Body language is not only about exhibiting your feelings but also helps you to deal with situations in a confident manner, says Jai Madaan
Body language is an extremely natural way of expressing yourself to others non-verbally — we can tell a lot about strangers and often make our first impression about them based on their body language. We know that someone is feeling uncomfortable, shy, nervous or embarrassed if they are hunched up or holding their arms close to their body (and just generally making themselves smaller), on the other hand, we know that someone is confident and dominant if they are standing tall, spreading their arms and by and large taking up a lot of space.
This phenomenon is not restricted to humans but extends to the animal world, for example, when a dog has his tail between his legs we know that he is scared and when an ape is pushing his chest out we know that he is displaying power and his masculine prowess. So it is very understandable that before someone even starts speaking to us, we are able to gauge significant amount of detail about them from their unconscious or conscious movement of the body.
Most people think that the synergy between our body movements and the way we feel is supposed to work by first feeling a certain emotion and then unconsciously exhibiting it through our movements. Contrary to this belief the science of that connects the mind to the body is not that simple. One aspect of body language that is not public knowledge, is that not only can our emotions effect our body gestures but infact our body movements can, in turn, effect the way we feel, too. Our own body language has the ability to alter hormone levels in our brains that instruct us to either feel confident or stressed.
A recent study done by Amy Cuddy and Dana Carney in the USA brought to light this interesting phenomenon that when an individual pretends to act in a certain way, in most cases that pretense translates into actual state of mind. To investigate this, they researched the way people felt before and after they displayed certain positions (that either suggested feeling powerful or timid) for a time span of two minutes and their results showed that in terms of risk tolerance, 86 per cent of those who were in a high-power pose would feel more confident when gambling, as opposed to 60 per cent of people in a low-power pose.
High-power pose participants also experienced the reason behind this kind of behaviour, which is the sudden increase in the testosterone of the former. When they measured cortisol (stress hormone), high-power people exhibited about a 25 per cent decrease and low-power people about a 15 per cent increase in the stress level.
This means that essentially, two minutes of adjusting our stance can increase our tolerance and our dominance when we are about to face something intimidating. It could also help in minimising stress levels. So rather than allowing our emotions to have an effect on our body language as they normally do, we can trick our body into feeling a certain way based on a conscious change in our body language.
This doesn’t mean that the next time you face a formidable situation, you start banging your chest to demonstrate your strength. These techniques are suggested as a means of communicating with yourself and re-wiring your brain to feel more confident — something which can, and ought to, be done privately. Perhaps the next time your confidence needs a boost you could find a quiet and private place to sit with your hands behind your head leaning back and your legs apart, or stand with your feet wide apart, hands on your hips and chin up. This little trick will help you to fake it until you don’t need to anymore — because the wonderful thing about confidence is that the more you have, the more it grows.