Perhaps one of the best-loved cartoon characters is Charles Schultz’s – Charlie Brown. Charlie Browns ability to capture our heart lies in his simple honesty, which resonates with our own life experiences and enables us to smile, perhaps because we feel less isolated in the knowledge that we are not the only one feeling how we feel.
In the cartoon below, Charlie Brown demonstrated his depressed stance. He explains that when you are depressed; “the worst thing you can do is straighten up and hold your head high”. Why? Because you’ll feel better! His conclusion, “If you’re going to get any joy out of being depressed”, you need to take his “depressed stance”.
What Shultz’s is saying in this short but insightful cartoon is that in opposition to the Cartesian philosophy of mind and body divergence, the mind and body are in fact intrinsically linked and influential upon universal functionality.
I wonder, have you ever stood or walked like Charlie demonstrates? If not all the time, I bet the answer is a resounding YES sometimes. If you’ve felt tired, discouraged, feel like a failure, or are in pain, you tend to droop. Through your postural attitude, you tell the world around you that you feel low, anxious, stressed, depressed or maybe just tired. As your head lowers, your neck shortens, your shoulders droop or maybe end up around your ears and your hands hang at your sides. Conversely when you are feeling bright and positive you likely find that you carry yourself in a more upright and dynamic fashion.
As one of my early mentors put it; Celestial & Terrestrial postures; opening up to the sky when it is bright and warm and curling up and hunkering down to the ground when it is dull and cold.
In a slumped terrestrial posture, the musculoskeletal functions of breathing are restricted, your ribs lower and compress the lungs, affecting your breathing and maybe reducing oxygen transport and causing a build-up of carbon-dioxide in your systems. Decreased oxygen flow to the brain diminishes clarity of thought. It also stress the body as delivery of oxygen to the organs is less efficient.
It is also suggested that if you fall in to a slumped posture, with your head bowed forward, your shoulders drooped and hunched forward, and your neck pulled in like a turtle, something happens within your limbic system (the system that regulates your emotions, behaviour and motivation) causing these behaviours to plummet. Where do you laugh from? Where do you cry from? These are emotions expressed physically maybe with a deep belly laugh or a sob of grief.
If Charlie Brown was one of my patients at www.the osteopathycentre.com I would be interested to discover as much as I could both about his physical health and within my professional capabilities about his mental health too.
Armed with this information I would be able to offer an appropriate treatment plan which may involve some recommendations to help him with his mental health. With this combined approach, Charlie Brown may find himself not needing to get the most out of depression. Instead, however, he may indeed stand tall, lift his head and breathe deeply in the knowledge that even with a little help from others, he can improve his mental & physical health together.
If your back or mind goes out more often than you do think about Charlie Brown, call The Osteopathy Centre, where I help people like you to feel great every day!