When the head needs good ideas, the first thing to do is turn to the body! Creative thinking.
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What does body language say about us and how can we use our body to build self-confidence?
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My student writes: “I see: my daughter is worried, bent over into a ball and cries sobbing. I tried to talk to her — it doesn’t work, my daughter cries excitedly and says that she can’t stop. I said that she could cry as much as she wanted, but I straightened her back and suggested that she raise her head. She raised it … A minute later she was already calm: she said in surprise that it was impossible to cry in this position.
Our body is not only the seat of our mind, will and our feelings, it is the very source of our feelings, our will and even our mind. The way our body is built and in what state it is is a serious factor that affects both situational mental states and the prospects for personal development. In psychology, the study of the relationship between the structure of the body and the internal state of a person began with the studies of E. Kretschmer and W.G. Sheldon. They described the relationship of three types of body constitution and three types of character. The descriptions are very similar, only the names are different: endomorph is an analogue of an asthenic, ectomorph is an analogue of a picnic, mesomorph is an analogue of athletics.
In psychotherapy, the research of Alexander Lowen, the author of a number of books on body-oriented psychotherapy, has gained popularity. Lowen studied how chronic muscle tension in different parts of the body affects a person’s well-being. According to his observations, the bodily expression of emotional health is grace of movement, good muscle tone, good contact with other people and with the ground under one’s feet (in the terminology of bioenergetics — this is «groundedness»), a clear look and a soft pleasant voice.
Just as everyone has their own facial expression, each of us has our own «body pattern» — a unique, but quite readable combination of features and characteristics of our body that creates our mood and our character. Each body has its own pattern, which consists of a gait pattern, shoulder turn or stoop, a certain head position and a certain gesture pattern, characteristic facial expressions and familiar intonations. Together with the facial expression, the drawing of the body creates a personal-psychological background, which both reveals the state of a person and forms it. Stoop, shuffling gait, frozen eyes and lips habitually twisted in offense — an unsuccessful personal background. A straight back, a free, collected gait, lively eyes and a smile on his face are a more interesting option.
You can make your body beautiful and help your life. How? What do you usually need to pay attention to first? First of all, it is useful to solve the following tasks: replace stoop with a royal posture, remove bodily rattling, master relaxation and confident gestures. When you cope with this and feel how life has changed, you can no longer deal with problems, but with perfection. These are: royal manners, soft gestures, put the right vector of strength, build a gait and put a voice.
Assuming strong poses—like the pose of confidence, even in situations where we don’t feel confident—affects our testosterone and cortisol levels and increases our chances of success. MBA students often display a full range of non-verbal expressions of power. Some of them behave like real alpha males, they take two places at once and raise two hands at once when they want to answer. Other students simply wither when they appear, and it can be seen from their faces and body positions — they literally shrink in size. Social psychologist, professor and researcher at Harvard Business School Amy Cuddy shows how we can use body language to change the way we think about ourselves.
By correcting the drawing of our own body, we get additional opportunities to control our state. Having set ourselves an energetic and confident gait, we create the basis for the usual inner confidence. By keeping a lively and interested face, we increase our motivation to work. When working with couples who need to learn how to negotiate with each other, we often recommend that they buy soft toys that can be held in their hands and gently stroked with their hands during a conversation. While the hand is gently stroking a bear or a seal, the intonations sound just as soft and the conversation proceeds calmly, with understanding of each other: a soft hand forms an appropriate mental attitude. If the hand of one of the interlocutors begins to “unscrew” the seal’s head, then the conversation has gone in the wrong direction. You need to stop and change something in what is happening.
A person begins with a drawing of the body. That is: from an open face or a suspicious (sorry) muzzle, from a strong camp or heavy carcass, from beautiful brushes with live fingers or paws, familiar only with a shovel. The body is the source of your physical energy or pale infirmity. Your body, its pattern and condition is not only your image, it is a notebook of your destiny, where your character and your inclinations, your mind and your attitude towards people, your mood and prospects for your personal development are recorded.
