Post-It Note: Breathe More

At work, I present seminars over the phone, teaching clients to use our point-of-sale salon and spa software products. During some seminars, I spend nearly an hour talking non-stop. (I've mentioned my need for throat lozenges and the negative side effects of them here.)

Recently Michelle hung out with me at work (my own little Bring Your Wife to Work Day) and watched me do my thing. She was able to give me a few pointers, including something that I was completely unaware of - I often run out of breath.

I've been giving the same seminars several times per day every day for three years now, so needless to say I have them memorized. It seems that I take breaths at the same times for each instance of the same sentence, such as:

"...at this point, Lisa realizes that she forgot her purse in the car. Now, we have a line of customers in line behind her (of course), so we can't just sit and wait on this transaction, we'll need to put this transaction on hold - you'll see a checkbox for this at the bottom right of the register - click the box for 'Place on Hold' then click 'Accept'." (Breath here)

Many of my sentences go the same way - the only time I pause for breath is immediately after I have given a direct instruction. This is a bad idea because I'm probably running out of breath at this point, and even though I cannot realize it, my voice has been getting slightly more faint with each word.

So because of my bad breathing habits, the student might not hear the instruction, and ask me to repeat it - much to my haughty frustration - damn it, weren't they listening? Forget the fact that they are in a noisy environment with hair dryers, people laughing and talking, tv or music blaring.

This sort of 'didn't realize I did that' thing is the reason athletes and other competitors will video or audio record themselves - it's very difficult to have perspective of yourself performing a task.

I was wondering this morning - you can whistle while breathing in as well as breathing out. I realize that whistling does not engage your voice box, so it's an apples and oranges comparison - but I wonder if a person could train themselves to speak normally while breathing in? Air is flowing across the same body parts.

According to Wikipedia: Normal human speech is produced with pulmonary pressure provided by the lungs which creates phonation in the glottis in the larynx that then is modified by the vocal tract into different vowels and consonants. However humans can pronounce words without the use of the lungs and glottis in alaryngeal speech of which there are three types: esophageal speech, pharyngeal speech and buccal speech (better known as Donald Duck talk).

In linguistics (articulatory phonetics), manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants.

The ability to speak normally while breathing in either direction would definitely be a benefit to anyone who does a lot of public speaking.