How to sit, stand and pick dropped items elegantly (Deportment, Part 2)

Hello, I'm Jamila Moussaieva, an international social etiquette consultant and the author of the book, Etiquette, The Least You Need To Know. A lot of my subscribers have been asking me to do a video on how to walk, how to sit, how to stand properly. So I decided to make a series of videos that I've called deportment video. Deportment is essentially the way you carry yourself. It's just a fancy etiquette term, but what it means is how you present yourself, your overall demeanor. The first part of this video was dedicated to a good posture and how to walk properly. This video is dedicated to how to stand elegantly, how to sit elegantly, and how to pick dropped items elegantly. So if you're new to this channel, make sure you subscribe to it. Please don't forget to like and comment. Let's talk about a good stance. What I mean by good stance is how we stand. So most of the time, if we're not walking, we're usually standing. It makes a big impression on people that meet us, especially if you are at a reception or at some buffet party, you have to stand for the most part. So your stance tells a lot about you, about your personality, how confident you feel. As I mentioned before in the first part of this video, a good posture is a key to everything, to a good stance, to a good walk, to a good seat. So make sure you look at that video, know how to have a good posture, and now let's continue on a good stance. I'm going to show you two kinds of stance. One that shows you are a confident person. This could be very handy when you're going for a job interview or when you're doing a presentation. You have to make sure that you give the image of a confident person, the one that knows what he or she is talking about. So in order to have that, make sure that you place your two feet at hip width apart so you occupy physically more space. Even in animal kingdom, animals usually try to extend their bodies to make themselves look more confident and more powerful. So when you have two feet firmly grounded on the floor, you will feel more balanced and more confident when you talk. So this is a position for a confident stance. In case if you want to show a more elegant image of yourself, so your goal is to look more elegant, more feminine, then you have to do a different stance. So this is how you do it. So first you put your two feet together, then you place one feet behind the other, so the ball of the first feet is touching to the middle point of your second feet, the one that is on the back. So you place your feet like that, you shift all the way to the back of your feet. So this feet becomes almost weightless. You can check it by lifting it up. If you can easily lift it up, that means all the weight is on the back foot. So now as you are able to lift it up, make sure you just place it back in and instead of having your knees outward, you tuck them in. You basically put them in. This position gives you a more feminine and more elegant stance and you visually look much slender, much slimmer if that's the look you're going for. To check for yourself, look at the mirror when you're doing this. You can see the difference between a stance that's just straight like that with your feet together. Put your hands on the sides and see how much space you're occupying. And now if you want to try the elegant stance, put your feet backward, your front feet stays in the front and there's no weight on it so you can lift it up. And then put the knee inward. And now if you visually try to look, you'll now occupy much less space so your body looks more slender and more feminine in this position rather than this position. This tip will particularly come handy to you when you're doing a group photo shoot. So if you are standing in front of everyone, taking a picture in a group, so instead of just standing straight, just do a little bit of a shift to the side. This will give you a better look in the picture as well. Let's now look at how to sit properly. This is the technique I'm teaching all my students and it's very handy especially when you go for a job interview and you have to handshake the person you're interviewing with and still keep an eye contact but meanwhile take a seat. So this is a useful technique and if you apply it once you'll be able to use it for the rest of the time. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to step in. So imagine I'm meeting someone but I still have to take a seat. I'll walk backwards, backwards, backwards without looking back at the chair because that will mean that I will have to break the eye contact which is something I don't want to do. So I'm going to walk all the way back and as soon as I hit with my calves the chair, I can also use my hand, make sure that there's a chair right there, to touch it. So when I sit down, I feel the chair and I'm seated down without breaking the eye contact. So when you are seated like that on a chair, not completely all the way back in the chair, this position enables your body to lift yourself up much easier without applying too much pressure. So all you have to do is tuck your legs back in and simply stand up. I use a lot of visual images when I teach my students about etiquette rules. So this is another thing I'm telling them. When you're seated down, imagine there's a little kitten behind you that you don't want to squish. So having the image of a little kitten behind your back or a little puppy will make it easier for you not to move your back too close to the chair. So if you haven't checked out my dining etiquette video, make sure you do. That's where I'm talking about how to sit properly as well. Sometimes a chair might have arms and it feels it has more room in it for the seat. So once you sit down, you can use the arms to support you to move a little bit more backwards inwards to the chair. So that's permissible if the chair has the arms. If not, then make sure you just position yourself in the middle of the chair so you can easily stand up when you need to do so. Now let's talk about the legs. We always remember the good posture. We always remember to keep our head high, our chin parallel to the ground. What about our legs? For men, it's important to make sure that they keep their feet a bit slightly apart, grounded firmly on the floor. No shaking of the legs, no nothing, because that translates into nervousness, anxiety. So make sure you keep your feet straight on the ground and slightly apart. For women that want to go for a confident look, also with the same way, but just make sure that your feet are a little bit closer together so your feet are actually together when you're standing still like that. So imagine something like this. Actually, Queen Elizabeth prefers this kind of sit where she keeps her two feet together firmly on the ground for a confident look. If you are aiming though for a more elegant, more feminine sit, then there are three sits that you can consider. They're called the Royal Sits. So one is a Duchess Land, the second is Cambridge Cross, and a third is something that I call a mix of Cambridge Cross and Duchess Land, also recently known as the Sussex Sit, something that Meghan Markle has brought back, but it was actually originally done by Princess Diana. Let's look at each one of them and look how we should position our feet in order to sit in one way or another. So what is a Duchess Land? A slant means an inclination, so a Duchess Land is when you keep your knees together, your feet together, and you incline them together to one side or another, whichever one you prefer. Either you place them like this, or you place them to the other side like this. The second option that you have is called a Cambridge Cross. So cross means you have to cross your feet. So you keep your knees together, but you cross them at your ankle, but firmly keeping your feet on the ground like that. This creates a lock so there's nothing to see through your skirt or a dress that you're wearing. This is a very secure and confident seat. Another option that you have is something that's a mix between a cross and a slant. You have to cross your legs and then slant them. This is something that was popularized again by Meghan Markle. So you would cross your legs, but you would slant them to the side, so creating an illusion of longer legs when you sit down. You can choose to slant it either this way or that way. I just prefer it this way. So whichever position you prefer to sit in, make sure that you practice it a lot at home so it comes naturally to you when you're doing it outside. I personally really like this kind of sitting position or I also like just the simplest slant. Please do let me know in your comments which of these sitting positions is your favorite. I'm curious to know. The final segment of this video is how to pick up dropped items. Of course, I'm not talking about heavy boxes of books or things like that. I'm talking about things that you might drop on the way when you're walking. So when you drop something, make sure that you bend not from your back, but from your knees to visually see how it looks. If I drop an item, instead of doing like this, I will just sit down, pick the item and stand straight up like that. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really do hope that you find these tips and this information useful and you actually apply it in practice rather than just listen to it in theory. If you haven't yet subscribed to my channel, please make sure that you do. I'll have more informational video coming up and for that, I need your help. Please do comment and give me your feedback on what are some topics that you would like to hear more about and I'll be more than happy to film it for you. See you in the next video. Bye!