Have you ever listened to someone's tone of voice and cringed? Have you ever spoken to someone whose body language and words haven't matched? Have you ever interacted with someone and they have constantly looked everywhere, but at you? As human beings, we look for meaning in everything. In every interaction we have, we're assessing the validity of what we are hearing and seeing consciously and unconsciously. We have looked at how to influence the brain. Now, let us take a deeper look at what happens on a physical and vocal level. When we are assessing someone, we are looking for signs of congruity. Breath is one of the unconscious factors we assess. If the breadth is shallow and high, we think the person is going into panic mode, or fight, flight, or freeze mode. We can then start to become distrustful and think they have something to hide. When we breathe into our belly, however, we're connecting to the neurotransmitters, which are funnily nicknamed by some scientists as the second brain. Here lie 100 million neurons, more than the spinal cord. When you get nervous, anxious, or fearful, we often move from the parasympathetic nervous system, which includes our normal bodily functions such as salivating and digesting to the sympathetic nervous system, the blood then leaves your organs and goes to your major muscle groups, and prepares you for fight, flight, or freeze. Your eyesight becomes keener, your heart beats faster, and your breathing becomes more and more shallow. Breathing into your chest is when it's very shallow. However, when we accept what it is we are feeling in our gut, we breathe into our bellies, and we slow the breathing down bringing more oxygen, and allow our brains to think more clearly. This supports our voice and instead of a shrill harsh tone, the sound is much more supported, richer, and more resonant. When I was training as an actress in New York, we did a class called Committed Impulse. I was asked to get up in front of my class and do my monologue. The teacher, Josh Pisor, an amazing person, asked me before I started, ''How do you feel now?'' Really nervous, I answered as I started my monologue. Hi, my name's Cassandra, and I've just finished the first half of my Secrets of Fascinating Women course. [inaudible] tells me I'm well on my way to being totally fascinating. He stopped me. ''How do you feel now?'' Excited I said. He said off you go. I said, "Hi my name's Cassandra and I've just finished the first half of my secrets of," ''How do you feel now?'' He asked, agitated. ''Go again.'' Hi, my name's Cassandra, and I've just finished the first half of my Secrets of Fascinating Women course. Now he said, ''Angry. Go again.'' Hi, my name's Cassandra and I've just finished the first half of my Secrets of Fascinating Women course and [inaudible] tells me, I'm well on my way to being totally fascinating. You see, our emotions change all the time, if we let them. If you ignore them, or press them, they get worse and worse and worse. For example, if you're going into a job interview and you might feel anxious or nervous, and you think, I'm not nervous, I'm not nervous. You stop connecting with your belly and your emotions. You stop breathing properly. Your breath gets very shallow and high, and your voice becomes shrill. However, if you breathe into your belly, breathe into your emotions, accept them, then they change very, very quickly. So, how do we prepare our breathing and our voices so that they as congruent and as easy to listen to as possible. Here is one of the leading practitioners in the States, Chuck Jones. His work impressed me as it connects the breath, to the emotional state. His work is also very closely linked to Kristin Linklater as work who specializes in freeing the natural voice. So, let's do some work, shall we? Make sure you're comfortable, preferably sitting in a chair or lying down. Lying down is great because it allows your body to relax and for gravity to take over, so that you're only using the muscles you need to perform any particular task. As human beings, we create a lot of unnecessary tension in the body due to the way we see it, use computers and phones. Have you noticed that babies can cry for hours and hours without getting a sore throat? It's because they have no unnecessary muscle tension. So, relax as you sit into the seat. Relax your muscles. Now we're going to take some deep breaths, so that's right. Now yoga is great, but it encourages people to breathe only through their nostrils. When we speak, however, we naturally breathe through both our nose and our mouth. I've only met one man who did this. ''Hello Arabella? How are you today? What's the plan? Where are we going from here?'' So, make sure you're breathing in through your nose and your mouth. It is the fastest way to bring oxygen into your body. And when you speak, you want a quickly. Now, take a deep breath and connect to whatever your feeling. You don't even need to know what it is. We take a deep breath connect and let it out on an aha. I'll give you an example. I take a deep breath, I connect to whatever I'm feeling. Deep breath, connect. Remember to breathe in through your nose and your mouth, deep breath connect. Good. Now, let's take it a step further. We're going to take a deep breath, connect, breathe in through nose and mouth, let it out on a ha, and then go to a hum sound. I'll show you how. So, take a deep breath through your nose and mouth, connect with whatever you're feeling. Again, deep breath through your nose and mouth, connect with whatever you're feeling. One more time. Feel the vibrations on your lips. Breath in through nose and mouth, connect with what you're feeling, deep breath connect. Yes, you may even want to move your lips around so you start to feel the vibrations throughout your whole mouth. Now, we're going to take an another step further. You take a deep breath, connect, breathe in through the nose and mouth, connect with whatever you're feeling, go from a ha to a hum sound, then to an open ah sound. I'll show you how it works. I take a deep breath, I connect. Now, your turn. Deep breath, connect through nose and mouth. Again, deep breath connect. Nice. Good work. Now let's take it. Again, a step further. We're going to take a deep breath, connect with whatever we're feeling, and we're going to let it out on an ha sound, but this time, you're going to sing Happy Birthday. Yes, that's right, on an open ha sound. I'll give you an example. I take a deep breath, I connect with whatever I'm feeling, push all the air out. Good. Then you take a deep breath and connect, and so on. So, let's do it together. Taking a deep breath in through your nose and mouth, connect with whatever you're feeling, and you're ready to go. Push all the air out, push it out, push it out, push it out. Good. Deep breath connect. Deep breath connects. Go for it. Deep breath connect. Hip hip hooray. Well done. Now, I've got a code. So, you should sound better than I do. Well done. So now, your voice is connected to how you feel emotionally. It is authentic, it's open, and rich. One last step. Take a deep breath, breathing through your nose and mouth, connect with whatever you are feeling, and say, ''Hi, my name is,'' and your full name. Let's do it together. Deep breath connect. Hi, my name is Arabella McPherson. One more time. Deep breath connect. Hi, my name is Arabella Macpherson. Good work. What we are also learning to do here is to speak on a sigh. When we speak on a sigh, our sound waves travel and reach the person we're speaking to. Most people speak like this, and their voice stops here. Their sound waves stop here. But when we let the air out, our sound waves travel and reach the people we are speaking to, which has a far greater impact. It also helps with the downward inflection. You've heard people, haven't you? With an upward inflection at the ends of sentences, and it sounds like they're always asking a question. If you want to sound impactful and create positive meaning for the people you're speaking to, it is much more effective to have a downward inflection. If you speak on a sigh, you cannot go up at the ends of your sentences. In fact, most of Shakespeare's work was written based on the iambic pentameter. Five strong beats and five-weak beats. To be or not to be that is the question. That has an extra weak beat at the end. But most of it is based on the iambic pentameter. Why? Because five seconds was considered the average length of a human breath. It means, you speak, take a breath, and then speak again. One breath per sentence. When you speak this way, not only do you sound rich and resonant. Not only do your sound waves travel and land on the person you're speaking to. Not only do you stay emotionally connected, but you also speak in a good measured way, because you cannot speak quickly if you're speaking on a sigh. When you breathe and speak in this way, people will trust you more as you are emotionally connected, relaxed, and resonant. This will help create a positive impression of you, and therefore attach a positive meaning to what you say. Now, it's your turn. In the course materials, you'll find a paragraph. Use this paragraph to practice speaking on a sigh, connecting emotionally, and letting those sound waves travel. See how you go, and see how rich and resonant your strong voice will come across.
