Articulation Mastery: Unlocking the Power of Clear and Confident Speech

1. Articulation Mastery: Welcome to Articulation Mastery, Unlocking the power to clear and confident speaking. I am so thrilled that you have joining me for this course. My name is Molly. I'm a professional voice and action coach based in London. I work with actors as well as a variety of professional voice users around the corporate scene. My mission is to make sure that you can use your voice the most easily, efficiently, and clearly as possible. And so that is why I'm so excited to bring you this course all on how to master your articulation skills in this skillshare course. I'm delighted to be diving really deep into all exercises that I learned as an actor in articulation and what all of the best actors learn when they're preparing for stage and film roles. I'm trying to make these exercises as accessible to everyone, because you deserve to speak and feel confident in your own voice. These exercises are going to empower you in your articulation and whether you're an aspiring actor, a public speaker, or someone who simply wants to develop their everyday speech, this course is designed with your needs in mind. Throughout our time together, we are going to be delving into a range of different topics. Including your exercises for releasing excess tension. Soft palette, work to open up some resonance Lip exercises for expressiveness and techniques to eliminate de, voicing and sustaining vocal energy. We're also going to tackle some common challenges, such as mumbling and using some filler words such as like. As providing you with practical strategies to overcome these and deliver your speech with as much impact as possible. This course is suitable for learners of all levels, whether you're starting from scratch or wanting to refine some skills that you already have. Good experience in each lesson will provide you with clear instructions, demonstrations, and engaging exercises that you can start applying to your day to day life. By the end of the course, you will have the knowledge, tools, and confidence to articulate your thoughts with more ease, with more clarity, and make a lasting impression on your audience. So are you ready to unlock the power of your voice? Sign up now, and I cannot wait to embark on this journey together. 2. Your Project: Hello everyone. And I am so excited that you are going to be joining me for articulation mastery. Now in this course, like all skillshare courses, there is, of course, a class project. And for this course, your class project is to create a schedule for your favorite articulation exercises. As we go along the course, I'm going to be sharing a load of different exercises that I'm going to encourage you to try out and see how you get on. And as you go through the course, I'd like you to try and see how easy or how difficult each exercise is and start curate a weekly articulation exercise for yourself. Really try to treat your voice just like any other muscle in the body, which means you have to be an athlete about it. Try not to just do jaw exercises every day, otherwise you're going to get really tired. But maybe on Mondays you do jaw Wednesdays, tongue and soft palette. On Fridays, maybe you even want to try out recording yourself before and after doing the articulation exercises on one day. Whatever you choose, it is totally curated to your own schedule. But I really want to create a great community feel. And I'd love you to upload your ideal weekly schedule of articulation exercises just to keep everyone motivated and also to inspire other people to do the same. I'm going to have an example of what my articulation schedule looks like and feel free to use that as a blueprint as we go forward. Remember that everyone's life is unique and everyone's body is unique. The exercises that you enjoy doing are for you and you only. You don't have to do what everyone else has done. I'm so excited to see which articulation exercises help you the most. And also to see the schedule that you've built for yourself. Remember, I'm always active in the discussion points. In case you have any questions, good luck and enjoy the course. 3. Lesson 1: What is Articulation?: Welcome to lesson One of articulation mastery, which is understanding articulation. In this lesson, we dive into the fundamentals of articulation and explore why it is so essential for effective communication. Articulation refers to the clarity and precision that we apply to our words. It involves movement of the jaw, the tongue, the lips and the soft palate to create distinct sounds. When we articulate well, it's easier to be understood. And there's also just more of a flow to your communication throughout the cause. We're going to be delving into each articulator as a different component. But first, let's understand why articulation truly matters. I work with many clients daily who have a fear over not being understood. And I believe that everyone deserves to feel confident as they speak. You deserve to have the ability to convey your ideas, engage your audience, and establish credibility. Whether you're delivering a speech, performing on stage, or having a conversation, mastering articulation will elevate your communication skills. What's most important about understanding articulation is it is probably very, very different to what you've understood it to be before. Usually we think of articulation as really dotting our eyes, crossing our T's, and over using all of these muscles. I'm going to show you in this course how actually the true secret to articulation is about doing less, not about doing more. Ease is at the forefront of articulation. Without that ease, then our voice isn't going to be able to flow. