Engaging the body in presentations

Everytime you walk in to a room your posture will give you away faster than anything else. The next 7 minutes of this article will give you insights on how to take ownership of it.

In my former career I was a professional actor. It was a life that was challenging and uncertain. One could do all the work in the world to be a great actor but ultimately getting hired depended on the subjectivity of those making the casting choices. What you brought to the auditions was your look, your energy and your enthusiasm.

Today, in the business world, all people looking for new opportunities face this. It is why the adage 'first impressions last' has never been more relevant. One of the most funadamental things we need to think about when making a good first impression is posture.

In the acting business, many casting directors make their decisions quickly on actors when hiring them. It’s often literally seconds before they decide ‘yes’ or ‘no’. While certainly a lot of this is about the ‘look’ of the person, I also believe it matters how they communicate to the outside world through their posture and subconscious physical attitude. Do we see calm and confidence? Or do we see neediness, fear, or resentment? The posture and how we hold ourselves around others is our very non-verbal essence. There is a very similar dynamic with dating. Self-esteem comes from a notion of self-worth. Confidence stems not from the notion of scarcity, but abundance.

Simply by the way we stand, move in, and occupy a space we communicate something whether we realize it or not. I have seen speakers who take the stage looking positive and confident and this reassures the audience on a subconscious level. They calmly walk onto the stage, find their spot, look to the audience with a receptive smile and begin their presentation when they are ready. There are also speakers who look the opposite, who may be tense, look out of place, be anxious about what's coming or are generally not looking very centered. The way we hold ourselves when will be stand in front of an audience reveals a lot of how we are feeling at that moment.

Mask Work and Posture

One very good way to emphasize the true communication of someone's posture and how they're feeling is to do mask work. Mask work originated from Italian theatre traditionally known as Comedia Del’arte. It is a style of comedic theatre where the actors play masked archetypes. The acting style is demonstrative and farcical. It has long influenced theatre throughout the centuries and remains a foundation for other styles that developed a little later such as mime in France.

Working with masks is also a great training tool used by actors to help them free up the body during their development by eliminating the ability to use facial gestures. The focus is then drawn on how an actor can be expressive through their body and thus put the focus on their posture, their movements, and their physical expression in space.

Mask work for Presenters.

The exercise lends itself very effectively to presenters. By placing a mask (with a neutral expression, not an archetype) on anyone who is stood up in front of an audience, we are suddenly drawn to the physicality of the person and away from the face. Once the mask covers the face, we can begin to ask ourselves some questions. Do they stand up straight? What are their shoulders doing? Are they tense? Is one shoulder higher than the other? How is the weight distributed on their feet? Are they trying to communicate anything subconsciously? Like making themselves look more alluring, tougher, or more austere? Do they assume with their physicality the mantle of leadership that they have in title, or do they shy away from it? What is it about their posture and the physicality that the subconscious gives away?  What is their attitude about themselves at that moment? This is a wonderful exercise and well worth investigating to get feedback on posture.

The link between posture and health

When it comes to posture in my experience, people who take care of their bodies and who practice sports, meditation, the physical arts such as dancing, martial arts or yoga have a better connection to their posture. The challenges for people who don't look after their bodies and who can spend a career rarely even stretching their arms above their head are compounded. A weaker body leads to a mind that is less resistant.

White-collar work does not lend itself to good posture, nor good physical or psychological health for that matter. Long work hours, stress, physical tension, and poor sleep have been proven to directly hinder performance. If you look at the Yerkes Dodson Law*, which dates one hundred years, high levels of stress will decrease your performance and over time it will get worse and worse as the stress intensity continues.

About 10 years ago I worked for a pharmaceutical company helping them to put together an important strategic event featuring key presentations from key medical experts and business and marketing executives. The culture there at that time was very challenging as the company faced many headwinds. The impression from the people I was working with was that nobody slept! I had mid-level executives coming to me complaining of only getting 3 hours of sleep a night. Our coaching sessions were difficult and often interrupted by other colleagues. The culture badly needed to change (and it did indeed eventually as I worked for the same company 10 years later and they were a completely different organisation). In a situation like this, the individual choice to accept the negative working conditions of a toxic environment will ruin our health and our natural balance.

