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The Transformational Effect: When the Air in the Room Changes

Breath is the fuel of performance; make sure you give yourself enough for full expression.

Advanced Performance Techniques

On Stage

Public speaking

Stage performance

Eli

Pauley

Performance Faculty

minute read

Published on

June 30, 2025

Breath is a profound catalyst for presence, authenticity, and engagement in every performance.

Think back to the moment when you realized you were in love.

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Or the moment you decided you were ready to go out on your own and become an entrepreneur.

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Or that moment of inspiration: the one that led to your Core Message or completely changed your perspective on life.

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You might not have realized it, but you probably took a deep breath while thinking of each of those moments. Why? Because size of breath is subconsciously correlated with size of thought.

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Size of Breath = Size of Thought

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In life, as a general rule of thumb, the bigger the thought, the realization, or the change we are experiencing, the bigger the breath we usually take to express it.

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Some thoughts don’t require a lot of breath: like choosing what cereal to have for breakfast or which gum flavor to buy in the grocery store checkout line.

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But the ideas you’re sharing onstage? They’re probably pretty big ideas, ones that you’ve put in quite a bit of work to develop and refine. Deep-breath-worthy ideas.

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Unfortunately, most speakers skip out on a powerful way to show their audience the grandeur and importance of their ideas onstage.

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Instead of strategically using breathwork to uplevel their performance, they deliver their speech without taking a single deep breath. Instead of using deliberate pauses that make it look like ideas are spontaneously occurring to them in the moment, they drive through their speech without taking the breaths necessary to really let their ideas sink in.

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The result? A performance that feels gum-flavor-sized rather than transformational.

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What It Takes to “Change the Air in the Room”

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Have you ever listened to a keynote speech or watched an onstage performance that gave you goosebumps? Or heard someone say something that literally shifted the energy in the room?

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In the acting world, people call this “changing the molecules” or “changing the air in the room.” It’s something you feel, perhaps on your skin or in the air, when someone delivers hard news, shares something really chilling, or says something extremely profound.

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Transformational speakers activate both their language and their breath to make their audience feel specific emotions and change the air in the room. You can tell you’re truly having an effect on your audience when you change the air in the room.

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But let me be clear, changing the air in the room is not something you can strong-arm. You don’t have to go big, overplay, or overact to achieve it. In fact, often you’ll change your audience more effectively with a laser pointer rather than a searchlight.

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You won’t be able to change the air in the room if you can’t control the air in your own body. That’s why breathwork is so important. Achieving this transformational effect is much more about connection than force. And anybody can do it, anybody can learn it. It’s actually quite simple.

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How to Use Breath to Change Yourself and Your Audience

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Breath gives us inspiration and allows us to access ourselves. It’s the fuel of our performance.

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You can harness the power of your breath, not just to captivate your audiences, but to move them as well. Create a performance that resonates on a deeply emotional level, a performance that changes the air in the room.

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Try these practical tips for exploring the largeness of breath that is required to express the significance of your thoughts and ideas:

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#1 Breathe in before you speak.

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We often tell people to breathe in before they speak. Duh, you might think. But more often than not, as soon as a speaker steps onstage, their breath is hijacked by their nervous system. The nerves and fear take over, and their body starts taking short, shallow breaths that stem from the upper chest, rather than the diaphragm.

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Diaphragmatic breathing (more commonly known as deep breathing) actually lowers stress and improves brain function. With this type of breathing, you consciously use your diaphragm to fill your lungs to full capacity. Try it yourself: put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach, directly under your ribcage. Breathe in deeply and slowly so you feel only your hand on your stomach rise (rather than your hand on your chest). Notice how this deep breathing feels different from your normal breathing.

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Research shows that deep breathing can also help you remember information. Perhaps that’s why taking a deep breath often helps performers remember their lines. In fact, when performers we coach forget their lines, often, all we have to say is “take a breath” before they can inhale, oxygenate the brain, and find the next thing they’re going to say.

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Sometimes speakers go blank and forget what they’re going to say next because they get so nervous they stop breathing. When that happens, just inhale and let your next line come to you on the breath.

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Taking a deep breath onstage opens up your body and relaxes you. It allows you to stay grounded and be in touch with your audience. And, technically speaking, if you don’t take strong breaths, you can’t support your vocal sound or project your voice properly.

Full Transcript

Don't

breathe in and then breathe out all the fuel you need to support your voice before you speak your lines.

take a deep breath, then speak the words you need to say (without exhaling all your air).

#2 Practice with a table read.

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One of the best ways to practice breathing before you speak is to do a very technical table read where you force yourself to breathe before speaking each sentence. This helps build that muscle memory into your body. (Of course, use your judgement if you have lots of short sentences in a row; we don’t want you to hyperventilate!)

