There is something called ‘situational awareness’ and this is an important life skill. Generally, just by seeing something, we can be aware of any dangers which might be coming towards us and it can give us some time in advance to react. By seeing such dangers, we can also be aware who around us are naturally or purposely ignorant towards such cues. The only way to train your situational awareness skill is to be very observant. Not just with your eyes, but with all of your senses. You have to look at situations as a whole and analyze them along with the people and things involved in those situations.
When we are talking about people involved in situations, we are particularly referring to their body language, and that is what the bulk of this post is going to be about. We are going to teach you how someone’s body language could give you cues about what kinds of dangers lie ahead of you due to individuals harbouring dangerous motives.
What is body language?
Body language is the way we behave, without ourselves knowing. It is the act of our subconscious mind playing in the way of our movements and reactions. It encompasses a lot of how we portray ourselves, including our way of speech, the way we place our hands and legs, the way our face reacts to things and the way we stand or sit. Such cues from our behaviour can say a lot about our own character and thoughts at the moment especially to the skilled eye. Most people only look at someone’s face to decipher what they are thinking, but there’s a lot more to just facial reactions.
Why must we observe body language?
There are three main reasons why we should observe body language. Firstly, looking and analyzing someone’s body language makes us aware about what are the kinds of actions people are going to take towards us. With their gestures and reactions, you can gauge how close or far away they are planning to stay from you. Body language also gives us a chance to look into someone’s mind to tell us about what their present thinking is.
Finally, body language is an intrinsic system built into all of us to serve as a precursor warning sign for everything we do. Learning body language thus teaches us a lot about someone just by glancing at them once in a while. Now let us run through the clues that would help us to read body language easily.
By looking at someone’s face
Our faces are very expressive and it is indeed a hard thing to hide what we subconsciously present to someone else with our facial reactions. People who don’t want to be read would keep a masked face which is just emotionless whereas people who have no idea about their body language being read will give it away easily by giving you nervous laughs and facial twitches. Pupil dilation is something to note closely as when someone is about to do something intense, it is natural that their pupils dilate. Their heart rate also increases with similar emotions and an increased pulse becomes visible in the neck and temple area. Breaking into a sweat can also come along with these and someone keeping their mouth open to breathe in is also a sign of tension.
Upper body
There are two parts to the upper body which are of significance: one is the shoulders and the next is the upper chest area. Someone keeping their shoulders relaxed and dropped is obviously calmer than someone keeping them propped up and tight. For the upper chest area, bear in mind that women naturally tend to breathe with in and out movements on their chest and men do that with movements with their stomach. But for both genders, being tense will let them have rapid and shallow breathing which would be obvious from their chest movements.
The position of their hands and arms
Keep an eye on someone’s hands because when their hands are hanging around their waist area, it is likely that they are keeping it close to pull out a weapon on you at any time. Keeping fists closed shut also is a sign of tension and anger but at the same time many attacks begin with hands resting in a crossed arms position or from being in the pockets.
Observing someone’s feet and legs
What we are focusing here is how someone stands. Usually what happens subconsciously when someone is preparing for a fleet or an attack is that they tend to move and rest in a style called blading. Blading means that the foot are placed one behind another but in at least a shoulder’s width apart. This might mean that the person is moving back and forth to prepare for an attack or that they are possibly preparing to take a weapon out on you.
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