It is necessary to take the time for personal physical relaxation and working of the body, to be able to tap into a healthy connection to the body and therefore the mind which will make us all the more stress resistant. If you nurture your muscles, your joints, and your spine your posture will be better for it. I also stress the need of enough sleep, the avoidance of unnecessary stress and a healthy diet.I don’t mind telling you that I meditate for 5-10 minutes every morning, workout 5 days a week and dance on average once a week. This is a contract I have with myself for my body. It helps give me balance.

So, what are you doing to take care of your body?

There are many schools of thought about what good posture is and what you should do to improve it. Stand tall, hold your head up high, place your place your feet shoulder width apart, smile, be confident and so on. For me, there's just one very important thing to do whenever you take the stage and that is to do two things. One, be grounded and two, focus your attention with great interest towards your audience.

These 2 elements I have found to be indispensable when standing in front of an audience. They by nature both encompass what they call in aikido ‘Irimi’.

Irimi (translated ‘to enter’) is the 2nd of the 6 pillars of Aikido is in this martial art symbolizes the motion of entering into the immediate proximity of the attacker once he or she moves towards you to render them vulnerable and counterattack. While presenting is not combat, there is a precision and focused energy that is gained from this stance. In essence to bring yourself in to a position of groundedness and total focus on the present moment. In the words of Wendy Palmer in her book ‘An intuitive body’ with whom I discovered this approach, she talks about Irimi representing the action of moving into life with a desire to connect. Here is an exctract:

"Irimi is the sense of commitment and precision used to focus and direct the energy to the heart of the matter. Irimi is the act of entering into life and not trying to avoid it. It remains a way of constantly exploring our fear that provides an opportunity to understand what holds us back and prevents us from living fully what are some of the elements that help us to face our fear to open our hearts and move forward into life. It seems to me that the two most important elements when facing our fear are grounding and interest, we begin with the groundedness because it provides a place from which we can become interested and there's a sense of embodied stability it allows us settling down to provide some space in our being within that space interest and inquiry can arise."

Wendy Palmer

Let’s start with this notion of being grounded and interested inspired by this Aikido stance Irimi. By nature of being curious and actively seeking to connect but from a place of groundedness and balance.

Exercise: Let’s try to adopt it now: stand up and take a stance where your feet are shoulder width apart. Lean into the balls of your feet, bending your knees slightly, shifting your weight forward as if you were leaning your weight in. Remember we are looking to connect, not retreat. Think about your mental energy and focus as being forward in movement. This stance is very important. Firstly because its grounded; you have both feet connected to the floor, with a neutral dstribution of your right and left side, and interested; leaning froward with genuine interet and desire to connect with your audience opposite you (not hiding in retreat).

For the sake of future reference, I will call it the GI stance (Grounded and Interested).

Of all the grand masters in presenting and public speaking I have worked with, they all intuitively use this. Whether it’s the notion of reaching out with one’s gestures in a forward motion to connect with the audience, or somehow simply working to ‘think forward’ is consistent with this approach. Think of it as entering from a solid and grounded place filled with curiosity, interest, and fearless acceptance of your audience.

A great exercise to help nurture this is the Wall Exercise. I learnt it initially from studying voice classes at The Drama Centre London and have been using it with clients throughout my entire professional career.

The Wall Exercise:

-Move to a wall with around half a meter of space between you and the wall. Put your hands on the wall in front of you (palms facing the wall) and push your weight against it firmly.

-Maintain that pressure against the wall and then begin take some deep breaths.

-After 2 or 3 breaths start to move to your voice with humming sounds. I usually do 7 or 8 breaths in succession.

-Continue to take deep breaths and let the hum release until your 8th hum of so and then release the grip on the wall and walk rapidly in the room or down a corridor quickly with a strong sense of direction.

-Then come to a stop, adopt the posture, and see if you feel a fresh energy coursing through your body. One should feel a certain ‘pull’ out front as your energy expresses itself. Now you should feel solid on your feet in the GI Stance.

-Play with this stance by walking around the room to a stop and adopting the stance at any moment. How does it feel?

Stay in the GI stance. Feet shoulder width apart, weight slightly shifted forward. Spine straight but not tense; head should be leaning forward with the body towards its target audience like a sunflower might be growing towards the sun. Hands dropped by your side and only brought up when gesturing. Gesture we will discuss a little later.

*Yerkes Hodson Law reference and futher reading: https://www.simplypsychology.org/what-is-the-yerkes-dodson-law.html