Mastering Non-Verbal Communication and Body Language

The Power of Non-Verbal Communication

Communication between humans is conducted through words, but your body is also responsible for completing the message in a 30:70 ratio. This balance depends on several factors: culture, education, state of mind, and character.

Defining Body Language

Body language is the set of elements that assist spoken words in the transmission of a message, often referred to as non-verbal language. These elements include postures, gestures, movements, and looks or sights, which can be both conscious and unconscious.

Types of Gestures

• Facial gestures: Utilizing the muscles of your face to show emotions.
• Manual gestures: These serve as enhancers or clarifiers of a message.
• Universal gestures: Gestures shared by a society that everyone knows and understands. Some are made as a fashion or novelty but are soon forgotten.

Understanding Postures

Postures represent the expressive static disposition of your body segments:

• Open: Limbs are separated from the central axis of the body.
• Closed: Limbs are close to the central axis of the body.
• Tense: Involves muscular contraction.
• Relaxed: Characterized by a lack of muscular contraction.

Dynamics of Movement and Proximity

Movements are dynamic expressive dispositions (fast, slow, wide, or reduced) developed in different planes:

• Upper: From the shoulder line upwards.
• Middle: Between the hips and shoulders.
• Lower: From the hips to the ground.

Planes of Proximity

• Long distance: An environment with foreign people.
• Medium distance: Also known as "social distance," occurring between people close to each other.
• Short distance: Where your personal space is shared.

Manifestations of Corporal Expression

Theatre

Theatre is a spectacle where, through practice and repetition, an imagined reality, an historical evocation, or a literary piece is represented. It requires costumes, lights, a script, and a scene, incorporating body language into the representation.

Dramatization

This is an expressive model where a person tells a real or invented event by representing it. It is of short duration and does not require a script, scene, costumes, or similar objects.

Mime: The Art of Silence

Mime is a higher-level expressive technique. Practitioners, known as mimes, use only their gestures, postures, and movements to show and create elements around them that do not exist. This technique is also known as "The Art of Silence."