One of the most common complaints I hear from clients is that they run out of air at the lectern. If this is a problem for you, let me ask you a question. Do you experience breathlessness in normal conversation? Your answer is probablyNo. If you do not run out of air when you are speaking to friends, family or co-workers, then you should not be breathless at the lectern.
The causes of lack of air are as follows:
1. You do not think to breathe.
2. You are waiting until you come to the end of a sentence to take a breath.
3. Nervousness is sapping your air supply.
The cure is simple.
1. Be aware of your air supply before you begin your speech or presentation. Learn to breathe with the support of your diaphragm. In doing so, you will not only have control over your breathing, you will also discover the best means of controlling nervousness in any form of public speaking.
2. Take control of your speed. Talking at 100 mph takes a lot more air (and energy) than moving along at 75!
3. Supplement your air supply before you run out if. The problem at the lectern is that we wait until we are totally spent and then take a huge breath which only makes the situation worse. In addition, that large amount of air is actually increasing your nervousness, not decreasing it.
In the 2nd grade, we were taught to wait until we came to the end of the sentence before taking a breath. This was the advice given in our early years because of the possibility of choppy speech. So, in order to make us smooth readers, the teacher told us to wait to breathe until we came to some form of punctuation. That was fine advice when there were only 6 words in the sentence. The problem came later when our sentences were 3 lines long with no punctuation!
You have what I refer to as a speaker's license. As long as you have some color, some life, some emotion in your delivery, you can take a breath almost anywhere. (If you speak in a monotone, however, this does not work.) Remember, you interrupt your conversation continually to breathe without giving it a second thought.
Don't allow your breathing to be the last thing you think about when presenting. Without air, there is no voice. Without voice, there is no message. Learn to breathe with the support of your diaphragm and discover the benefits of always having enough air!
