Caroline Goyder

It's funny, isn't it?

Because we know about breathing for yoga or Pilates.

We know that when we run, we need to think about our breath.

What we don't think about is the breath for speech.

The basic principle that everybody needs to understand is that because all speech is out-breath, your pause is in-breath.

If you understand how to take a really relaxed in-breath, then everything you say is relaxed.

Whereas if you forget that and do what most people do when they get really scared, which is kind of chest breathe and their shoulders come up and they gasp the air in.

And that's when your system says you're running away from someone really scary now.

And so you're going to speed up and you're going to get flat and it's going to become just really hideous quite fast.

So in other words, the full stop for a speaker and the quality of your in-breath is the quality of what comes out next.

And I just wish that everybody understood that because then you can be on stage in front of 4000 people.

You relax, you look out at the audience, you breathe and you're with friends.

And that's that's the art, isn't it?

So speaking now is to seem really at ease in that situation.

I remember being at drama school and them talking about the diaphragm and I was like, I kind of think I should know what this is.

It's if you take a thumb, the best, I mean, I do this in the TED talk.

If you take a thumb and just stick a thumb, women, it's below where your bra strap is.

Men, you just kind of have to imagine between your ribs somewhere and just feel that squishy point.

That is the front point of attachment for the diaphragm.

And the diaphragm kind of cuts you in half, like the skin of a drum, like a jellyfish, all the way across your torso.