Title Winning Body Language

Author Mark Bowden

Year Published 2010

Kind of Book Communication/Body Language Manuel/Self-Help

How strongly I recommend it 5/10 

My Impressions Not greatly written, but there were a few key takeaways. I would recommend watching his youtube videos instead (which are fantastic.)

Date Read Oct 2019

Practical Takeaways

  • Understand the mindset of your audience

  • Remember, the audience naturally is just not that interested in you

  • Help people feel trust in you through nonverbal communication

  • Don't drop your hands by your sides when you're giving a presentation

  • Keep your hands over the table when you're sitting down and talking to someone (increases trust)

  • Literally take a step backwards to question something

  • Literally take a step backwards when encountering a difficult mental situation

  • Keep your hands above your waistline

  • Lower your hands by your sides to drop the energy of your audience

  • Allow your voice to follow the impulse of your body in alignment with your chosen physicality

  • Gesture on a horizontal plane extending from the naval

  • Breathe from the belly

  • Sit in a position that buts less of a visual barrier between yourself and your counterpart

  • Remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure

  • Breathe in when you communicate

  • Use the in breath to engage your audience with expectation

  • Use the out breath to deflate or disappoint your audience and create an atmosphere of negativity or depression

  • Take a breath before moving on (to process ideas and be more receptive to the next sentence)

  • Use the passion plane (at chest level) to frame content you wish to come across as exciting, energetic, or even aggressive

  • Keep your hands away from your mouth (or people will think you're lying)

  • Avoid gesturing around the lower face

  • Stay away from choreographing detailed movements when presenting. Keep movement simple and consistent

  • Keep your eyebrows slightly raised to gain trust and liking with audience *don't overdo it

  • Give an ear to others speaking to you. Ie. Tilt head slightly to one side to give the "I'm listening to you" signal

  • Gesture symmetrically

  • Mute the sound when watching your video of your public speaking to analyze your body language

  • Use asymmetrical gestures to add tension, discomfort, or confusion to audience

  • Make a goal

  • Make your goal tidy

  • Make your goal bigger

  • Be clear with your body language

  • Relax your audience by relaxing

  • Excite your audience by raising your own tension

  • Give your employees much praise (you might not need to give them a raise in money if you do)

  • Make people feel accepted

  • Make the gesture of pulling your audience/someone towards you to make them feel accepted

  • When giving a handshake, Always make sure your palm makes full contact with the other persons palm

  • Give others the upper hand when greeting them with a handshake ie. When you shake hands, simply turn the other person's hand quickly and gently so that it is slightly over yours, and at the same time quickly and gently move both your and his clasped hands closer toward and into your vulnerable stomach area

  • Get out from behind the podium or at least make sure your hands and torso are visible to the audience

  • Stand at a distance where you can see the feet of the person you're talking to and they can see your feet

  • Let the audience see your whole body

  • Sit in the front center for talks or classes or events. (The Funnel Effect)

  • Arrange the seating so that the important people are placed up front or in the funnel (center) of your talk/show/presentation

  • Use horseshoe seating to increase participation, recall, and experience

  • Make sure your plan admits modification//It's a bad plan that admits no modification-Syrus

  • Don't get stale in your physicality (keep moving and changing)

  • Immediately use anything that is working for you, and immediately discard anything that is not

Big Ideas

  • The audience will mirror whatever kind of energy and nonverbal feedback you give them

  • The body and the voice are inextricably linked

  • The more ignorant people are the more confident they are

Surprising Facts

  • If a healthy person were to voluntarily stop breathing for a long enough amount of the time, he would lose consciousness, and the body would resume breathing on its own, using its unconscious survival mechanism

Unknown Terms

Golden Proportions: Plato's vision of the perfect symetry in the human face. The width of the face is 2/3 its length, the nose is longer than the distance between the eyes

The Funnel Effect: Those sitting in the open end of the funnel participated most, interacted most, recalled the most, and had the most possitive experience of the seminar