In today’s global society, you spend most of your life in and around people without a clue as to what they are thinking or how they are feeling. You may be highly fluent in English, Arabic or Chinese. It doesn’t matter. The language these people are saying is on a whole different level.
You might look for meaning between the words, but most of the communications is not in the content, itself. Tweet on and on forever. How many people actually get you? How many people do you get?
Why not try watching people? Then a whole new world will open up for you.
What Is Body Language?
Body language is the term we use for nonverbal communication. It includes everything we say and do over and beyond the literal definition of the words we utter. It includes everything we do whether alone or around others, whether family, friends or strangers. How we walk. How we stand. How we sit.
Body language encompasses where we place our body, how close we get, who we touch and in what direction we turn toward or away. It includes our face, our smile or frown and our eyes… loving or piercing.
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Body language even encompasses our tone of voice, whether harsh or melodic, loud or soft. It goes far beyond the actual words we say. It is all in the way we say them. Until a professional actor or actress read the lines of a screenplay, even Shakespeare, it is all rather dull. The text comes alive the moment it is consciously spoken with passion.
Why Is Body Language Such a Big Deal?
According to researchers, interpersonal communication only 5-7% lies in the actual words you speak, their dictionary meaning. The remaining 93% to 95% lies in their nuances, how they are spoken, what your body is telling the world. This is why it is so easy to get into a war of words on the Internet, and why, in very sensitive matters, it is better to meet in person than over the phone.
It is very difficult for most of us to lie. I studied graphology informally, the art of reading handwriting. In the process, I found out that it is impossible to totally masque your handwriting and pretend to be someone else. There are just too many variables that a handwriting analyst can detect, such as the pressure of your pen. So with your body.
Most of the time, people give little or no thought to what they are actually saying with their body. They rely on impulse, habit or intuition. If you learn body language and carefully use it, the chances are high that not one person in a packed party of 100 will be consciously reading it, only you. It would be as though everyone around you were naked, except you.
Always On the Move: Posture and Gesture
We never stand, sit or lie totally still, even when we are asleep. To be alive is to be active. Lovers can read each other without saying anything, just by hanging out with each other. Not a word need be articulated. Still, much will be said.
The big key to posture is open or closed positions. We are embracing the world or contracting in a fetal position, or somewhere in between. Are you looking at a lovely lady across the room? Is she pointing toward you or away from you. If you are standing close to her, are her legs pointed toward or away from you?
Many gestures are culturally defined, such as Italian or Yiddish street language. However, many are universal, such as thumbs up or down, or blowing a kiss. Some cultures are restrained, such as the British, and some talk with their hands, as many Mediterranean people.
Face the Facts: It Is All in Your Eyes
Joseph Campbell, in his masterpiece PBS series, Power of Myth, introduced his discussion of romantic love by affirming that it all begins with the eyes. We tend to zoom in on the face, and as we get to know someone, discern shifts in emotion with the slightest contortion, from a grin to frown to lips in a defiant curl.
We especially notice the eyes, while fighting the prohibition of staring at someone. Some cultures only allow you a second or two, before your gaze appears rude. This is especially true if someone, a teacher, a manager or a politician, is held to be superior to you. As a consequence, we give short shrift to good eye contact, and miss out on making the greatest possible impact.
I did transformational workshops where we all engaged in a mirror exercise, as well as in an exercise where you would stare into someone’s eyes for five minutes or more. I found the process exhilarating. Having someone’s permission to monkey him or her, or gaze for that long was liberating. You can make a huge difference with your eyes, if only you know how to use them.
Proxemics: How Close Can You Get
Julius Fast pioneered the public discussion of nonverbal communication back in 1971 with his best-seller, Body Language, speaking of different zones: Public, Social, Personal and Intimate. He gave a certain distance for each.
- Public was much like viewing actors on a stage while you sat midway back in the audience.
- Social was more like being at a gala where the lady you seek is across the room.
- Personal was when you were five or six feet away comfortably talking.
- Intimate was when you were actually face to face within kissing range, only six-to-eighteen inches away.
