The Ultimate Body Language Book

Millions of years ago, we gave up quadrupedalism to walk upright leaving our feet to the dirt. While
our hands busied themselves with other complex tasks like fire building, making clothing and shelters,
throwing spears our legs were relegated to more primitive activities like locomotion. The hands,
because of their opposable thumbs are more useful to complex tasks putting the thinking neocortex in
charge. This in turn hampers honest language because the thinking mind can, within reason, eliminate
the type of body language it desires.
These feet want to escape and so are turned toward the escape route.
The feet on the other hand, carried out more traditional tasks like escaping predators, avoiding hot sand
or coals from the fire, leaping from slithering snakes or poisonous spiders, or navigating rough rocking
river bottoms. The feet were therefore connected more to the reptilian brain which reacts to stimuli
directly instead of contemplating higher order tasks that require planning. When we’re frightened it
doesn’t take much to put our feet in gear by getting them tucked under our legs and coiled up, or
freezing instantly or get pulled up onto a chair when startled by a mouse that catches our eye
scampering across the shadows of a room. Our feet carry the flight or fight reaction to the letter,
although they tend to first freeze, then take flight through distancing them from negative stimuli, and if
neither is possible will begin to kick or fight. None of these tasks require high order thinking, they are
based on reaction and are immediate.
The same sorts of positive reactions can be read in the feet. For example, we know that children are
interested in play rather then eating when their legs bounce at the dinner table quickly trying to eat their
food so they don’t miss the next inning in street ball. Even if they don’t fidget the feet will still point, or
inch toward to door in effort to prepare for escape. Even the feet of adults reveal true emotions by
pointing away from boring conversations or toward a lover. Adults can also be seen “Jumping for joy”,
even if rarely such as when they are surprised by winnings at the casino slots, or are when met with a
grandson at the airport. People of all ages can seem to float on their feet showing joy, which is an
important “gravity defying” body language showing that they are excited. Young babies and toddlers,
when held by a parent who’s been absent for a short while, will kick up and down and the entire body
will jump with joy despite being confined in an embrace. None of a child’s body is as exuberant as their
legs and feet!