Breath by Breath: Transforming Fear into Creative Expression

What if public speaking wasn't a performance but a genuine conversation?

In this coaching-focused episode, Lauri works with seasoned creative Emily McGregor, who’s spent 20+ years directing, producing, and leading teams in video sketch comedy and marketing. Despite her confidence behind the camera, Emily struggles with stepping into the spotlight herself. Lauri helps Emily tackle her inner critics though practical tools that ground the voice. Together, they explore how breathwork, alignment, and being intentional can transform performance anxiety into genuine connection. 

Whether you’re a seasoned speaker or just finding your voice, this episode offers profound insights to amplify your presence and impact.

TAKEAWAYS:
Know Your Masks: Our sometimes overused strengths, like humor, can become "masks" that hide our true selves. When you know your masks, you can begin to release them. 

Stop Performing and Start Connecting: Reframe speaking as a conversation with your audience, inviting connection instead of striving for perfection.

Intention is Powerful: Set simple, clear emotional intentions to harness  your energy and unleash your presence when speaking.

Align Your Body and Breath: Rediscover your natural expressive self by releasing tension and reconnecting with your innate charisma.

Quiet the Inner Critic: Recognize and balance your inner stage mom or director so they become constructive rather than controlling.

About Emily:
Emily is a seasoned creative with over 20 years of experience in video sketch comedy, marketing, and leading dynamic teams. As the founder of PenguinCat Creative, her copywriting agency, she has crafted hundreds of high-converting marketing funnels and campaigns. Her work has helped bestselling authors, top influencers, eCommerce giants, and industry-leading coaches achieve remarkable success—selling out events, tripling membership signups, and exceeding launch goals.

Previously, Emily served as VP of Production at Comediva, a comedic content studio, where she wrote and directed viral videos amassing millions of views, created branded content for major brands like Pepsi, and even sold a TV show to Amazon.

Today, she leverages her vast marketing expertise and scrappy filmmaking background to produce entertain

Story Magic
A Soulful Speaking Playshop for loving rebels on a soul-driven mission.

Join me for Story Magic — a live, interactive Soulful Speaking Playshop where you’ll learn powerful secrets from the ancient art of theatre for telling engaging, dynamic stories.

The Speaker Alter Ego Quiz

Take the Speaker Alter Ego quiz to find out which protective mask hides your natural radiance so you can learn how to get present, connect deeply, and share your vision when it matters most!

https://voice-matters.com/speaker-alter-ego-quiz/

Chapters

• 0:00 Speaking Challenges & Inner Critics
• 3:51 The Jivin’ Jokester Mask
• 6:10 Controlling Stage Mother Soul Suckers
• 8:07 Shifting Limiting Beliefs
• 16:18 The Intend-Align-Invite Framework
• 18:57 Speaking as a Conversation
• 20:51 Aligning Body, Breath, and Energy
• 28:22 Playful Breath Exercises
• 41:24 Closing Reflections and Gratitude

Transcript

Lauri: 1:08

welcome back listeners. Today, my guest is emily mcgregor. She is a seasoned creative with over 20 years of experience in video sketch comedy, marketing and leading dynamic teams.

Emily: 1:21

Welcome, emily hello, thanks for having me yeah, thanks for being here.

Lauri: 1:28

Emily has graciously agreed to let me coach her for all of you on today's episode. So, emily, thank you so much. I want to honor your courage and your playfulness in doing this. The first thing I'm going to do, before you even speak, is I'm going to ask you what have felt like your biggest challenges when it comes to speaking, and for Emily and for our listeners. When I say speaking, some of that is what I grew up with, where it's a person on a stage, live with other people, and particularly post-pandemic, we're in a whole new speaking world when I say speaking. Speaking is this podcast. Speaking is shooting a video. Speaking is doing a presentation on Zoom, pretty much anywhere that you can share your message or your magic with the world, including the stage, but also including those TikTok videos. What have been your speaking challenges?

Emily: 2:32

Yeah. So it's funny, I'm really comfortable one-on-one with people, make friends easily. I can direct a set of 40 crew members no problem doing that. Leading teams, that kind of thing no problem thing, no problem. But then, like, getting on stage is like not something I'm trying to do right now, but I am trying to do more social media content. I am trying to record myself more behind the scenes person. I'm not in front of the camera person. And yeah, the second, like I feel like I get in front of a camera, my mind kind of goes blank or I get into like a really kind of performative kind of place where I feel like I'm not really myself and I'm just like I'm now doing speechy things.

