What do fear of public speaking, trauma, and yoga have in common
February 23, 2010
I had a conversation with a colleague today about how much I incorporate yoga practices in the coaching I do with my public speaking clients and it reminded me of this article, which I wrote back in 2008. I thought readers of this blog might be interested and so here it is:
In 2008 I attended a conference on Yoga and Trauma. Why? Because I had been working with a group of inner city teenagers who wanted to speak out against gang violence. I was interested in developing more adequate techniques for helping them speak with presence while living with the trauma of violence in their daily lives.
What I found most interesting at this conference was the unexpected similarities between trauma and the fear of public speaking. It seems that when traumatized, different parts of the brain don’t work together, so that the person:
Feels scattered, confused and unable to focus attention- Finds it difficult to take in new information
- Is unable to experience what’s happening the present moment
Does this sound familiar? To me this is what many people report when they are in the throes of the fear of public speaking!
I’ve also heard that neuroscientists often use an experience of public speaking as a baseline for determining levels of stress in a subject.
It seems that fear of any sort throws our brains into a state of chaos. What works best to quiet the fear is to calm the nervous system so that all its parts are working together in harmony. If trauma and public speaking fear essentially cause the same kind of neurological disorder, then perhaps we can look at what has worked in treating trauma to help reduce the anxiety and stress associated with speaking.
Current neurological research is showing that ongoing contemplative practices such as yoga, meditation, and tai chi help to bring people back to the present moment and by doing so help to quiet and stabilize the nervous system. It seems that these practices not only work to quiet the mind in the moment, but also have a long-term impact on our well-being when practiced regularly by strengthening those parts of the brain that inhibit fear and increase self-awareness and our ability to consciously chose how to respond in the moment.
Why is this relevant to people interested in reducing anxiety and enhancing their speaking presence? You might want to consider taking a yoga or tai chi class or begin a daily meditation practice as part of your efforts to become the speaker you’d like to be. In fact, much to their surprise, I often find myself recommending this to my clients.
Lessons from a lint filter, water bottle and electric toothbrush
February 17, 2010
Somehow, as much as I’m trying to slow down and simplify my life, I always seem to be in a hurry.
Every time I do my laundry I’m reminded that hurrying through my tasks isn’t the most efficient way to get things done. I always seem to want to quickly empty the lint filter in my dryer before starting a new load of wet clothes. But this filter needs a gentle touch and doesn’t move easily when I try to pull it out in a hurry. Almost every time, after my first aborted attempt, I have to take a breath, get loose, slow down and softly lift the filter out of its frame. I can’t force it out or do it fast.
I have a stainless steel water bottle that I take to yoga class with me. I love the color and shape, but the top is a problem. I can unscrew it easily, but it requires a lot of focused attention when I try to screw the top back on. It goes off track very easily and this is a problem for me when I’m trying not to take too much time out of my yoga practice. I’ve found that I have to consider the act of taking a drink of water another posture, if you will, and to have the same quality of soft attention as I do every other posture in the class.
I’ve learned something similar from my electric toothbrush, which from old patterns with manual tooth brushes, I automatically apply pressure and move the brush up and down in rapid motions as soon as I turn it on. The speed and pressure of this gesture is really counter-productive when the toothbrush is already doing it for me. Invariably, I have to remind myself to relax my grip and slow my brushing motion down so that the electric brush can do the work.
The ability to slow down and be gentle with ourselves is key when we feel especially anxious prior to or during a presentation. This anxiety is especially apparent when the speaker is working too hard, pushing out his/her content, and talking very fast.
Instead of reacting to the urgent anxiety that causes people to speed up, my clients learn to slow down, take a breath, soften their internal environment and relax into their connection with the audience and their content. This most often requires that they take a figurative step back and loosen their grip on themselves and their material.
I often suggest to clients that they use the mantras “Soften into the talk” or “Rest in the relationship” as a way to release the anxiety and find the conversational tone that can be so effective. As I write this, I’m reminded of a Haiku poem that I wrote years ago to help people discover this softened state:
Gaze resting gently
Listening to the river
Essence to essence
If we allow our gaze to rest gently on our audience, our content and ourselves, we establish a way of being that is much less about pushing and much more about relaxing and receiving.
The idea of “listening to the river” conveys that quiet center we all have within us where we can attend both to our internal and external world and receive rather than drive our content.
“Essence to essence” speaks to the ability to speak humbly from the simplicity of who we are as human beings to the essential human beings in our audience.