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the terminology in the session. After that, we'll get straight into understanding the jaw and how to release it. I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Lesson 2: Terminology: Welcome back to another lesson on mastering articulation. And today we're going to be running through some key terminology that you're going to be hearing across the course and that it's really important for you to understand. First off, I'm going to explain a load of muscles to you. Starting with the jaw muscles, Your jaw is connected to the upper score by three predominant muscles. One is called a Temporalis, which sits just behind your eye socket. It is a large fan shaped muscle on the side of the head covering your temporal bone. It is one of the primary muscles involved in chewing and it helps to close the jaw. You then have the medial terraci. This is a deep muscle that runs along the inner surface of the mandible, which is your lower jaw bone. It works together with the Mast muscle to help elevate and close the jaw during chewing. You then have your lateral terracoid, which is another jaw muscle located on the lateral side of the skull. It has two heads. It's superior and inferior. And it plays a crucial role in opening the jaw by moving the mandible forward and sideways during chewing. You then have your master, which is a really powerful muscle. And this is located at the side of the face covering the jaw joint. It is the primary muscle responsible for elevating the mandible and closing the jaw during biting and chewing. Now let's move on to the tongue. We can talk all day about the variety of tongue muscles, but I'm going to keep it fairly simple for this course, or really just what you really need to know. That is firstly the apex, which is the tip of the tongue. It's typically the narrowest and it tapers to a point. You then have what we call the body of the tongue. This is the central and largest portion of the tongue, responsible for most of the tongue's movements and functions. Then you have the dorsum, which is the upper surface of the tongue that faces the roof of the mouth. And finally, we have the root or the base of the tongue. This is the back most part of the tongue adjacent to your pharynx or your throat and connected to the hyoid bone and surrounding structures. I will also mention something called your soft palate or your velum, which is a tissue that separates your nasopharynx to your oral. Also mentioned something called the alveolar ridge, which is a gum ridge behind your front top teeth just before the roof of the mouth curves over. The last terminology that might be useful is subglottic pressure. Now sub means under glottic or glottis refers to the space between the vocal folds. When I talk about subglottic pressure, I'm simply talking about the air pressure that builds up underneath your vocal folds. That just about wraps up all of the key terminology I may be using among the course. Now that you understand that, let's move on to our good friend, the jaw. I'll see you in the next video. 5. Lesson 3 Jaw Release: Welcome back to another lesson. Today, we are going to be tackling our good old friend, the jaw. Now, the jaw is probably the most commonplace. I find people gather excess tension. Our bodies are like a woodwind instrument. In the same way that we need to open up a passage or a megaphone in order to allow sound to come out. We need to do the same with our bodies. Releasing this jaw is literally going to allow the sound to come out of the mouth with more ease. How do we go about releasing the jaw? Well, the jaw is one of those muscles where the more attention you give it, the more you sometimes try to massage it out, the more tension it's going to build. Remember, we hold so much in the jaw, whether that is grief, anger, stress, joy, excitement. Even when we're working with the jaw, it's really important to be nice and gentle. We have three muscles in the jaw, and we're going to start with our temporalis muscles. I want you to just take two fingers and you're just going to relax your lips open as you massage your two fingers on your temporalis, which is just behind your eye socket. And you can close your eyes if you like, trying to just release the lips open. And remember to bring your hands to your face rather than your face to your hands. This is even just a good one to do in between meetings, but just a nice massage. Now, when you feel comfortable with that, you're going to heat your hands together until they're fairly hot. And you're just going to place the heat of the hand by the other two muscles of the jaw, which lie around here. Just applying that heat to just this area right here. Again, I'm making sure that my lips are nice and open. It's quite funny when we think of the jaw, because we usually think about it opening like a hinge. Whereas actually it opens at the back of the face. Really, you want to think about it opening like a platform rather than that hinge. Notice how I'm not massaging at all or rubbing my hands like so. Instead I'm just applying the heat. Now, I'd like you to imagine that on the bottom of your lower mandible, you have little weights. The weights are just going to start dragging the