten up even if you don’t feel like it and effectively “fake it till you make it”. And make it you will.

Standing upright will not only benefit you personally on the physio- psychological level but as with lobster it is also a sign in the primitive parts of the brain that signals the predatory instincts of the bullies, users, sadists, emotional vampires… to leave you alone. The part of the thrill for a bully of any kind is the return he gets when you display the appropriate submissive behavior which strokes the ego and inflates his power. If this display is missing they won’t bother and will find someone who is displaying weakness to torment. Standing up straight with shoulders back and head elevated shows strength and confidence because you are leaving yourself wide open, your chest and soft parts are more easily exposed to a fatal attack but the display of confidence itself is enough so you won’t have to be. So the next time you’re feeling low and notice that your body is following in a kinesthetically mimicking spiral downwards – stand up straight immediately. You grandma was right. You don’t need to feel like it, just do it and let the loop work its magic, let the body heal the mind.