Body Language of Crouching
Cue: Crouching
Synonym(s): Cowering
Description: The body takes on a smaller form by bending at the knees or ducking the head.
In One Sentence: Cowering by lowering and taking on a smaller body profile indicates that one desires to submit.
How To Use it: Cower when you want to feel more protected or to ‘hide in plain sight.’ Bringing the chin down, arms in and slumping the shoulders will show others that you are not prepared to battle. More than likely, people will come to your assistance and offer you sympathy and care rather than present further attack. Cowering is best done when you feel that you can not win against another person and instead wish to manipulate their gentle side.
By reducing your profile, you are not only producing a smaller target for attack, but you are also flexing muscles which will help brace against impact. When viewed by an aggressor, cowering is a cue telling him or her than you are not a threat to their dominance and do not wish to challenge them. If read properly by an aggressor, it will lessen their verbal or physical violence.
Context: General.
Verbal Translation: “I’m scared. I’m going to shrink the outline of my body in effort to escape injury or emotional threat.”
Variant: Bow and Body Bend, Body Lowering or Body Shrinking.
Cue In Action: a) A foul ball was coming straight for her so she duck her head down and bent her knees. b) The boss came in looking for trouble so the employees ducked down in their cubicles so they wouldn’t attract attention.
Meaning and/or Motivation: Crouching or cowering is a submissive body posture done to reduce confrontation. Crouching out of fear is a universal posture. When scared either due to emotional discomfort of physical fear, our bodies will shrink down to become a smaller target. Instinctively, people will pull their arms in, tuck their chins down, lower their eyes and otherwise seem to succumb to the effects of gravity.
Making the body smaller is the opposite of defying gravity through expansive movements. It is an indication of confidence and desire in the ability to challenge others.
Cue Cluster: Our heads tuck into our shoulders, our eyes wince and our face scrunches up. Heads can also drop forward to protect the neck from attack and the arms brought up over the chest to protect the heart and lungs. All sorts of crouching takes place over the body and takes on the form of contracted muscles pulling on various parts of the body and shrinking up. When bodies are un-crouched, they are relaxed and loose.
Body Language Category: Body size reduction, Closed body language, Defensive, Distancing or moving away, Escape movements, Fearful body language, Orienting reflex or orienting response, Protective reflexes, Submissive body language.
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