jaw open from the back. You can feel space in the back teeth. Whenever that starts to feel heavy, you can take your hands and you can try to close your mouth with your hand and release it again. Now, a lot of you may notice that you're wanting to open the mouth or your jaw isn't moving at all. Don't worry, this is part of the practice. But start with just feeling the weight of the jaw. And when that feels comfortable, then you can start incorporating a close and open. Now, whenever that starts to feel comfortable, you can move onto a jaw shake, where you might clasp your hands together, look down ever so slightly, relax the jaw open and just start to shake the jaw like so. I know it seems so silly, but really it can be very effective, just a gentle shake up and down. But really the best thing you can be doing for your jaw and for your attention is observation. If you know that you grind your teeth or clench your teeth, especially at night, it might be a good idea to start doing some teeth chattering before you go to bed. So then feel the weight of the jaw before you go to sleep. This should help you stop clenching and grinding your teeth quite so much, but really just try to observe all of that happening. Another thing that might be helpful is imagining two tiny blueberries are in between your back molars. And as you speak, you don't want to squash those blueberries. You want to feel your jaw really nice and heavy, and those blueberries are just staying in contact. You can try saying them days of the week like this. For example, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Even though it might give you a slight lisp at first, just getting used to that heaviness will eventually remind your body that it doesn't need to hold on so tightly. The biggest thing with the jaw, like most of these muscles, is I just want you to be patient with yourself. As I said, the jaw holds a lot of tension, whether it be from past stress, past upsets, or even past excitement. Being really patient and really gentle with your jaw is always the best thing to do. Remember that when you get used to these exercises, you can add into the discussion and into the class project. What sort of exercises are your favorites? And how often you're going to be doing them so that you can start sharing your articulation exercise schedule with the group. Well done for today's lesson and I will see you for the next one. 6. Lesson 4 Tongue Release: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another skill shared course, where today we are going to be tackling the tongue. The tongue is actually a really huge muscle that goes all the way down to something called our hyoid bone, which is really the top of the larynx. In today's lesson, we're going to explore a load of different exercises that will help just release that excess tension in the tongue and as a result, help it to become more flexible, released, and therefore you become more articulate, which will, as a result, help you speak more clearly and with more of a flow. The first tongue exercises we are going to explore is tucking the tip of the tongue behind the bottom teeth and flexing and releasing it. For this exercise, you really want to go back to our jaw lesson that we've just done. And feel the weight of the jaw getting heavier and heavier. And you're definitely going to want to show me your top teeth as you do so. It will look something like this. Now, we're going to try to do that ten times out. And in notice that my jaw isn't getting involved, and I'm also not spreading out like this. Instead, I'm thinking very vertically. And I'm allowing that jaw to be nice and heavy. Well done. Oh, I can really feel that going all the way down there. I don't know if it does for you as well. If it does, this is going to be a great exercise to put into your articulation schedule to try to do weekly. Remember that if you're a bit stuck on creating your own articulation schedule, feel free to check mine out in the class projects. Another exercise we're going to explore for the tongue is more of a tongue strengthener. This is really great if you struggle to do something like this. If you struggle to narrow your tongue without curling it, then this exercise might be a good one for you to implement. You're going to stick your tongue outwards and you're going to try to get the tip of the tongue into your right ear. As you do so you're also going to take your right finger and you're going to try and press your tongue with your finger. Almost like a resistance band, just like. So you're probably going to want to use a mirror or a phone or something to help you really be able to see. Because we want to avoid the finger getting stronger or the tongue getting stronger than the finger like this. Try to make sure your tongue is always pointing forward. We're going to do 10 seconds, three times either side, and switch over, making sure you're switching with your finger and switch over again, making sure the drawl is nice and heavy and you're showing me your teeth and switch and switch switch. I can really feel that one. Let me know if you can as well. Another one that might be nice to do is very similar to the first one we did, but just tiny little ones. So raver, then bringing the tongue all the way out, you're just going to almost bounce the tongue. You can even add some sound to this that should try to alleviate any tension built up throughout your tongue strengthener doing those exercises once a week. Over time you will