This Haiku can provide a steady reminder to help us slow down, to stop pushing, to stop trying so hard to make something happen, and to simply allow. And, from that place, we can be so much more effective as speakers.
The yoga of public speaking
December 16, 2009
I’ve been a yoga practitioner for more than 20 years. At one time I taught yoga. I now take every opportunity I can to study with different yoga teachers from different traditions. I do so to expand my experience of myself and to extend my ability to return to a state of inner quiet while stretching myself into new physical realms.
Recently I was in a vigorous yoga class in which we were practicing a number of strenuous postures in a series of flows, never stopping to rest between flows. What I was most struck with was how quiet my mind was and how steady my focus even when attempting to do some very difficult (for me) postures. And, this seemed true for everyone else in the room. There was no huffing and puffing, no groaning, no expressions of exasperation.
In short there was no drama in the class but a clear and quiet sense of purpose and a set of inquiring minds. We all worked at whatever level was possible for us in a state of equanimity. At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
And, because equanimity feels like the optimal state of mind when we speak, I often refer back to my experiences in yoga when I coach my clients. The question is always how do we steady our thoughts, quiet our hearts and speak with clarity and purpose when engaged in something that often feels stressful, difficult, and unsettling? How do we apply these principles of equanimity discovered in a strenuous yoga practice to the highly activating experience of speaking in public?
Here are a few yoga based principles that I’ve discovered can be applied easily to the stress of public speaking that help me to steady my mind, calm my heart and communicate with clarity and purpose:
- Slow down my breathing so that my attention stays in the present moment and my thoughts (and heart) stop racing. This, then, gives me much greater access to what I know I want to say and allows me more space to make choices and decisions on how to respond to what’s happening in the moment.
- Feel my ground. Become aware of the nuances of my physical experience so that I can be more holistically present to myself, my content and my audience. Let those points of contact calm me down by feeling rooted.
- Get out of my own way. Notice when the fear arises, and return to my breathing. Attend to physical sensations rather than emotional ones.
- Stay curious not critical. I had a yoga teacher once say, “Don’t let ambition replace curiosity.” If I stay curious and open to discovery when I speak rather than trying to be perfect, I feel more alive and engaged. If I’m continuing to find fault with what I do, then I’ll amplify my anxiety.
If we approach a speaking event with the same kind and gentle attitude that we approach a vigorous yoga class, we have the opportunity, then, to speak with equanimity and clarity.
Speaking with both feet on the ground
November 7, 2009
Several weeks ago I gave a workshop on this topic with the intention of, for the first time, beginning to clarify what I mean by the phrase “embodied presence”. Here is some of the thinking that went into the workshop.
Where we put our attention, that’s where energy goes. This is probably the core principle of embodied presence. When we are anxious all our attention is focused on the thoughts that are fueling the fires of the anxiety. All our energy is concentrated in our minds, and we end up having an “out of body” experience. This is especially true when the fear of public speaking flares up.
If we can divert our attention, even for a moment, away from all that thinking, we can then lessen the experience of anxiety. The best way that I know of to change the direction of energy is to fully occupy ourselves, to be more aware of all of our experience as physical beings, not just thinking beings. This means to drop our awareness down into our physical experience: feeling our feet on the ground, coming into our center of energy in our bellies, staying loose and easy, noticing physical sensations. All these practices serve to divert energy away from anxious thoughts and bring us more fully present in the moment.
There is a difference between self-consciousness and consciousness of self. When we are self-conscious, all our attention is focused on our concerns about how we look and how people will respond to us. When we are conscious of ourselves, our focus has dropped into a more holistic sense of self which, paradoxically, frees us up to be more available to others. When we speak, then, we can focus more on how we can be of service to our audience, rather focusing entirely on how we will be of service to ourselves.
I have found that yoga, tai chi, authentic movement and meditation are all practices that help me stay present in my body. And, I use these practices to help the people in my courses speak “with both feet on the ground”.
Contemplative practices reduce anxiety
April 4, 2009
Several weeks ago, I gave a talk with Dr. Sara Lazar, neuroscientist and researcher at Mass General Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital. Sara’s research is centered on changes in brain structures that result from meditation and yoga.
Her results are very interesting! Basically they show that regular awareness (or contemplative) practices like yoga and meditation thicken those parts of the brain that have to do with self-awareness, well-being and embodied presence and decrease the size of those parts of the brain that are most active when we feel anxious.
