Winning Body Language

Mark Bowden: Okay. Good question. So we know that a lot of communication now in business goes on online and over the phone and we can talk about that a little bit later, but let's talk about face-to-face, which is where, I believe, most of the really big deals of business are still done. I mean, if you think about it, a big purchase that a company makes of goods or services, really, at some point, they're going to want to sit down face-to-face with the vendor or with the service provider and decide whether they trust that person or not. Or, at least, that's what their unconscious mind is doing. The thing is, we make up a huge portion of a sense of what's called "theory of mind" – how we think other people think or feel. We get that information from what we see in them, from those non-verbal cues. So, when I sit down to make a big deal, I want to know, "Do I trust that person or not?" And my unconscious mind is really paying attention, at a very big level, to those non-verbal cues to decide, "Do I like them??", "Do I not like them?", "Are they good for me?" or "Are they bad for me and my company?"

Rachel Salaman: So what kind of things are we talking about? What are the non-verbal cues that convey those messages?

Mark Bowden: Well, I guess it's everything other than the words, non-verbal is everything other than the words. So it's what happens with your body: the picture that your body makes, which tells us a lot about the emotion or the intention of what you're saying. Then it's the intonation of the voice: the music that the voice plays us. Again, that gives us really key information as to what you're feeling is and what your intention is behind what you're saying. And then, of course, there's the environment that you set yourself in. You know as well as I do, and everybody listening knows, that it's very important where you might set a meeting, where it might be taking place. That has meaning to us and, of course, that's part of the non-verbal world as well. So it's what you do with your body; it's where your body is and it's also the music, the intonation that your voice plays. That goes into telling us, "What does this person think or feel or intend by what they're saying?"

Rachel Salaman: In your book, you explain in detail your theory about gesture planes. Now, in simple terms, that's where you hold your arms. How did you develop that theory?

Mark Bowden: Well, this theory – and practice, essentially – came from the work that I did within visual theater. When I first started out as a teacher of body language essentially, or behavior, I was training actors and there was this long history in acting, passed down by word-of-mouth, that the height that you hold your hand – the horizontal height – makes a huge difference to the way that your text is perceived, to the way your words are perceived and that actually each separate, horizontal height had a separate meaning, universal meaning, for the audience. So I first started training actors in this, just as I'd been trained and these gesture planes were literally thousands of years old: they go right back in time, actors have been using them, literally, for centuries and centuries. So I developed this work further and eventually started training business people and politicians in it. So you're right, to an extent, that it is a real theory – there's been no scientific testing of this – but we see it play out in practice time and time again.

Rachel Salaman: Right. And there are three planes that you identify. Let's start by talking about what you call the "grotesque plane", which is when people hold their hands below their waist. What is the effect of keeping your hands low like that?

Mark Bowden: Well, here's what we know tends to happen with people, okay, is, when the hands go low, the speech slows down. So, as I'm talking to you now, what I'm going to do is allow my hands to hang down by my side as I'm talking to you and I'm not going to make any changes other than that but what it's causing me to do is not breath in as much oxygen, which means that my brain is not getting the kind of, I guess, power that it needs to have a strong conversation with you. My eyes are now cast down at the moment, thinking about what I'm saying. It feels to me like I'm having to think more about what I'm saying. You're maybe hearing a downward intonation of voice as well. So, at the end of each line, yes, my voice goes down and this causes you to feel that my words are potentially depressing or it's over or I'm not so interested in what I'm saying.

Now, the reality is that I'm just as engaged in what I'm telling you, it's just my gestures of allowing my hands to hang down by my side is causing everything to slow down and get sleepy. We go to sleep when ... One of our ways of going to sleep is to rest and put our hands down by our side. It actually lowers by blood pressure and my heart rate. And, for the audience listening, what I want them to recognize is, "Have they become more sleepy, more lethargic?" "Are they losing concentration in this?" "Are they essentially very quickly mirroring the feeling that they feel is coming from this gesture?" So that's really what the grotesque plane does: it slows everything down; it cuts off oxygen to the frontal lobe; it starts to make you sleepy, slightly depressed and it brings the audience there as well.

Rachel Salaman: The second plane that you mention in your book is arguably the most important and you call it the "truth plane." And it's when you hold your hands in the vicinity of your waist. Why do you call this the "truth plane"?

