Maren Blair - Body Posture Analysis

After watching several videos of myself focusing on my body movements, most of my movement rotates around my hips. I see that my feet are grounded, but I skip from one side of the room to another from my hips. The rate at which I do this is a bit distracting. My pelvic plexuses and/or sacral spinal area overcompensate for my fear of rejection. I am very conscious of criticism and judgment from others. Although I am not consciously concerned with survival, the profuse movement in that area may suggest fears of impotence, frigidity. 

My hand gestures are varied and help move the speech along. Without sound, they seem to be emphasizing certain points that I (as an observer) want to know about. I take this as a success; my hand gestures are engaging and significant to my speech. Most are applied around the upper chest near my heart where emotions are centered. I was surprised with the size of some of my emotions; some took more space than I was expecting. The sizeable amount of space I occupied during these few seconds suggests comfort, confidence when speaking. 

My goals for body postural improvement include making more eye contact with my audience. I observed a lot of searching eyes, eyes to the upper left corner of the room, and a lot of looking just above everyone’s heads. I would also like to work on talking to one side of the audience for longer periods of time and then spending quality time with the other half. Flipping back and forth too much demonstrates nervousness and doesn’t establish the connection I want to have with my audience. Finally, I would like to practice standing still at appropriate times. During serious parts of my tribute speech, I pulled this off for a few milliseconds. I believe that standing still can also speak for my speech.

Neda's Body Language Analysis

After watching my video on mute, I thought all that I was doing was so strange! The speech was my first speech, but I had to remember the context to make sense of what I was doing. I noticed that not only did I move a lot, but I also used my hands constantly. Not hearing the sound made the constant movement of my hands intriguing and the main point of focus throughout the speech. Seeing my hands move to emphasize a point or continue the flow of the story was by far the main thing I noticed. I’m not sure if it’s considered a distraction, but my motions where mainly revolving around my core. It made me open up and tell a story by opening up my core and interacting with that energy.  I also noticed how many facial expressions I made throughout the speech. These tied in with my hand movements made watching myself awkward to me, but engaging and entertaining overall.

Goals

1.     Not move my hands too much unless I’m emphasizing a point

2.     Rest my shoulders more to look even more relaxed in front of the room

3.     Not allow my arms to hover in front of my core by keeping them by my sides in order to open my chest more when speaking

Anaelia Ovalle- Analyzing the Body

I decided to watch 1 minute of my tribute and past, present, future speech. Surprisingly enough, I found some common actions that occur when I speak over passionate topics. Firstly, I am the queen of velociraptor hands, dear god. I didn’t think it was to such a radical extent. I noticed that as I made a point to emphasize, I’d viciously shake my hands, stress my fingers, and face my palms to each other. And as awesome as that looks to me, I know that it’s a sign of stress. Likewise, I see that my shoulders are very tense and I look like a hurdled turtle as I speak. I may attribute this to energy centers regarding the burden area, throat center, and heart center. Since the beginning of class, I struggled with opening up and engaging the audience in new ways that correspondingly made feel vulnerable (heart center). Even as a child, I noticed that my shoulders took the most stress, especially when playing music. When I play the piano or viola, my shoulders also tense and tighten-to the point where my instructor had to push my shoulders down.

Therefore, before I speak I would like to do several things. Firstly, I’d like to try full-blown “shaking it out “before. And as I carry the most stress in my neck and shoulders, I’d like to try the neck exercise done today to relax those muscles. I would also like to relax my hands as I speak by having my palms loose and facing up instead of being in attack mode.

Boby Language

While watching my tribute speech I noticed I few trends in my body language that took away from the success of my speech. I could tell that all the stress and fear I was experiencing was leading to tension in my neck, I would tilt my neck every once in a while especially during uncomfortable parts of my speech. I also grip the sides of the podium most likely because I find comfort in holding something and especially squeezing something. I twist my hips throughout my speech, I believe this is because of my pelvic plexuses.
My goals for improving my body language are to stand still through out my speech, to focus all my weight on the balls of my feet rather than rocking back and forth. I also need to be able to take my hands of the podium because it can be distracting when they are sliding over the side of the it and if they are off the podium certain hand movements can be useful in my speeches.

Body Language Analysis Mohammed

       In my past, present, and future speech, I talked about stuff that related to my live. And I was a little bit afraid because it was the first time talking in front of native speakers. I was not looking at the audience which means my eye contact was bad; Also, I was not focusing that much when I started taking in English.

       However, I was looking at the tables and the books in the room to avoid focusing on looking at my classmate and then as a consequence, I lose my attention on speaking. Moreover, for me I love smile while I am talking or looking around, so I think smiling while I was talking was the good thing.

Body Analysis

It is very bizarre to intently focus on your body language and try to make conscious decisions to improve it. Additionally, it is interesting to watch such an emotionally charged speech without the audio. I feel like I do not do a great job in my video of portraying the emotion with body language alone. I feel like I don't consciously decide what I am doing with my body in the speech, and instead let my body sort of follow my speech. I feel like I could communicate much more effectively if I involved my whole body in the speech.

I seem to carry a lot of tension in my shoulders, which I think is due to how nervous I am. This area is a "burden area", where one feels stress when they feel "the weight of the world on their shoulders". I think that this is due to how emotionally charged this speech was, and how much pressure that I felt in the time following Matt's death. Additionally, I don't make much eye contact with the audience, and seem to be stressed through my neck as well. 

Goals for Body Postural Improvement:

1. Carry less stress in my shoulders.

2. Do not look down so intensely, be more aware of the audience and use more eye contact.

3. Make conscious decisions regarding body movement to improve the quality of my speech.

Body Analysis

Throughout my speech my body language was generally very closed off. My eye contact as a whole was extremely limited, I spent a majority of the speech looking down and just glancing up. I knew that by not visually addressing the crowd I would feel less nervous, and that is my method for coping with giving a speech. I also noticed that I tended to sway slightly, leading mostly with my shoulders. This aspect again can be attributed to nervousness. My lower body remained to be very motionless throughout the duration of the speech. While watching myself, I realized that the body habits that were present in my speech were distracting without the actual vocal content of the speech, and so they most likely were just as much so with them as well. By opening my body up I will have a much more successful speech. The three goals that I have are making more eye contact, planting my feet firmly to eliminate any squirming that I might have, and finally approaching the speech with confidence that will help to prove that I can make a better presentation.