Jae's Blog, page 54

Merry Christmas

I want to take the opportunity to thank my loyal readers who keep reading my books, short stories, and my blog. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a good start into the year 2011.

I've you're still trying to get into the holiday spirit (no, I'm not talking about the egg-nog! ), you might want to head over to L-Book and read Coming to Dinner, a free Christmas story. Or you can buy any of L-Book's novels and get the Holiday Special Edition for free.

Merry Christmas,

Jae

Filed under: News

Body language: hugs

I thought since this is the season when you get together with family and friends, I'd blog about hugs.

You'd think that a hug is a hug, but there are a lot of different kinds, and not all of them are the pleasant kind. A hug can reveal a lot about the two people and the relationship between them.

The A-frame hug

In this type of hug, the two huggers stand two feet apart, lean over, and only touch each other's shoulders. With their rear ends sticking out, they seem to form an A frame. Sometimes, the A-frame hug also includes air kisses.

The wallet rub hug

This is also called the side or one-arm hug. Two people stand side-by-side and hug with one arm around the other's shoulder or waist.

The baby burp hug

While hugging, the two people pat each other on the back as if burping a baby.

The jock-twirl hug

One of the huggers lifts the other of the ground and twirls him or her around.

The full-body hug

This is a hug with maximum body contact, so it's usually only shared with lovers or someone you're very close to.

The cheek hug

The two people press their cheeks against each other while they hug. This can also be done while one of them is sitting and the other is standing.

The shug

This is a combination of a hug and a handshake. While you shake hands, you lean forward a bit for a one-armed hug. The handshake creates a barrier between the two huggers, so this type of hug isn't very intimate at all.

The bear hug

The bear hug is the same as the full-body hug, but it's much tighter.

Filed under: body language

Body language: interpersonal distance

I've been asked to blog a bit more about proxemics. I mentioned before that the interpersonal distance we keep from other people depends on factors such as gender, culture, and personality.

But how much distance we keep from others also depends on how comfortable we feel with the situation and the people around us.

More than once, I found myself in the following situation at work: For group sessions, I arranged the chairs in a circle. At the far back of the room, two rows of chairs were still standing from an earlier presentation.

Now my clients entered the room for their first court-mandated session. As you can imagine, they didn't want to be there and wanted nothing to do with a psychologist.

Care to guess which seat the first person to enter chose?

You probably guessed it. In some groups, there'll be someone who tries to sit in the very last row at the back of the room, as far away from me as possible. Keep in mind that this happens in the very first session, when I didn't have a chance to work with them yet

Beware of misinterpretations, though. As with all body language, interpersonal distance can be interpreted only in context. I once had a client who insisted on always sitting very close to me during group sessions. It wasn't because he liked me so much — he was hard of hearing and wanted to make sure he didn't miss a thing I said.

Filed under: body language Tagged: interpersonal distance, proxemics