Body Language of Love And Dating is a video course by Vanessa van Edwards teaching people how to read body language.

Full Summary

Body Language of Love & Dating requirements are quite far-fetched and easy for many to just nod along:

• • Looking for Love

• • Single Men or Women

• Interested in Building All Aspects of Relationships

Vanessa van Edwards says that she’ll talk about all the nonverbal signs of seduction.
She says she gives love advice like nobody else does and her course is not about gimmicks and sleazy stunts.

Her course sets itself apart because it’s science-backed and tested in her lab, sprinkled with a sense of humor and solution-oriented.

Let’s see.

Body Language of Love

A man’s favorite body part in a woman is the legs and a woman’s favorite body part in a man is the butt.

Vanessa talks about congruency and incongruency.
When we are faced with incongruencies, she says, we will always believe the nonverbal signs.

Vanessa says that the body language of love is based on two main components:

• Trust: based on the oxytocin hormone
• Attraction: estrogen and testosterone

Women are looking for men with a high level of testosterone and men are looking for women with a high level of estrogen.

Vanessa also says in couples where the nonverbal communication decreases, the satisfaction of the relationship also decreases.

Science of Attraction

Vanessa goes on to explain how we know if someone is attracted to us. She lists five solid ways:

#1. Gazing

There are 3 different types of gazing, and intimate gazing is the way we show attraction:

Power Gazing
Power gazing is looking at someone’s eyes and then forehead. Your gaze stays high and you want to use Power Gazing during business meetings or negotiations.

Social Gazing
Social Gazing happens when you look at your eyes and mouth.

Intimate Gazing
Intimate gazing is eyes and chest -not eyes to boobs, eyes to chest-. If you want to send a signal you like someone, you should drop your gaze to their chest area.

#2. Feet

The direction of someone’s Feet will tell you about their mental activity.

#3. Proxemics

Vanessa goes into the intimate, personal, and social zones people tend to use when keeping their distance from other people.

You can gauge how close people feel to you by looking at how close they get to you. You can use proxemics in two ways: show them how close you want to be when speaking with them. Or by planting: stand and see how close they get.

When seating the same is true for leaning. And we can use also use touching to close the gap: the more we touch, the closer we want to be.

#4. Haptics (touching)

You can gauge how people feel about you not just by how much they touch you, but also by how much they touch themselves and how much they preen.

Vanessa says we use touch to release oxytocin and feel more connected.

Women tend to do more self-touching. Women tend to touch their:

• Necks (it releases pheromone),
• Hair (long healthy hair shows good nutrition and health)
• Lips (they might like to have something in their mouth, and it reminds them of other lips).

#5. Men Displays

While women tend to touch themselves more, men tend to:

• Show territorial displays when they’re around women they like (spreading harms and legs, drapes their arm around a chair)
• Inflate (puff up chest)
• Alpha Cross (in western countries mostly: it takes lots of space and releases pheromones)

How To Know It’s Time To Move

Vanessa suggests that before making a move you:

• Observe 3 different attraction signals or the same signal repeated 3 times
• Baseline: make sure she’s not giving those signals to everyone

Flirting Fundamentals

Vanessa says that a study found that unattractive women with the right body language were approached more times than attractive ones who did not signal correctly.

Signal amplification bias: we tend to think that our signals are obvious. Most of the time they’re not.

Vanessa gives us some ways to send proper signals in what she calls “Primal Flirting”, composed of:

Availability

Fronting: move your toes, your torso, and your top towards the person you’re interested in. Some women get nervous and move their torso away, that’s bad because the brain cannot relax to form a connection if someone is facing away.

Smiling: smile as soon as you see your date to signal you’re a friend and not a foe.

Eye Gazing: the intimate gazing already discussed, and deep gazing.
Solid and prolonged eye contact releases oxytocin.
On average, we hold eye contact for 60-70% of the time. You want to stay in that rage, but if a topic you are particularly interested in comes up, focus intensely as if you wanted to keep noticing their eye color.

