E The Holistic View 159
youth come back to your body as your exuberance
causes you to pick up your step and move more
nimbly to get there.Overall movement
Is boundless activity or serenity more associated with the “ideal”
in your culture? Do you want your children to bounce around and
climb things, or to learn quickly to control and focus their energy?
In the United States, when a man enters a room, he will be
perceived as in control and powerful if he is calm. There is a
caveat: if he stands for too long with no contact with others, he
becomes an outsider. Low levels of movement, with hands con-
trolled and decisive at or around waist-level, are viewed as mascu-
line in our northern European-descended culture. This same level
of inactivity may be seen as odd coming from a woman.
Contrast this behavior with those of Mediterranean and Latin
descent in the United States—Italians, Hispanics, Greeks, Turks,
and so on. These cultures all use the hands demonstratively as part
of normal illustration. The elbows may even rise close to shoulder
level in men of these cultures. People with my military background
see this kind of gesturing as hot-tempered, too emotionally involved.
Let’s get some perspective on this, though: Germanics and Brits
are more the exception to body language than the norm in human-
kind. The waist-high, controlled gestures probably seem rather
lame and uncommitted to many people around the world.
Overall movement is affected by several factors: some biologi-
cal, some cultural, and some part of microculture so obscure that