Cebu's Top Team Building Facilitators Meet The Country's Top Mentalist
The word Mentalism has always presented some confusion for most average people. The term can easily be mistaken for magic tricks, sorcery and even supernatural or paranormal phenomena. According to Wikipedia, mentalism is a performing art, which practitioners known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. The practice of Mentalism is sometimes frowned upon because most people do not understand what it really is. It’s easy to assume that it can be some form of sorcery and supernatural thing.
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| CTFN affiliate Marc Julius Rizada with Justin Piñon |
Cebu Teambuilding Facilitators Network Affiliates Meet Mentalist Justin Piñon
Last November 20, 2016, the Cebu Teambuilding Facilitators Network had a big opportunity to meet Justin Pinon, a Mentalist, who is known in places as the “Mental Assassin. According to his profile in his website, www.mentalassassin.com, Justin Piñon is a Mentalist who goes by the moniker “Mental Assassin”. As a Mentalist, he can seem to read your mind and manipulate your behavior and your decisions. He does not claim that he possesses neither supernatural powers nor psychic abilities. However, he can figure out what you are thinking through the use of Psychology, his expertise at body language reading, hypnosis, suggestion and showmanship.
The whole afternoon session with Justin Pinon together with his wife, Trista and the affiliates from the Cebu Teambuilding Facilitators Network was held at VisMin Advent Trading conference room at Gochan Compound, MJ Cuenco Ave., Mabolo St. Justin started his lecture with a quote to one of his favorite characters – Sherlock Holmes, which says “By a man’s fingernails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the calluses of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuffs, by his movements – by each of these things a man’s calling is plainly revealed”. What Justin was emphasizing is that by looking at the body language of a person alone, a lot is already revealed. Indeed, it has been said from most research that only around 10% of communication is verbal. The remaining chunk of 90% is on the nonverbal part of communication.
This goes to say that most nonverbal communication can be better understand through understanding body language. Justin explained that body language is an outward reflection of a person’s emotion, and there are usually two types of body language that we give out – Positive Body Language and Negative. The lecture focused on the different areas on how body language was decoded, such as open arms and open palms can mean a positive body language while crossed arms can mean a negative body language. An activity was then conducted to experience the feeling of talking to the person who have a negative body language versus a person who was exhibiting positive body language.
The discussion even took particular note on Neuro-linguistic Programming such as paralinguistic cues to tell if the exact emotional state the person is feeling such as the tone of voice, volume, rhythm and many more. Justin also emphasized that although people understand that using body language can give out a different meaning for some, it is important to be aware of the clusters, congruence and context on how the body language cues are being shown. Another set of activities was performed on how to detect lies by observing the body language cues on the face.
Justin also gave his several demonstrations with the benefits of mastering body language. One of this demonstrations was for him to guess a word to which we were thinking by just observing our body language and saying yes or no. It is truly amazing experiencing him finding out the word we were guessing by just responding to yes or no. There was a time that he told the volunteer not to say anything at all and he will just guess the word being imagined by the volunteer and he was able to figure it out, even detailing the characteristics of the word whether is a character, a place, a fruit, the color, the experience connected with the word. There was one demonstration that he was able to figure out in exact sequence, while blindfolded, the serial number of any paper bill a volunteer would grab. In the end, it was discussed that learning body language needs consistent practice like most skills. It is surprising to note that most body language cues are universal and no matter how we try to conceal our thoughts, it will almost always reveal in our nonverbal gestures. The benefits of learning body language seem endless and I’m sure that learning this immensely useful skill will not only develop awareness to one’s personal communication styles but also greatly improve our relationships with others in our work, our family and in our daily lives.
This article is written by Christopher Douglas Avila, an affiliate facilitator of the Cebu Teambuilding Facilitators Network. He was one of the Organizers of Now I See You, Bai: The Body Language Advantage workshop last November 26, 2016 held at JCenter Mall.
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