3 Powerful Tools to Master The Art of Public Speaking

Public speaking is a beautiful way to connect with people, share our message, and grow as a person. It’s also scary AF.

I often battle with anxiety as I stumble my way towards an event. I sometimes even battle my way through anxiety while the event is happening.

There’s nothing sexy about anxiety. There’s nothing cool about it either. It’s annoying at the best of times and downright destructive at the worst.

The one good thing that has come out of my anxiety, however, is the fire that it’s given me to find ways to live with it better. I still want to connect with people, share my message, and grow as a person after all so understanding what causes it and how to self-regulate myself has become a life-long mission.

I was curious to know if I could stop anxiety before anxiety hit.

So, nowadays, I try and prepare myself in the lead-up to an event by putting things in place to support my journey. “An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure” and all that.

Three of the best tools I’ve found are the ones I’m about to share. They’re for when shit gets real, lights are on, it’s happening, there’s no turning back, it’s go time.

They are three of the best tools I’ve found to get me in the zone, release any tension, and open up my throat.

The tools I love to share are completely free. They are the ones that include everyone, regardless of gender, race, location, wealth, or health. They are free of dogma, prejudice, bias, discrimination, sexism, ageism, and injustice too.

In short: Anyone can do them anywhere in the world.

So, let’s get to it.

1. Breathing

The thing about the breath is that it’s directly connected to the nervous system and the nervous system is what makes us feel, well… nervous.

It does this by sending signals to the brain. Those signals tell the brain that something is about to happen and that it needs to pay attention, so it does. The brain then signals to the heart to speed up thus pumping more blood around the body just in case it needs to get moving. This then speeds up the breath that activates all the other cells in the body as more oxygen brings them to life.

In short, we become highly alert, focused, and sharp very quickly. In its unhealthy expression, this is anxiety. Crank up the volume even louder and someone is in what we have come to know as a panic attack.

Now for the good news

Because the nervous system has an up/down switch that gets activated when we breathe — inhaling turns it up, exhaling turns it down — the power is in our hands when things get too hot. Basically, through breathing exercises, we can self-regulate ourselves.

And because we are breathing 24 hours a day, from birth and until death, we don’t have to go anywhere to find it, buy it, grow it, source it, persuade it, convince it, or bargain with it either, it will breathe through us wherever we go.

We are breathing between 15,000–20,000 breaths everyday but what we do with each breath is a personal choice.

Do we turn up and on or do we turn down and off?

From my personal experiences, anxiety doesn’t need more fuel, it needs less. So, learning how to self-regulate and release some tension can be a great way to relax and step into the arena exactly as the person we want to be.

Because of its accessibility, the breath is my number one tool.

Discover my favourite breathing technique here

Lion’s breath

This breathing exercise is a fantastic way to release tension. It engages the diaphragm, opens up the throat, and massages any stuck muscles that may prevent us from expressing ourselves freely.

I love it so much that I do before almost every zoom call, conference, and public event I attend.

Putting it into practice:

1. Find a nice comfortable position with your back straight.
2. Spread your fingers wide to imitate a lion’s paw and place your hands on your knees.
3. Inhale through your nose.
4. Exhale strongly through your mouth, making a “ha” sound. As you exhale, open your mouth wide and stick your tongue out as far as possible towards your chin.
5. Relax face back to a neutral position
6. Inhale again
7. Repeat for 10 breaths.
8. Increase force and speed of breath as you go.

Sounding

When we’re talking about public speaking it’s important to have a calm, clear voice.

Anxiety or nervousness can make things uptight and shaky. So, what I’ve found to be a fantastic exercise is to make a sound before I speak.

This is commonly done by all performing artists — musicians, actors, speakers, lecturers, and the like — right before they go onstage. So, if this resonates, you’ll be in good company.

Sounding can be anything: aaaaaahhh, oooooooohhhh, iiiiiiiiiiii, eeeeeeeee.

Sighing is also sounding.

Follow what feels good here and allow your voice to guide you to where it needs to go.

Sounding is so powerful for two reasons:

It vibrates and lubricates the throat, getting it ready to speak.

Whenever we make a sound we often breathe out for longer than when we breathe in.

And remember how the nervous system has an up/down switch that’s influenced by the breath?

Well, if we’re breathing out for longer than we breathe in, we signal to every cell in our body to calm down and relax, so it does.

Shaking

Animals in the wild do this all the time.

Whenever they’ve just survived an attack or gone through an anxious moment, they shake and shake and shake until the fear has been released. They’re then ready to move on with their lives.

Humans have forgotten this. We’ve even made it socially weird and unacceptable.

But what happens, as a result, is that our bodies store this energy and it gets stuck.

Shaking is a great way to release it. It’s especially helpful just before speaking in public.

I often shake my whole body, moving from my ankles all the way up to the top of my head, allowing my wrists to flick and shake as I go.

In terms of preparing to speak in public, I couldn’t recommend this one highly enough,

Combine forces

Now for the real gold.

Each one of these practices is great by themselves but combined together they are even more effective.

One of my favourite ways to do this is to take a nice deep inhale through my nose and then begin to shake and sound as I exhale. When I’ve squeezed every last drop of breath out, I then pause, stand still, and take a nice deep breath in. Once I’ve filled myself all the way back up, I begin to shake and sound as I breathe out. I continue this movement for a few minutes allowing myself to breathe deeper, shake faster, and sound louder as I go.

This is one of my favourite exercises to do because it’s so silly. It takes the edge off, so to speak, and it lightens the seriousness that public speaking can sometimes bring.

To recap

Breathe — the longer the exhales the better!

Make sound — any sound is good, allow yourself to explore.

Shake — release any last bits of tension by shaking them out.

Combine forces — breath, sound, and shake yourself free.

If you’d like to learn more about the breath, you can read my 3-year personal journey with it here to see how it’s changed my life in the most profound ways.

Or alternatively, sign up for a free online masterclass here and try it for yourself.