Basics

There are two genres of nonverbal communication. There are cultural nonverbal cues and cross cultural nonverbal cues. Cultural cues include things like the okay sign or “flippin’ someone the bird”. This is the idea that in the Middle East it is inappropriate to show someone the bottom of your feet but it is completely okay in Africa. These are cultural cues and when you travel it is important to understand common cues so you don’t offend people, but this is not the kind of body language I teach. I teach the nonverbal cues that all humans do, a hardwired language in the human system. What I teach goes deeper than cultural learned behaviors. The way to think about it is “what would someone that has never seen another human do?, and what would a tribal human or a 1st world human do in this situation?”  This information is not magic or pretend. Folks like Dr. David Matsumoto and Dr. Paul Ekman have numerous studies to show and codify certain aspects of this cross cultural nonverbal communication. They work on very specific portions of the body language lexicon. Many more behavioral and scientific studies have been brushing on these body language cues for decades. For example, Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s book “Behave, the Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst” describes underlying mechanisms of human behavior, which can be clearly extrapolated to body language concepts.  The information that I provide is a communication method that is hardwired in all of us. It has been around longer than human language and you, as an individual have been using it longer than you could actually speak. This makes it very difficult to articulate because you have been doing “it” since before you could think. It is preverbal, but when you hear “it” articulated, it makes sense, it clicks. I sound like an amazing teacher but the truth is: I am helping you articulate what you already know! Body language is rooted so deep in the human psyche that any increased understanding on your part, ensures you better results in daily communication.

Learn

There are lots of places to learn, but what I’m doing it making it simple for you to get an unbiased and accessible way to learn body language. The first online course covers all the basics of body language. The video below is an introduction to what present time cues looks like. This video is to show you both how to see and give you an idea on how you can use this information in daily life.

Eventually, I plan on releasing advanced courses as well as more real-time analysis videos. Stay tuned.

Check out my basics course, you can take a look at the first couple modules for free.

Bio

This is a quick nutshell explanation about me and my path to teaching body language. I was an only child until I was six. Before that, around three years old, my mom married a poor black man. They had a child when I was about 6 and my mom decided that she needed to start over. So, my mom left her husband and moved me and my brother to a small South Texas town. Within a year she had married a Mexican man with 5 boys. In less than two years, I had gone from being an only child with a single mother, to living in a black community with a new sibling, and finally living in a poor Mexican community with 6 step-brothers that didn’t speak Spanish or English well. I was put into a situation where my new siblings were violent and I didn’t understand the language or the culture. I quickly developed defense mechanisms which is when or how I began to understand nonverbal cues. At the time I could not accurately describe them, but I began to notice an incongruence between the feelings people verbally expressed and their physical presentation. I also began to use these skills to ensure my safety, utilizing them to set up “I win, you lose” situations. I was able to walk into recess with a dime in my pocket and by the bell, I would walk out with a candy bar, two cookies and a carton of milk, all by influencing others. I was a tiny con artist, and until I was an adult, I didn’t realize how I was doing it, but I began to realize that it was not ultimately serving me well. Around 2002, I was introduced to one of the top body language readers in the world, Patrick Collard. As I began to apprentice with him, he spent a lot of time showing me that I was being an ass and needed to set up win-win situations instead of the con "I win, you lose" game I was playing. I befriended another apprentice, Russel Lipensky. Russel and I teamed up and pushed each other. We spent most of our time studying and practicing together, we pushed each other and got VERY good. I apprenticed for approximately 4 years and learned from Patrick until he died. I have used this information not just working on clients through bodywork, but in life or death situations all over the globe. This skill has saved my life and the lives of my teams more times than I can count. I have taught it to every strata of society. Some examples of different types of people I have taught: The former Dean of Harvard Business school, DOS officials, music producers, Hollywood actors, Directors, Managers and Directors of Global Hospitality Programs, Doctors, Lawyers, and Federal Judges. I have used all of these skills in real time globally.