How to speak easier and louder

Why speak clearly?

Have you ever seen such face on any of your co-workers, family or lover?

Consciously or not, we all want to be better communicators. We want others to understand our speech, to listen with attention, and to respect our words. Natural and full voice can make wonders. People will first of all understand what you are saying. Moreover, voice is huge vehicle of sub communication. It tells what kind of person you are and how you feel at the moment. Authority, internal peace, joy, enthusiasm, and many more qualities you will be able to project with your voice. Plus speaking effortlessly and with natural resonance will give you great internal feeling of being in tune with yourself. I hope I managed to convince you it's worth taking closer look at your voice.

Before you dive

This material you will be reading will be filled with new concepts. Bare with me because its worth it! It might be helpful to take this knowledge, experiment and come back and reread the article. I have come to this knowledge after studying Alexander Technique, attending seminars on voice emission and watching many online materials. So that will be combination of many schools of thought but all of that I find useful. Bare in mind I am not an expert, these are just my observations.

I am fed up with searching for diaphragm!

• "Stand straight."
• "Breathe with diaphragm!"
• "Speak clearly and loudly!"

This is common advice you will find in internet. Was it useful to you? For me, it puts too much emphasis on end result. Does not go to the core of speaking, and does not give tools to take control over subtle processes happening in human body and mind. 

Prison of our muscular patterns

Breathing, standing, and speaking are complicated processes. They require synchronization of multiple muscles with correct timing. When you want to "speak louder" or "stand straight" - you don't in fact do it consciously because you don't have control over every muscle. What happens is you think thought of end result - "I want to speak louder". Your body loads certain habitual muscular pattern that you associate with such command. Chances are you have picked up tensions through out your life and now they are ingrained into your habits. Especially when it is about speaking "louder", standing "straight". For instance "standing straight " people associate with bending back in C shape, tensing neck and putting head backward. And that is not what we want. Tension is terrible to speech apparatus; it puts pressure on delicate parts, and kills resonance in voice (so you sound shy and quite). 

Conscious voice

There are few components I consider necessary for beautiful speech. This is where different schools of thought come in.

Psychology

It is about being in touch with yourself and being honest about how you feel. The more you are able to show yourself and your feelings in your voice, the more beautiful it sounds. I took it from Aneta Lastik, polish voice trainer. The book is titled "Get to know your voice" (link is in polish, no english version). Author have worked with many singers that had issues with clean singing. Often they had some unresolved issues about either hiding their aggression or pretending to be overtly confident. When they realize that they often changed (author also proposes few exercises to release internal feelings). Sometimes that required professional consultation.

One more important point here it to pay attention to meaning of what we are saying. Say for instance "love" thinking about boring thing. And then feel the passion of love, think of it, bring the image you associate with passion and say "love". Any difference in expression?

Posture

Relation between head, neck and body it of extreme importance. That is one key thing from Alexander Technique (AT). If you have it incorrect you are: 

• causing pressure on your larynx 
• decreasing way out for sound
• not allowing sound wave to bounce from your hard palate
• introducing tensions through out your body that effect other resonators

Ok, so how to stand effortlessly if we know that it is so difficult to change our habitual ways? Best way would be to take AT lesson. After 10 lessons you would be feeling much more at ease. If you can't, study this book "How you stand, how you move, how you live" but for now try this. Stand up. And few times do such a procedure. This is simplified from the mentioned book.

• Focus on area of your brain over your eyes. This is to make you more aware and allow your executive processes to be more successful. This supposedly activates prefrontal cortex. 
• Second thing do not go to your body to check if any changes happen. Don't try to feel tension in neck or back for now. It will change the focus area of your brain.
• Repeat quietly: "I am not talking to myself, my internal chatter quiets". This is to quiet your mind.
• Repeat directions: "I allow my neck to be free so that my head can to forward and up". Important do not do any of this in conscious manner.  Do not make move. Just repeat that. Your body will know what to do and will execute it.
• Repeat: "My shoulders are loose and float on my rib cage".
• Repeat: "My rib cage expands in width while I breathe".
• Repeat: "I am not tensing my: " for every: jaw, my tongue, neck

Repeat this procedure few times, at least 5. Now you can check how you feel. Wider, taller, lighter? If so, great, you will probably have more resonance and will speak more loudly and expressively. You will have to repeat that procedure to teach your body this state. You might want to repeat some of that thoughts through out the day.

Gentle introduction to AT.

Habitual use of our speech apparatus

We know at this point about "giving directions" and that though influences our body. Now we will finally say something but before that I will introduce concept of inhibition. It can have multiple meanings in AT. What we want to do with inhibition is to stop first habitual body response to though of doing something, stop conscious interference and allow body to act on its own by being directed by our directions. Easy, it might take some time and experimentation. Procedure:

• Direct your body for good posture as in the previous point. 
• We will be saying aloud for instance "My voice is loud, resonant and I love talking"
• You think as if you want to say it, as if you are almost about to say it you say "stop. I am not saying anything". At this point you stop your habitual use. Repeat it 3 times. Probably you will notice changes in body - certain tensed muscles will release. Good.
• Now direct once again  "I allow my neck to be free so that my head can to forward and up". 
• Say to yourself  "I allow my body to say" and say aloud "My voice is loud, resonant and I love talking"

The basic idea here is we don't do things, we try to allow our body by means of directions to do it by itself. This kind of directions and inhibition you might want to use in sport or dance as well.

General knowledge and exercises:

I don't neglect voice teachers. They know what they do, but I love to supplement this knowledge with Alexander Technique. And I like to apply what they teach in my own way. I encourage to search for traditional tips as well as I am not repeating them:

• How to pronounce better. Some people just do not open their jaw enough. Some don't move their lips. This awareness and few exercises might really help.
• Find out about resonators and how to activate them. Often its focusing on speaking vowels. Vowels are the vehicles of sound. Pronounse "s, k" and "a, o, e". So many people just say sentences where they extend and accent vowels - try youself "I lOOOvEEE tOOO tAAAlk".
• Find your right pitch of voice. Often we speak to high. When you will lower your pitch just a little bit like 15% your resonators will start to work better. Check out Nancy Daniels - Voicing It for more details on how to find it.
• Be more expressive. Take sentence of any kind and try to say it more expressively. Its fun and teaches your brain new ways of expression.

Practice those techniques by recording yourself. Get application on ipad or your phone and record yourself. Practicing without recorder is misleading, don't do that. Experiment with what you have learnt and observed. I would love to hear your comments. What worked best for you and if there is anything that is not clear.