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I hear it all the time – people contacting me because they run out of air when addressing an audience and they don’t know what to do about it. It also doesn’t matter how small the audience or how large. It can happen when speaking to 5 people or 500. It also affects both novice speakers and professionals. Let me ask you a very simple question. Do you experience breathlessness when you are talking to your colleagues, friends or family? More than likely your answer is no. [Admittedly there are some who are breathless when talking in any situation. They tend to be women and they tend to be speaking very fast.] If you do not usually run of air when in conversation, why do you think you have this problem in public speaking? Is it nervousness? Nervousness is certainly part of the problem but it is not the entire issue. The problem deals with the practice of interrupting your sentences to take a quick breath, also known as supplementing your air supply. You do this in normal conversation; however, you are not doing this when standing at the lectern or at the head of the boardroom table. The problem of breathlessness goes back to 2nd grade. Because a child will often take a breath after every word when reading out loud, the teacher will instruct the student to wait until he or she is at the end of the sentence to take a breath. In the 2nd grade, this is not a problem because sentences are much shorter than they are in 12th grade. Herein lies the problem. By the time we reach high school, we are under the mistaken belief that we are not allowed to breathe until we come to some form of punctuation. What results is a huge gasp for air at the end of the sentence which eventually becomes a ‘cat and mouse’ game with your air supply. You have what I refer to as a ‘speaker’s license’ which is similar to the ‘writer’s license.’ You can breathe almost anywhere in any sentence as long as you speak with emotion, with life, with color. Read the following sentence out loud and take a quick breath where you see the asterisk. I cannot * go to the store. Did it work? Read it out loud again but this time pause after the word go. You should notice that you can pause after any one of those words – even the word I – if you speak with expression; i.e. shaking your head negatively as you say it or furrowing your brow. After experimenting with this exercise, you should realize that you pause in normal conversation, sometimes to take a quick or supplemental breath or sometimes just for effect. The answer to breathlessness is to treat your audience like you were having a conversation in your living room. If you can accomplish that effectively, you will discover that your breathlessness is gone. The Voice Lady Nancy Daniels offers private, group and corporate training in voice and presentation skills as well as Voicing It!, the only video training program on voice improvement. Visit Nancy's Voice Training Website and watch as she describes the best means of controlling nervousness in any form of public speaking.
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