You need oxygen to talk

May 16, 2017 4:51 AM

I've recently begun to have breathing difficulties whilst presenting to an audience.

I suffer from anxiety, but I've given many presentations in my lifetime and have never experienced this before (I usually enjoy public speaking). It's like I'm unconsciously holding my breath and then having to gasp between words to try and catch it. Weirdly, it seems worse while I'm practicing speeches alone, than when I'm actually delivering them to people.

Even though I'm aware of it, I can't seem to get my breathing working normally. I have a presentation coming up in a couple of days, so any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!

posted by anonymous to Health & Fitness (6 answers total)

I also get this way. I think it's normal to some extent to breathe shallowly when you're tense. My tip: When you find yourself having to gasp, go ahead and take a gasp, then focus on exhaling as long and as deeply as possible. That will force your next inhale to be relaxed and deep before you continue speaking. Good luck!
posted by BusyBusyBusy at 6:33 AM on May 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had this problem a few times in a row when I was doing some public speaking, and I fixed it by bringing a glass or bottle of water with me the next few times and taking a sip every few sentences. It forces you to reset your breathing to something more normal every time you take a drink.
posted by lollusc at 7:04 AM on May 16, 2017 [1 favorite]

I absolutely do this too, and I have no idea why. Doesn't happen all the time, but feels quite embarrassing when it does. I do try to just slow down, but it does seem to correlate with how confident I feel about what I'm saying. If I'm not overly confident, it gets worse.
posted by ryanbryan at 7:20 AM on May 16, 2017

Consider Alexander Technique. Alexander was an actor who kept losing his voice, and he figured out that he was holding his body all wrong and with way more tension than he ever realized. So he developed this technique in like the late 1800s. Theatre people are very fond of it. I've done a course of lessons at 3 different times in my life, decades apart, and I am a much better and more relaxed speaker for it.
posted by janey47 at 8:12 AM on May 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

The best public speaking advice I ever received was NOT to take a big breath before you start talking. The instinct is to take a big breath "to have enough air", but it just fills your chest with air that makes you uncomfortable when you talk. Take a big breath if you need to, but exhale most of it before you start talking. Try it both ways when you are practicing your speech, I think you will see what the difference is.
posted by BillMcMurdo at 9:05 AM on May 16, 2017

Are you presenting on a new topic? I experience the same breathlessness with public speaking, and I find that how severe it is inversely correlates with how comfortable I am with the topic. If I know that I am familiar with a topic inside and out so that I can speak off the cuff about it at length, I tend to be fine unless there are high stakes (a contest, or I have to make an appeal to the audience for something necessary). I have found when I'm speaking about something I'm less comfortable with, I need to have my speech written out word for word and practice it a number of times, whereas for the comfortable topics, I can go off of a few bullet point notes.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 7:31 PM on May 16, 2017