Reading Body Language

210
Part IV: Putting the Body into Social and Business Context
Sometimes, lowering yourself can raise your status. When you flop into a chair
in someone else’s home in front of the owner who’s standing, you’re demonstrating
your comfort in that person’s territory. By touching his belongings
and behaving in unrestricted ways you’re indicating that although someone
else may have a claim on the environment, you’re more than comfortable
taking over. This behaviour can be perceived as dominant or even aggressive.
Japanese businesses instruct staff members to bow at different angles,
depending on the status of the customer. A customer who’s ‘browsing’ receives
a 15-degree bow whereas the customer who wants to buy is awarded up to a
45-degree bow.
Balancing the asymmetrical body
Studies of neuromuscular therapy and yoga
provide insights into how humans stand, sit, and
move. The ultimate goal is to have the outer
body and the inner body working together to
create an enhanced feeling of harmony and
deportment. Yoga practitioners call this ‘the
dawning of the light of the spirit’.
People use their bodies asymmetrically, with
the result that some sets of muscles work more
than others. This leads to pain and discomfort
as parts of the body have to work overtime to
compensate for those muscles that are going
slack. Diagonal gravity, misalignment, and poor
balance lead to the body falling off kilter.
Although the pelvis serves as a fulcrum, people
often distribute their weight unevenly, causing
their bodies to become unbalanced.
The Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate Octavio
Paz writes in his poem Boy and Top, ‘Each time
he spins it / It lands, precisely / At the centre of
the world.’
These lines serve as a metaphor for our bodies.
The body, like the top, has a centre of gravity
that it continuously seeks. The body’s muscles
work to keep you aligned. Because no one is
perfectly symmetrical, the muscles pull in one
direction or the other, away from, or towards,
our centre. This happens from side to side and
front to back. Any misalignment in the body
causes one part of the body to overstretch while
another part understretches. Muscles in one
part of the body contract more than muscles in
another part, causing a counter-contraction on
the opposite side of the body. This counter-contraction
occurs in the part of the body diagonally
positioned to the first contraction. The
width and length of these muscles is approximately
the same. As the muscles pull and contract,
they create an illusion of symmetry in an
effort to create balance. Their efforts are misguided.
Muscles move in complex patterns,
some of which are obvious, and many of which
are not.
The back is an area where many people experience
pain and discomfort. When the upper
right thoracic muscles contract because of a
slight curvature of the spine, the lower left
lumbar muscles also contract because they’re
pulled in a counter direction. People with this
condition who stretch to relieve the discomfort,
at first feel rigid and stiff. As they become more
aware of their bodies, and exercise carefully,
they discover which muscles pull in which
direction.
In both neuromuscular therapy and yoga it’s
said, ‘First you lengthen, then you strengthen’.
By making the muscles more supple, flexible,
and permeable, the pelvis stabilises and the
body aligns itself.