Now, those of us who do any of these practices on a regular basis already know this from experience. Personally, I’ve certainly recognized that after 20 years of meditating, doing yoga and practicing tai chi (another contemplative practice not currently part of Sara’s research), my general state of anxiety has significantly decreased.
This became very clear to me several years ago when I stopped my daily practices for about 3 months because of some health issues. I began to notice that a background level of agitation which had been so present when I was younger was beginning to resurface. It was only then that I realized just how much calmer I had become because of my daily contemplative practices.
A common principle that runs at the core of each of these contemplative practices is “Where we put our attention, that’s where energy flows.” If we become preoccupied with our anxious thoughts, we actually strengthen our anxiety. If, instead, we focus on our breath, the contact we make with the ground, a mantra (a calming phrase), or any other anchor for our attention, we begin to quiet the mind and become more present.
So, how can we apply this understanding to reducing the anxiety that comes from public speaking? I think there are two ways to support ourselves through contemplative practices.
First is to commit to some minimal degree of daily awareness practices. Many of my clients start out with 5 minutes a day of simple meditation (I might do another post some day on developing a meditation practice to support your public speaking). Meditating on a regular basis, even in very short increments like this, can help to calm that sense of floating anxiety that might always be there in the background.
The second is to practice what I call a relational meditation whenever you speak, whether it be at the dinner table with your family, in the check-out line at the grocery store, on a phone call, in a meeting with your colleagues, or in a formal presentation. Rather than focusing on the situational anxiety that can arise in a stressful speaking situation, we focus on our audience, asking ourselves how can we be of service to the people in our audience. In effect, we anchor our attention on the relationship and not on our anxiety. Paradoxically, this can help calm us down, steady us, and help us be more fully present in the moment and responsive to the needs of our audience.
By strengthening our self-awareness through our daily practices, and then regularly anchoring our attention on our audience when we speak , I believe we are actually making changes to the structure of our nervous system that can have a long term impact on our degree of comfort speaking in public.
Paying attention
February 25, 2009
I was in yoga class this morning doing a posture in which I was paying most attention to the position of my upper body. While in the posture, I suddenly became aware that I had no sense of what my left leg as doing… it was just hanging there without any awareness on my part (it had no presence in my consciousness). Once I tuned into my left foot, in particular, while also paying attention to what my upper body was doing, the posture felt more integrated and I felt more present.
I find that when I speak, I can get so focused on what I have to say or how the audience is responding that I lose myself – some people describe this as having an “out of body” experience. I find that by simply paying attention to the contact my feet are making with the floor, I can then re-occupy myself and be much more present to myself, what’s happening in the room, how my audience is responding and the message I want to convey.
Find the haven of your back body…
February 7, 2009
The ability to step back, not get caught up in the fray, see the forest for the trees, is key for leaders in all capacities. When the chaos of an emergent crisis grabs everyone’s attention, it is so easy to jump in with both feet. All our attention gets pulled to the details of the events at hand, and with that, we so easily get pulled out of ourselves. This is especially true when we are making an important presentation. And, in fact, this particular skill is essential for all of us today given the current economic uncertainties that can so easily throw us off balance.
Ideally, it would be optimal if, in the midst of a crisis we could say “Time out!” and then physically step back from the situation to get a “10,000 foot view”. Most of the time we’re so caught up in what’s happening and don’t even remember that this might be a good strategy. But even when we’re aware enough to realize that this is something we ought to do, we don’t always have the luxury to do so – the timing might be wrong, someone might feel slighted, or the issue is too urgent and you need an answer NOW.
This morning my yoga teacher Judy Scribner-Moore, a wonderful yoga teacher in the Boston area, said, “Find the haven of the back body” as we were entering into a difficult posture. This got me thinking (maybe not what I should have been doing in yoga, but there you go…)! What if when we are confronted with all the difficulties that life presents us that take us off balance, what if in those moments, we simply pay attention to our spine, to what our backs are in contact with, to the space behind us? Wouldn’t that provide us with same psychological haven as physically stepping back? And, we could do it so easily without anyone even knowing!
I have often suggested to my speaking clients to include in their awareness the space behind them as they speak, and for some people this has been the key to diminishing their fear and anxiety around speaking to a group. But it occurred to me today that simply changing our awareness to focus on our spine, our back body and the space behind us could also provide a moment of respite (a haven, if you will) and a new perspective in difficult leadership situations as well as in life itself!
