The eyes have it , but so do the feet: Body language expert
PAT ST. GERMAIN
POSTMEDIA NETWORK
Worried your Valentine is just not that into you?
Their eyes may hold a clue, but you’d be wise to look farther down. No, not there. Keep going. “Where we point our feet is actually a pretty profound indicator of whether we want to be with the person we’re with, or whether we’d rather be somewhere else,” says Geoff D’Eon, writer and director of one-hour documentary
airing Feb. 16 on CBC-TV’s
The significance of our lowest extremities came as a surprise to D’Eon during the making of the documentary, but experts including former FBI agent Joe Navarro told him feet are more accurate indicators of someone’s emotional state than their face. Anyone can put on a fake smile, but your feet don’t hold with social convention.
“It’s a function of the limbic brain, the part of the brain that keeps us safe, and so Joe Navarro says that he starts at the feet,” D’Eon says.
“When he goes to a social gathering, he says, ‘That’s where I look: I begin at the feet and then I work my way up.’ Most people look at the face because it’s the most obvious place to start and then look at other parts of the body for indicators of intent, but he starts at the feet.”
In the documentary, Navarro points to photos of Prince Charles and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, as an example of an unhappy couple whose body language speaks volumes about the state of their union.
“They don’t face each other, they’re most often photographed with them shoulder to shoulder,” D’Eon says.
“And (Navarro) uses that aphorism, ‘Belly away, don’t want you to stay,’ and he says it’s surprisingly accurate. And so when he’s watching people in a social situation, a couple for instance, he’s looking at where they position their feet, and ideally if it’s a functional couple and things are going well, their feet will be close together. Sometimes their legs will even be intertwined under the table.”
One couple whose body language is ripe for scrutiny these days is Donald and Melania Trump.
“Just watching his arrival at the White House on inauguration day — just watching him get out of the limousine while Melania got out of the left-hand passenger door and he got out of the right-hand passenger door and he walked straight up the steps. He didn’t wait for Melania, he didn’t go around to take her by the hand and walk up the steps with her. He went up on his own as if she wasn’t there.”
Contrast that with the arrival of Barack and Michelle Obama eight years ago. He not only waited for her at the bottom of the steps, she preceded him as they walked up to greet former U.S. president George W. Bush and Laura Bush.
“That’s a fascinating contrast in styles and it’s tremendously illustrative of Trump as an alpha male. He is the centre of attention, and she (Melania) is an accessory. She is ancillary to the main event, which is him, and he displays that over and over again.”
Los Angeles-based body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass says that, love him or loathe him, Trump “is a great communicator,” who comes off as genuine to his base. You many not appreciate what he does with his hands, but he doesn’t use any of the rehearsed gestures we’ve become so used to seeing politicians make.
D’Eon says Glass had predicted that Trump would not only win the Republican nomination, but that he would be elected president.
“At which point my head figuratively exploded and I went, ‘Wow,
The most popular northern tales to date tend to focus on how it was “hundreds of years ago,” Kisoun Taylor explains. For example,
the award-winning 2001 Inuit movie, is set roughly 1,000 years ago. Voted the top Canadian film of all time in 2015, it’s probably the most acclaimed portrayal of Canada’s North.
Stenbaek points to musicians Susan Aglukark and Tanya Tagaq as two successful Northern cultural exports to the rest of Canada. After that, things quickly get on thin ice. There are rare TV dramas like and the 1990s and reality series like
and
On the literary front, novelists seem more likely to use the frozen landscape as a dramatic vehicle for murder mysteries, or survival tales — think U.S. author Jack London’s and I’m just not buying this for a second.’ Well, she was right. Lillian Glass was the first person who pointed out to me that he is in fact a very effective communicator.”
Whether Trump is a truthful communicator is another matter, best judged by what he says and not how he says it. D’Eon says the Pinocchio effect — an involuntary action people make that gives away a lie — is a myth.
“People often think there are easy ways to tell if someone is lying or not, such as if they look up to the left, or if they look down to the right, or if they scratch their nose. In and of themselves these individual actions don’t mean anything. Most of us have about a 50/50 chance of determining whether someone is telling us the truth or whether someone is lying to us. We might as well flip a coin,” he says.
“Sowhilethere’snoonePinocchio effect, if you know what you’re
These works of fiction rarely focus on the North’s culture and indigenous peoples. Other popular reads, like Farley Mowat’s autobiographical
tend to put more focus on nature.
Given the North makes up roughly 40 per cent of Canada, it often seems to gets frozen out of the storytelling circle. Money is one major barrier, says Grace, whose crew shot over 10 months in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut.
“It is very costly to be in the North, live in the North, to shoot in the North,” she says. Limited daylight (less than three hours a day during parts of the CBC shoot) and a frigid climate can wreak havoc on production schedules and equipment. Local film crews are also harder to come by.
“If people saw more, they’d be more into it. Canadians don’t know much about the North, so doing and you know what you’re looking for you, can put together these individual signs and you can make a much more educated guess as to whether someone’s trying to deceive you or not.
“We all recognize an angry face, but not all of us would be able to pick up the clues necessarily of somebody targeting us with their eyes. When people are happy to see us, when people aren’t a threat to us, they smile openly and their eyes widen. But if you’re in a situation where somebody’s head tilts down and they narrow their eyebrows with their head tilted down, that’s called targeting,” he says.
“In a conversation, if your potential mate is leaning in, leaning across the table, or if you’re standing, if they’re leaning in towards you, that’s a signal. And what you want to look out for in that situation is do they reciprocate, do they lean back towards you? Is their there isn’t the demand.”
Atanarjuat’s success created a brief spark, and was followed by such films as (2006) and (2008). Genie Award winner
(2008) was partly shot in Nunavut.
could potentially take the baton from The Fast Runner and hurtle forward into the 21st century. Kisoun Taylor is certainly hopeful the series will convince more studios and broadcasters to heed the true north’s call.
It turns out, the CBC show and his tour company aim to provide the same thing. As he puts it, “an authentic interpretation of what life is like in the North.” Kisoun Taylor, who also sits on the Aboriginal Tourism Association of Canada, says he’s currently looking into the possibility of bringing a major movie production to the N.W.T. behaviour synchronous?
“Because if you lean in to someone and they back away, well, you know, you’re wasting your time. But if you lean in and they lean in that’s a really good sign.”
D’Eon says making the documentary has made him slightly more analytical in his day-to-day life. But sometimes an itchy nose is just an itchy nose, and if someone points their feet away from him, he understands they may not be looking for an escape route, but simply seeking a more comfortable position
“It’s just another thing in a toolkit that helps me in interpersonal relationships. I think that if we all became more informed on the subject of body language and if we were all better at reading each other we would have fewer misunderstandings in our lives — we would understand our partners better, possibly.”
How to read your mate (or potential mate) from head to toe:
If they smile openly and widen their eyes, they probably like you. If they tilt their head down and narrow their eyebrows, maybe not.
If someone scratches their nose, does that automatically mean they’re lying? Perhaps, but not necessarily.
If they’d rather be shoulder to shoulder than linked up, you might not have the bond you were hoping for.
If they’re leaning in that’s a good sign. Leaning back? Not so much. Also, if their belly is often facing away from you, chances are they’re not interested.
If they intertwine their legs with yours under the table, that’s a good sign.
If their feet are pointed toward you, and stay close to yours, that means they enjoy your company. If they point their feet toward the exit, that’s probably where they’d rather be.