Great speaking comes from a combination of standing still, gesturing, and moving. When you are still it is vitally important that you don’t move from the waist down!
There are a couple things people do with their feet. They shift their weight, they rock, they move their hips, or they kind of bounce up on their toes, taking their heels off the ground. Others keep their feet still but their toes are pointed outwards. Every time your hips move, you shift your weight, or bounce, your credibility plummets. There are two reasons why this is so hard. 1) Almost no one naturally stands with their feet straight. 2) Everybody has a nervous energy release where they shift their weight, rock, or move in some way.
We all do it. This is how we conquer it.
If you’re going to have tension, it should always be in your feet. It is the only place the audience can’t see. Before you begin speaking, crunch the BIG TOES as if you were trying to drive a nail in the ground.
- If you are really nervous, crunch them real hard. This releases tension through the bottom of your feet.
- If you are NOT nervous, crunch them softly. This keeps your balance equally distributed on both feet and keeps you from moving from the waist down.
Obviously when you move you do not need to crunch your toes. But once you stop walking you must immediately crunch them again.
To combat this, you can boost your speaking skills to the next echelon of success by crunching your big toes underneath you. You will stay balanced and get rid of tension. From the waist down you will always be perfect from an appearance and movement point of view. *I can’t even begin to explain how the smallest shift of weight or movement of the hips will spoil your credibility. The audience may never be able to pinpoint this issue at a conscious level, but they will be unimpressed with your overall performance* Conversely, when your toes are crunched, the audience will obviously be unaware that you are employing this technique, nor will they consciously notice that your legs are perfectly still, yet they will consider you an effective orator. That is the beauty with this method.
I had a new teacher at her first class not long ago call me five minutes before the class was scheduled to start. She was not quite mentally prepared to teach and her confidence was low because she didn’t know the material as well as she would have liked. In other words, it was her first teaching job and she was scared like the rest of us.
In a panic she said, “Tom, give me one piece of advice that’ll get me through the day. I can only focus on one.” I think she expected some miracle gem of wisdom. I could tell she didn’t get what she wanted when I |
told her I had the perfect technique for her. I said, “Keep your feet straight and crunch your big toes so that your feet never move.” Her response was simply, “Uhm, ok.” It was time for the class to begin.
At the end of the day, my teacher called me up and said everything went really well. I asked how crunching her toes worked. She said it was incredible. “My feet never moved, my balance was good and I felt more confident. People seemed to respect me more. I didn’t have any problems. This is a great technique.” |
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