see a huge difference in how your tongue moves. And really trying to isolate every single different part of the tongue, the apex, the body and the root. But something else that you can do are actually two exercises you can start applying to text. Just try saying the days of the week for me, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Now I'd like you to do it, but relaxing your jaw and your tongue something like this. It's almost as if I've turned your brain off Monday. Father thunder. And I'm really just relaxing my tongue over the lips. Thunder. Now, I don't know about you, but this feeling of speaking like that is really relaxing for my whole body. Even if you go to speak this text afterwards, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and you can't hear much of a difference, I can feel a huge difference. Just that feeling of release and that feeling of ease is going to give me so much more confidence to articulate my thoughts more clearly. Another exercise that might be fun to do with text or speaking is imagining you have a dot of glue at the tip of the tongue and you're going to stick it to your alveolar ridge, the gum ridge behind your top teeth. This is going to look something like this. Now, the goal with this one is try to speak as clearly as possible with your tongue there. But trying to keep your jaw nice and relax your jaw isn't trying to help the tongue out. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. To me, that feels suddenly so much clearer and so much more articulate. Now while those two exercises are fantastic, I will say that they're not the ones that you're going to see long lasting results with. Think of those two exercises more as activation, something you can do just before a call, just before a pitch, just before a presentation. Whereas the tongue exercises that we started with are really going to be the best ones for long lasting impact over time. That summarizes a little bit of a deep dive into the tongue and some of those exercises, remember to note down how each one feels for you now And let me know in your class projects or the discussion page how they are for you. Well done for this session. You now know enough exercises for not just the jaw, but also the tongue. That's fantastic, progress. I'm so excited to see you for the next lesson, which is all on the soft palette. 7. Lesson 5 The soft palate : Welcome back to another lesson. Today we are going to be exploring all about the soft palate or your lin. Now your soft palette is a tissue that is connected to the roof of the mouth. And it separates a nasopharynx from your oral pharynx. If you give me a big yawn, which is something we're going to be exploring a lot in this session, as well as a gulp, You have just very successfully both raised the soft palate for that yawn, as well as lowered it for the gulp because the soft palate can move up and down as we please. Usually what tends to happen is if you notice maybe a wheezing as you breathe in, or maybe you notice that certain things get caught in the back of your throat. There's probably a sign that the soft palate likes to stay quite low. And I want to experiment with what it is if we just play with the agility and the flexibility of the soft palate, as well as keeping it a little bit more raised to give more space for the air to circle around. The first exercise we're going to do is just playing with that agility of the soft palate. And to do this we're going to play with the G sound. You're going to try and just release the back of the tongue from the G sound downwards for the R, nice and gently like so. Now a lot of you might notice you're giving a, but for now I just want to go nice and smoothly into it and you're going to try that five times, really trying to feel the back of the tongue releasing when that feels comfortable. We're then going to try it in the reverse an see how that feels. Now when the smoothness feels comfortable, you can even try doing and a more hard hitting release. Or you can even try speeding it up and see how far you can go. But any sort of practice with that GR variation is going to be really helpful for just opening up the soft palettes. Another one you can try to do is give a k into it. Because not only is it an NG where the soft pallet comes up, but also a sound. You can try giving a K as you exhale, but also a K into an inhale like this. You want to imagine that almost I've given you the most amazing present in the world. You should feel this big hit of cold air that's coming right to the back of the mouth. Now that is your soft palate rising up. But my favorite exercise with the soft palate has to be yawning. Yawning is such a beautiful thing to do. It tells the body that it's safe. And it also is just going to open up the whole oral pharynx. If you just try to induce a yawn and you try to speak on this an like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Even though you sound very strange, I then want you to try to dial it back so that you're doing a sneaky or secret yawn. Think of a 20% yawn. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Even though it still feels alien to me, I bet it doesn't sound that strange to you. My voice actually feels way more connected when I'm thinking of that yawn or I'm thinking about that space in the back of the mouth, That's the effect that the soft palette can have. And I actually teach that to actors when they're thinking about safe screaming or safe shouting onstage. And it works really well for projection. Rather than reaching for the sound or trying to get that note out. Instead, try to open up the back of the throat and just allow the sound to come out. Instead, it's going to help you to become clearer as well as louder more effortlessly. That wraps up everything about the soft palette. Don't forget to write down your favorite exercises and start to schedule them into your weekly articulation work. And let me know if you have any questions in the class discussion. I'll see you for the next lesson where we're going to be tackling the lips. See you then. 8. Lesson 6 The Lips: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another lesson on mastering your articulation. Today we're going to be discussing the lips now. The lips are such a fascinating muscle group because there are so many different muscles. There's literally one set of muscles to do this, another set of muscles to do this, and everything in between. The best thing that you can do for your lips is really to massage it. But before we do that, we're going to just press the lips together and away like so now this is almost like an activation just like how you might roll your ankles or roll your wrists before doing any weight lifting or going on a run. It's just a good way of getting the blood pumping into the lips as depending on what language you speak and what accent you have. You may notice that you might not use your lips whatsoever or really round them at all. Just getting used to moving them a little bit is really good. Now when we come to massaging the lips, we're going to focus on some certain focal points. That is going to be every side of the lips. You're just going to do ten circles one way and ten circles the other way. I'm then going to bring that pattern down. I'm going to just go a little bit down my lower lip and do the same thing here. This is like a free lip plumper, ten circles the other way, then bring my fingers closer together, doing the same thing here and the other way. When I get to the middle or the bottom lip, I'm just going to massage one way and the other way. Now coming away, this bottom lip feels so much more live. Let's see if we can do it on the top lip as well. Just going in slightly massaging ten circles one way, the other way, bringing them in again and the other way, and then coming into the middle and the other way, great. Now we've got that blood pumping into the lips. We're now going to go just around the lips, Taking your fingers. You also are going to go to the top of your laughter lines and just give ten circles one way and the other way. Very attractive, I know, but it's really good, especially for anyone who gets allergies like myself, like hay fever. This exercise is really lovely, Lovely then just stretching your lips into a big circle, and then sideways, sideways, sideways. Lastly, you're just going to see if you can do lip isolation. You might have noticed, you might be aware of this joke before. Where someone ties a string around one part of the lip and they try to pull on that lip. Just see if you can isolate the right side of that upper lip and one side is comfortable. Try the other side. For me, this side is much stronger than that side. Don't worry if you can't do either. It's just working on it time after time. But now let's try the upper lips, A rope together, like you're doing lip press ups now. Just an massage around the whole lip. One more time and give me a that really sums up my lip routine. If you like to help with articulation or the actor's way of helping with articulation with the lips, we want to get the blood pumping through. We want to try some isolation work. We also want to massage. Remember that if you enjoy that, do write down which part of it you enjoy the most and keep it into articulation routine. And share it in your class project with everyone else so that we can all be inspired to incorporate more articulation exercises. Thank you for joining me this lesson because that actually sums up all of our muscle work when it comes to articulation. And I'm so excited for our next lesson, which is all on voicing. It's a big topic. So I will see you then. 9. Lesson 7 Being "on-voice": Hello everyone, and welcome back to another session on mastering your articulation. Now that you have a good amount of exercises that are all based on the muscles, I now want to start talking about something called de voicing. Now de voicing has a couple of different terms and I actually have a few Youtube videos on this as well. If you did want some free content, you can check it out somewhere in the link or on my profile. But all in all, devoicing can refer to two separate things. Firstly is what we call coming off voice onto vocal fry. That sounds like something like this. If I was to speak to you in like a bit of a croaky way, and you probably noticed this raspiness or croakiness in a lot of people. And this will just be really hard to understand someone and to allow their voice to carry. The second way you might voice is actually something that's due to the accent usually. So for example, if I said Harry said this yesterday, I'd very rarely go. Harry said this yesterday. I would usually go, Harry said this yesterday. Do you notice how I'm turning that sound into a tough sound? Well, we call that turning of voiced consonant a d, which is with Sound into the unvoiced equivalent to do said. We're going to tackle both of these subjects actually in today's video, starting with that vocal fry. Now