Different cultures respond in different ways. I was working for a British gentleman I really liked who practically flinched when I touched him. I have also worked extensively with people from India who are comfortable standing very close. Julius joked in his book that a Mediterranean couple might touch each other forty or more times an hour, while a British couple would never touch each other in public.
Haptics: How to Touch People Without Even Trying
Haptic communication was pioneered in the world of gaming and VR, where you can get force feedback from a virtual object, so that you are actually touching him or her. When all is said or done, nothing has the power of touch to break social barriers.
This may be why many formal churches now ask members to shake each other’s hands, and other alternative churches may ask members to actually hug one another. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, hugging was the modus operandi of the Love Generation. Since then, it has been suppressed.
You can actually touch people without “touching” them, simply by touching the intimate zone, some 6” to 18” away. People can detect your body heat, and it registers subliminally. A less subtle, but still legitimate, way to touch is on a person’s wrist or shoulder. This is acceptable, for example, in man-to-man discussions, which otherwise discourages touching in any way, apart from the famous football hug.
Tone of Voice: It Is All in How You Say It
Two key elements need to be attended to in how you say something: your pitch… high or low and your cadence… how fast or how slow. It can be a challenge for slow talkers to follow fast talkers, and vice versa. Likewise, for very low talkers, it may require extra effort to understand their booming voice.
A fun way to sensitize yourself is to take a poem, or a passage from Shakespeare and practice stressing a different word each time you recite it. Eventually, you will discover that you can give subtle nuances to each and every word, much like a consummate actor, such as Lawrence Olivier.
You might also give attention to diction, or the actual choice of words. You might find a number of ways to say the same thing, as the English language has a rich vocabulary of nearly half-a-million words. You might choose elevated or popular discourse, words derived from French, or those derived from the Anglo-Saxon.
The Big Secret: Listen While You Watch
One way to break out of the tyranny of your monkey mind, the never-ending stream of words that take you out of the present moment and keep you stuck in your head is to practice listening. This is done in several ways.
You can practice conversational generosity by always talking about the other person’s concerns before your own. This can get you way ahead in business, sales and romantic relationships. Some men and women will take advantage and never reciprocate, but the more sensitive will quickly switch the attention back over to you.
You can also focus on asking questions, and actively, as if you were interviewing a star. I had the privilege of interviewing one of the founders of PC publishing, and came with a typed list of almost 100 questions. As it turned out, I only asked him three or four, and he told me his life story. This led to a meaningful friendship with a mover and shaker in high technology.
You can also focus on his or her body language while you are talking, or he or she is talking to you. Very few people consciously practice this. You will thus be regarded as a whole lot more caring or sensitive than the majority of his or her friends. This is especially true of a woman, who takes extra joy in a man who is highly perceptive and a good listener.
Practice People Watching
The best way to get started today is to spend some time watching people. This reminds me of the funny pop song, “Music to Watch Girls By.” You don’t have to say anything. You can sit or stand near the entrance of a party, café or cocktail lounge and watch what happens around you. You will find it funny, if not amazing.
Men have found it effective to read an intellectual book in a conspicuous place with women all around them. On occasion, a woman will come up to you and interrupt. She can’t stand that you are not gazing with admiration at her. She will want to find out what you are all about.
As you study body language via books and videos, your practice sessions will all begin to make sense. You will see for yourself what others have noticed and begin to decipher the hidden communication. You can then test it out to make sure.
The Fun and Easy Way to Master Body Language
All this lead me to suggest that the very best way to learn body language is to learn it from a beautiful, impassioned master, Vanessa Van Edwards. Vanessa grew up with glasses and braces, painfully shy as a girl. As a consequence, she studied everything about nonverbal communication that she could get her hands on, until she formed an institute around it, Science of People.
Vanessa consults for the Fortune 500 and has been featured on CNN, NPR, Forbes and The Huffington Post. She loves teaching and throws herself into every course. She is now available on Udemy with an affordable course that walks you through all the basics, including extensive video of pre-recorded material, including such stars as Britany Spears. She personally answers all the emails of her students, and loads her course with goodies.
If you want to learn the language of love, and the communication that sees through people to their inner core, then you will allow no further delay. Click below to preview her introductory video.
Body Language: How To See Through People appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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