Glancing: a study by Pamela C Regan found that successful men directed more brief glances to the women they liked. The flirting for them started way before they even started talking.

Confidence

Using Power Body Language will make you come across as more confident and will make you feel more confident too.
Look at some great body language at a bar or some sexy poses for hands in pockets.
Low power poses are contracting yourself, head down, and shoulder rolling.
High power poses are expansive.
It’s claiming territory, head high, arms loose, shoulders back and chest open.

Vanessa says however that power poses are too obvious for normal situations and the ideal is in the middle (loose arms, open torso, shoulders down, head up and fronting).
But you can use power poses before a presentation or before going out and then the re-settle is in the middle.

I love how Vanessa suggests you find a few ideal poses for you, practice them and then use muscle memory to revert back to them and never get into low-power poses again.

Vanessa quotes again Pamela C Regan who found out that successful men, the ones who got the most numbers or went home with most women engaged in more “space maximization movements”.
For example hands out of their pockets and arms over a chair.

And they displayed more non-reciprocated touching to the men around (patting, back-slapping, playful shoving)

Fertility

It’s important to highlight a high level of testosterone for a man and a high level of estrogen for a woman.

Estrogen:
Body: The Hourglass, a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7
Face: symmetrical face, large eyes, and large lips.

Testosterone:
Deep Voice: when you’re tense the words tend to be higher pitched because of tense vocal cords. A good way to minimize this issue is to take a deep breath and speak after the out-breath.
Face and Body: prominent jaw and brow and large shoulders. Vanessa suggests that two-button shirts and two-button suits help to make your shoulders appear larger. Facial hair can also help accentuate the jaw.

The Psychology of Courtship

1 approach eye pattern:
The author says that the first 5 to 10 people enter a new space they will be scanning the room.

Next, we identify targets, which are one or two people that intrigue us and often our toes will also be pointing towards them as well.
This part lasts less than 3 seconds.

If we feel there’s potential there, people we will engage in a longer 3 seconds gaze and will look if there’s a smile and if the 3 seconds gaze is reciprocal. If all signs are positive, then there can be an approach.

The good thing about eye patterns is that you can do it before the approach to test the water, but also to invite more approaches. You can gaze at someone to invite their approach.

Monika Moore found that on average women had to make 13 direct eye contacts before being approached.

2. Approach:
Women like being approached from the side because it can feel too threatening from the front.

Men prefer instead being approached from the front.

Visual Voyaging: people want to assess and see the full body before connecting with them.

So while some people might feel discomfort and prefer not being seen fully it’s important that you allow a person to look at you fully from head to toe.

Joe Navarro, for example, suggests that you do something to take your eyes off your speaking partner so that he/she can take a full look at you while you look away.

Also, read:

• How to approach women
• Cold approach as an approach strategy

Cold Approach VS Social Circle (VS Tinder): Strategies

First Impression

Vocal confidence:
Vanessa recommends never to speak as if there were a question mark at the end of sentences, not even for women as that’s often perceived as untrustworthy.
Men with deeper voices are considered more attractive while women with higher voices tend to be more attractive in the dating arena as it shows estrogen (but it’s counterproductive in business settings).

Primal Flirting:
Fronting, smiling and confidence.

Validation:
Showing ourselves fully engaged in the conversation provides validation to our speaking partner.

Seduction

Leaning In:
We lean in when we are curious, engaged, or want to connect on a deeper level.  You can use leaning to show engagement and test engagement. You test by gauging their reaction to your leaning in.
Do they stay put, do they lean in as well? If they pull back, you’re coming on too strong for now.

Eye Brow Raise:
It’s a sign of curiosity, used for example when saying “oh really (tell me more)?”.
If people use it while they’re speaking it’s a way of saying “pay attention to what I’m about to say” or “this really matters to me”.

Eyebrow Flashes and Glances:
Eyebrow flashes and direct flashes are the way in which women show sexual openness.
So when you see a woman giving eyebrow flashes and direct glances, that’s a go-ahead signal.

Dating Dynamics

Vanessa goes into micro-facial expressions here.

