Could Standing On One Leg Ruin Your Relationship?

Whether you wobble all over the place or just stand there like a tree, balancing on one leg could affect how happy you are in your relationship

Thought imitating a flamingo was simply a way for yogis to show off on Instagram? Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's actually got way more value than that. In fact, it's a sure-fire way to ruin your relationship (or at least make it a little bit more unstable, for the three and a half minutes that you can stay like that without falling over).

Yep, a new study has shown that your posture affects your emotional thinking - and can even damage how you think of your partner.

Reported by the New York Times this week, the study all comes down to an area of science known as 'embodied cognition' - which basically means the relationship between your body and your mind. For example, apparently if you hold a warm cup of coffee, you're more likely to think of people you meet as friendly and warm themselves. But if you hold an iced latte, you're more likely to find anybody that you encounter cold, or abrasive.

It makes sense. But how does that standing in tree pose make us like our boyfriends less?

Well, researchers decided to investigate the connection between being wobbly in terms of balance - and wobbly in terms of relationships.

They tested a group of students who were all in relationships, by seating half of them at regular desks on regular chairs, and half of them at wobbly desks with wobbly chairs. They then all had to complete a survey about how happy they were with their partners.

And the results revealed that the people sat at unstable desks were more likely to describe their relationships as unstable.

The researchers then did another study, where they got a much more diverse test group together, including some really, really old couples who had been married for decades. They asked half the group to stand on one leg - and half to keep both feet on the ground. They then asked everybody to write a letter to their partners, explaining their feelings for them at that given moment in time.

The results were consistent with the ones in the first test: everybody standing on one leg had negative feelings towards their loved ones, while everybody with both feet on the ground felt happy and stable in their relationships.

Which means only one thing: never, ever have a fight with your boyfriend during your yoga class.