Changing your mood and moving your body is just one technique to improve your lifestyle. Click here for other Lifestyle Improvement tips

Change your mood by moving your body!

Studies have shown that you can change your mood by changing your body position.  If you have ever come across NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), you will have come across the strong link between how we hold our bodies and the feelings that we have.  Each emotion that we feel, each feeling (whether negative or positive) has a certain set of characteristics associated with it.  We will breathe in a certain way, hold our heads in a certain way, put the tension in to our bodies in a certain way and look in a certain direction.  If you want to change your mood, you only need to make sometimes very small changes in your body to make a difference.

If you are feeling low or particularly negative, stop and check your body position. 
More than likely, you will have tension in and around the neck or shoulders, your eyes will be down and your back will be bent.  If you change your body position, then you change your mood automatically. 

Move you shoulders back and put your head up.  This will change your breathing and will change your mood by changing the feelings inside.

Of course, there may be times when you want to feel sad, sorry, depressed, angry or the victim, but if you want to change your mood and improve your lifestyle then you need to recognise and learn ways to stop spending all of your time in those states.  If you recognise the body positions associated with some of the more negative states, and the body positions associated with the more positive ones, at least you have a chance to make a choice, a chance to change your mood.

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One way that you can change your mood is to go for a walk

Going for a walk changes your physiology, changes your surroundings and helps change your mood.  Walk with purpose, with your head up and with a faint smile on your lips.
A walking style where you are dropped down and dragging your feet is not going to help you unless you specifically wanted to think like someone with all the cares of the world on their shoulders!! 
Pay attention to what is going on around you.  Put the attention on something external to you and you automatically change your mood.  Find something that fascinates you, whether it be clouds, nature, architecture, people, fashion, whatever and concentrate on that.  Notice how easy it is to change your mood when you have the focus on something else.  Notice how different thoughts pop into your head, giving you different options and a different viewpoint on your current situation.  If you walk with purpose at a pace that is slightly above your normal walking speed, you will notice your heart pumping and that will automatically change the blood flow in your body which will also help to change your mood.

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You could also change your mood by smiling, by laughing, by joinging a fitness club, by singing along out loud to a “feel good” song, by doing any sort of physical activity, or by relaxing. 

An added benefit is that the more you exercise, the more you will get fitter and lose your belly fat.  As you change yourself on the inside, you will find that changing yourself on the outside becomes easier and easier.

Remember that when you change your mood, it doesn’t have to feel right straight away, it may even feel like you are faking it, but the body position has such a powerful link to the state that you are in it can not help but change your mood for the better.