Body Language
Training Exercises and Resources

The new age of virtual reality (VR) is upon us. We are still at early stages of VR development, but the field has shown a strong promise. Of all the new technologies that we are about to fully experience in everyday life, such as self-driving cars, drones or 3D printing, VR and AR (Augmented Reality) prove to be the strangest and the most magical technologies ever developed. Just imagine that in a few decades, when the technology has matured enough, as soon as you put on a VR headset, you will be transferred to an alternative universe the like of which you might have never seen before. It is the kind of environment that might feel more interesting than real life to the point that you may not want to leave it!

It could also be the opposite; you may go through a hellish environment and see how the world may look like if we don’t pay attention to important environmental issues or let greedy politicians bully us to annihilation. Either way, you will come out of the experience better informed and with a strong vivid memory.

This exercise helps delegates to understand and appreciate the power of eye contact and how it can affect emotional connection and emotional states. It is ideal in teaching emotional intelligence, body language and communication skills.

You can get the most from this exercise with the follow up discussions so make sure you allocate enough time for this.

This entertaining exercise helps delegates practice their acting in front of an audience. Each person will be required to deliver a speech about a given topic. You can vary the exercise by expecting a specific style of speech or just leave it completely uncontrolled. It is ideal for training on acting, storytelling and public speaking.

The aim of this exercise is to get the delegates think about body language and gestures and observe how such signals can be instrumental while communicating. The training exercise illustrates the importance of communication without using words and how much a social context or background can help us understand what is going on in a given situation. The exercise also helps unleashing the writing creativity of delegates so it is also ideal as an exercise in storytelling and creative writing.

This is an entertaining and creative exercise which can serve a variety of purposes. You can use it for subjects such as story making, storytelling, communication skills, acting and creative writing. You can also use it in a course on public speaking to get delegates practice making stories which they can then utilise in a speech.

The activity is designed to engage everyone at all times, so each member of the group is ultimately involved in all tasks while reducing the total length of the exercise. This shared experience helps delegates examine the subject from multiple angles and feel that they have contributed to all the stories developed in this exercise.

Use this body language exercise at the beginning of a session before covering non-verbal communication. The aim is to find out how much delegates already know about this topic and effectively prepare them for what is followed. They can also learn from each other in the process. This activity will also help you understand which areas to focus on most as you go through the body language training.

Some people are fast talkers. They like to talk with the same speed as they think. In the process fast talking people end up mumbling a lot, shortening sentences, rounding off parts and skipping words. Their diction is poor and therefore they are difficult to understand. The problem is that fast talkers usually have a lot to say, which is why they are in a hurry to express themselves and more often than not what they want to share is actually useful. However, if no one understands what they have to say or if they mix it up with all sorts of irrelevant data or going off- tangent too often, then listeners get bored quickly or misunderstand them.

This exercise helps such individuals to practice slowing down their rate of speech and improve their diction. The exercise also helps to practice listening skills as delegates have to pay full attention to what has been said.

This exercise helps illustrate an important point on body language. As soon as we see a person, we read their body language quickly to establish their mood and we can be fairly good at this. The problem is that the mood of the interaction is then set from that point onwards and this can be contagious. This emotional contagion can then work against us as we may react with the same negative emotions even when there is no cause for it. The exercise helps people see this non-verbal phenomenon and increases their awareness. For example, this can help people at workplace to control their body language when interacting with colleagues and also helps them not to get affected by other people’s moods and emotions, thereby improving their relationships.

Many people find public speaking daunting. They get butterflies in stomach, feel nervous and sometimes simply refuse to give a public presentation when they can get away with it. It doesn’t have to be this way and a great way to overcome the lack of confidence is to adopt the behaviour artificially. 

Research shows that when you adopt a particular facial expression, such as smiling, you start to feel happy. In other words, the physical imitation of a smile can make you feel happy. The same applies to non-verbal gestures. If you stand straight, you are more likely to feel strong than if you slouch. If you are looking ahead while walking, you appear to me more energetic and determined than if you look at the ground. Using a similar approach, this exercise aims to boost people's confidence so they can present confidently to public.

Humans are predictable. Magicians have taken advantage of this predictability for generations. Knowing how to read people helps you significantly in your negotiations, persuasions and overall communications. This ability to predict human behaviour is often related to our evolutionary past. As we have evolved to survive in our environment, we have acquired a lot of “hardwiring” in our brain which now simply dictate our behaviour. We are all too familiar with some of the common behaviours such as seeking water when thirsty or wanting to leave the meeting room when we can no longer hold it.

However, some of these hardwiring and their consequences are more subtle and a careful observation can give the observer a significant advantage in predicting the eventual behaviour. It's all about reading non-verbal signals, where people  are looking, their body orientation, their posture, their eyes, their legs and other gestures. 

In this article, a particularly useful body language technique is presented that helps you read people and understand what people are likely to do before they do it and to use this knowledge to your advantage. This also helps you to improve your communication skills as you don't have to rely primarily on what people say and can read other non-verbal signals to understand them.