Right, so this is somewhat fudged – my locations and definitions may not match exactly with those of any specific yogic or tantric traditions.  But whatever spiritual tradition you follow, they are a great way of getting started thinking about body language for specific characters.  Most people have one or two that are much stronger and more comfortable, and one or two that they are not comfortable with or can’t access at all.

A few notes to explain some of the poses: The gentleman demonstrating the Root chakra is both leading with and gesturing at the level of his root chakra.  The lady is not so blatant, but that sway in the hips can also be seen as the energy centre of the pose.  The hungry pose in the Stomach chakra got me thinking about that bit in Julius Caesar:

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Note you could do the exact same pose on a werewolf and it would still work – the stomach is not leading the way, but it is powering the whole body.  In Throat – that’s a con-man or salesman of some sort – someone who is focussed primarily on the words themselves, not the meaning.  The guy walking around in Brow is a type I see a lot of: he is so totally off in his head that the rest of his body is almost superfluous.  The head is leading so much, he almost seems to be lifted off the ground.

I’m pretty sure I read about this somewhere – it’s not my own idea – but I don’t remember where.  The poses are mine at least…

Again, it is very important not to start treating this like a mix-and-match, or some sort of secret code.  Use it as a starting point for explorations, but try making the pose yourself.  If it doesn’t feel right for the character or the situation, try something else!

Body language is amazingly powerful for communicating characters’ internal states – especially where they are saying one thing but feeling something else.  We have reasonably tight control over our words, moderate but variable control over our faces, but surprisingly little control over our bodies – they tend to express the subconscious state more truthfully.  Again, this is all ripped from Scott McCloud’s excellent Making Comics.

Based on Paul Ekman’s research, it appears there are 6 basic, innate and universal expressions.  All others are combinations of these, in varying degrees of intensity.  For more info, see Scott McCloud’s Making Comics (from which this info is unabashedly ripped) and for an amazingly in-depth view of the subject, Gary Faigin’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression.  As always, this info on its own is not enough – always try to make the expression with your own face and inhabit the emotion you are trying to draw – try to draw the feeling not just the surface.