Mark Bowden: Here's why I call this area the "truth plane" is that when you hold your hands in that belly area, right where your navel is, and allow them to gesture out on a flat, horizontal plane about 180 degrees fanning out from where your belly is, your belly button is, your navel is, people perceive that what you're saying is more trustworthy, more true and more factual. And, actually, your voice comes across as being more factual: the intonation of it, the cadence of it, is flatter. It doesn't have that upward intonation which causes people to believe that everything's a question, even when it's a statement. Yes? And it doesn't have the downward intonation of depression or that the statement is over, or ever the loud downward intonation of command structure, which is where I'm telling you what the truth might be and, often, that will cause you to rebel against it. It has a nice, soft, easy, calm and assertive tone. So that's why it's called the "truth plane": because, when you deliver words from there, people easily are ... more easily believe them to be true, essentially.

Rachel Salaman: What do you base that idea on?

Mark Bowden: Well, again, it's based on behavior or observation. Let me give you an example of it. Think of a picture of a Buddha – think of a picture of a Buddha. Okay? And Buddha is probably a figure that's going to be there as a figure of trust and it's telling us good things that would be good. And think about where the hands of that Buddha are in your mind. If you've got that Buddha in your mind, tell me where the hands are.

Rachel Salaman: Yes. They're around his stomach area.

Mark Bowden: Exactly. Now, look... Buddha's hands could be anywhere. The artist that is creating that Buddha and the hands done for centuries. The artist creating that Buddha could put those hands anywhere; they choose to put them in the belly area because it's trusted, because the audience will go, "There's a figure I should trust." Let's think of another kind of religious icon, and I only choose those because, in most people's minds, they know them and they've been around for, literally, thousands of years. Now we think about Christian iconography. Obviously, you've got the picture of Jesus or Christ on the cross and you'll notice that, probably in your mind, his hands are out at the chest area, being crucified. Get another picture of this Jesus or Christ in your mind. Okay? There's a picture in your mind. Where's his hands?

Rachel Salaman: Yes, kind of fanning out from his stomach as if he's addressing a group of people.

Mark Bowden: Right. Exactly. So, again, the people who created these images – and these images over centuries – these are the images that are fixed in your mind because these are the images that you've seen the most, these have fixed the idea of the hands being in the belly. They could put the hands anywhere. And the artists know that, if the image should be trusted, put the hands in the belly area. So it's literally thousands of years of tradition in art that knows that human beings see more trust in somebody who has their hands in that belly area.

Now, there's also some good kind of evolutionary psychology around this: that belly area is very, very delicate; you don't want to be attacked in that belly area; you don't want to be poked and prodded; you certainly don't want to be bitten there; you don't want sharp objects put into there; you don't want to get damaged there; it's not well-protected. So, if you've got somebody who has their hands open in that area, almost unconsciously directing your eyes towards it, they must be pretty confident they're not going to get attacked; they must be pretty calm and assertive. So the evolutionary psychology would be, is that somebody with their hands there is calm, assertive, strong and doesn't believe that the people around are going to attack them. And if they do believe that, they're still very calm and strong in that situation.

So, look, this is the information that goes into this. Modern science is pretty young; art is thousands of years old and art's been doing this for thousands of years. Of course, you could test it with science: I'd love for somebody to give me the cash to go and do that and I'd love to go and get myself a doctorate in that but, unfortunately, it's not useful for my clients. What's useful for my clients is that they use these behaviors and it gets the result – as it has done for thousands of years.

Rachel Salaman: So can you give a few examples of how people can effectively use their knowledge about the truth plane, for example, in a meeting with a client?

Mark Bowden: Okay. So, look: here's what we know. Is that the client will feel more comfortable if they can see that area of the body and if they can see gestures in that area of the body. The client will feel, "Here's somebody calm and assertive, somebody I can trust, somebody who's being honest with me." So, pull the chair back away from the table a little bit more so the client can see over the top of the table and see that area – rather than being tucked in close to the table where, actually, the client can't see the belly area and any gestures there will be hidden by the table, pull the chair back or even raise your chair up so that you can almost display that area over the top of the table.

Now, you don't want to pull up your chair so much that you have a huge height advantage over your client; understand that part of their brain, their reptilian brain, is wanting to know has anybody got height advantage over them? If you're taller than them, it lowers their status and their brain is designed to want to take them away from the situation, not advance them towards it. But, if you can pull your chair back and display over the top of the table, they will feel more comfortable.

Rachel Salaman: The third gesture plane is the "passion plane." And that's when you gesture at chest level so a bit higher up. How can you use that to good effect? Well, what effect does it have?

Mark Bowden: Good. Okay. Well, actually, let me take my hands up there now. So, as I'm talking to you, I'm going to take my hands up to the chest level and I'm moving my hands around in that area. And you might have noticed that my speech is speeding up and the pitch of it has gone up and there's more upward intonation in it. Now, what this tends to come across to people is that I'm passionate, that I am emotionally involved in what I'm saying. Now they might not see it or hear it as being so much the truth, not so calm and assertive anymore, but certainly passionately assertive, certainly emotionally involved. And that's why I've called this area the "passion plane".

