Bedfordview Probus Club hosts body language expert
In the July Probus Club of Bedfordview Open Meeting, the guest speaker expounds on Neuro Body Language, which explains how non-verbal communications are translated and processed by the brain.
The Probus Club of Bedfordview open meeting on July 7 started with the inauguration of president Ineke O’Dougherty for her third term.
The inauguration was conducted by past president and honorary life member, Ken Girdwood. President O’Dougherty welcomed all attendees, including the guest speaker, Dr Denise Bjorkman.
Bjorkman, a health practitioner who wears many hats, spoke about the art and science of body language. Her human body language profiling has been used on major criminal trials in South Africa.
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The health practitioner works in 23 countries, and her more recent work has been on body language and forensics in famous court cases, including the Oscar Pistorius trial.
In her talk, Bjorkman aimed to dispel myths about body language, such as the belief that rubbing the side of one’s nose means one is lying, which is not true.
She also introduced a new line of thought called Neuro Body Language, which includes profiling a person from birth. In this way, Bjorkman showed how body language runs deeper and why some people, through it, become the world’s leading statesmen.
Bjorkman said her approach to neuro body language is integrated because body language influences the brain. So it all begins with a synchronicity of heartbeats between a mother and a baby in the womb.
As the baby develops, the mother’s vocal pitch plays a significant role in the baby’s future mental health.
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She gave an example of the Zulu lullaby ‘Thula Sana’, which she said, when a mother sings in a high-pitched, melodic tone, promptly lights up the baby’s auditory cortex (emotion-processing centres), and triggers a sharp decline in the stress hormone cortisol.
The guest speaker went on to share that scientists discovered a new cell in the body called a mirror neuron.
These cells mirror or copy the behaviour of others onto your own brain. She said, therefore, if you did not mirror empathy as a baby, you are unlikely to be an empathetic adult.
Through brain imaging techniques, Bjorkman said scientists discovered how the brain works. These techniques include a computed tomography scan, magnetic resonance imaging and an electroencephalogram, among others.
Through these techniques, they determined that if a person shoots many times, it’s in rage or anger. Bjorkman said Oscar Pistorius’s murder of Reeva Steenkamp was a pure act of rage.
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Moving on to neuroscience and the voice, Bjorkman explained that voices are used as shortcuts for inferring people’s personalities.
“Someone with a mature voice is assumed to be warm and honest but not powerful and competent, while mature-sounding voices are believed to be associated with power, intelligence and dominance.”
She added that women use very long sentences, which contributes to their struggle to enter leadership spaces, while men use short sentences, which are associated with authority and status.
She shared an example of the British statesman Winston Churchill, who used to make speeches with mostly three words at a time, which gave the people he led assurance during World War II.
