How breathing correctly helps with public speaking
The power of our breath is something that has gotten a lot of attention in the last few years.
Breathwork pioneers like Wim Hoff have taken some of these age-old yoga techniques to the mainstream and demonstrated their ability to provide a host of benefits including reducing stress and anxiety, boosting immunity, helping to process and heal trauma and much, much more.
For public speaking, there are two main reasons why learning to breathe correctly is important. One — to combat symptoms of nervousness and anxiety, and two — to help you be able to efficiently use your breath when having to speak for long periods of time.
We’ve always championed diaphragmatic breathing and guided our students to learn this technique. Diaphragmatic breathing is actually our natural way of breathing that we all do as children, but over time, most of us incorrectly shift to breathing from our chests.
The key thing about learning to breathe in this way is that it helps us activate our parasympathetic nervous system, which then helps turn off the “fight or flight” response caused by the sympathetic nervous system that is activated in the face of perceived threats.
The great thing about how these two parts of our central nervous system work is that only one part of it can be activated at a time. This means turning one on shuts off the other. This makes diaphragmatic breathing a massive tool to have at our disposal when preparing to deliver a speech or any situation where we’re feeling anxiety hijack us.
Alongside diaphragmatic breathing, something that has also really helped us is using the technique in conjunction with “2:1” breathing. 2:1 breathing is a process whereby you deepen and lengthen your exhalation, making it twice as long as your inhalation.
When you’re anxious and stressed, your breathing becomes faster as the sympathetic nervous system starts to pump blood fast around the body to prepare it for physical activity. With “2–1” breathing, you are actively doing the opposite, lengthening your exhalations and activating the parasympathetic nervous system even more.
And the best thing about this is it’s super simple to do. You can start off breathing in for a count of two, then breathing out to a count of four and practice until you feel comfortable. Then you can move it up to three and six, four and eight, five and ten and so on. Everyone’s lung capacity is different, so it’s important that you find a ratio you feel comfortable with and don’t stretch yourself until you’re gasping for air — the goal with these techniques is relaxation after all.
Whilst learning these types of techniques is great for moments of overwhelm, we also believe it’s also important to have a standalone breathing practice to help regulate your feelings overall and help provide balance to your day-to-day life. If you can integrate 20–30 minutes into your daily routine you will start to feel the benefits, but out our stance is that the longer the better!
Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has spoken a lot about breathing on his Huberman Lab podcast and often mentions how we try to combat anxiety with what he calls a “top-down” approach, meaning that we try and control how we feel by telling ourselves to “calm down”. As most people have experienced, this rarely works, and potentially makes things worse. Instead, he prefers a “bottom-up” approach where we use the mechanics of our body through processes like using the breath.
So next time you’re flustered, nervous and anxious, and you keep trying to take control of how you feel with more thoughts, try bypassing this with your breathing instead, and give your mind a much-deserved break.
