{"id":683,"date":"2010-04-20T17:53:46","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T16:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/?p=683"},"modified":"2010-04-20T17:53:46","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T16:53:46","slug":"myers-briggs-and-the-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/04\/myers-briggs-and-the-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Myers Briggs and The Body"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Personality is revealed in our posture and movement. This is why people still interview for jobs, business people travel across the world for meetings and Internet dating can go very badly wrong. Academics and business consultants however have largely studied personality linguistically through questionnaires and the like, relegating the body to short-term \u201cbody language\u201d. Assessments of how a people\u2019s bodies reveal longer term character are however possible &#8211; known as <a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/10\/somatic-assessments.html\">somatic assessments<\/a>. These reveal how personality shows up in the body but do not label people according to their more obvious body-types like <a href=\"http:\/\/wilderdom.com\/personality\/L6-1PersonalityTypes.html\">Sheldon\u2019s earlier typologies or ancient Indian ones <\/a>\u2013 I am not claiming that all short or tall people have one personality type for example! \u00a0I recently applied body personality assessments to the <a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/04\/uk-election-debate-candidates-body-language.html\">election candidates<\/a> if you\u2019d like a timely example of this at work.<\/p>\n<p>I have been working with somatic assessments for some years and find them reliable indicators of such things as trustworthiness, leadership and how much fun someone will be to be around. I had a lot of practice in them while working for an NGO in conflict zones world-wide where I often did not speak the local language and come to rely upon them for my safety. More recently at an event in Brighton last month we combined embodied approaches to personality with Myers Briggs \u2013 probably the world\u2019s most popular personality typology and in wide use in business. \u00a0This was innovative work and as far as we know \u201cembodied MBTI\u201d has not been attempted before. The following has been put together with much help from\u00a0Integration Training associate and MBTI trained coach <a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/trainers.html\">Dawn Bentley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There are four preferences (or dichotomies) that make up type in Myers Briggs (aka the MBTI) are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Extraversion \u2013 Introversion: attitudes or orientations of energy<\/li>\n<li>Sensing \u2013 Intuition: functions or processes of perceiving<\/li>\n<li>Thinking \u2013 Feeling: functions or processes of judging<\/li>\n<li>Judging \u2013 Perceiving: attitudes or orientations toward dealing with the outside world<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Personality types result from the interactions amongst the four preferences and dictate our preferred way of operating in the world. But how are these preferences embodied? What distinctions might there be? Based on personal experiences and individual coaching work the following are some places to look and explore:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Extraversion \u2013 Introversion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is about width &#8211; energetically taking up space and extending outwards (extrovert)\u00a0or being contained and inward facing (introvert). Extraversion is about increasing\u00a0energetically and introversion containing. As Extraversion is about contact so\u00a0extroverts are\u00a0likely to have more width (again not literally, but in terms of how much space they like to take up). This is one of the easiest\u00a0 to to see in a person and may show up as inwards\u00a0turned feet and held in arms and gestures (introvert) or open posture and engaging eye contact (extroverted) \u2013 although as with all of these, short term body language, contextual and environmental factors (e.g. is it cold?) need to be taken into account.<\/p>\n<p><em>Images \u2013 two world class business leaders \u2013 who is the more extrovert? Note\u00a0Branson&#8217;s shoulder roll-in &#8211; a common introvert posture.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-685\" title=\"extrovert_introvert\" src=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/extrovert_introvert1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"260\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/extrovert_introvert.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sensing \u2013 Intuition<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sensing preferences will rely on their experience and what is real; therefore likely to be more back and a grounded. Intuition preference is all about possibility, trends, patterns and opportunity therefore likely to be more open and less grounded \u2013 some may not be grounded at all \u2013 \u2018head in the clouds\u2019. Back and down vs up and forwards.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thinking \u2013 Feeling<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Thinking is all about logic and fact so thinking inclined people lead much more with the head where Feeling is about values and harmony so they lead with the heart more. General softness and openness may also be found more in feeling \u00a0types who are literally feeling their bodies more than thinking types who may have more of what is known as \u201carmouring\u201d (chronic contractions of musculature from and enabling not feeling).<\/p>\n<p><em>Image \u2013 Steve jobs head out front with \u201carmoured\u201d jaw and brow (seen walking in profile he is an even more obvious head lead) and hearty comedian Michael Mcintyre leading with his chest<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/head_heart.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-686\" title=\"head_heart\" src=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/head_heart.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"507\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Judging \u2013 Perceiving<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Perceiving is about being in the moment and a sense of freedom and curiosity so possibly looking at a relaxed body, softer eyes and maybe laid back. Judging is about order and getting to the destination \u2013 a very clear route from a-z. Likely to be more focused therefore possibly more leaning forward and a<strong> <\/strong>rigidity in the body.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Images \u2013 a military officer \u2013 an exemplar of judging \u2013 focus forward (and also thinking and sensing I\u2019d guess) and Keith Richards going with the flow of a perceiver (and also intuitively the up and away look- though this might just be the drugs). Even without the uniforms could you guess which person was the artist?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/judging_perceiving.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-687\" title=\"judging_perceiving\" src=\"http:\/\/integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/judging_perceiving.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"516\" height=\"297\" \/><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The \u2018art\u2019 of using MBTI is to build personal agility and flexibility around the preferences so maybe somatic\/embodied work and practices is another way of achieving this.\u201d Note the complexity of the interactions at work in the last photographs both in terms of the four preferences and also situational and cultural factors. Integration Training\u00a0will be exploring this topic more and I would state that our guesses as to body and personality are tentative, should be treated with caution\u00a0and are in need of more rigorous testing. Such research would be relatively straightforward and I welcome academics or psychometric companies who are interested in this to get in touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Personality is revealed in our posture and movement. This is why people still interview for jobs, business people travel across the world for meetings and Internet dating can go very badly wrong. Academics and business consultants however have largely studied personality linguistically through questionnaires and the like, relegating the body to short-term \u201cbody language\u201d. Assessments of how a people\u2019s bodies reveal longer term character are however possible &#8211; known as somatic assessments. These reveal how personality shows up in the body but do not label people according to their more obvious body-types like Sheldon\u2019s earlier typologies or ancient Indian ones <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[673],"tags":[1062,1230,1537,1594,1805],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9xvDN-b1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.integrationtraining.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}