Almost ten years ago, Amy Cuddy shot to fame with her popular TED Talk on the ‘power pose’. This was the idea that adopting an expansive body position for a couple of minutes would increase testosterone, and thus help you feel more confident and even perform better. The classic example of the power pose was the ‘Wonder Woman stance’ where the individual would stand with their legs wide, their hands on their hips and their chin raised.
However, over the last decade, scientists have consistently failed to replicate the results of Amy Cuddy’s initial research. Perhaps the nail in the coffin for the power pose was a meta-analysis published in June 2020 by a team at Aarhus University in Denmark which looked at the impact of posture on emotions and behaviour. Recently, one of the paper’s authors, Professor Mia OToole, was interviewed for the BBC. She said,
“We found no evidence that power poses, in and of themselves, increase feelings of power. Tentatively, we conclude that it is the absence of contractive poses or postures that matters most. When you stop assuming a slumped position, and you just sit in a neutral position – that’s where the change in mood occurs, that you have less negative emotions, that you have more positive emotions and so-forth.”
Interview on Podcast ‘Made of Stronger Stuff: the Spine’ from 16:18
This is a striking finding, and a much more nuanced understanding of the relationship between posture and emotions. It also chimes with how the Alexander Technique seems to bring about positive emotions through reducing habitual and unnecessary muscular contraction. Little attention in the research literature has so far been paid to such ‘non-physical’ outcomes of the Alexander Technique, but a review of the current evidence is expected to be published later this year – so watch this space.