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"Be a voice not an echo." - Albert Einstein

Stress Reduction: Relaxation Techniques for Public Speaking

Need to reduce your level of public speaking stress and anxiety? Looking for relaxation exercises you can practice before that speech or presentation?

If your answer is yes, you're not alone. Few things can create instant stress like the thought of speaking in public. The fact that it's a great way to reach lots of people with an important message hardly seems to matter sometimes.

To get in The Zone quickly and easily when you speak, download my free cheat sheet, "How to Calm Your Nerves Before Speaking."

For those times when you're feeling tight and anxious instead of blissful, here are two exercises that will help get you relaxed and focused. Each of them takes a maximum of 15 minutes; and you can even shave that time down once you become familiar with them. "Progressive Relaxation" helps reduce muscular tension so you can practice diaphragmatic breathing to speak with confidence, staying flexible and in control. "Mini-Vacation" allows you to do the same thing mentally. It's the best value vacation you'll ever find. Enjoy!

Progressive Relaxation

  • Lie on your back, with eyes closed and arms and feet uncrossed at your sides.
  • Follow your breath: Be aware of breathing in and out easily. “Watch” your breath as it enters your nose and goes down your throat. Stay with the nourishing breath as it passes into your lungs and then throughout your body. Feel how the oxygen nourishes every cell in your body. Become conscious of how refreshing and life affirming each miraculous breath is.
  • Now, as you continue to breathe easily, focus your awareness on the top of your head. Be aware of a sense of complete relaxation: as you focus on that area, your scalp and the individual hairs on your head suddenly release all tension held within them. You feel a pleasantly heavy sensation like warm lava moving slowly down your head and scalp, gently melting away all tension as it moves.
  • Allow that warm heavy feeling to spread from your scalp to your forehead. Feel the same release of tension, the melting-away, the sensation of smoothness and relaxation.
  • Keeping the level of relaxation you’ve achieved in your scalp and forehead, let the lava flow down to your eyes. You may hold considerable tension behind your eyes—many people do. Let it melt away.
  • Allow the warm melting-lava feeling to slowly proceed down your body. Each part of your body that it reaches immediately relaxes as the tension melts away. When you get to your fingers, allow any remaining tension to flow out your fingertips. And when you get to your feet, let the same thing happen through your toes.  Don’t DO anything; just let it happen.
  • Once your body is completely relaxed, do a mental scan to locate any remaining pockets of tension. Then let that tension melt away, until you’re completely and utterly relaxed. Now, allow your muscles to “remember” what this feels like, i.e., register it in your muscle memory. You can use this "memory" the next time you start getting tight before an important presentation.
  • Now that you’re completely relaxed, place the palm of your dominant hand on your abdomen where it rises and falls with each breath. Breathe gently and deeply. Feel your hand moving up and down with the “bellows” action of free diaphragmatic breathing. This is what natural breathing in a relaxed state feels like!

 Mini-Vacation

This exercise is an excellent continuation of the benefits you gained in the above activity, though it can also be done on its own.

  • Lie on your back, with your eyes closed and arms and feet uncrossed at your sides.
  • Follow your breath, as in the previous exercise. Allow your body to relish each life-giving, delicious breath. Give yourself over to your breathing. Let it fill your consciousness.
  • Focus your awareness on the present time and place: the here-and-now. Think about where you are. Listen to the sounds around you. Smell the air in this room. Become aware of the floor underneath you and the sensation of the air on your skin. Does this place have any taste associated with it? If you opened your eyes, what would you see? (You’re using all five of your senses, of course, as you experience this time and place.) For a few minutes, fill yourself completely. Now, imagine that the reality of this place and time is dissolving, melting away into nothingness. 
  • In its place, you find yourself traveling to a favorite location—someplace you love going to. This place is now arising in your consciousness. It might be a beach on a warm summer day; a field in springtime; a hammock outdoors in the early autumn; a cozy fire in a ski lodge at the end of a day on the slopes. Perhaps you’re lying in the bottom of a rowboat that’s bobbing gently at the dock. Wherever you are, this has become your new reality, and you’re relaxing there.
  • Open yourself up completely to this special place. Experience it sensually, with all of your senses as you did in the here-and-now. What sounds are you hearing? Seagulls? Waves slapping at the bottom of the boat? Bees buzzing? A crackling fire?  Can you feel that breeze on your face as you lie in the field in the sun; or the warmth of the fire at the ski lodge? Are there any smells noticeable in this place? If you were to open your eyes, what would you see? Do you taste anything—the salty air at the beach or the smoky air in front of the fire? Allow your senses to feed you the entirety of this world that you’ve recreated.
  • Spend the next 5 or 10 minutes enjoying this place. Take it all in deeply. Then slowly let it too begin to dissolve in your consciousness. In its place, bring back the present time and location where you’re doing this exercise. But keep the level of deep relaxation and sensory input you’ve achieved. The present time and place is the same as it was before, except now you’re experiencing it much more fully. Let it flood into you and throughout you. 
  • When you’re ready, open your eyes. While staying completely relaxed, sit up slowly (no need to rush). Relish the sensations of the here and now you’re still bathing in.
  • Now take this feeling with you as you go about your tasks for the rest of the day. Keep the relaxation of your “mini-vacation” not only in your mind but all of your senses and in your physical response to the world around you.

By the end of the exercise, you may have achieved a new level of awareness concerning the input of your physical senses. Good! In a sense, you’re “more alive to the world.” This is a valuable skill if you’re feeling isolated and removed from the present moment because of speech anxiety. Speakers who can immerse themselves in the present and experience it fully have an invaluable advantage concerning presence and effectiveness. Now you have a way to be one of those speakers!
Conquer stage fright with Fearless Speaking  

 

Tags: speech anxiety,stress reduction,relaxation techniques

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