Comment by asgraham

4 hours ago

Ignoring the spiritual part, emotional state does have a well-known feedback loop with physical state. There’s a (largely incorrect) idea in pop psychology that just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness. It’s not nearly that simple, but there are some more straightforward examples: lots of tense emotional states (anger, anxiety) lead to tense muscles (jaw being the classic example). Relaxing your jaw can lead to a (temporary) relaxation of your emotional tenseness. I’ve never heard of a similar result for the lower back, but it’s not hard to imagine. If nothing else, they must be correlated through sedentary lifestyle.

> (largely incorrect) ... just as happiness leads to smiling, smiling leads to happiness.

I don't have a citation to hand and it's really old but there was academic research supporting that at some point. IIRC they used some clever request to get people to move their facial muscles in various ways without tipping them off about what was really going on and then asked them lots of questions that touch on emotional state.