all that's happening when we go into that croque or vocal fry ness is that the vocal folds aren't really coming together and apart very clearly. Instead they're just rubbing together like this. This is usually due to subglottic air pressure, which is the air pressure that sits underneath the vocal folds. In order to fix this, we want to make sure that we're breathing into our belly. If you just imagine you see a cat in front of you, you're going to give a long, so at the end of that sound, you're going to feel your belly expand. Do you notice how I'm not I'm not preparing and I'm not bringing my shoulders up to breathe. I'm just encouraging the air to get into a balloon that's deep into my belly. Now when that's comfortable, you can try on a sound when you feel like it's your belly doing all of the work and it's releasing nicely and coming in and gently. Then you can try Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Now if you can still feel that vocal fry, I want you to go back to our soft palette lesson and add a little bit of a yawn. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You should be able to experiment with a good amount of lower air pressure That's going to help that subglottic pressure underneath the vocal folds function really nicely so that the vocal folds are coming together and apart succinctly, rather than just like this where there's no air pressure really underneath them. And also the yawn is just going to open up the resonance. And open up your soft palate to make sure that the air and voice can flow nicely through it. Now let's tackle the whole de, voicing consonants thing. So what I want you to do is just record yourself speaking through. Maybe something you love, maybe a story, maybe a couple of sentences from your favorite book. And just notice whether you have a habit of doing this, because as I said, some accents won't. But if you do have a habit of doing it, I want you to take that same book, and I want you to try to replace every voiceless consonant. And I'm going to put a list of them somewhere on the screen with their voiced equivalents, which I will also put on the screen. So, for example, if I am reading the sentence Sally, go get the sausages said the children. Sally, go get the sausages, said the children. That would turn into Zal, Go get the A, Z the children. That feels so strange. I'm going to try and smooth it together and I'm also going to really connect to the feeling of vibrations in my chest because that shouldn't go as I'm continually making sound and voicing. Ally, get the usages. The children Alain. Now I'm going to try and dial it back ever so slightly, Sally, go get the sausages, said the children. Now, that to me, sounds a lot stronger than what I would have said at the beginning, which was something like, Sally, go get the sausages, said the children. Do you notice how when I apply those voiced techniques then actually there's more voice, there's more richness and there's more gravitas behind my voice. It's not that I'm really changing what I'm saying or changing anything about how I pronounce things, but I am just making more of an active effort to stay with that vibration, stay with being more on voice. As a result, I'm sounding a lot stronger. Those are my two categories for devoicing. One is all about air pressure. Making sure we're breathing into our diaphragm and we're yawning to allow the breath to continue on. And then the second one is really more isolate, which I really work with actors when they're on TV film or any sort of microphone device. It's so important that we watch ourselves for signs of coming away the voice or really backing away from that energy, which I'm going to be speaking about more in the next couple of videos. Well done for today's lesson. Let me know if you have any questions in the discussion box. I'd love to hear how you get on. 10. Lesson 8: Umms and Ahhs: Hello everyone and welcome back to another lesson in this course of articulation mastery. Today we're going to be discussing one of the most asked questions ever, which is, how do I cut out my filler words, us, likes and R's? In this lesson, I'm going to tell you exactly how in one very simple technique, close your mouth. Those three words are going to encompass everything that I know and my philosophy around this subject. When people are using M's arts and likes, it's usually because there is a type of nerves around speaking and their mouth is just keeping going while their brain is clocking over and they're trying to think about what next to say. Instead, what you could do is try to close your mouth. After you finish the sentence, allow the thought time to drop into the brain fully. You'll notice that in this way, I don't actually have any S or R's. It takes a lot of confidence to do this. And in fact, our next lesson is really going to be all on building that confidence. Because you have to really believe that someone is going to keep listening to you. Someone is going to hold onto your attention and no one is going to interrupt you. When you close your mouth, there is a difference between closing your mouth when you're finished speaking versus when you close your mouth and you are still active. Just like that. What I'd really suggest is think about your posture as well. Try to sit or stand with a good amount of energy. When you go to close your mouth. Maybe think of just leaning in ever so slightly, just to let someone know that you're not quite finished. When you go to open your