I got a new view on communication: non-verbal communication should be considered an asset. Something valuable. People say that 90% of messages are transported non-verbally, so we should see non-verbal communication as increasing the bandwidth of our communication by a factor of 9!
However, many people see the realm of non-verbal communication rather as a liability, because the messages transmitted are often sent involuntarily, and then misunderstood. To deal with this problem, we simply need to learn to send and to receive non-verbally.
Learning to communicate non-verbally is quite a time-intensive process, but it is necessary to establish a communication link between each two people. Though time-intensive, it is actually great for people who have a shared life anyway: couples, intentional communities etc..
Mastering the channel of non-verbal communication offers many benefits, actually. Especially, it offers more subtle means of communication: ways to express something with less force and less sharpness than possible by any words. (Because words, as explicit entities, have always a lot of inherent weight.) And there are many situations where it is desirable to transport content in a subtle, gentle way.
And here is an idea on how to learn non-verbal communication: you simply need a “feedback mode”, to check what messages you sent (partially unnoticed by you) and what the other party understood. This can be done by agreeing that it is always (at all times in all communication situations) possible to request feedback; which means the other party has to say with absolute naked honesty what he or she understood. That requires a great amount of underlying trust, because saying what one understood also gives deep insights of what one thinks, making woundable. But in partnerships and good friendships, this should be possible.
Leave a Reply