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Like a singer who knows exactly where to breathe and how deep of a breath to take in each section of their song, you’ll learn how to naturally incorporate breath in your speech to make it more impactful. And pretty soon, you’ll get in the flow and you won’t have to think about it anymore.

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And remember, never speak while looking at your script. Read the line in your head, take a breath, and look up (at another person, at an object in front of you, or imagine your audience) and say your line. This simple habit will help you avoid sounding stiff or robotic and prepare you to deliver your speech to your audience.

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a table read of your script and breathe before each new sentence you speak.

#3 Map out your speech to align size of ideas with size of breath.

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A breath says to your audience: “I just had a new thought.” That’s why performance breathwork can have the effect of making it look like you just thought of something, in that very moment.

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Of course, deep down your audience knows you’ve written your speech, thought it out, and prepared the presentation. But they also want to believe it’s happening for the very first time. The most transformational speakers are so connected to the audience that it feels like every word comes out specifically for them.

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For that to happen, you have to work against the tension, fear, and rote-presentation style that happens when speakers tense up, bear down, and just rattle off their speech. You need to breathe and align your thoughts with your breath.

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Filling up with breath allows you to deliver a more relaxed, natural, and impactful performance because, instead of your brain going a million miles an hour and your body panicking and struggling to keep up, your body and your mind are on the same wavelength.

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Go through your script and identify the emotional turning points, the big-idea reveals, and high-impact lines. Think about the size of breath required for those specific moments. Rehearse breathing before, after, and while delivering your lines.

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You might be surprised at how impactful breathwork is for your performance. It really does make it look like you’re spontaneously having discoveries and new ideas come to you in the moment, onstage, for the very first time.

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If it feels awkward or technical at first, that’s normal. Imagine that with every breath, you’re not filling up with air, you’re filling up with how you want to make the audience feel. You’re filling up with your next idea. You’re “breathing in” your audience, their energy, and their potential.

Don't

lose your connection to your breath. If you do, you’ll lose connection to your audience as well.

think of breathing as filling up with thoughts, feelings, and connection with the audience.

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The Benefits of Breathwork for Your Performance

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Each of these practical tips are things we do on autopilot in our everyday lives. We usually don’t have to think about breathing at all. But onstage, we start getting nervous, feeling tense, and we lock up.

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Even something as simple as consciously thinking “I’m going to keep breathing” can help you deal with nervousness and focus on connecting, softening, and directing your focus to your audience.

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Breath expresses to your audience the significance of the moment. But it does so much more. When you use breath as a catalyst for presence, authenticity, and engagement in your performance, you also:

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Feel much more relaxed and in control onstage; your confidence increases because you know how to effectively deal with pre-performance nerves.
Connect more deeply with your audience (because you’re less focused on what you’re going to say and more focused on the audience and their experience).
Deliver a performance that’s much more visionary; it seems like new ideas, discoveries, and connections are happening in real time onstage. And your performance is much more captivating, inspiring, and insightful.

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As you commit to performance choices, even if they are as simple as taking a breath before each line, you will be able to change the air in the room. Your audience will feel the full depth of the emotions you are trying to convey, the meaning behind the words you speak, and the importance of your Core Message.

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As you uplevel your stage performance, you won’t just connect more deeply with your audience, you’ll become a transformational speaker who powerfully changes the minds, hearts, and lives of the people in your audience.

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#2 Practice with a table read.

‍

Dont

a table read of your script and breathe before each new sentence you speak.

#3 Map out your speech to align size of ideas with size of breath.

‍

A breath says to your audience: “I just had a new thought.” That’s why performance breathwork can have the effect of making it look like you just thought of something, in that very moment.

‍

Don't

lose your connection to your breath. If you do, you’ll lose connection to your audience as well.

think of breathing as filling up with thoughts, feelings, and connection with the audience.

The Benefits of Breathwork for Your Performance

‍

Even something as simple as consciously thinking “I’m going to keep breathing” can help you deal with nervousness and focus on connecting, softening, and directing your focus to your audience.

‍

Breath expresses to your audience the significance of the moment. But it does so much more. When you use breath as a catalyst for presence, authenticity, and engagement in your performance, you also:

‍

Feel much more relaxed and in control onstage; your confidence increases because you know how to effectively deal with pre-performance nerves.
Connect more deeply with your audience (because you’re less focused on what you’re going to say and more focused on the audience and their experience).
Deliver a performance that’s much more visionary; it seems like new ideas, discoveries, and connections are happening in real time onstage. And your performance is much more captivating, inspiring, and insightful.

‍

Don't