mind your body

What is communication? How do we communicate?

at this point, i am anticipating COM students to flip through their notes and giving me all the communication models that were taught (and tested for our quiz!) as your answers. but really, lets be parsimonious (yes, a new word i learn from psy class). Communication in its simplest form would be the interaction between two or more human beings. or if you like to talk to animals because that happens to be your thing then so be it. But there's SO many ways of interacting. lets just talk about interaction of humans via face-to-face. because essentially, thats how humans communicate. People can live without communicating through technology (yes people, we can) but it is IMPOSSIBLE for people to not communicate face-to-face. unless you live in another planet and the population of human beings there is one, assuming no other life forms that are as intelligent as us. okae, pardon the idol of the cave tendancies.

So, in a face to face interaction, how exactly do we communicate? According to Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer researcher of body language in the 1950s, in a face to face conversation, the total impact of a message is about 7% verbal, 38% vocal (tone of voice, inflection and other sounds) and 55% non-verbal. this is also supported by anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell that found that the verbal component in a conversation is less than 35%! meaning,most of our communication (over 65%) is done non-verbally. So, dear readers, MIND YOUR BODY. how you move,be it your hands, legs, eyebrows or even the dialation of your pupils would subconciously be sending messages to your receivers!

Body language has often intrigued me to the highest level. i've been obsessed with self-help books that teach us to decode the body language. how to tell if someone is flirting, or lying, or uncomfortable. sure, it take years and years of practice ( for those who wrote the books, years and years of reserach) and it is never always accurate, but to me,it is FUN and empowering. espescially when i'm right! and believe me, it has helped me in quite a bit of my life after i invest my time in it. You know how sometimes, we feel like we know something, but cant quite pin point what exactly is telling us that? IT IS BODY LANGUAGE. so technically, the truth has always been out there. it is whether you can detect it or not. exactly the reason why i like learning abt body language. it is a skill. and it is also something you can manipulate in order to bring about a certain impression from your audience.

We all, in some ways have a basic skill in decoding body language. like we can feel when someone is sad or dissappointed even when they're not saying a word. (remember this friends? silence is a form of communication) SO, why dont we polish up what is already there? go to a book store, go to search engines and find out more about body language. i assure you that, it WILL benefit your life. start empowering yourself now.

SHARE TME;
-the handshake. if a person shakes your hand with his palms facing upwards, he is being submissive or has submissive characteristic. and if its facing downwards, he is a power player. one who likes to be in control.
- basically, when the palm is exposed while interacting, it is a non-threatening gesture which usually indicates comfort or friendliness. and when palms are turned face down, it projects immediate authority. (think hitler)
- touching a stranger on their elbows for not longer than three seconds before asking a favour, would give you better response. up to three times the chances of getting what you want. (of course not ridiculous favours!)
- the eyebrow flash (moving your brows up for a split second and then dropping it down again) which we use as a 'long-distance' hello, is actually a social greeting signal used by apes and monkeys. (maybe darwin was right....haha)

tell me what are your opinions on knowing body language! useful? not useful? interesting or dull?
OR if you already know some, SHARE! what are the common body language that people use and how you interpret it? lets discuss!

joke of the day!
how do you know when a politician is lying?
-when their lips are moving.

a shout out

testing testing...

just so you guys know, i am indeed what they call, an IT-idiot. technology to me is like a bed of needles;-uncomfortable. and i might have very huge problems if my comm class continue to have such emphasis on technology like having your own websites, video editting and so on. BUT i will persist and attempt to befriend technology.

therefore, dont expect anything visually nice in this blog. this is like the basic of all basic blogs. and even so, i had some help from my cousin with creating this. (dont start yelling that creating a blog is idiot-proof..its not). so this is the best that it could be. until i get friendlier with this whole blogspace..and MIGHT just add a thing or to. if not, my opinion is all that you will get from this black little space. enjoy.