Allow the following sketches: I am riding the subway, a human storefront is in front of me. Well, with such a body, or rather, with such a face, he cannot be the boss. In the face, in the shoulders, in the movements of the hands, it seems to be imprinted: «I am nobody here.» Next to him sits a thoroughbred specimen of the spiritual type, although already somewhat degenerate. And there, while with her mouth closed, she was a market brawler from birth. Truly, through her body — you can not trample. The next specimen worthy of a museum showcase is a victim who strictly and worthily carries his cross. Behind her sits an accountant, smilingly obtuse to everything that does not fit into the framework of debit and credit. But a meat breed fell into the car and fell on the seat, which, apart from developed digestion and basic instinct, has no other details. … These sketches are not beautiful, but what conclusion will you draw from them: will you blame the artist or will you make sure that your body not only pleases you every day, but also decorates your city?
Observing the body pattern of other people, we can tell a lot about their level of development, lifestyle, character and state of mind. Our body is a book in which our life is recorded: not only the past, but also the future, and those who know how to read this book read it. By the age of five or seven, everything is already written on everyone’s face, their values and their path are already imprinted in their eyes, and you just need eyesight to see it all.
The simplest thing to pay attention to is posture, gestures and gait. The gait of a person for an experienced personnel officer says more about a person than his resume. A loose gait is a disorganized life. Habitual grimacing and shifting from foot to foot, from toe to heel, especially habitual shifting eyes, is the impossibility of a calm, confident openness. The underdevelopment of fine motor skills of the fingers, the palm of a shovel means the impossibility for a person of subtle feelings and quick sharp thinking. Clamps of the collar zone are always self-doubt, it is always a little neurosis.
We would like to separate our conversation about the interaction of the soul and body from such authors as Louise Hay, Louise Burbo and other near-scientific popularizers of the ideas of psychosomatics. Louise Hay is convinced that a sore throat is a consequence of the fact that you are holding back from good words and feel unable to express yourself, hemorrhoids — fear of not meeting a certain time, anger in the past and fear of parting, venereal diseases — from feelings of guilt on sexually, as self-punishment, and constipation is an unwillingness to part with outdated thoughts and getting bogged down in the past … Yes, this is an ingenious business model that makes just a sick person also a client of a psychotherapist, but these fantasies have no scientific basis.
Facial expression, eyes and lips are more subtle things than posture, gestures and gait. They are more difficult to describe, but for an attentive person, this information is deeper and more accurate. Carefully observe the facial expression characteristic of a person: if the eyes are the mirror of the soul, then the facial expression is a record of his entire fate.
It’s not difficult for me from a photograph of a person’s face, if his eyes are clearly visible in the photo, to tell almost everything about him that you are interested in learning about him. His character is easy or difficult, whether he trusts people, how many friends he has and what kind of friends he has, whether he is a person who is carried away or rather coldly reasonable, how decent or prone to set-ups he is. For an attentive person with experience already from a photograph of a girl, I repeat, it is easy to read what kind of wife, mother and mistress she will be, how stubborn she is and whether she knows how to organize herself. Also, at trainings for managers, participants show me photos of their employees on their iPhones, then at first I tell them what they already know about these employees, and after that what is important for them to know. Looking at the photo, I tell the perspectives of these employees as leaders, their leadership style, their ability to lead a large team, their behavior in conflicts, whether they will steal and whether they are at risk of future alcoholism. If only people knew how much their face could tell about them!
Listen to the person’s voice. Best of all, if you can not hear the content, you can listen to the voice just like music or the voice of a foreigner, then you will hear his character. The voice of an experienced leader differs from the voice of a novice employee, in the timbre of the voice and intonations it is easy to hear good breeding or its absence, one timbre can tell whether this person knows how to love and whether he is capable of love at all. I am convinced that the absence of certain timbres in the voice makes a person unable to love. Scary? But by connecting the necessary voice resonators, having mastered the necessary timbres and having learned the necessary intonations, a person acquires the ability to love. Surprisingly, unbelievably, but at least for me it is a fact, and that is why work with the voice, with the face, with the body is mandatory for all my students at the University of Practical Psychology.