You know, the heart rate goes up; the breathing rate goes up, the blood pressure goes up when your hands are in this area and, also, the audience mirror that as well. They've got mirror neurons which like to copy. We all love to copy each other and our brains are designed to copy each other. Can you also see that my words are kind of running away from me now? I've got a lot of oxygen going round my body now that causes the blood to really flow. My brain's kind of tripping out on itself now. So, what I'm going to do ... Listen to what happens: I've lowered my hands now to my belly area, okay, back down to the truth plane. So notice how, maybe, there's a sense that the passion has gone but, now do you feel you're talking to somebody more in control of this conversation? Or certainly in control of their side of it, thinking more carefully about what they're saying.

Again, I now feel calmer; I now feel more in control; my breathing rate has slowed down and what I want the audience to notice if they're listening to this is has their breathing slowed down with me? Am I actually influencing and persuading them physically? On a physical level, have I slowed their breathing rate down? Because, if I've done that, I've caused changes in the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide that's going round their blood stream. If I've done that, I've now caused changes to the chemicals from their endocrine system. And, if I've done that, then I've caused a change in the electrical activity of their brain: I'm changing the way their brain is thinking by simply altering my body and that's what this body language, gesture plane system is all about: how to change people's thinking and feeling with your body.

Rachel Salaman: In your book, you talk about the effects of symmetry and asymmetry in gestures and something you call "the congruence of movement." Can you share some examples that illustrate your points?

Mark Bowden: Sure. When I'm talking to you now and I want to get my point across and get it across clearly, again, my hands are in the truth plane in that belly area and they're symmetrical. One side of my body is exactly the same as the other. But, what I'm going to do now is to ... I've now got my right hand up where my head is and my left hand is now down by my side and I'm gesturing in quite an extreme, asymmetrical way. And I want you to notice how well I'm now coming up with my content for you and how clear I seem to be. Again, look ... I'm not acting this; all I'm doing is placing my hands there, keeping them there and carrying on my flow of content to you and I know that, if you were watching me as well as listening to me, you would be losing track of what I'm saying because my gestures are really hard to comprehend at this point.

I'm going to bring my hands now, quickly back to the truth plane and in symmetry and I want you to notice how quickly I seem to get straight about what I'm saying, and how quickly, again, you key back into my conversation, into my words because it feels to you like I know what I'm talking about. Again, all I've done is pull my hands back into symmetry. Asymmetry is difficult for our brains to understand. It takes just more brain power to try and work out, "Why is one side of the body different from the other?" And we know, in nature that nature tends to be attracted to symmetry within certain tolerances: as "way too symmetrical" seems a bit strange, faces that are too symmetrical seem unreal to us, but faces that are very symmetrical, they tend to feel very attractive to other human beings. Symmetry is attractive in nature. So, if nothing else, your symmetry is attractive to other people. I tend to find out for myself and for clients I work with and within the art that I looked at throughout time, that symmetry seems to help us think better.

Rachel Salaman: You say in your book that body language plays into territory in the workplace. How does that work?

Mark Bowden: Well, first of all, you've got to start to recognize what you believe other people's physical territory is and when you move into that territory, you've got to be gentle, move more slowly, take up less space in that territory. So, look: you're sitting in your office, at your desk and I come in and I've got a good message for you. Do I come in, sit on your table, lean over, move right into your space and give you the good message? If it's a great message, why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I come, rush in, sit on your desk, lean right into you and give you the great message? Well, I know you will probably get very angry with me. I mean, you might suppress it but, deep down, part of your brain will be going, "Get out of my space; get out of my office; get out of my territory."

What I need to do is maybe just stand at the doorway for a bit, as if it's okay for me to come in and, when I do come in, if you don't offer for me to sit down, say, "Can I sit down here?" Again, move more slowly in that environment because, again, quick movement within somebody else's space can feel very, very aggressive. There might be objects that you believe to be yours. Do I...? I want to write something down; do I lean over, take your pen and start writing it down? Or maybe should I say first, "Can I just borrow your pen for a moment?" Because, just by taking that piece of territory of yours, it could completely stop you listening to me. And, in fact, you could attack my idea – and it was a great idea but you start to attack it.

Rachel Salaman: Right. So it's important to think about these things. In your book, you devote a chapter to breathing and say it can actually affect people's propensity to accept your message. How does that work?

