Organ language

Dear reader,

no, organ language isn't something bad or rude. It's the manner of expression of our organs, to show us that something isn't right. The theory goes that, based on which organ gives us trouble, we could also identify more precisely what kind of problem we have.

That doesn't seem that odd at all, although I have only very barely dealt with that subject. Some of it seems, even without deeper knowledge of organ language, almost intuitively finding expression included in our word-language, too.

The next time when you're thinking very hard about something, maybe also think of this entry and don't be too surprised that you've got a headache. Even though I can't tell you, why precisely you've got a headache from thinking a lot, there's still the phrase of “causing quite a headache”. Alternatively things can “cause somebody an upset stomach”.

Especially woman have fun when cooking, to also prepare the food on a plate in a nice way or enjoy it when someone serves them a meal that's set in a pleasing way, because “you eat with your eyes first”!

When once I was in the hospital for a surgery to correct my nose, many of us had tamponades in our nose and we joked some days after the surgery that we were “fed up” with it. Actually that one doesn't translate very well in English, because in German we say something like having a “full nose” literally.

Maybe you've heard of pheromones before, chemicals that are exchanged between two people and make us and the people next to us react to each other in certain ways. All of it is unconscious, but still there's some truth about the saying of “hating someone's guts”. Again, that one is a bad example in English, because in German we say that someone “smells good”, if we like them or doesn't smell good, if we don't like them. But still works in English with the “gut” as an organ in the saying.

Is it so surprising that some people develop asthma, when we've got the saying that something “takes my breath away” or something is “breathtaking”?

Maybe it's worth looking more into this organ language and what it may mean, especially if you've got problems with one or more organs time and again.

Keep a stiff upper-lip!

Until next blog,

sarah

Sometimes unconscious is better

Dear reader,

I'm very consciously writing about the “unconscious” and not the “subconscious”. The “subconscious” doesn't exist. It's just what many, sadly also experts for example my professors at university used for the word “unconscious”. Even Wikipedia, otherwise despised by teachers and professors points this out. A search for the "subconscious" does get you to a separate page in english, unlike the german website, which just redirects you to the “unconscious mind” with just a paragraph that the word “unconscious” is just everyday speech. Very correct. There are areas in our mind, doing and perception, which are conscious and others are not conscious. Unconscious. But not subconscious. I will not correct or rebuke anyone about it who is using the word “subconscious”. I find it sad that even experts don't use the correct word. I assume it's because everyone knows what it is anyway. So the “subconscious” and the “unconscious” are used synonymously. I for one will write about the “unconscious” now and in the future and not about the “subconscious”.

One aspect, which got into the consciousness more especially because of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is gestures, body posture, body position, facial expressions. It's time and again suggested, in order to get good contact with your dialogue partner (rapport), to adjust your own body posture and body position to the one of your partner. For example if the other person is crossing his or her legs, you do the same. Either crossing the same leg over the other, say both crossing the left one over the right or if the other one has the right one over the left, you have your left one over your right.

Outside features are not the only ones you can mirror. Speaking rate and breathing are also things you can match, among other things. Feel free to read up on that some more, if you're interested.

It's important and correct to notice body posture, body position, facial expressions, gestures, speaking rate and all of that. Especially it's important to notice certain signals and perceive them. Even more so when they are expressions of disagreement or otherwise negative. Everyone should be able to see those signs, to be able to prevent unpleasant processes of a discussion, especially when it's a negotiation meeting.

Far too often people forget to mention that mirroring should be used carefully and not be done strictly all the way through in a conscious way throughout a whole meeting, especially not a long one. If you use it too often and for too long to essentially mimic aspects of your partner, it's going to be a silly copy and instead of positive rapport, it'll give the other person a bad feeling at best and he or she will feel offended. Even if the people don't know or notice exactly what you do. I guarantee you that they will at least get a strange feeling.

Personally I'd recommend you to use body posture and that consciously at the beginning of a meeting and once it's going, to just let it flow and keep it going on a more unconscious level, only to be aware of signals, but not to abuse them, only to notice. It can be a lot of fun to have a great talk with another person and to keep it at an unconscious level like that, only to notice consciously how movements and positions are flowing in sync with the other person. It's not only fun to be in a discussion like that, but also to just watch two or more people doing it. All knowledge you could and should have about this to a certain degree, there certainly are reasons why so many things are rather unconscious for us. Some unconscious things are better consciously left unconscious.

In the beginning it can actually help to consciously cheat. I once had to give a talk in an english class. I was very nervous. But I knew enough about body language, to at least give the impression of confidence. At first I was very nervous and very conscious of my body posture. It often helps to fake a body posture to get to the actual feeling. Much like Charlie Brown describes it, as I posted already in my post about “Showing feelings”. My teacher actually gave me that feedback right away that I appeared very confident and sure-footed. She had no idea...

Until next blog,

sarah

Let there be Lightman

Dear reader,

part of doing hypnosis and especially hypnotherapy, is to observe the client. Something very important is to look for incongruence. That's when the body contradicts the spoken word. You may have experienced this in your daily life before. Usually, I guess, we get a strange feeling. "Something" isn't quite right. It's when I'm with a friend and ask him if he wants to come over to my flat. His mouth says "yes", but he's shaking his head "no". So which is it now?

