Find and Power your Authentic Voice. Lesson One.
The key to finding and powering your authentic voice is learning how to find and use your vocal toolbox. Like a well-organized mechanic’s or woodworker’s toolbox hand tools are organized in separate drawers by categories based on the purpose and use of the tool. There are hammers and mallets, pliers, cutting tools, screwdrivers, prying and scraping tools, wrenches, etc.
Think of your voice as a vocal tool box with separate drawers containing individual tools in each of the drawers, each tool with a specific purpose. Breath, pitch, pace, resonance, melody and volume are the tools that give your voice tonality. Tonality — how people hear your voice.
The next several blogs will focus on empowering your vocal toolbox.
No Breath – no Voice!
Most people don’t breathe properly. And breath impacts the function and use of all the tools in all the drawers of your vocal toolbox. If, when you take a deep breath, your chest expands and your shoulders rise, you don’t know how to breathe effectively. You are cheating yourself of all the breath you could have to power your voice.
Let me get a bit technical here. The rib cage limits how much the lungs can expand. However underneath the lungs and the rib cage is a big muscle called the diaphragm. A muscle you control. The lungs can significantly expand downward by pushing the diaphragm down allowing more air in.
Stand up straight but your hand on your belly without moving your shoulders take a deep breath and fill your belly as if you were filling a balloon. Fill the balloon. If you do it properly you’ll feel your belly expanding as if it was a balloon. Learning how to breathe is the first and most important step in fully powering your authentic voice. It’ll take lots of practice to fully power your authentic voice.
Practice, Practice, Practice
As a coach, trainer and consultant, Larry Blumsack partners with people and organizations on the move and those already there to accelerate their communication, presentation and speaking skills to be on par with their ambition. Through one-on-one coaching and group training Larry helps leaders and aspiring leaders elevate their presence and communication skills to influence more people, sell more products-services-ideas and inspire others more successfully than they ever imagined.
Larry is the bestselling author of Face-to-Face is The Ultimate Social Media and founder of Zoka Institute and Zoka Training®. Zoka Training® — Mind/Voice/Body/Mindfulness in sync — is the result of Larry’s 45 years as a coach, acting teacher, actor, voice-over artist, theater and TV director/producer, radio & TV commentator and show host, speaker, trainer, serial entrepreneur, and syndicated columnist. Larry was a founding member of the theater department at Northeastern University.
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