San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
What messages are you sending with your body language?
It’s said that nonverbal behaviors make up as much as 65 percent of our interpersonal communication. I read that in a book by a former FBI agent, and it makes a lot of sense.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned from my yoga and meditation practices is how our bodies don’t lie. We can try to convince ourselves of certain things, but our bodies don’t play along.
One of my friends used to throw up whenever she needed to break up with someone. She would tell herself that things would work out, to give the guy a chance. Then he would show up and she would vomit. Her body’s reaction: “Nope!”
Of course, most of our physical reactions are more discrete than that. Maybe we tense up when something isn’t right, or sense more fluid breath when we’re on the right track. Some of these indicators can only be viscerally recognized, some spotted.
Which brings me back to that FBI agent’s book.
Joe Navarro was an FBI counterintelligence special agent specializing in nonverbal communications for 25 years. His book, “What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Speed-Reading People,” is all about body language. He gives a crash course on nonverbals and explains how knowing them can improve the quality of our connections. I think it could help us to know ourselves better, too.
I’d like to share a few of Navarro’s lessons that have been helping me navigate and interact with a deeper level of awareness and understanding.
1. We touch our necks when we’re stressed. Navarro says we touch our necks to self-soothe when we’re in some kind of emotional discomfort, or feeling doubt or insecurity. He says even a brief touch of the neck says someone is insecure and/or pacifying stress. He even goes as far as to say that when recounting something terrible, one “should” touch their neck.
Navarro notes some gender
stereotypes here. Men tend to cover their necks more robustly. I can picture some men I know rubbing the back or side of their necks with a strong grip when something’s wrong.
Women, meanwhile, are more likely to touch, twist or manipulate a necklace, or cover their suprasternal notch — the depression or dip in the neck area — when feeling stressed, insecure, threatened, uncomfortable or anxious.
2. The most revealing part of the body: our feet. Navarro says we turn toward things we find agreeable, and this is most wholehearted and genuine when we turn our feet that way, too. When someone only swivels at the hips, the person would rather be left alone.
Navarro says a cooperative person’s feet should mirror yours. When feet are pointing away, assume the other person needs to leave, is disinterested, unwilling to assist or not committed to what’s being said.
Navarro adds that toes tend to point upward when someone is in a good mood or hearing something they like.
3. How to identify (or express) confidence. There are a few telltale signs of confidence, he says. Confident people spread out. They take up space. In meetings, the person who takes and maintains a large territorial footprint is likely very confident.
That person may also “steeple” their hands. This is when the fingertips of both hands are together and spread apart, and hands are arched so there’s space between the palms. Navarro says this universal sign of confidence is often used by leaders.
When we’re confident in what we’re saying, he says, we tend to sit up, with shoulders back and wide.
Thumbs can be indicative, too. Standing up with hands on hips and thumbs backward communicates confidence and standing one’s ground. If thumbs face forward in this same posture, the read is that the person is curious, less authoritarian, more inquisitive.
He says statements made with thumbs pointing up indicate high confidence. Also, the space between the thumb and index finger can be a gauge of confidence or commitment to what one is saying: the greater the distance, the stronger the confidence/commitment.
Deepening our awareness of such nonverbal cues is enriching, empowering and, at least to me, super cool.