Body language is a non-verbal communication, that you need to master, if you want to learn mentalism. The ability to correctly read the body language can be also very useful in your everyday life.

Thanks to the non-verbal communication, a mentalist is able to recognize the mood of a person and use it in his Mentalism accordingly. You need to remember, that the body language, to a large extent, is different for each culture.

Facial Expressions

Our faces are the most expressive part of the body, therefore they can provide a mentalist with a lot of useful information. Particular attention should be paid to the:

• eyebrows (raised eyebrows signal surprise or fear, lowered – domination or aggression)
• head (down or to the side – sadness)
• chin (wrinkled – anxiety, jutting – envy)
• skin  color (red-embarrassment or anger, white-fear)
• lips (pulled to the side – boredom, slightly pressed together – interest)

‘Look Into My Eyes And You Will Find Me’

In general, the longer the eye contact during the conversation, the more sympathy we have for each other. By looking only at the eyes or mouth, the mentalist is able to recognize multiple emotions.

Increased size of the pupils can often mean excitement or interest. Avoiding eye contact means that a person wants to hide their emotions and has interest in interaction or lies.

Body Posture

There are two type of body postures ‘open’ and ‘closed’.

Crossed hands/legs usually mean a negative, defensive attitude. When someone has their hands/legs crossed, most of the time he wants to avoid contacts and is closed to any new ideas (look for a different target to use your mentalism tricks). 

Open hands signalize openness, positive attitude and readiness to listen (this should be the target for your mentlism).

People with open postures are much more susceptible to mentalism than people with closed postures.

Every mentalist always needs to remember about your own body language and adapt it accordingly to the tricks. Mentalism is a performing art and often the way a mentalist speaks is more important than what he speaks. Many of the mentalism tricks are based solely on body language. In the following video you can see how Derren Brown uses his mirroring technique to convince a person to commit a crime: