A famous spiritual teacher who had written no fewer than 75 books was once asked to summarise all of his teaching in just one word. He thought for a while and then simply said “Relax.”
Although I can’t say that the same advice will solve all of your problems with public speaking, surprisingly, it will go a long way. In fact, for reasons I’ll explain later, I’m starting to think that most of our issues with public speaking and leadership can be solved by making this our first focus.
What do you mean, “Relax”?
At first glance the advice to relax sounds both trite and ridiculous. It almost sounds like telling people who are stressed out about public speaking that they’ve got nothing to worry about!
In fact, this advice is only trite and ridiculous if it doesn’t come with precise instructions as to how to do it.
For various reasons, speaking in public causes a huge amount of tension in both the body and the mind. If we can find ways of allowing both to relax, public speaking becomes vastly easier.
My job in this article is to give you some simple actionable things you can do, to do just that.
Relaxing the body
There are two basic modes that we are usually operating in between as human beings – “Personality” and “Presence”.
Personality is the world of “little me”. It’s where you are worried about what other people think of you, worried about whether you will succeed or fail, worried about your physical reactions (like your fast-beating heart or dry mouth) and how they might impact your performance.
Presence describes the state that sportspeople often call “flow”. Seeing the big picture, being in the moment, thinking clearly, instinctively knowing what to do.
It’s not all or nothing, it’s more of a sliding scale. We are either closer to one end of that scale or the other.
It’s fairly obvious that being closer to the state of Presence is a better place to speak from (and to lead from) than being mostly in our Personality.
The good news is that there is one very simple way of shifting yourself more towards the state of Presence in any situation.
The state of Personality is associated with a tight body, and in particular contraction along the midline of the body. (Imagine a line going from the top of your forehead straight downwards, dissecting your nose your throat and your torso). The state of Presence is associated with the opposite. The good news is that we can affect this pretty easily.
By simply relaxing down the midline, and encouraging expansion in the body, we can easily and quickly shift the dial in the direction of Presence, giving us more access to calmness, clarity and flow. I learned how from two master embodiment teachers – Paul Linden and Wendy Palmer.
Try this experiment right now:
- Breathe in – let your spine lengthen up.
- Breathe out – let your shoulders fall and allow your spine to remain long.
- Encourage your forehead to relax, your eyes and your jaw.
- Allow your mouth to be slightly open and your tongue to be fat and heavy in your mouth.
- Allow your throat to relax, your chest and your belly.
- Become aware of the space above your head, to the left of you, the right of you in front of you and behind you.
- Notice that you are (probably) in a room with a lot of space. Feel that space.
Notice how you feel compared with a minute ago. I would imagine you feel much more spacious and your mind feels more at ease.
Note – The suggestions above are just gentle encouragements from your mind towards your body. You are not telling these particular parts of the body that they must relax, you are simply suggesting that they might like to.
Astonishingly, making very specific encouraging suggestions like this towards parts of our bodies, often does allow them to release tension that they have been subconsciously or unconsciously holding. And in my experience, it can make an absolutely huge difference!
Slow down
When we get tense, the speed of our speaking tends to increase. This can often create a vicious circle, with more speed creating more tension and yet more speed.
But this process can be deliberately reversed. Whenever you notice you are speaking a little bit too quickly, you can simply, deliberately take 10 to 15% off the speed of your speaking. It will immediately break the tension spiral and start to relax your body and your mind.
As a very important bonus, speaking more slowly will give you more time to think, which will allow you to organise your thoughts better, and this will also calm you down. In my experience, most speakers rush themselves, especially when they are nervous. When we notice we are doing this, we almost always benefit from doing the opposite!
Take a 4-8 breath
By taking an outbreath that is twice as long as your inbreath, you start to switch off the “fight or flight” response in the body, and this will relax you. And it’s really easy to do:
- Breathe in gently through your nose for a count of 4, deep enough in your body so your belly expands. (It doesn’t need to be a lot of breath, it just needs to activate your diaphragm).
- Breathe out through your mouth for a count of 8. Make your mouth into a little slit as if you were blowing a cup of tea or coffee cool. This will make the breath come out more slowly.
- Notice the difference this makes in your body and mind.
You can repeat this technique anywhere between 1 and 4 times. (Doing very large numbers of these breaths can be counterproductive, but anywhere between 1 and 6 should be absolutely fine, and even a single 4-8 breath can make a huge difference).
A more advanced version would be adding a pause for of a count of 4 after the inbreath and the outbreath. (So in for 4, pause for 4, out for 8, pause for 4).
Experiment with both of these methods and see which works best for you.
Bring in the heart
We often speak of conflicts between Head and Heart. In fact, the two organs are rarely in actual conflict (except in matters of romance), but when we are trapped in a state of worry, it’s usually very much the head in charge. And that’s bad news.
