I seem to be spending a lot of time working in academic institutions at the moment (see here, for example). Recently I did two half-day sessions at an FE college in my home region. Many of the staff were complaining of problems with their voices; while chatting to another facilitator\/trainer over lunch we compared notes. He was working on staff stress levels and it quickly became apparent that the two problems were very strongly related.<\/p>\n
Stress does horrible things to your voice.<\/p>\n
Having seen the terrible things that Stress can do to its sufferers I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not for one minute suggesting that these tips are a substitute for a good Stress Management course or good Stress Management techniques but they will help. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s particularly appropriate to get working on your voice when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re stressed because the breathing exercises involved in good voice control are great stress relievers – and because the quality of your voice is a good barometer of how stressed you are. Check how your voice is working and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get a good indicator of your stress level even if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not consciously aware of being stressed.<\/p>\n
Okay – the tips…<\/p>\n
Breath slow and low. Make sure you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re breathing in your belly<\/strong> with your diaphragm. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll often be told to take \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big breaths\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to control your anxiety or stress – or perhaps \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deep breaths\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but if these are at the top of your chest they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just make the situation worse, not better. This is because the hormones released by breathing at the top of your chest tend to be things like Adrenaline – which is a pretty good hormone in the right place but can cause stress when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s present inappropriately.<\/p>\n Drop your shoulders. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be amazed at how often you walk around with your shoulders \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hunched\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without realising it, almost as if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re braced for a car crash or something. Not only is that a stress-inducer but it also tightens the muscles in and around your throat. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find that if you try to make a presentation like that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll sound nervous, anxious and insincere. Obviously that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bad, so to avoid it, just make a point of dropping your shoulders – not just when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re aware that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re anxious but all the time. I even know someone who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gone so far as to set a count-down bleeper on his watch so that every 10 minutes he was reminded to drop his shoulders. Okay, that might annoy everyone around you but my friend pretty soon got the habit right and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need to have the reminder any longer! Probably just as well, given how stressed out the bleep would have made all the people he shared an office with! :)<\/p>\n Ungrit your jaw. Just as stressed people tend to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153brace themselves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by hunching their shoulders they also tend to clamp their jaws. Locking your jaw locks the stress in. (Quite apart from that, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bad for your teeth!) Before you present, waggle your jaw a few times and do a couple of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big yawns\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to stretch yourself out a little. In fact it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably a good idea to do that whenever you remember to drop your shoulders – so that a relaxed jaw becomes a habit too.<\/p>\n There are plenty of sites online which give you a wealth of good stress-relieving advice (and some which give you some bad advice too!) so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not going to spend more time on things – these are the three hugely effective tools based upon your voice as a presenter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I seem to be spending a lot of time working in academic institutions at the moment (see here, for example). Recently I did two half-day sessions at an FE college in my home region. Many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,9,14],"tags":[19,20,31,37,45],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-key-posts","category-presentation-tips","category-voice-tips","tag-breath","tag-breething","tag-nerves","tag-presenting","tag-stress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}