The power of your breath and voice

Day 1 of 3 of building a writing habit.

When the nerves creep in whilst giving presentations, all I can think of is, what is it I need to say, rather than being conscious of how I am saying it. Meanwhile what the audience hears, is how fast I’m speaking and my numerous “hmmm” or “and” I say to fill the gaps. What I forget about and don’t give time to is my breathing.

Lauren Currie explains that the person with the most relaxed breathing pattern, is usually the most confident person in the room because they are projecting a sense of ease. Equally, when in the same room as someone who is flustered, you feel their sense of stress and agitation, and they are usually not enjoyable to be in the company of. How I can take control of my voice and project my confidence when presenting, is through breathing low and slow. This is something UPFRONT believes will connect you with an inner confidence — breathe in through the nose for 3 seconds and out through the mouth for 6 seconds.

Not only is our breathing important when presenting but so is our voice. Our voice is our number one tool for communication and if I want to improve my confidence when I speak to others, I need to slow down as well taking control of my breathing. I would love to get to a point where I take a moment to breathe whilst giving a speech, rather than constantly saying “hmmm” to fill the gap. I feel like this is a hard one to unlearn because when your in the moment, it’s easy to forget everything you’ve learnt up to now.

Lauren taught me that there are 3 ways to feel your voice.

1. Your head
2. Your heart
3. Your gut

Each one sounds different. Using your head, your speaking with curiosity, thoughtfulness and logic. When you need to speak with compassion, care and love, you use your heart. And when you need to speak with power, drive and action, use your gut. We can pick the suitable voice to use based on the situation. Even just practicing these 3 different voices to myself, straight away the gut voice feels the most uncomfortable but I think it would be a great voice to practice and apply when putting myself forward for promotion at work. On reflection, I feel I use the head voice on a daily basis when discussing and analysing research findings with colleagues and I switch to using my heart voice when empathising with users on their experiences.

What I need to unlearn about my voice, is that I have just one voice, and that introverts can’t speak with power and authority. Instead I need to engage and utilise these three different voices that we all have within us.