YOUR BODY IS A WEAPON PART 1
We all follow our bodies.
As much as we would all like to believe that our bodies don’t lead our emotions, they do. While I specialize in teaching how to interpret the INNER feelings / thoughts based on OUTER expressions of behavior, the opposite is true as well.
Try this experiment to start out with:
1. Slouch down as far as possible and put a scowl on your face.
2. Try as hard as you can to feel confident and happy and open without moving.
This is an illustration that our bodies make way for emotions to take place.
MIRROR NEURONS
We all have neurons in our brains called ‘mirror neurons’. When a human sees happiness in another human, we all tend to replicate that emotion in our mind using mirror neurons. In body language, we tend, as a species, to generally copy or slightly mimic the body language or gestures of people we like and/or trust in conversation. We are also attracted to people we generally like and trust and who like and trust us.
To experiment with mirroring, try this experiment:
1. Say hello to a person in a friendly and courteous way.
2. Raise your eyebrows momentarily as you say hello.
3. Watch for their eyebrows to automatically rise as well.
This is an easy example and it works almost every time you do it. We can’t help but automatically return this gesture. It evolved from primates and indicates the lack of intent to do harm and shows an appearance of non-threatening and friendly demeanor. If you make the face, it’s about as close as you can get to performing the opposite of an ‘angry’ facial expression.
Most of you have heard about mirroring body language. This involves the covert ‘copying’ of people’s body language in order to establish a stronger rapport and trust. It’s a very simplistic and elementary method to manipulate thoughts and feelings of people you talk to. It’s only the beginning, however. Mirroring is common in conversation. The listeners will typically smile or frown along with the speaker. If one person throws in sports metaphors, the other will likely parry along similar ideas. Since people usually accept their mirror image with ease, mirroring the person with whom one is speaking generally makes them feel more relaxed and encourages them to open up.
This is expounded upon in the Ellipsis manual and involves a great deal of sophisticated movements and tactics that border on mind control…we will not be discussing that here today.
If you’d like to read more about mirroring, this is a very well written article on here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)
The next step here is using your body language after you’ve mirrored someone’s actions in order to get them to begin mirroring YOU.
Once they start to mirror your actions, you have a giant Santa Claus-sized bag of tricks you can do. We will cover a few here today you can go try out in your next meeting, promotion request or trip to the bar.
1. When being mirrored, begin to shift your breathing in line with theirs and speak mostly while they exhale, you are now mirroring their breathing and can shift yours to a slower pace to relax someone with whom you are speaking.
2. Begin to blink with them. Once you’ve got about 2 minutes of pacing their blink rate, start to slow yours down. Keep in mind you will be slowing down your blink SPEED and your blink RATE. This will keep them very interested, relaxed and softened up for you.
3. As they start to mirror you, begin to open your body language using open gestures (from the behavioral table) while they are saying things you like to hear and being attentive to what you want them to absorb. Start to touch your mouth and close your gestures as soon as they bring up anything you want to manipulate them into eventually let go of. Anything you don’t like to see or hear should warrant a negative physiological response from you. If you can make their physiological responses negative while they are talking, their mind will eventually begin to associate the two.
Have fun out there.
-Ellipsis
NOTES:
1. Romano, D. M. (2004). "A self-psychology approach to narcissistic personality disorder: A nursing reflection". Perspectives in psychiatric care 40 (1): 20–28. PMID 15147049.
2. Fay, W. H.; Coleman, R. O. (1977). "A human sound transducer/reproducer: Temporal capabilities of a profoundly echolalic child". Brain and language 4 (3): 396–402. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(77)90034-7. PMID 907878.
3. Birdwhistell, R. 1970. Kinesics and Context. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
4. Knapp, M. 1972. Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction. Reinhart and Winston Inc., New York.
5. McDermott, R. 1980. Profile: Ray L. Birdwhistell, The Kinesis Report 2, 3: 1-16.
As much as we would all like to believe that our bodies don’t lead our emotions, they do. While I specialize in teaching how to interpret the INNER feelings / thoughts based on OUTER expressions of behavior, the opposite is true as well.
