How to read our body language

Communication is essential in our daily life with our fellow beings. Speaking the same language, e.g. English, Spanish or French is important in order to transmit the message that we want to send out. As children, we learn how to give names to objects e.g. " a tree, a house, a ball' etc. When a little child doesn't know how to express what he/she wants, he/she starts crying.

Similar to this, adults get frustrated or upset when their message was misunderstood. We are talking about a 'miscommunication' in this case. When an adult realizes he/she couldn't 'deliver' his/her point of view, he/she would try a second or third attempt with different explanations and examples in order to get the message delivered. Meanwhile, a little child would still cry until someone gets what the baby wanted the whole time. In most cases, the adult would name the object that the baby wanted, so he/she could learn and maybe use it as a new vocabulary to express himself/herself ,e.g. 'this is a cracker'. We have been always encouraged to learn new vocabularies, to use different expressions, to say 'thank you and please' and everything else that is important in a 'verbal-language'.

What about our body language? How come we never learn our 'primary language' ? In the Stone age, people used to raise their hands, if they saw someone coming from the distance. The message was simple: I will not harm you. Our body language has always been our first language and we still don't recognize that. After all, the human brain calculates not just the verbal-language, when it comes to the evaluation of a new information or message; the human brain sums up the gestures that come with the spoken words. When you know someone very well, you can tell if someone is happy, sad, or hiding something.Usually parents are good in reading their kids body-language.

Body language is like any other foreign language: everyone can learn it and use it for a better understanding of each other. The goal is to avoid miscommunication in our globalized world. Here is to mention that different cultures have their own body language, e.g. a nod can intent confirmation in some cultures and in others, it can mean the opposite.

How can we become a student of our primary language? It's easier than you think: Watching is the key word! Watching and be aware of how the verbal communication is accompanied by your body language.

Here are some guidelines where to start and what to watch:

1. Watch yourself first! Watch how you interact in different environments: with your friends, family members, at your job/school. Be aware of the moment you spend time with your friends indoors and outdoors. In a loud crowd, can your friends tell by just looking at you that you are bored or happy? If so, then you might be sending the right signals. If that's not the case, you either pretend to be OK when you are actually not. Is that something that you want to continue or do you want to be "heard' by your body language?

2. Watch others!

Watch your friends and family members. Can you tell when someone wants to speak to you in private or do you need more than one hint to understand? Do you want to be able to understand your friends before they say much?

3. Watch people on TV!

Actors/Actresses can provide a great resource for more practice. How do we usually determine if an actor/actress is a good one or a bad one? We usually ask, if he or she was convincing in that role. That's the question you should ask yourself every time when you analyze someones body language. What does he/she do to make the role more convincing? You will find many things that you haven't paid attention to before.

After opening our eyes for our primary language, I want to give you some hints on what to pay attention to:

Gestures

Gestures can include hand, body and head/face movements.

1. How are the hands moving? To the side? Up and down? Is the speaker showing his/her palms? Usually, the shallower the space of our hand movement is, the more comfortable we are. When we get too nervous or too excited we expand our hand movements. Showing the palm indicates that someone has nothing to hide and open for your opinion.

2. Body gestures

When everyone is sitting down in room and when one of the participants gets up and when his/her body is turned towards the door and his/her face to the group he/she was talking to, that person is more likely to leave in a few minutes he/she is just waiting for the right moment.By standing up he/she is already signaling her intentions.

3.Head/face gestures

Around the eyes and mouth you will find the most challenging signals and maybe the most significant hints to someones inner view. The muscle contractions around the eyes and mouth are related to some emotions. "Eye rolling' or 'eye brow raising' is probably the easiest signals one can encode.

3.Intonation

Does the intonation change all of sudden? Does the pitch range change from low to high or the other way around, then the speakers inner view is going through some changes as well.

When starting analyzing and watching, you mustn't forget that the body language is like any other language: you should consider everything in a context. Taking just one signal in your consideration, will mislead you on your path, e.g. crying doesn't always mean that someone is sad; tears can also be caused by unexpected happiness. Trust your instinct when it comes to you primary language.