In this paper a new method for head gesture recognition is proposed. A the first stage, face image data are transformed into low dimensional vectors by principal component analysis (PCA), which utilizes the high correlation between face pose images. The a self organization map(SM) is trained by the transformed face vectors, in such a that the nodes at similar locations respond to similar poses. A sequence of poses which comprises each model gesture goes through PCA and SOM, and the result is stored in the database. At the recognition stage any sequence of frames goes through the PCA and SOM, and the result is compared with the model gesture stored in the database. To improve robustness of classification, probabilistic relaxation labeling(PRL) is used, which utilizes the contextural information imbedded in the adjacent poses.