Try this experiment to start out with:
1. Slouch down as far as possible and put a scowl on your face.
2. Try as hard as you can to feel confident and happy and open without moving.
This is an illustration that our bodies make way for emotions to take place.
MIRROR NEURONS
We all have neurons in our brains called ‘mirror neurons’. When a human sees happiness in another human, we all tend to replicate that emotion in our mind using mirror neurons. In body language, we tend, as a species, to generally copy or slightly mimic the body language or gestures of people we like and/or trust in conversation. We are also attracted to people we generally like and trust and who like and trust us.
To experiment with mirroring, try this experiment:
1. Say hello to a person in a friendly and courteous way.
2. Raise your eyebrows momentarily as you say hello.
3. Watch for their eyebrows to automatically rise as well.
This is an easy example and it works almost every time you do it. We can’t help but automatically return this gesture. It evolved from primates and indicates the lack of intent to do harm and shows an appearance of non-threatening and friendly demeanor. If you make the face, it’s about as close as you can get to performing the opposite of an ‘angry’ facial expression.
Most of you have heard about mirroring body language. This involves the covert ‘copying’ of people’s body language in order to establish a stronger rapport and trust. It’s a very simplistic and elementary method to manipulate thoughts and feelings of people you talk to. It’s only the beginning, however. Mirroring is common in conversation. The listeners will typically smile or frown along with the speaker. If one person throws in sports metaphors, the other will likely parry along similar ideas. Since people usually accept their mirror image with ease, mirroring the person with whom one is speaking generally makes them feel more relaxed and encourages them to open up.
This is expounded upon in the Ellipsis manual and involves a great deal of sophisticated movements and tactics that border on mind control…we will not be discussing that here today.
If you’d like to read more about mirroring, this is a very well written article on here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)
The next step here is using your body language after you’ve mirrored someone’s actions in order to get them to begin mirroring YOU.
Once they start to mirror your actions, you have a giant Santa Claus-sized bag of tricks you can do. We will cover a few here today you can go try out in your next meeting, promotion request or trip to the bar.
1. When being mirrored, begin to shift your breathing in line with theirs and speak mostly while they exhale, you are now mirroring their breathing and can shift yours to a slower pace to relax someone with whom you are speaking.
2. Begin to blink with them. Once you’ve got about 2 minutes of pacing their blink rate, start to slow yours down. Keep in mind you will be slowing down your blink SPEED and your blink RATE. This will keep them very interested, relaxed and softened up for you.
3. As they start to mirror you, begin to open your body language using open gestures (from the behavioral table) while they are saying things you like to hear and being attentive to what you want them to absorb. Start to touch your mouth and close your gestures as soon as they bring up anything you want to manipulate them into eventually let go of. Anything you don’t like to see or hear should warrant a negative physiological response from you. If you can make their physiological responses negative while they are talking, their mind will eventually begin to associate the two.
Have fun out there.
-Ellipsis
NOTES:
1. Romano, D. M. (2004). "A self-psychology approach to narcissistic personality disorder: A nursing reflection". Perspectives in psychiatric care 40 (1): 20–28. PMID 15147049.
2. Fay, W. H.; Coleman, R. O. (1977). "A human sound transducer/reproducer: Temporal capabilities of a profoundly echolalic child". Brain and language 4 (3): 396–402. doi:10.1016/0093-934X(77)90034-7. PMID 907878.
3. Birdwhistell, R. 1970. Kinesics and Context. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
4. Knapp, M. 1972. Nonverbal Communication in Human Interaction. Reinhart and Winston Inc., New York.
5. McDermott, R. 1980. Profile: Ray L. Birdwhistell, The Kinesis Report 2, 3: 1-16.
