What Happens In Our Bodies When We Speak On Stage

To the second part of your question, here's what made a crazy difference for me:

Make an introduction, then show a short, relevant film/clip that establishes a mood or an interest in the subject. Then continue the talk.

It gives a chance for the audience to redirect their attention, and for your body to settle down after the first jolt. Then you return to a talk where your knee-jerk physiological responses are strangely absent, or at least way less present becuase you had a break from audience's attention to sort yourself out. My clip was only about 2 minutes long.

I'm no expert on public speaking, but a couple of talks this way made all the difference in the world to me.

DeMing wrote:I was wondering, What Happens In Our Bodies When We Speak On Stage? Anyone can to share? How can we counter this physiological changes?

our body act something weird if we're on stage that's because we are afraid or nervous on what we are going to do, The only true way to get over this is to practice.Then take the speech and say it everywhere. At bathroom, at the mall, at friends house, anywhere where people gather.

DeMing wrote:I was wondering, What Happens In Our Bodies When We Speak On Stage? Anyone can to share? How can we counter this physiological changes?

Whenever I speak in front of people I sometimes feel a little nervous and my body starts to slowly shake. I solved this problem by slow speech practice in front of people and eventually I overcame my nervousness when I do speaking engagements...

Most of the (unwelcome!) changes that occur physically in our body when starting to make a presentation are due to our fear, nerves, apprehension, stage fright, call it what you will.
The fear is usually about yourself; will I make a fool of myself, will I be able to handle the audience, will I have a mental blackout, will I live up to expectations ….? and etc. Once you start concentrating on what you have to give and how you can benefit others, you shift your focus away from yourself and toward your listener.

Try using the anxiety as a self motivator. Once you know that with enough research, concise and usable notes, repeated practice and some coaching, you will perform at your best, set time aside and start your preparation – don’t procrastinate! The longer you put it off, the less time you will have and the stronger the fear will be – a recipe for disaster! Make it your goal to give your very best and in a short time you will feel the (welcome) changes in your body that will enable you to concentrate, adopt the correct posture and use the adrenaline to give it your best shot!

When I do public speaking I can feel my body tense up and sometimes it gets a little uncomfortable sometimes...

When we speak on stage our body reacts only to what we want them to, like when we feel nervous our bodies reaction would be to just freeze and not move...

Hi DeMing

Our bodies can seem to have a mind of their own when we speak in public. This is because adrenaline takes over, causing symptoms such as butterflies in the tummy, shaking, racing pulse and so on. The usual advice is a few deep breaths but, while this is good, there is more you can do. Our physiology and posture can go a long way to help. You will feel more stable and grounded if your feet are evenly placed beneath your hips, ensuring that your knees are not locked, but relaxed. It's important to stand up straight and have your shoulders back and down - this not only looks better but feels better. If you're slightly bent forwards and your shoulders are forward and down, this cuts off your diaphragm, making it harder to breathe and the oxygen doesn't flow properly, causing all sorts of unwelcome symptoms. Having your shoulders back and down opens your diaphragm, it's easier to breathe and the symptoms will ease. There is a lot more to this but I didn't want to write war and peace!

I hope this helps.

Best Wishes
Tina

Tina Sibley wrote:Hi DeMing

Our bodies can seem to have a mind of their own when we speak in public. This is because adrenaline takes over, causing symptoms such as butterflies in the tummy, shaking, racing pulse and so on. The usual advice is a few deep breaths but, while this is good, there is more you can do. Our physiology and posture can go a long way to help. You will feel more stable and grounded if your feet are evenly placed beneath your hips, ensuring that your knees are not locked, but relaxed. It's important to stand up straight and have your shoulders back and down - this not only looks better but feels better. If you're slightly bent forwards and your shoulders are forward and down, this cuts off your diaphragm, making it harder to breathe and the oxygen doesn't flow properly, causing all sorts of unwelcome symptoms. Having your shoulders back and down opens your diaphragm, it's easier to breathe and the symptoms will ease. There is a lot more to this but I didn't want to write war and peace!

I hope this helps.

Best Wishes
Tina

I could not agree more with what Tina said ! That should be a sticky on this forum.
Regrettably, this kind of advice is too often lumped together with new agey gibberish about light and love, to the point many people will just ignore the whole thing.

What I would like to add here is that if you want this approach to work, you need to work on the physical issues described above often and with great patience. If you only try to do it before the presentation, it won't work simply because building that level of control over your body takes time.

The way to do it is by observing what's happening in the body. Once you start being familiar with more subtle sensations, try to change your posture FROM THE INSIDE OUT. Like Tina said, shoulders will hopefully end up back and down, but it's essential that they fall into that position while you're focusing on elongating the spine. If you forcefully bring the shoulders back using the large superficial muscles (military style), you may end up looking alright to an outside observer, but in fact you'll have cut off the air flow even further by compressing and tightening the upper back.

Btw, the mental benefits of observing and becoming aware of pasterns in the body extend far beyond gaining the ability to control unwanted physical symptoms while speaking in public.