 Jon
Beaupré is a voice and performance consultant for radio
and television performers. Under the name Broadcast Voice, he
provides private training and workshops for reporters, anchors,
sports and weather casters, and others working in electronic
and broadcast media. He teaches in the Broadcast Communications
program at California State University at Los Angeles, and conducts
workshops and seminars with the Associated Press Radio and Television
Association. He has been a fixture on the convention circuit,
teaching workshops at a wide range of specialty journalism and
broadcast conventions and stations on both coasts of the U.S. |
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“This is a Set-Up!”
October 15th, 2001
In this installment, I want to talk a bit more about the set-up
process.
The idea of the set-up, as described in earlier installments,
is to prepare physically, emotionally, and psychologically
for your performance. We’ve already talked about the process
of systematically relaxing your body from your toes up to
the top of your head, inhaling and exhaling from your diaphraghm,
inhaling to prepare, pausing, then speaking.
The whole procedure takes from 20-30 seconds, but can frankly
make a world of difference in your performance. A bit more
about breathing. While it often feels good to inhale air,
especially after holding your breath or exhaling deeply, it
is really the process of exhalation that causes the greatest
feeling of well-being.
This is because the oxygen and nitrogen that you have inhaled
does not begin to dissolve into your lungs until you exhale.
This leads to a peculiar law of breathing: all of our work
at expanding capacity and increasing control and strength
of your breathing is to make more air available inside your
body to exhale.
Needless to say, with the exception of the last breath of
your life, you will need to inhale every breath you use to
exhale. Thus, we spend a lot of effort on breathing exercises,
in expanding capacity, and increasing this control. But it
is also the source of our most accessible source of relaxation.
If each time you exhale, you relax a bit more, you will interrupt
the natural process of tension and anxiety that we constantly
experience in performance.
More on how we expand that capacity in the next installment.
In the mean time, breathe deeply!
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