Get Physically Ready to Present
Lesson 2 from: Strengthen Your Stage PresenceKimberly MacLean, Sammy Wegent
Get Physically Ready to Present
Lesson 2 from: Strengthen Your Stage PresenceKimberly MacLean, Sammy Wegent
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Get Physically Ready to Present
So we want to get you physically ready to present. So we're going to review some things that we did in one of our other classes because they're great exercises and we want to really help them become muscle memory for you. So as we get physically ready, we're going to ask everyone to stand up again. If you're at home, I want to reiterate what I said earlier which is to always take care of yourself physically. If we ask you to stand and you need to sit, please do that. If we ask you to do something of movement that is that you are restricted, please take care of yourself always. It's more important that you feel safe and comfortable and you adapt in whatever way you need to adapt yourself. We're going to center and breathe. We're going to get our feet, if my hands are your feet, we're going to get ourselves centered, grounded, feet in the ground as if there are roots going down. Remember to keep a little bend in your knee. Yeah. A little bit of a bend in your knee so that you don't lock ...
your knees. And we're going to take a nice deep breath in and then roll our shoulders up and back and sigh it out. Let's do that one more time. (repeat movement) Great. And now we're going to take a nice deep breath in and we're going to raise our hands over our head while we do that. So try to time how long it takes you to fill your lungs with how long it takes you to get your hands to the top of your head. Ready. One, two, three. (instructed movement) Take a little more air in. (coughing) I'll cough it out. And now let's do a nice, gentle happy sounding sigh. One, two, three, go. (sighs) And let's do that one more time. (Repeat last series of movements) Really fill your lungs up. And this time, do a nice, cranky, frustrated, anything you're holding onto that might be getting in your way of being present here. Sigh that out. One, two, three, go. (Sighs) I have to shake after that one. Let's do one more nice deep breath in. (Repeat movements) And you do you. Whatever kind of sigh you need to help you be here and present. Ready. One, two, three, go. (sighs) Ah, we're gentle people. We all needed the nice gentle sighs. Excellent. In one of our other classes, we did shake out. We're actually going to do that again. So the way that this works, just as a reminder, is we're going to count out loud together, take a nice a nice deep breath in, breathe as you need to. We'll shake one arm. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. (Raises other arm) And then eight. (shake out each leg) And then eight. And then eight. And then we'll cut it in half. Four on all of our limbs. Two and then one and this time, we're going to do super models. So pose like a super model. Alright, are you ready? Nice deep breath in. We're going to count together. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two. One, two. One, two. One, two. One. One. One. One. We are now not only going to pose like super models, we are going to strut around this space here so please work the room. Go. Work it. Move around. Work it. You're [Inaudible], but you may get a huge job from this. You don't know. Mmm hmmm. Move it, work it. Enjoy yourself. You're beautiful. Uh, you're so beautiful. Mmm hmm. Move. Work. Giggle. Have fun. Practice those turns. Mmm hmm. Beautiful. And please stop and pose. Pose. And move again. Mmm hmm. (nervous laughter) Jim is making a super model face over there for people who are missing that, please enjoy. And please make your super model way back to your seats. Mmm hmm. Sammy you might have another career. (Sammy exhales) Yeah. It felt good. (laughter) It probably didn't look good, but it felt good. (laughter) It does feel good, though. That's all that matters. So one of the things that we love about doing something like that that's a little bit silly and maybe a little bit out of our comfort zone, is there is a moment of like "Oh boy, we're going to do this." We're taking a creative risk, right? But then there also was a bunch of giggling that happens. So one of the great things about doing a shake out or doing those kinds of exercises, not only does it give that nervous energy a place to go, but it also makes you feel like kind of fun and silly. And imagine coming on to a stage or coming into a meeting with that energy. So you're coming in with this sort of happy, positive, I was just a super model, right? (laughter) Instead of coming in being worried about your slides or the deck or what you're going to say or your agenda. So you're coming in with more of that flexible, improviser mind that we want people to have and I bring that energy into a meeting with me as opposed to the energy of "I just had five phone calls and I didn't really eat breakfast" and right? It's this positive, happy energy that probably will bleed throughout the room as well. What do you want to say about it? I was going to say and depending on how you work and collaborate with other people, this exercise, other exercises we're going to do throughout all of our classes, I implore you to try these with people that you collaborate with. Time box it because somebody might go "There's no time for that." There's time for all of these things cause most of these things can be effective within 30 to seconds because it's just changing the energy of the room. Sometimes before we have our meetings with the rest of the Speechless Team, we will do these things. It makes total sense because this is what we do, this is what we love, but we also encourage our clients to do it and when they do it, it changes the dynamics. So if you're going to have a brainstorm and it's after lunch and everybody's lethargic and everybody's thinking about the end of the quarter and everybody hitting their numbers or whatever it may be, all those kinds of standard stressors that people have at work, these exercises just really change the dynamic. And now you get back into that creative place and you change the dynamic of the room as well. This is a room where maybe you're feeling like "Oh, well, I've been sitting a long time," but you just strutted around, you owned the space, just like we have been doing in kind of the instructor role and now we're a little bit there's a little bit more equilibrium. Now we all can kind of think in our heads "Hey we've all been up there. Now we've all owned that stage. We've all looked out." And that changes the way you feel and the way that you include others and the way that you collaborate. One of my all time favorite stories I will tell quickly is that we were working with a large group of people at a company and they were all going off to one of those big kind of big huge meetings with like thousands of people. And one of the people that we coached was in the bathroom and she was doing shake out. She was doing this to herself. She didn't have anywhere else to do it so she was in the bathroom by the sinks doing this and someone walked into the bathroom and went "Oh, I work with Speechless too!" Total stranger stopped and they did it together. So they had this wonderful connection and moment, but then they also were there for each other in a moment and they were silly and giggly and they both talked about what a positive experience that was then to go on stage just having this really neat experience with a stranger; that opportunity to connect with someone. But again that sensibility of like let's just play together and let's be silly together. It's such a joyful thing to give someone, but also to take with you to do a presentation.
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