A certain Albert Mehrabian did an experiment and found out that if someone is incongruent, we break down his non-verbals and what he says. According to Mehrabian, about 55% is body language as such, 38% is speech (how fast it's said and that kind of thing) and only 7% is what's actually said. This means that when we're in doubt and someone is incongruent, we tend to trust the non-verbals and body language more than the actual talk. Mehrabian found that out in 1971. People still like to quote that study. But they misquote it badly actually. They leave out that his study was for incongruence and say that we trust the words only 7% all the time. That's wrong! I guess this misquoting and misinterpretation happens when people take out of the study what they like and other people quote the people quoting that study. I believe that rather few people actually read the original story, but (mis)quote it all over the internet. That's so sad.

Another person worth mentioning when the talk is about body language, incongruence and lies is Paul Ekman. He's the lead expert on deception and lies. According to Ekman, there are 7 basic emotions, which are the same with every human around the globe. They are:

anger: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5708.htm

contempt: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5709.htm

disgust http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5710.htm

fear: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5711.htm

happiness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5712.htm

sadness: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5713.htm

surprise: http://www.poptower.com/lie-to-me-picture-5714.htm

The pictures above show Tim Roth and the pictures have been made as part of the tv series "Lie To Me", where he plays the deception expert Dr. Cal Lightman. He's modelled after Paul Ekman, who also worked as consultant for the show. So "Lie To Me" isn't just any wanna-be-science show. Much of the science on that show is actually true and really works. FOX, which by now has cancelled LTM in the middle of season 3, has since taken away Paul Ekman's blog where he explains aspects of his science on almost all episodes. There are only a few exceptions, for episodes in which nothing special regarding his science came up. You can still read it here now: http://www.paulekman.com/lie-to-me/

Personally I have so far only read "Why Kids Lie" by Paul Ekman. It's a nice read. Especially I found it interesting that the book was a family project really. Paul started of, then his son took over to write from a child's point of view, including some advice for what parents should be doing or can do. And then his wife, who worked as an attorney, wrote the last chapters.

What fascinates me about body language and lie detection is the aspect of so called micro-expressions. That's very quick expressions you make showing your real emotion and then hide it with another expression. Paul Ekman is better at explaining this, so I'll let him talk here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXm6YbXxSYk

I think it's helpful to know the science of facial expression. Probably we don't need to bring it to perfection to see micro-expressions. Knowing the science of facial expressions as such, does help though. Lightman makes that point at the end of the second episode of season 1. In the pilot episode they get a new staff member, Ria Torres, who is a natural. She can see and correctly read facial expressions, including micro-expressions, without formal training. Lightman seems a bit annoyed by her and teases her quite a bit in that second episode. There are scenes when Torres says nothing, but Lightman reads her face and she shows negative emotions. She pays him back in the final scene when she reads his face. However he shrugs it off. When she calls him a liar, he simply tells her to get used to it. Seeing things is one thing. He tells her that without the science, she's unable to see the whole picture and people get hurt. I have to agree with him, that with the science of it in mind, we get a deeper understanding.

Paul Ekman also created programs to train yourself in recognising facial expressions as well as micro-expressions. If you're interested in those kind of things, check out his website.

One thing about detecting lies: It's a widely accepted myth that liars would break eye contact with you. The idea being that the liar can't stand looking you into the eye for a longer time. Probably for fear of you seeing he's lying. Actually eye contact says nothing about whether someone lies or tells the truth. As Lightman and his colleagues repeatedly state: The important thing is to have a base line. Some sort of reference point which tells you what the person is like in a fairly relaxed state. If you don't know what a person is like in a relatively relaxed state, you're unable to tell anything about him. If he has a twitching hand, even when you're talking small talk, it's likely to be a normal behaviour for him and has nothing to do with nervousness or impatience or anything like that. If that person has calm hands in a small talk situation and the hand twitches when the talk gets to more serious matters, it's likely that something is going on now. But a twitching hand as such means nothing. Similarly, if someone crosses his arms and legs, it doesn't necessarily mean disagreement. Notice what the person is like when you think he's fairly relaxed and telling the truth. Once the person does something else and breaks this behaviour in some general way, these may be signs of holding back informations and/or telling lies.

The british magician, or self-proclaimed "psychological illusionist" Derren Brown makes those points of how to tell a lie in his book "Tricks of the Mind" as well. He also explains a trick/experiment you can do with anybody willing to take part. If you go for the three main sensory systems we have visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Ask a person five or so questions for each of those sensory systems. They should tell you the truth. It can be really simple questions. Notice how they move their eyes. If you think you know their pattern, you can ask them to tell you a number of things (say five again) and one should be a lie. The lie is when they don't keep their usual pattern of "truth telling", as you established before. Derren Brown makes it seemingly even more interesting and mysterious as he tells the person only to think of the answers and not say them aloud. Here's a video of Derren Brown doing this trick with car salesmen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM

Go with Derren and make your choice about which facts are lies. Again: don't just go for eye contact or breaking eye contact. Eye contact or not are no indicators for lies or truths!

The blog title today comes from... you guessed it, Cal Lightman. In episode 2, season 3, we see him having problems starting to write his new book. Instead he procrastinates big time with making beans on toast at 4 a.m. and even sets off the fire alarm when he burns the toast. He's distracted with a video he watched on his laptop. So his daughter Emily comes down to see what's going on. She suggests writing just any sentence. Lightman rejects her first line, so he types into the laptop: "Let there be Lightman." and presents it with his arms stretched in a "ta-da!" kind of fashion. Emily tells him to hire a ghost writer and decides to go to bed again. I love the scenes with the two of them. Sometimes Emily seems much more grown-up than her dad. He often does what he feels like doing, which isn't always appropriate and sometimes even dangerous. See for yourself.

Well, I think that's it for now. My take on body language, truth, lies and those kind of things.

I'll keep you posted! Stay tuned!

Sarah