Body Language

Our body language, which includes your posture,X your expressions and your estures, accounts for more than one-half of what other people respond to and make assumptions about.

When people think of body language, they tend to think it means what happens from the neck down. But much of what we communicate to others—and what they make assumptions about—comes from the neck up. Facial gestures and nods and tilts of the head have a vocabulary that equals or exceeds that of the body from the neck down. 

The signals we send with our bodies are rich with meaning and global in their scope. Some of them are hardwired into us at birth; others are picked up from our society and culture. Everywhere on the planet, panic

induces an uncontrollable shielding of the heart with the hands and/or a freezing of the limbs. A smile is a smile

on all continents, while sadness is displayed through down-turned lips as often in New York as in Papua New

Guinea. The clenched fists of determination and the open palms of truth convey the same message in Iceland as they do in Indonesia.

And no matter where on earth you find yourself, mothers and fathers instinctively cradle their babies with the head against the left side of their body, close to the heart. The heart is at the heart of it. Facial expressions and body language are all obedient to the greater purpose of helping your body maintain the well-being of its center of feeling, mood and emotion—your heart.

Volumes have been written about body language, but when all is said and done, this form of communication can be broken down into two rather broad categories: open and closed. Open body language exposes the heart, while closed body language defends or protects it. In establishing rapport, we can also think in terms of

inclusive gestures and noninclusive gestures.