mouth and go again, be very impulsive with it. By impulsive, I don't mean sporadic, I simply mean jump on that next thought, give it a good amount of energy. Just that gusto or that little jump into the next sentence is really going to help articulate your thoughts and let people know, oh, she's not finished or they're not finished. But one of the best ways of really cutting out filler words, and I know that a lot of you aren't going to like this. But do try to record yourself public speaking or doing some sort of presentation. And listen back to yourself. Notice when you are doing your Ms and R's and filler words, then next time try to retape yourself doing it. And practice this closing the mouthing. It can be so hard when you just have a few bullet points to go from, but if you don't already, try to have a really clear structure in place on what you are going to talk about, even if it's a Q and A, try to have a good sense of an idea of what you're going to answer for each question. Think about it and you'll find that your confidence is going to sky rocket and those Us and R's are going to just get smaller and smaller and smaller. The last thing I will say on this is there's also a human quality to doing Ums and R's. I think there was a big wave, especially in the corporate scene of, you can never say us R's likes and s. While yes, it does diminish a lot of presence, there is a human quality about it. And I don't think it's something to fret too much about. Remember that implementing all of the exercises that we have already done is also going to massively help you with your voice and communication skills. There's no one quick fix, but it's just learning, observing, keep working on those exercises and just watch your improvement unfold. But maybe this is an exercise that you're going to want to incorporate into your articulation weekly schedule. Let me know in the class project section and I'm so excited to see them. With that, I'll see you for our next lesson, which is our last lesson, all about sustaining vocal energy and building our confidence. I'll see you then. 11. Lesson 9: Energy and confidence: Hello everyone and welcome to your last lesson of this course on mastering articulation, where we are going to be speaking about sustaining vocal energy and building your confidence. Well done for getting to this point, a massive round of applause to you. Because this is where I want to talk about some other factors that might not be just muscularly based. When we speak, it is very usual for me to hear someone speaking at the beginning of their sentences with a lot of energy. And then when they get to the end, it kind of trails off like this. Or they start the next sentence really nice and loud, and then it kind of trails off like this. Now if you've noticed this is you, this might not be just a vocal thing, although I do have a tip to help. But it might also be a mental block or limiting belief that you were dealing with that I think it's important to address. First off, let's talk about my tip for if you feel like you're losing the energy Augusta at the end, this is finally enough, something I work with actors with all of the time. What I'd like you to do is I want you to imagine you have a helium balloon in front of you. When you get to the end of your thoughts or when you're practicing your pitch or presentation, you're just going to tap it at the end. It doesn't have to be a tap up, it just has to be some tap. And it's really important that that tap is happening as you say the word. It doesn't have to be the very last word of the sentence, but it does have to be as you say that word. You may notice that as I'm speaking to you now, even though my hand looks a little bit strange and almost like a conductor conducting a very strange piece of music that actually I'm starting to emphasize and I'm sustaining the vocal energy to the very end of the line. Whereas what I might normally want to do is something like this, where I just trail off at the end. Now you'll notice that actually that type of speaking has a lot less impact than if I was to continue my sustained energy. What I'm going to do as I'm speaking to you now, is I'm going to try and imagine that I'm hitting that balloon. Without actually hitting that balloon as I'm speaking, it's almost like I'm just actively and very consciously putting in that little bit of extra effort to sustain my volume, energy, and space. Another tip that I love using and giving people is the idea of speaking from your back. So much of what we do is in the front of our body, we are always leaning forward to speak to each other. Whereas actually the support muscles for your voice are all down your diaphragm and the back of your spine. Even though I'm facing you and speaking to you right now, I'm going to imagine there's an audience all the way behind me. And I really want that audience to be able to hear me. It's almost as if I'm breathing and speaking into my lower back. I can immediately feel more groundedness, more scented, and far more articulation or clarity than what I had before. And I'm also going to make sure that I'm keeping up this energy for the duration of my thought. Maybe you want to give that a go with either saying the days of the week, the months of the year, or even a piece of text. Play with both tapping that balloon as well as speaking from your back and let me know which one works well for you. But on another note, if you don't think that either of those are really the problem