Mark Bowden: So, look: if we take into account that there are let's just say two types of breathing – breathing in and breathing out – and, actually, the two types of breathing cause a very different response in the human body. So, as an example of this, what I'm going to do is allow myself to breath out as I'm talking to you but then I'm not going to breath in so much. So I'm what I would call the "out breath," it's causing my body to slump more; my shoulders are more hunched over and that's because I've got less air in my lungs. Now, again, I'm not acting the way that my voice comes out or the way I'm thinking here but I want you to think about how engaged you are with me now on this out breath. Again, this is just the way I naturally talk when I allow myself to go onto this out breath. And you've heard people to you like this before and I won't stay like this for long because our listeners will just tune out in a moment. But – you know – why wouldn't they? I don't sound engaged; I actually don't feel engaged now although I was before. Just my physical position has caused me to not feel like that and I know it'll be influencing other people.

Now what I'm going to do is put myself onto what I call the "in breath." So I'm breathing in but what I'm trying not to do is allow too much of that oxygen to come out of me. I'm more inflated, I guess, in my lungs; I'm more supported by the breath. And think now: are you now more engaged in what I'm saying? This is the same person, with the same information, just talking to you. And think, "Is this person more compelling, more engaging?" Because, if I am, here is all that I've done: I'm just on what I call the "in breath"; I'm predominantly on the in breath, rather than the out breath. Now, I know this is causing more oxygen to be available for me; I know that oxygen is part of the system that produces ATP – adenosine triphosphate – which is the universal energy currency of the body. If I've got more oxygen available to me, I've got more energy available to me. I know my brain uses ATP to function; it needs that in order to ship electrons and ship calcium across the synapses. Without oxygen, my brain doesn't work. So here's what I'd say about it: the in breath is helping my brain function at a much higher level. And, if you read the book, there's some experiments that you can do on yourself as to how this changes your thinking, and actually your imagination, in quite an extraordinary way. But, hopefully, you've been able to hear a little bit there of how it changes perception.

Rachel Salaman: Yes. How much do these observations and tips cross cultures?

Mark Bowden: Yes, sure. So, obviously, there's body language out there, which is... it's actually more like real language, which is like... Different countries have different languages; there's certain signals within each country that can mean different things in different cultures. And I don't talk about any of them in the book because... well, there are plenty of books out there about cross-cultural signals. What I'm talking about is behavior and behavior that changes minds at a fundamental level. And it's my experience, again, by looking at this across cultures, and looking at art and performance across cultures, that these gesture planes are the same in every culture. Basically, we're more the same than we are different.

I know that pretty much, give or take a little bit, you've got two arms, two legs and a head in roughly the same position as I've got, give or take, but actually your DNA is more similar to mine than it is different. If in fact, cross-sex – male and female – I know that your DNA is more the same to me than it is different. And, actually, give or take a little bit, you've got two arms, two legs and a head in roughly the same position as me and so I tend to look at "What are the similarities?" And these gesture planes are, for certain, similarities.

Rachel Salaman: Is there a danger, do you think, that you can focus too much on getting the body language right to the extent that you actually get your words wrong?

Mark Bowden: Well, yes. I think... Look, if you make your body language really complex; if you want to purposefully put on complex body language and do complex movements, it would be a bit like doing dance and trying to get your content out at the same time. You might find it difficult. So I would say, "Look, you don't want to come up with complex body language because, look, on the whole, the brain just gets on with its body language." Here's the important thing: when you get under stress, it will get on with the body language that it will decide for you, which is pretty much to go into the fight and flight system and you will come across as passive or aggressive or anxious and it will just take charge of that. Or you could use the techniques that I'm telling you about, which actually take control of your body language but in a simple way.

To me, there's nothing simpler than saying, "Keep your hands in your belly area; gesture out from there." It's not complex: I'm not asking you to remember a whole series of gestures. I'm just saying, "Look, when under stress, put your hands there. Stress will go down, audiences? stress will go down; just think about that – and content will come out." Either you know your content or you don't know your content. If you don't know it well enough to be able to concentrate on putting your hands in your belly position and get across your content, you probably don't know your content and you probably won't be able to know whether you're standing up or sitting, giving that content but, if you can control whether you deliver your content standing or sitting, you can control that you deliver it with your hands in your belly area just as easily, just as simply.

Rachel Salaman: Mark Bowden, thanks very much for joining us.

Mark Bowden: It's been a pleasure talking to you, Rachel. Thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Mark's book again is "Winning Body Language – Control the Conversation, Command Attention and Convey the Right Message Without Saying a Word." And you can find out more about him at his website: www.truthplane.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.