Dawson - BODY LANGUAGE: Communication Skills, Nonverbal Communication, Lying & Human Behavior (Psychopath, Lying, Communication Skills, Interpersonal Communication, Conflict Resolution, NLP, Mind Control)

Body language refers to the involuntary or voluntary expression of an emotion or thought, through physical behavior. Many times, we do not speak a word and yet end up conveying a message through our body language. It is essentially a culmination of several involuntary and voluntary body gestures that allow us to understand each other just by mere observation and without having to speak and listen.

We usually involuntarily convey our emotions and feelings through our body language as a reflex. For example, if you smell something rotten your first reaction is to crinkle your nose in disgust. Most of the times you do not even think about crinkling your nose and end up doing it even before you give it a second thought. Sometimes, you may voluntarily make a face or stick out your tongue to show your displeasure over the dirty smell.

See how effectively you communicated your annoyance about the smell without saying a word? This is how effective body language is. In this case, interpreting the body language was very easy and it was extremely simple to draw the conclusion as the situation and the corresponding response was pretty obvious.

A lot of times though, interpreting body language is not this easy. The art of body language has been studied for several years and many connotations have been arrived at. Despite studying body language for a while now, it can be concluded that body language is not an exact science. Various people have a different reaction in the same situation and the interpretation of the body language varies from person to person.

Bodily gestures are just as important as the activity of speaking and in fact, we emote 55% of our thoughts and feelings through body language alone. Our body language speaks volumes about us and a minor change in our behavior can set the tone of the conversation and set our image in the mind of the person we are interacting with.

Some of the various emotions that we emote through body language include excitement, anger, sadness, happiness, shame, content, relief, embarrassment and satisfaction.

One of the key aspects of reading the body language of an individual is to ensure that you know what the person is like normally, before studying their signs in a particular situation. One of the easiest ways to ensure that a person relaxed is to ask them a question that is completely unrelated to the purpose you have met for.

For example, if you are interviewing a prospective employee, he or she is bound to be nervous and this usually covers their usual behavior and makes it extremely difficult for you to get a reading off them. You can use this simple trick to ensure that the individual is relaxed. Start off by asking them a very random question, something completely unrelated to your purpose of meeting. Ask them about the people in their family or ask them about their high school or even crack a little joke about something random. This will ensure that they slowly relax and help you get a good reading off them, without the interference of their excessive stress.