Want To Be Happier? Breathe Deep & Don't Frown!

Has anyone ever tried to cheer you up and told you to turn that frown upside down?

*sigh*

Bear with me for a quick anatomy lesson. Your nervous system has three main parts. One, your parasympathetic nervous system, mostly handles normal, everyday tasks. Your sympathetic system hangs around, waiting for the tap out in times of stress or even danger. (It's the system that runs the whole "fight or flight" thing.) The third system is your autopilot, making sure you blink and digest food and stuff.

Now, if you're under chronic stress, your sympathetic nervous system gets a good workout - and gets over-stimulated to the point that you start to develop actual physical, mental, and emotional symptoms of stress. It gets stuck in the ON position, in other words.

We need to re-boot the system once in a while, and there are two easy ways to do that.

1.  Breathe!

Slow, mindful, deep breathing allows your brain to produce certain neurohormones. These counteract the stress-producing hormones your sympathetic nervous system has been demanding. Your parasympathetic nervous system starts to take over again. It decreases blood pressure and heart rate, so you can (finally) physically relax. Breathing exercises can be done any time, any place. Just sitting up straight and taking a slow, deep breath every so often through the day is good for you.

2.  Stop Frowning!

Recent studies (cited below) confirmed the idea that if you don't frown, you can't actually experience negative emotions. Actually, the studies found that Botox injections - which cause people to be unable to express emotion on their faces - kept people from feeling much emotion in the first place. Assuming you haven't had a Botox treatment lately and are capable of expressing emotion, the science still stands: if you don't do it, you don't feel it. So smile instead (since you can), and since your facial muscles are tied to your emotions, you'll pull your emotions into line with your expression!

Davis, Joshua Ian, Senghas, A., Brandt, F., & Ochsner, K. (2010). The effects of BOTOX injections on emotional experience. Emotion, 10(3), 433-440.

Havas, D. A., Glenberg, A. M., Gutowski, K. A., Lucarelli, M. J., & Davidson, R. J. (2010). Cosmetic use of botulinum toxin-A affects processing of emotional language. Psychological Science, 21(7), 895-900.