0444 – Choosing The Right Gesture

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2022.03.20 – 0444 – Choosing The Right GestureIf you are nervous (and there’s more on overcoming stress, later), it may be that you suffer from ‘expression suppression’: the life drains from your presentation and you become stiff and starchy. It’s the last bit of the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ trio of possible automatic physiological responses to a threatening event. You’re not going to ‘fight’ the feeling of stress, you’re not going to flee from the studio, but the ‘freeze’ is still a possibility. If this is the case then you need to think how you can deliberately build appropriate gestures into your content. This will not only help you look natural, and sound natural, it will help you feel natural too: you’ll be tricking your brain into thinking “OK, these gestures are usually what I do with these words, so things must be less scary than I thought, so I can relax…” So how do you re-engage with expressions, how do you judge which gesture is right? When you’re relaxed, gestures come naturally, so analyse what you do in various situations without thinking. When you’re out having fun with friends after football, what do you do with your face? What is your pose when you’re pleading with police about problems with your tyre pressure? When your home with your honey, what do you do with your hands…? (Oh…!)  My point is, monitor the mannerisms in the moment, so when you need to read with ease, instead of a freeze, you can take possession with rehearsed and appropriate expression. When you are less stressed and more comfortable with your story, and situation, you can forget about your gestures. That may be a funny thing to say in this section, but what I mean is that you’ll be able to think about communicating, not about what your hands are doing! Your body will be naturally reflecting what you are saying, so the audience will better feel and understand … not just be watching your hands. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.