This is because a worried mind is very much associated with the state of Personality. A focus on the heart, in terms of focussing on what we love and what matters to us, is a very quick way of shifting us more towards the state of Presence.
A very quick way of doing this is a technique I first heard from Paul Linden. One of his favourite formulations is to “Think of someone who makes your heart smile”.
Do it right now. Think of someone who makes your heart smile and notice how it makes you feel. I would imagine it may makes you feel more relaxed, warmer and stronger. That’s certainly how it makes me feel.
Relax the mind
By simply relaxing the body, you may well notice that your mind relaxes. But we can also work the other way. There are mental techniques we can use to allow our worried minds to relax, and these will relax not just the mind but the body as well. Again, this will make us much more effective speakers and leaders.
How do you relax your mind?
There are a number of simple, actionable ways to allow your worried mind to relax in the context of public speaking and leadership. I’ve written about some of these before (see the links in the text below). Once again, I’m not simply going to tell you to “relax your mind”. I’m going to tell you how!
Adopt an attitude of service. Shift the spotlight away from how the audience will receive you and judge you, to how you can be of assistance to your audience. Think about what your audience might gain if they are able to benefit from the content of your speech. Whether you are selling a product that might be useful to them, or an idea that might potentially change their lives for the better. You are literally wanting the best for your audience, and connecting with your belief that what you are offering them will genuinely help them.
This not only brings in the heart, but also deliberately shifts you from the “little me” of Personality, to the “big me” of Presence, looking at the big picture and your part in it.
Remember that your audience wants you to succeed. Most people in your audience, most of the time would like you to do well. They would like you to give them the information that they want, and ideally entertain them too. If you crash and burn, they get neither of those things (unless they are fully paid up sadists). Your success is their success. By reminding ourselves of this, it once again takes the pressure off us and allows our mind to relax.
Know that blank faces are normal. Even though our audience are wanting us to succeed, they don’t feel obliged to show us that they are interested. The usual social conventions of smiling and nodding for somebody who is speaking to you don’t apply when we are listening to a speaker in public. We tend to listen with blank expressions. To put it another way most of us, when we are audience members have what is colloquially known, for both men and women as “resting bitch face”.
Assume support. It follows that even though most, or even all of our audience are supporting us, they’re not showing it. This will be freaking out the part of our mind that really wants to have evidence that the audience is on our side. There’s nothing we can do about the fact that they aren’t showing it, but there is definitely something we can do about the part of our mind that is worrying about it. We can “assume support”.
We can treat the worried part of our mind a little bit the way we would relate with a child that was feeling anxious, showing it kindness, and understanding and giving it the reassurance that it needs. This is surprisingly easy to do.
Say to yourself “I know it’s driving you crazy, that you’re not getting the feedback you want from the audience, but let’s assume that they are interested, because they probably are even though they’re not showing it.”
Manage your adrenaline, using “…and that’s OK”. Just the way that our minds tend to panic about blank faces in the audience, they can also get rather worried about the symptoms of adrenaline in our bodies. This once again sets up a vicious circle, whereby worrying about your fast heart rate makes your heart beat faster and worrying about your dry mouth will make it drier.
Once again we can actively reassure the worried part of our mind by acknowledging its worries and giving it appropriate reassurance.
The thing about these uncomfortable sensations is that they are only a bit uncomfortable provided that they don’t get out of hand. And they won’t get out of hand if we don’t worry about them too much.
So the way we can break the spiral is by offering reassurance to the worried part of our mind that our uncomfortable physical sensations are both normal and okay.
They are normal, because adrenaline is a natural part of public speaking, especially in the first few minutes in front of an audience. And they are okay because they’re not going to kill us, even if we don’t like them!
When you notice yourself worrying about the symptoms of adrenaline try naming the symptom that you don’t like and simply adding the words “… and that’s okay.”
E.g. “My heart’s beating quickly – and that’s OK.
“My mouth’s really dry – and that’s OK”
“My mind’s gone a bit a blank right now – That’s OK. I’m sure it will clear in a moment or two. But for now, I’m just going to take a 4-8 breath”.
Bringing it all together
I’ve suggested ten techniques above that will help you to relax your body and your mind when you are feeling stressed speaking in public, or in any challenging situation.
If you use any one of them, it will take you in the direction of greater clarity, confidence and ease. And the more of these you use together, in my experience, the better it will get.
Give some or all of them a try and let me know how you get on.
Happy relaxing!
~
We explore many of these techniques on our Foundation public speaking courses in London, or I’d be delighted to take you through any of them in 1-2-1 coaching on Zoom or Teams.
- I and Thou:The Secret to Truly Connected Communication - June 4, 2026
- Presence and Self: The same place, different paths - April 9, 2026
- Where we’re coming from. The source of leadership and communication. - March 12, 2026