Some of the topics we communicate are personal, intimate, and deeply emotional. Sharing them in front of a group can be unexpectedly challenging—oftentimes dredging up feelings that are more unwieldy to navigate than we expect.
Of course, we want our work to resonate emotionally with our listeners and inspire them to feel, think, and act differently. Feeling connected to your message and channeling the power and vulnerability of your past experiences can be tremendously effective. It can help you lead with passion and authentic perspective.
However, the challenge lies in striking the balance between being connected to our emotions as speakers and ensuring the focus always remains on the audience and the experience we’re creating for them.
As you navigate the emotionally precarious content in your speeches, there are a few things to keep in mind.
How Your Body Responds to Emotion Onstage
When experiencing emotion in the intensely public setting of the stage, the body tends to do two common things to disengage from the overwhelming vulnerability of the moment:
First, we stop breathing.
During normal activities, all day long, we breathe without thinking about it. But certain stressful or emotional situations affect the depth and nature of our breath. They create lingering tension in our bodies that doesn’t fully leave when we exhale.
In fact, when something is intensely painful, one defense mechanism is to hold our breath in an attempt to not have to feel what’s coming.
You’ve probably seen it happen: an energetic kid runs around at the playground, until he trips and skins his knee…
For a split second, the impact is met with a huge held breath. Time slows as the body waits for the pain to kick in. It’s almost as if the child is willing himself to become invisible to the painful emotions by not moving a muscle, not even to breathe.
But that mechanism doesn’t block the pain for long; cue the uncontrollable waterworks, the parents swooping in, and the Spiderman Band-Aids.
Onstage, our body’s natural defense mechanisms shift into high gear. As emotion wells up and becomes trapped and we attempt to avoid what’s inevitably arising with a held breath, the size and nature of the feeling can become unmanageable and lead to a breakdown in our ability to effectively communicate.
Your body will subconsciously want to stop breathing. You might feel intense overwhelm—like no matter what you do, you can’t quite catch your breath.
What to Do Instead:
When you’re speaking and start to feel the dread of handling a wave of emotion you’re not sure you’ll be able to move through, the key is to fight the temptation to hold your breath in a futile attempt to stifle that feeling. Instead:
- Do the opposite: breathe.
- Give the emotions space to exist and move through you by continuing to breathe throughout the section that triggers sensitivity.
- Practice this in rehearsal—and maybe even write “breathe!” in the margins of your script.
Will this kill the emotion in its track? Thankfully, no! In fact, the opposite occurs. Breath gives emotion space to exist without allowing it to reach an overwhelming degree of intensity.
Second, we go “off-voice.”
The second thing our bodies do to dissociate from uncomfortable emotion onstage is go “off-voice.” The term “off-voice” refers to disengaging the vocal cords and speaking in a voice that has the breathy quality of a stage whisper—technically loud enough to be heard, but not spoken with full vocal resonance and power.
This avoidance stems from a subconscious attempt to not fully commit to the very words that are attached to the vulnerability. In doing so, vibration isn’t formed and vocal resonance is not achieved.
Speaking off-voice prevents us from feeling intense emotions, and it also prevents our audience from feeling emotionally engaged with our words. It’s like faking the idea of vulnerability or intimacy—in reality, it ultimately lacks true emotional authenticity and depth.
What to Do Instead:
Instead of vocally retreating from the oncoming feeling, lean into it. Continue to speak in your normal, resonant voice, despite the difficulty of what you are experiencing. When preparing to speak about a particularly personal or demanding topic, it can be helpful to meet with a vocal coach who can help you produce your strongest sound.
Attempting to suppress or deaden the emotion through shallow breathing or disengaging from your voice strips a performance of its life force. Remember, you’re there to reach the people in the seats, not rob them of all of the beautiful details and emotion of your voice and your experience.
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