Did it affect the state you were in? Of course it did. You might have felt frustrated or depressed or snapped at people who you normally were nice to. You may have been very easily irritated by something that normally makes you laugh.



When my wife experienced hormonal changes during pregnancy, it did indeed change her state a few times a day. And this is usually called mood swings. The way we use our physical body, the way we move, stand and breathe, has a major impact on how we feel.

Let us do a little experiment right now. You will need to put your things away and really participate in this. I want you to sit in a way when you were really depressed, get to the really depressed state. Think of the last time, of a situation in which everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. And, I want you to sit and get into that state right now.

Ready? Go! Go ahead into this depressed state. Now, as you are feeling depressed, I want you to notice a few elements of your physiology. Do you know what your posture is like right now? Are your shoulders up or down? Is your breathing deep or shallow? Is it fast or is it slow? Which direction are your eyes looking in? Are the muscles in your face tense or are they droopy? Notice the muscle tensions in your hands and your legs.

If you are like most human beings, I bet your physiology will be the following: Your posture would be shoulders down, head down, and your eyes will be looking down and being defocused, your breathing will be slow and shallow, the tone of your voice will be the way I am speaking now, low volume, low pitch, the muscle tensions will be relaxed, or slight tension a bit.

You see, every state has a specific physiology associated to it. In order for us to get into a state called depression, we have to shift our physiology in a certain way. If not, it is impossible for the human nervous system to accept the depressed state. We do it so often and subconsciously that many of us have become experts at being depressed, have not we?

So now that you are aware that your physiology affects your everyday state, what are you going to do about it?