Have you ever tried to express your thought or feelings but failed? Regardless of the particular situation or circumstances, perhaps you felt shy and couldn't even start, or your voice failed at the critical moment, or you were so nervous and confused that everyone who was listening couldn't understand what you were talking about or, even worse, you were totally misunderstood. Would it be great to avoid those moments altogether? Do you ever envy those people, particularly in the movies, who just stand up and say what they want to say?
Perhaps you even prepare or rehearse whatever is it that you are trying to say or communicate. It may be an important business negotiation, a job interview, a date, an oral examination, a street protest. It may be an unpleasant encounter with a police officer, a trial where you don't want everyone to assume that you are guilty just because you are totally embarrassed and lack confidence, and are so ashamed of being charged with a crime.
Certainly, do you homework. However, if you write down every single word you are planning to say and simply memorize the speech, this is not going to work very well. You will not be present. After you have done your homework, plan thinking from your upper visual cortex. Plan, what qualities you are going to bring to the situation, rather than what exactly you are going to do. Even as you do your homework such as preparing your speech, do it from the upper visual cortex. First of all, the preparation process will be more efficient and you may memorize more of what you have prepared. Secondly, it is important to let go of attachments during the planning phase.
Most importantly, during the actual communication the first and foremost thing is to stay present. You may think you need confidence to express what you think. You are starting to say something, and suddenly you feel very self-conscious, you voice changes, you posture changes, and so on. Of course, this "struggle with the struggle" makes it even more difficult for you to accomplish whatever it is that you are trying to accomplish with your speech, but that is not the point. The point is: self-consciousness takes you out of the experience. Fear, anger anything that rises in the limbic brain, takes you out of the experience.
Before you start or even when you find yourself in the middle of a conversation, renew your intention to stay present. You may add an intention for connection, or whatever it is that you want: trust, clarity, or intimacy. You can only really add this intent if you are already present, otherwise it will be just general underfocusing with overfocusing on the idea of setting an intent. Watch your peripheral vision. If it starts shrinking, you are probably under- or over- focusing.
Another indicator is the voice. In Alexander technique it is known that your spine-neck-head alignment can change how your voice sounds: at some point the voice suddenly becomes much more resonant and acquires the power and the projection that so many people are trying to develop. For me, the feeling of my peripheral vision expanding seems to correlate with the feeling that my voice became louder and more resonant, that is, the two feelings often come together.
From a practical point of view, keep your peripheral vision wide, and your voice will be heard so much better. Of course, you can also thinking about freeing your neck, if you have studied Alexander technique for a long time, or listen to your breathing as you are speaking. I suspect that it may lead to the same result. However, focusing on the vision seems so much better since it does not distract you from the conversation. On the contrary, focusing on the vision and making and keeping your peripheral vision wider takes you deeper into the conversation, and allows you to stay more present.
As you become (more) present, I suspect that you will get all those things that are known to lead to presence because the relevant connections in the brain are probably bidirectional: you voice will get louder, your spine, neck, and head will move into alignment. Tension will be relieved because of alignment. Breathing will stabilize. Both of these will again make your voice resonant, and your voice can only be resonant after you have released most of the tension from your shoulders, chest, and neck (not overfocusing), but not all of the tension so you do not collapse all the way to the floor (not underfocusing). Lastly, this will probably lead you to start thinking, speaking, and acting out of your upper visual cortex. Even though under- and over- focusing allegedly originate in the lower visual cortex, I will prefer to not make this distinction for quite some time. If I get accustomed to the idea that every time I become (more) present and see my peripheral vision widen, then I automatically go to my upper visual cortex, and conversely, then this will actually happen. All that is without the need to ask or to understand.
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