A common complaint for those giving presentations or speeches is that they run out of air and can never seem to catch up on their air supply. The biggest problem with breathlessness is that your body is starved for oxygen because you are not allowing yourself the luxury of breathing. Instead, you are waiting until the last moment to take a breath; and, at that particular stage in respiration, the breath you inhale will largely be ineffective because it will only increase your stress rather than decrease it.
When you are in normal conversation, do you ever wonder when to breathe? Chances are good that your answer isno. Why then is it such a problem at the lectern? Fear of public speaking is a big part of that answer because our nervousness saps our breath. But the other reason is because we are under the mistaken belief that we not allowed to breathe unless we have punctuation in our sentence. That is wrong. That is a mistake. In normal conversation, we interrupt our speech constantly to breathe. My advice is to do the exact same thing at the lectern.
3 steps that can end your breathlessness forever are as follows:
1. Remember to breathe. This may sound silly but it is not. Think about it before you begin and continue to do so as you are speaking.
2. Learn to supplement your airbeforeyou run out of it. Think of your air supply as a balloon. As long as your balloon is inflated, you will have voice. The secret is not to allow your balloon to deflate because once you are out of air, you have probably noticed that you end up gasping for it!
3. Learn to breathe with the support of your diaphragm because it is the best means of controlling nervousness in any form of public speaking. (And, if you are at all interested in discovering your ‘real’ voice, it is not going to happen until you learn to breathe in this fashion.)
Newborn babies are breathing correctly and opera singers are doing it too, as well as all other mammals. It is only the most intelligent of the mammals who are not doing it. We are renowned for being lazy or shallow breathers which only increases our stress as well as our breathlessness because shallow breathing does not allow for the elimination of toxins in the body.
By breathing with the support of your diaphragm, you are then able to rid your body of toxins which decreases your stress. In doing so, you will discover a control over your delivery that you never knew was possible.
Breathing is the first thing you did in life; it will be the last thing you do in life. Why not make it one of the best things you do in life?
