Written by Ellie Smith, Yoga Instructor
Ellie Smith is an experienced yoga and breathwork teacher, with a background in academia, teaching communication and cultural studies. She is the founder of Ellie Smith Yoga Ltd, a platform for new and returning professionals to learn how to apply practices from yoga to improve their public speaking presence.
Reaching out to an audience, captivating their attention, and leaving a lasting impression are crafts that can be honed. Yes, the fear of public speaking nests deeply within many of us, including myself, but this doesn't have to be an immovable obstacle.
With a blend of targeted exercises derived from the ancient practice of yoga and a sprinkle of perseverance, you can create monumental shifts in your capability and confidence.
Key takeaways
Body language and eye contact: A few simple yoga poses can help improve your posture and gaze.
Mastering vocal delivery: Yoga boasts several breathing practices that ensure you speak clearly and succinctly.
Dealing with distracting nerves: Targeted meditation exercises significantly improve concentration and clarity.
Body language & eye contact
How we stand or move, and even our facial expressions and eye contact, can captivate our audience and establish a direct connection, indicating engagement and confidence.
An effective way to refine your non-verbal communication is to record yourself with a video camera while rehearsing in front of a group of friends or a mirror. This helps identify previously unnoticed quirks (mine tends to be holding my hands like a little hamster).
While this is a great exercise, first and foremost, we need to focus on posture. Adjusting how we stand is the first step toward becoming a successful public speaker. A popular and fun exercise for many is practicing standing in a power pose with your hands on your hips. However, a more long-term approach may be needed to achieve sustained good posture.
How yoga helps
Most poses work on strengthening, softening, and aligning different parts of the body. But how?
Standing poses help to develop leg and core strength
Standing balances further develop our muscular structure and stability
All those twists, side bends, backbends, and forward folds help to realign tight, rounded shoulders.
Some poses you could try as a quick warm-up routine before going on stage include:
Tadasana (Mountain Pose)
Standing Twist (Parivrtta Tadasana)
Standing forward fold (Uttanasana) feel free to bend your knees as much as you like
Standing backbend (Utthita Tadasana)
These are some easy ways to help you stand a little taller and broader while also helping you expend some nervous energy. Be sure to check with your trusted medical professional first before trying these out.
Mastering vocal delivery
How you speak often makes the biggest difference between being a good and a great speaker. Varying your pitch and volume captures your audience's attention and helps express your central idea more effectively.
One popular practice is reading diverse materials like TED talk transcripts on any random topic aloud. Recording yourself can also reveal how monotonous we may sound during our first attempts, regardless of our carefully crafted, compelling narratives.
Nerves, though, have a funny way of ruining everything – even our voice. Have you ever witnessed a talk (or given one yourself) where the speaker walks on stage, takes a deep breath, and suddenly squeaks out the first few words, coughs a bit, clears their throat, and then tries again with a notable shake in their voice? No amount of practicing can conquer that.
Voice exercises such as reciting tongue Twisters like "red leather, yellow leather," and "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" help fine-tune voice control. But, if fudging a tongue twister only quashes your confident tone, there might be another way.
How yoga helps
In the world of yoga, we practice "Pranayama." This is often simplified to mean "Breathwork". Humming Bee Breath is one essential breathwork practice for improving vocal tone before your presentation.
You breathe in, then breathe out slowly by humming one long, low, continual, single note in a hum. Rinse and repeat. Here are some of its benefits:
Enhanced respiratory and cardiovascular health, and reduced blood pressure
Reduction in stress and increase in relaxation – Humming Bee Breath plays a vital role in stimulating your rest-and-digest response
Warming up of the vocal cords, reducing the likelihood of squeaking or clearing your throat on stage.
It can be done anywhere (though you may garner some odd stares if you do this in front of others.
Another beginner-friendly breathing practice from yoga includes belly breathing, which you can even do when you're already in front of an audience.
Dealing with distracting nerves
For even the most seasoned public speaker, standing in front of a group of peers is daunting. For many of us, it is intimidating enough for our minds to go completely blank and to get distracted by a raised eyebrow here and a smirk over there.
It doesn't matter how much you've practiced in front of the mirror or if you've got all your main points scribbled down on your hand. Your whole body is fine-tuned to register and respond to each perceived threat from your audience members.
Deep breathing exercises like Humming Bee Breath, as mentioned above, became my go-to method to quiet my nerves. In addition, I embraced the popular idea of positive visualization. Before every public speaking engagement, I made it a habit to envision a successful outcome. Imagining the audience’s attention riveted on me, absorbing the central idea of my talk, really boosted my confidence.
However, visualization before a really important presentation in front of a live audience can be wildly sidelined by nerves. So here is yoga's next trick.
How yoga helps
Meditation, a foundational tenet of yoga, is often viewed as something that needs much time and much patience. And yet, anyone can do it. If you have a little time before the beginning of your talk, try sitting somewhere quiet and focus on taking ten deep breaths. Your mind will wander. Contrary to popular belief, that's the whole point.
Every ounce of life you've ever lived will endeavor to grab your attention during those ten breaths. Your job? Just notice that and try to bring your attention back to your breath. That's it.
Don't force yourself to think of nothing because that's a great way to ensure you'll ruminate on everything.
Don't try to sit in a lotus position. Just sit comfortably.
There is no need to chant or repeat any affirmations unless you want to.
This practice is beneficial to your public speaking journey in several ways:
Improved focus and concentration
Clarity of thought
Improved articulation or fewer filler words or "waffle."
Personally, I find meditation an overlooked underdog to ensure great communication skills. Yoga poses and breathwork practices are a precursor to good meditation practice.
Your yoga-inspired path to public speaking excellence
Mastering the mic isn't just about conquering fear through rote memorization and practice; it's about transforming into the keynote speaker who leaves a lasting good impression.
Engaging in a daily routine of yoga-informed practices like these beginner-friendly poses allows you to project confidence and connect more authentically with your listeners.
Vocal delivery, another cornerstone of effective communication, sees improvement from practices like Humming Bee Breath that enhance our modulation and pacing. These methods ensure that the audience hears and feels your central idea.
These approaches, alongside strategies derived from meditation practices to manage a blank mind, lay the foundation for a compelling presentation.
As you step onto your next platform, remember that positive thoughts and a little practice go a long way to managing stage fright. Embrace the techniques shared, and watch as you learn the tricks of dynamic engagement.
Becoming a great speaker starts with a single mountain pose, a deep breath, and the courage to share your big idea that will undoubtedly have a lasting impact on your audience.
If the notion of using yoga to help manage public speaking anxiety intrigues you, but you’ve never set foot near a yoga mat before, your first step might be to sign up for my weekly newsletter. It's a great place to assuage all your yoga concerns.
You’ll receive a free, actionable guide to yoga at home. Each week, you’ll get some tips and tricks on how to stick with yoga and some ways you can apply it to public speaking.
Read more from Ellie Smith
Ellie Smith, Yoga Instructor
Ellie Smith is yoga and breathwork teacher based in rural Japan. Her background is in tertiary education with a focus on communication and cultural studies. She now blends these two professions in her business, teaching clients how to get started with yoga, how to stick with it, and how to apply its principles and techniques off the mat to reduce public speaking anxiety and improve their public speaking presence.
