Conquer the Butterflies with Better Posture!
/Have you ever thought about your breathing and how it relates to your posture?
When I was a college student I did a weekly news segment on the campus radio station and I'd always get butterflies right before I read the news live over the air. It was also around this time that I started taking Alexander Technique lessons. I was learning a lot about my posture, breathing, and how I used my body, but I had to pick one thing to focus on in that moment when the butterflies hit me so that I wouldn't choke up and sound out of breath an gravelly.
I had noticed that in preparation to read the news, or even any time I had to speak in front of people, that I would have the butterfly sensation and then I'd feel my legs tense up and I'd feel like I was floating off the ground. When I'd then start to speak, I'd feel short of breath.
So sitting at the microphone at the radio station, I planted both feet on the floor and the one instruction I gave myself was to release the tension in my thighs. I didn't move anything. I just focused on it.
And it worked!
Despite being nervous, it was much easier to speak and I felt much more relaxed.
It would be difficult to change postural habits without looking at breathing or breathing habit without looking at posture.
If your posture (the way you're holding yourself up) is out of balance, there's likely tension, compression or both in your body, which can interfere with your breathing.
Speaking is a great test for this. If you tend to feel out of breath when you speak, you're probably doing extra work take a breath in that you don't really need to do. People often think of that extra work or tension as happening in the upper body, which it absolutely can be and that's usually where we see and hear it, but there's another side of what happens when we breath and speak and it's what we're doing with our legs. If your legs tend to be tense or you tense them when you speak, that tension will likely pull up into your abdomen and affect your breathing.
Working on your posture and how your whole body coordinates can help you to release tension you don't need in your legs and also get your feet to make better contact with the ground, all of which help with breath and voice.
So as an experiment...next time you feel a little nervous or even just a bit tense when you have to speak, make sure you have both feet on the ground and see if you can let go of a little tension in your legs and notice if it's a little easier to speak or if your voice sounds different.
To learn more about how to achieve balance in how you use your body, breathing and voice when you communicate, check out my Posture Under Pressure workshops for women. We'll look at and practice that moment that happens right before you speak so you can start off by putting your best foot forward.
Keep reading for more info or click here for more information and registration.