She says we take in information from micro facial expressions even if we don’t consciously see them or realize they happened.

Just one note, she is absolutely amazing at using her face to mimic facial expressions.

Dynamic Expressiveness:
People who use a lot of gestures are seen as warm and agreeable. People who remain still are seen as more cold and analytical.

Vanessa says that in dating you want to be seen as warmer and more agreeable.

A tip from Vanessa is to feel the emotions your speaking partner is feeling and mirror them in your face.

She also says that men using palm-up gestures are more successful with women as that communicates an agreeable personality.

Dynamic mirroring:
we unconsciously mirror those we like and the people whom we mirror also perceive us as more likable.

Again, and rightfully, Vanessa recommends a happy medium: don’t mirror too much and only mirror neutral and positive signals.

You can mirror the body language, the pace of their speech, the volume or tone and the facial expressions.

Vocal Emotionality:
Vanessa cites an MIT Media Lab research stating that men are more interested in women who vary their voice tone.

The key to showing emotions in your voice is to feel emotional and passionate about the topic you speak about.

Relationship Connectivity

Vanessa van Edwards tells us that women use more brain areas to decode nonverbals and that men and women interpret nonverbals differently.

Short interjections:
short interjections are:”uh-uh”, “ok”, “I see”, “aha”, “yeah”, “yup”.

Vanessa quotes another MIT Lab Media research saying the more men used short interjections in conversation the more attractive they were to women.

The more short interjections the woman made, the more she liked the relationship outcome (she felt engaged in the relationship).

Going Deeper:
Nodding three times slowly has been proven to make people talk longer (slow though, doing it quickly shows impatience).

Head tilt shows empathy and engagement. To learn more about relationships, check Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Let’s Get Physical

There’s not much “physical” about this section to be honest, and it’s just another collection of dating tips, albeit there are quite a few useful ones.

Vanessa von Edwards cites Rebhahn research that men tended to overestimate women’s sexual interest and women underestimated men’s willingness to commit.

Kiss Signal:
Women who want to be kissed will put their mouths somewhat closer to you.

Women who are ready to be taken home and ready for action will revert to the “Marilyn”, which is the famous pose from Marilyn Monroe showing her neck, lowering her eyelids, and opening her mouth, thus mimicking an orgasm (read here how Marilyin’s seductive secrets).

Back-Up Signal:
Some signs to back up are the lip purse (she’s holding back what to say), touching her neck (she’s nervous), and using her purse as a block between you two.

Note:
I don’t understand here why she says touching her neck is a bad sign. It can be a great sign, even if she’s nervous it can be a great sign if she’s nervous because of you.

Some behaviors that show untrustworthiness are: leaning back, crossing arms, touching rubbing, or grasping hands together, face touching (for men, as it shows nervousness).

Men should show their hands to heighten trust and offering protection is the ultimate alpha behavior (opening doors, offering coat, pulling out chair).

Pre-sex touches:
Men prefer backrub/massages and kisses on the lips. Women prefer cuddling/holding and holding hands.

Vanessa repeats again the main things you can do is: show you are attracted, show you are willing to adapt and show you want to know them.

Real-Life Applications

• Start speaking after breathing out if you’re nervous
• Use short interjections (“uh-uh”, “ok”, “I see”.. ) with abandon

CONS

Upselling
Not as badly as Captivate, but some upselling is also present

Micro-expression and lying
I feel that spotting lies have little to do with dating to be honest, and micro-expression shouldn’t have been covered.
Also focusing too much on “lying spotting” and “facial micro-expression” can get you in the wrong frame of mind.

Review

Vanessa van Edwards focuses much on “warmth” and “agreeableness”.

That’s great, but I feel that a course on Body Language of Love & Dating should also deal with different dynamics of dating such as leadership and dominance.

That being said the course comes packed with lots of actionable and useful information you will not find everywhere.

And what I loved the most is that Vanessa shows some real-life examples from clips she took from a series called “Dating in the dark”.
Those analyses are very good.