Presence by Amy Cuddy

Author:Amy Cuddy [Cuddy, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Economics / Women In Business, Business &#38, Nonverbal Communication, Business &#38, Economics / Leadership, Self-Help / General, Psychology / Social Psychology, Social Science / Body Language &#38
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2015-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

Presence Through the Body

He walked along the River Lee, his hands clasped behind his back. A new walk for him. Large and public. The attitude of a thinking man. He enjoyed the pose, found it conducive to the idea of himself.

—Colum McCann, TransAtlantic, describing Frederick Douglass

The “idea of oneself” is an intriguing concept. The self can, presumably, be anything you want it to be. It can even be new, but that doesn’t make it insincere or inauthentic. It suggests that you can think of yourself in a certain way and then take steps to bring that self into existence. In the example above, from a 2013 novel by Colum McCann, it means steps in the literal sense: Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century African American civil rights activist, walked a new walk, struck a fresh pose, and enjoyed it—he found it conducive to the idea of the person he thought himself to be.

Our bodies, McCann suggests, don’t just carry us where we want to go: they can help carry us to who we want to be. And, as we’re about to discover, the evidence seems to agree: where our bodies lead, our minds and emotions will follow.

To understand this phenomenon, it will help to look at what happens when the body betrays us, locking us into a defensive, fearful, hypervigilant state rather than leading us to greater personal power. I’m talking about post-traumatic stress.

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