Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [48]
Wear comfortable clothes with plenty of room around the neck and waist. This gives you a chance to breathe freely, without constraint.
As was mentioned above, oxygen must be constantly replenished. You need it for physical stamina to sustain you to the end of your presentation or speech and to keep your brain energized.
The Good Morning Breath
Since your vocal apparatus dominates the top half of your body, you will find it interesting to operate your voice-making instrument in a new way. The following exercise establishes the powerful support of the diaphragmatic muscle.
When you wake in the morning, lie flat on your back with no pillow. Stretch your body to its full length by pushing the heels as far down as possible and your head as far up as possible. Make your stomach fall into the small of your back, and raise your rib cage. Place the palm of one hand on the diaphragmatic muscle, just below the ribs, and the other palm on your breastbone. Notice how the muscle controls and supports the air that goes into your lungs as you breathe deeply. Now, pull in a deep breath that fills your lungs from the bottom to the top. Fill the rib cage completely. Say “yawn, awe, awe, yawn,” and feel that resonance in your chest. Say “hah hah hah” to exhale all of the air out of your lungs. Experience the power the muscle has to replenish the air.
When the lungs are filled to capacity, say “gooood mmmmorrrnnning.” Put your hand on your chest and feel the vibration and resonance there.
Now, sit on the side of the bed with heels dug into the floor, the body erect. Resist the pull of gravity to achieve that same resonance in the chest. Stand up, heels down with head up, and walk across the room, murmuring “good morning, good morning.” Walk proudly, knowing that you know how to breathe with your diaphragmatic muscle.
The Audible Breath
The audible breath is a soft gasp for air, which can be heard on today’s sensitive microphones. Speakers are frequently unaware of it until they hear it reproduced on an audio tape. It is distracting to hear a speaker pull in a breath between sentences. This is so noticeable—and to me irritating—in the speaking habits of a certain local radio weather reporter in my hometown of Washington, D.C., that I have to turn down the volume when she gives her reports.
The audible breath is shallow, taken from the top of the lungs and from the front of the face. When you breathe from deep in the lungs, and from the back of the throat, the breath cannot be heard. Therefore, to make the breath inaudible, move the process backward and downward toward the abdomen. Practice this technique with your tape recorder until it works well for you.
THE SPACE BETWEEN YOUR TEETH
You cannot speak clearly with your teeth clenched together. You have to put space between your upper and lower teeth in order to go through the gymnastics of correctly pronouncing all of the sounds in our language. Your articulators have to have space in which to move. When the teeth are too close together, it is almost impossible to open up the back of the throat for resonance. A lifetime habit of keeping the teeth close together results in indistinct articulation.
When you watch members of a choir as they are singing certain words, you can see what they are saying as well as hear what they are saying.
There are several ways to get the feeling of space between the teeth. Try dropping the jaw, and notice how much easier it is to say your words naturally. Some find it helpful to practice with a wine cork placed between the teeth. You need not be self-conscious about opening your mouth; do it naturally, just enough to be clearly understood.
PHONETICS
Our language is made up of about forty phonetic sounds. These are divided into consonants, vowels, and diphthongs. Some of these sounds are voiced (vibrated by the vocal cords) and some are unvoiced (not vibrated by the vocal cords).
The consonants are divided into groups called plosives, nasals, fricatives, glides, affricates, and semivowels. The plosives