Caroline is a public speaking coach who speaks about speaking with confidence. She draws a lot of lessons from actors, people who are traditionally very conscientious of how they sound and come across to others.
She offers three takeaways: the voice is an instrument, the power of the diaphragm and the importance of being aware of the energy in our breath.
She points out that if we view the voice as an instrument, one thing that is required is practice – no one becomes a great saxophonist without a lot of practice, she says. Practicing with inflection; adding and controlling the sound of emotion in your words, your tone, is important as well. She recommends singing as a good way of developing that further.
Next, she offers that the most powerful person in a room, or perhaps the person in the most control, is the person with the most relaxed breathing. She cites the work of Paul Eckman, who has studied emotion, and then goes into the effects of taking conscious control of our breathing. It is a powerful way to induce a sense of calm. She calls the diaphragm the key to regulating your system & the king of confidence.
She cites an experience with a yoga teacher where he instructs her to lie down, and then unexpectedly puts a weight on her belly and tells her to lift it up with her breath. She said this helped her realize how breathing should feel – breathing with your diaphragm instead of your chest. Breathing down instead of breathing up, she calls it.
She talks about the systemic effects of shallow vs deep breathing, and promotes deep breathing as a reliable method to increase confidence & self control and being able to perform through anxiety or nervousness. ‘Breathing low and slow.’
She then finishes with a call of being mindful for the quality of our breath. She provides the example of thinking of someone you really love while you breath in, and says that the words you would share with the associated out-breath would also be full of love. Or breathing excitement. And she suggests that you can control your voice by controlling your breath. ‘We breathe our thoughts,’ she said, pointing out the common root of respiration and inspiration. Being mindful of this is a way to have further control and empower the self. Interesting to note the overlap and parallels between this and various breathing or meditative practices like tonglen.
What may be a surprise to some is the idea that our physical and physiological processes affect our mental ones; it’s not just a one-way street. I liked the ending; after having drawn the connections to breathing, and saying the easiest way to pay attention to our in-breath is to close our mouth, she ends with the punningly funny: the secret to speaking with confidence is knowing when to close your mouth.