How you stand affects your voice and
the strain you put on it.
Imagine you're talking to someone else through a flexible tube
about two inches wide. After you put your mouth on one end
and she puts her ear on the other end, what's the next thing
you'd do?
Instinctively, you two would position yourself such that the tube was
as straight as possible, knowing that otherwise the sound would warp as
it bounced around a bent tube. To a lesser, but still significant
degree, it's the same with breathing and speaking.
Creating a straighter path of air from your lungs to the back of your
mouth not only allows greater air movement for volume, but it also creates a
resonance throughout your throat that helps the sound carry.
Overarching the back is as bad as slumping. You want to imagine
that if a string ran from the top of your head through your body and out
from between your legs, that string would be perpendicular to the
ground.
I say the back of your mouth because we also don't want to be craning
the neck upward, creating tension in the throat.
So what about sitting? It's not terrible in and of itself, but
it does tend to lead to slumping a little and lowering of the chin.
Also, because sitting is more comfortable, it can lead to "sleepy voice".
That's why my business phone isn't on my desk; it's on a shelf above my
desk. When it rings, it forces me to rise, uplift my energy, and
have full lung power to sound clear on the call.
I also like to imagine when I'm talking from the platform that
I'm talking from my legs upward rather than from my throat; this image
helps me make sure I'm breathing from the bottom of my lungs rather than shallowly.
One of the many tips in
"Public
Speaking:
Get A's, Not Zzzzzz's!"
