The windows of the soul: the language of the eyes

Verbal communication covers only a small part of what we are constantly expressing.. Normally our words are filtered by social conditioning or circumstances; That’s why they don’t always communicate what we genuinely want to say. Something very different happens with the eyes, which have not been classified as the “windows of the soul” for nothing.

The language of the eyes is basically unconscious. Almost none of us constantly maintain control over the way we look. Much less can we direct the range of opening of our pupils, or the degree of humidity of the eye. In those small details there is a lot of information about what is really going on in our heads.

The alphabet of the pupils

The pupils send very subtle messages, and that is why they generally go unnoticed. However, they have their own alphabet that can be deciphered. The most visible aspect is the size, which changes automatically according to various circumstances, without our will intervening in it.

Normally the pupils dilate if we are in front of an object that is pleasant to us. attraction

The same thing happens the other way around. That is, when we are faced with something that generates rejection or fear, the pupils tend to constrict. Small pupils reveal hostility or bad mood, even if we are not looking directly at the source object of those emotions.

It is likely that The language of the eyes has been known intuitively for hundreds of years.. Ancient Chinese and Egyptian prostitutes used belladonna on their eyes to increase the size of their pupils when serving one of their clients. They believed that this would make them more desirable.

As for the constricted pupils, it is easy to observe them in the gesture of any person who is preparing to attack. In addition to squinting, if we stop to observe, we will see that the size of the pupils also decreases.

The movement and language of the eyes

The eyes are constantly moving, even when we are asleep.. Normally these are small actions on the eyelids or eyeball, quite difficult to capture. Even so, there are more explicit movements that have given rise to identifying what is hidden behind this dynamic. The sleep phase REM (Rapid eye movements) is in which the eyes move at greater speed.

If the eyes move up and tilt to the right, the brain’s memory mechanisms have probably been activated. Movement denotes evocation of a past fact or situation. If, however, they move up and to the left, it is most likely that the creative functions related to the visual field have been activated. This movement usually occurs when we capture an image that surprises us.

Directing the eyes downward indicates that we have entered into a process of introspection. If the gaze is directed to the left, it is surely because a calculation is being made regarding a situation or some message. If it moves to the right, it is a sign that a memory process related to physical sensations is being carried out.

Eye movements to the left are the clearest indicator that a creative process is activated. Towards the right tells us about a memory process. And in both cases it alludes to experiences related to sound.

These are just a few small examples of that enormous universe that is non-verbal communication. Although The language of the eyes is useful to unravel what the people we talk to don’t say.perhaps has rather anecdotal value, because they only reveal some isolated data about what is in our brain.

The Duchenne smile

All the information that the eyes can provide us does not remain only in the eyeball, but can also be transferred to the muscles that surround it. In this case the orbicularis muscle is the main character. It is a muscle that is located around the eye and It is key to identifying if a smile is authentic.

French researcher Guillaume Duchenne realized that a genuine smile is one that involves the zygomaticus major and minor muscles near the mouth and the orbicularis muscles. Thus, he baptized the spontaneous smile as the Duchenne smile. In this case, The orbicularis muscles are responsible for stretching the cheeks and wrinkling the eyes through their contraction.

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