Everything summed up in the title.

I have a little bit of experience playing live, but by no means am I a live fox. Would like to get there though, as I feel a lot of the edge in live game comes from there. This is especially true in live MTTs IMO.

I feel I'm pretty good at reading people live, considering my little experience (I'm 25). I'm less good at properly protecting myself from being read.

I'm usually pretty good at keeping my composure. First off, I've stopped constantly shuffling my chips ; realized it made me more nervous than anything, and after a few hours of play, it's actually pretty tiring for the mind. I have a way better live attitude when I just sit and relax, and also let myself get a bit more focus / excited sometimes.

One issue that I have though, is my heart beating. When I pull out a big bluff, well it's very hard to hide my veins pumping blood all over. The good thing is that I also get that when value betting, so in a way it's pretty balanced. But what end up happening, it seems, is that I just get called more often than not: in the end my live composure (+ my hippie/samurai face) makes me getting paid off A LOT. Which is good now that I understood it. Hard for me to bluff a lot though. To be even more exact, when I feel the spot is great for me to bluff, then it usually works. But sometimes I don't feel like it's going to work often (might still be a profitable bluff right, depending on sizing and all that), and there I have a very hard time controlling my cardio-vascular system.

What I recently thought of was to actually let go of the tension by doing exactly what my body is telling me. Reason is: in those moments, I feel my body wants to ease itself, for instance rubbing my neck, nose, or changing postures, you know, all the classical tells of tension. But I'm repressing those impulses because I don't 'want to get caugh'. So in the end, I don't move much, or the movements seem clumsy to me, and that is a very big tell for bluffers in my experience: little movement but heavy tension. Hence I thought, what about letting go of what is coming? If I want to scratch my nose, or even stand up and move my legs because I'm tensed, why not doing it? Why not tell my opponent the room is getting hot? That I cannot stand the tension he's putting me on (basically the truth)? Instead of resisting the tension, embracing it and accepting to show it, with as little conscious effort as possible. It seems that it could be the best way to express confidence, because I'm usually considered a strong player by others (would they know me or not), and showing obvious agitation is more likely to be considered a sign of strengh than staying static with my carotid artery pumping crazily. I'm pretty sure that letting me moving would release the tension and ease down my vascular tension ; or even if it doesn't, it will not look strange.

Reason I thought of that is because I've had some success influencing my (good) opponents to do what I wanted them to do, simply by changing postures (so in moments I'm not stressed out). I've definitely realized that good players give meaning to changes of posture, and you can use it to your advantage when 3betting light preflop or whatever.

It seems pretty easy to balance by just randomly moving when having a real hand. In those cases my veins are also pumping a fair bit. Basically, and to sum up, my idea was to use tension and movement as a camouflage, instead of trying to become a statue, because the statue poker face, although working well 80% of the time, still let me down sometimes. Next time I play live, I'll definitely try out to let myself be, just release the conscious control, since the tension emerges from the resistance I develop towards the subconscious impulses. I resist to those because I'm afraid to look weak, reveal that I'm bluffing, but having thought about it for a while made me realize that I'm likely to look stronger (because bluffers hide).

What is your take on that? Any opinion appreciated. This thread could also become a brainstorming one, where anybody can share some insight about live game, composure, self-control and self-management.

All of this seems pretty important to me, because being confident in your live composure generally makes you very good (you make good decisions because you're not wary of doing anything out of line if needed), and also very scary.