Gestures are various animations, poses, sounds, text and facial animations. Unlike other animations gestures are different in that they can be triggered as follows:

1) Selecting the gesture from the "Gesture" menu, which is on the bottom right of the Second Life viewer.

2) Type in the name of the gesture, as it appears in the inventory, into the chat bar. Type the characters within the quotes. For example, type "afk" to trigger the pose assumed when you are away from your keyboard. Type "/yes" to trigger an animation that nods your head. You can see the Chat shortcuts in the Gesture menu.

CONTROL-G toggles your master gestures panel, which shows you all your currently active gestures, allows you to modify existing gestures, create new ones from the sounds and animations in your inventory, and also to see and modify the shortcuts and chat-triggers for a gesture. Default gestures are found in "Library -> Gestures" and in "My Inventory -> Gestures" folders in your inventory.

In order to use your gestures, you will need to activate them. Open the folder containing the gesture, right click on the gesture, and from the pop up menu select "Activate". You can now use your gestures as described above. When you first arrive you have a set of default gestures provided to everyone in Second Life. If at any time your active gestures may deactivated just follow the process above to reactivate them.