Communicating Through Posture
While campaigning for the presidency of the United States of America, former president, George W. Bush used various forms of non-verbal communication. The most dominant ones were body language and gestures. He always held his shoulders high and he would fold fists while asking the American people to unite. At times, he would point to the persons making a strong point concerning the ones. He would also look at people directly in the eyes and ask them to team up with him. All these things that Bush was doing are examples of non-verbal communication. Such techniques make communication between people more effective and let them understand each other better. Through the non-verbal communication, even if one has not comprehended a view, he or she can still interpret from innuendo what is being said. For example, when a speaker points to the people in the crowd and looks them directly in the eyes, one is able to know that he is taking about something that concerns the individuals who are there.
There are a lot of types of non-verbal communication such as eye contact, proxemics, gestures, body language and postures to mention just a few. However, in this paper, I am going to focus more on posture. Posture has been of concern to many people for a long time now; since 1970s to be precise. There are many aspects to explore in posture: for instance, how different people adopt various postures in different occurrences and how the community interprets different postures etc. I will also analyze a certain time when I used a different posture and the public adopted completely different opinion of me than I expected them to perceive.
The simplest definition of a posture is the way a person stands or walks. You will agree with me that you can spot a person, who is not confident in the way he or she walks or stands. How does this happen? Inherently people have a position of a body that they majorly were born with. If the person does not like his posture, it is evident that the individual is able to switch it to the one he or she thinks is better than the current. The models that grace beauty pageant every often have postures that they adopt. It may not be their original one, but that posture tells us more about their personality. The indicated state of things does not just show as their beauty, but gives us the possibility to criticize them in various situations. The models, which are not very confident about their knowledge, tend to adopt a different posture when they are going to the questions session. It is, therefore, clear that people will adopt different postures depending on situations and these postures communicate to us a lot about their “users.”
Every one of us has his or her way to interpret different postures that people adopt. Fortunately, many humans make almost similar deductions about a person given a posture. There are poses that society has generally accepted as a symbol of humbleness. The other ones are a communication of rudeness. There is also an example of a posture indicating that a person is confident. The president of a country should show he is confident in himself since people the country could entrust themselves to him, otherwise, they will not. Body language and posture experts consider, a person who is confident, should have his shoulders raised high, but not exaggerated. His head ought to be held high, as well. In this way, the society will perceive him as a confident person. Other than a man, who stands in front of the crowd in a hunched way.
All of us have a culture from our homes, schools right to the companies that we work for. Our families and companies have cultures that they expect us to uphold. Posture is a very important aspect of our culture. There is a certain way that a child is expected to stand while taking with his elder. For example, many places and societies find it rude when a child talks to his elder holding his hands at akimbo. Rather they expect that child to either hold his hands together, in front or back (Ballet, 2008). This posture shows politeness. The child can, however, adopt any posture that he or she deems fit amongst the peers. There are postures the society considers obscene and beseeches the members to refrain from such postures.
A few years back, I had been summoned by a teacher in the staffroom. As we were conversing how my studies were fairing and whether my performance was improving or deteriorating, I had adopted a posture of politeness with my hands held behind my back. As the conversation continued, I pocketed my hands automatically. I had not realized this until one of the teachers pointed this out. I tried to explain myself to them that, I had not done it on purpose, but they could hear none of that. They found it very rude of me to adopt such a posture in their presence. I was told to apologize, which I did, and later go and pay a visit to the guidance and counselling department in the school for in talk on the same. It is clear that, postures communicate a lot to other people about our personalities.
Making the right impression and showing that a person has good manners are some of the things that make posture if utmost importance to us. Nevertheless, besides that, there is much more such as displaying confidence in oneself and showing that one has dominion over the rest. The work that researchers have done on posture should not go waste. Its adopting and supporting depends on our efforts. Through that way, we shall be able to use posture to our advantage; especially when we are making a speech and want people to have a very good impression of us. The posture which one adopts has become so important that many celebrities, politicians and other influential people in the society have started to take some lessons in posture. For the young generation we should be grateful that, at one time, we learnt it in schools. It is an invaluable lesson that we will leave to treasure for the rest of our lives.
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