or you don't feel like either of them are helping, Maybe have a think about how much space you like to take up. And by that I mean that most people I work with struggle with articulation. Not because they don't know how to, but it might be that in certain situations, especially they don't feel like they deserve that space or they feel this Imposter syndrome, That means, well, why should I say anything? What do I have? That's interesting to say. This is what we call a limiting belief. It is very human to have these limiting beliefs, but as the name suggests, they're not the most helpful. So many people struggle with self doubt and that is shown in your voice all of the time. Any tremors, any choking up, all of that is just self doubt and something in your brain telling you why you here, you shouldn't be here. You have nothing to say. What I'd like you to do is before every presentation, really just picture yourself there before you go into it. Take a second, maybe the week before or day before to think, okay, I'm going to stand up there, I'm going to stand here, I'm going to see these people. I'm going to do this. Notice where in your body you can feel that tension creeping in. I want you to feel your feet on the floor almost as if you're making an imprint on wet sand. What would your footprint look like? Which part of your foot would be touching the floor more or going into the sand more so than others. I then want you to close your eyes. I want you to take a big breath in on that exhale. You're just going to get rid of those limiting beliefs and that tension about all of that self doubt. You're going to feel your feet on the sand again and you're going to take another big breath in again, you're just going to take a big exhale out. All of that self doubt messages, just focusing on the feet, focusing on the body. You're going to do that one more time, straight after that big exhale, you're then going to allow in self confidence, whatever that might mean to you. Maybe that's a color, maybe that's a feeling, but maybe it's just a message of I deserve to be heard and I deserve to take up space. Once again, feeling your feet on the ground, taking a big breath in. Let's expel all of that self doubt and breathe in all of that confidence, that worthiness and that desire to take up space. Remember that charisma, confidence, all of that can be developed over time. Do you think that I was always confident enough to sit in my sitting room speaking to a camera potentially for many, many people to watch me? Absolutely not. I used to be very shy. I used to be very timid, and I definitely still have to remind myself that I deserve to take up space in rooms. But when I have reminded myself of that, then every time I step into a new room, it starts to become easier and easier and easier. Even in rooms where you feel the most comfortable, I want you to start thinking about this idea of landing in that sand, realizing that you can take up your space and just start to notice how it starts to become easier and easier. Remember that once you feel like you can take up that space, then your voice will also take up that space. Meaning you will sound clearer, more efficient, and it will hopefully feel so much easier for you as well. You have every right to be heard just like anyone else in that room. And do not forget that practice is key to internalizing all of these exercises. Hopefully, with all of them together, your confidence will start to grow and grow. Thank you very much for this lesson team and I will see you for our next video, which is going to be our conclusion. 12. Conclusion: Congratulations everyone. You have reached the final video of my articulation mastery course. I hope this journey has truly been enlightening and transformative for you. And I wanted to take a moment to summarize some key moments from this cause that hopefully you can take onto your day to day lives throughout the cause. We've explored how articulation isn't necessarily about doing more, but really it's about doing less. We've covered your exercises to release tension, tongue exercises, soft palate, and lip exercises, all to release tension and make sure that agility is prioritized. We've also looked at techniques to eliminate voicing and filler words, and also discussed how can we actually sustain our vocal energy and also build our confidence to help us speak clearer and more articulate. Remember that mastering articulation is an ongoing process. Some days it's going to feel a lot easier than others. Remember to embrace your unique voice. Keep refining your articulation, and let your words create a lasting impact. Thank you so much for joining me on this adventure. I'd love to hear any comments. And as you can imagine, I could make a whole course on most of these once again. So do let me know if there's any more information or any more courses you would like to see next. I'm so excited to see your class projects as a little schedule of what articulation exercises you are going to be taking on and best of luck for your continued path. I'd also love to check in with you on how this path is going. My free 15 minute consultation link will be somewhere in the description or on my profile. And do make sure to check out all of my other social media platforms for more free content on articulation and all things, voice and accent. Thank you again, everyone, and keep going with finding your power and your projection. You deserve to take up space. Have a fantastic day. Bye.