I came to body language for a very ordinary, very human reason: my relationships kept failing, and I wanted to know whether the person in front of me was loyal or lying. After dating a few of the wrong kind of people, I thought, if there is some way to read the red flags, perhaps I'll be in a better position to choose well. That hunt is what eventually turned into my work. And the first thing the work taught me was that I had it backwards.
The star mark on 'reading people'
Yes, an untrained person can sense when a smile is fake. We do it all the time. But there is a small star mark next to that ability — conditions apply. You can only read another person cleanly once you are aware of your own biases, stereotypes and triggers. If I have decided I dislike people from a certain place, then the moment you tell me where you're from, I stop experiencing you as an individual. My bias has blocked the read before it began.
This is the part most people skip. Clients have offered me serious money to teach lie detection — and refused, in the same breath, to work on their own biases. They want to read others without decoding themselves. It's like adding salt to your dish at the wrong moment. The understanding of your own self is the seasoning; leave it out and nothing else tastes right.
What the face actually leaks
Non-verbal communication is the umbrella. Under it sits body language, facial expression and voice. On the face we work with three intensities: macro expressions, where a full emotion floods the face; subtle expressions, a hint of it; and micro expressions, the briefest flash that escapes before you can manage it. Hand someone a gift they dislike and watch for a split-second of disgust before the polite "thank you, it's lovely" arrives. Most people treat a smile as a free pass — "I smiled, so it's fine." A trained eye sees the feeling underneath it.
But a single cue proves nothing. Under Dr Ekman's framework we read five channels — face, gesture, the psychological layer, word choice, breathing — and the environment around all of it. If I keep adjusting my collar, am I nervous, or is the fan simply on low and I'm hot? Is this an idiosyncratic habit of mine, or a reaction to your question? Without that whole picture, lie detection performs barely better than a coin flip. With it, body language reveals patterns — not verdicts.
The two cues worth learning first
For everyday situations, I trust two things above clever tricks. First, a baseline: I cannot tell if you're lying the first time we meet, because I don't yet know your normal. Second, incongruency — when what you say and what you do point in opposite directions. "I'm so happy with her" delivered with a tight, unhappy face is the signal. "I'm really angry" said with no anger anywhere in the body is the signal. Allow for language too; someone speaking a tongue they're not fluent in will look off without lying at all.
The thread that runs through all of it
Beneath the cues, I keep meeting the same root: repressed feelings. The emotions we needed to share as children but were given no room to express. They don't vanish; they grow into the adult — overconfidence built on old fear, clinginess built on never being protected. Men, in particular, often carry calculations about power and self-image, while women carry them about acceptance and love.
So my real advice, especially to the men who write to me, is unglamorous. Be honest about what went wrong in your childhood, without excuses. Accept it. Then work on it — journal, talk, see a therapist if you need one. Build confidence through action, not posture; join the class, do the work, and the upright body follows the steady mind. And remember that the enemy of confidence is hesitation. Failure and rejection are simply part of a life lived honestly. Reading other people is a fine skill. Reading yourself first is the one that changes everything.