Emily: 3:22

Um, yeah yeah, and I'm feeling a little like that even right now, but um, yeah.

Lauri: 3:31

Yeah, thank you for your honesty, and I think you took the speaker alter ego quiz about the different masks. Like when you said performative, it made me think of that that sometimes we feel like we need to be something else when we're speaking. What was your top speaker alter ego mask?

Emily: 3:52

Yeah, I forget the exact name, it was the jokester one.

Lauri: 3:55

The jiving jokester Jiving jokester, yeah, yeah.

Lauri: 3:57

Yeah, and as a reminder for people listening who may have just joined us, and for you, the masks are not our true selves. They're a protection or a thing that we're doing because we think we need to and I know you're a comic. So sometimes what happens with the masks is that there's like one part of ourselves that we know we're safe in or we've had a history of. I've gotten rewarded for this. This is the safest part of me to share and sometimes that's what happens. Is it like we're only using that?

Lauri: 4:39

So it's almost like carpal tunnel in my wrist. If I'm only doing one movement, eventually, all of a sudden, my wrist is frozen into that one thing, and sometimes something like that can happen. So it makes sense that your top one might be the jive and jokester. It's not that she's not funny everyone, it's that she has a jokester and she also has this whole range that's much more fluid than this mask that might come up. What are your biggest dreams for speaking on stages and in front of those green camera lights, when you, when you step out of being the support person and start being the one in the spotlight?

Emily: 5:22

yeah, I think I would just love it to be easier. Um, so I work with my husband and he's like a natural performer, like he could improvise a speech on stage like no problem and have no anxiety about it and do great.

Emily: 5:33

Um, he like took over emceeing like an oktoberfest this year and just like took over, took the call sheet, started like running the show I don't need that level of ease, but I I would like it to just be like oh, I can pick up my camera and I can talk to it. I don't need to like prep and prepare and feel like, oh, I did that wrong, oh wrong, oh I did that wrong, oh I did that wrong, and like billion takes, like just takes too much time, and then like my anxiety level just like goes like up and I just rather just feel like natural and easy, yeah, like yeah, I'm talking to a friend like no problem.

Lauri: 6:09

Yeah, yeah, and I'm hearing as you're talking, some of the soul suckers, the inner critics, and it sounds like they're they're playing too big of a role. So I'm sure you know from being someone who can grab a megaphone and speak to a whole huge crew on a set, that there we have to. We have to have an inner critic in us and it sounds like for you it's kind of going haywire and it's making it harder than it needs to be yeah, I think that would be accurate.

Emily: 6:44

Yeah, I got the uh stage mom for the soul sucker on the quiz.

Lauri: 6:49

Yeah, the controlling stage, mothers yes, yes, that that feels right yeah, yeah and again, there's probably a critical um assistant director or director in you that controls and guides and harnesses the creativity of everybody on a set. And if it teeters over too much, past being an organizer, past harnessing other people into controlling and over-controlling and kind of sucking the life out of you yeah, like usually.

Emily: 7:36

Yeah, I'm just like hyper. I think I've just really created a story over time that's like, oh, I'm not good at this and like I'll never be good at it. Instead of I'm trying to shift more into like well, you know, it's like I I do casting, like I know like good acting, and it's like that's maybe not like a natural talent of mine doesn't come easily, but it's not some doesn't mean I can't like develop that skill or yeah yeah, change my mindset around yeah, and what is it that part of you that thinks you're not good at it?

Lauri: 8:08

what is it that that voice thinks other people have that you don't. What is it that that voice?

Emily: 8:14

thinks other people have that you don't? That's an interesting question. I mean, maybe it's, I guess it's like confidence or I don't know. I think I think there's like a story and like, well, intellectually, I know this is not true, the idea that like their brain works differently. Intellectually, I know this is not true. The idea that like their brain works differently, or you know, like they can just think on their feet, and I don't have that skill when the spotlight's on me. I have that skill when the spotlight's not on me. Mm, hmm, yeah.

Lauri: 8:47

Yeah, yeah, okay, are you ready to play? I guess I mean I am.

Emily: 8:52

I'm a little nervous, but yes, yeah, okay, are you ready? To play, I guess. I mean I am, I'm a little nervous, but yes.

Lauri: 8:56

Yeah, and how are you experiencing those nerves mentally, physically, energetically and emotionally right now?

Emily: 9:08

I can feel the little anxiety bubble sort of in my chest stomach. Chest area is where that usually comes up or there's like if it gets a little worse there'll be a lump in my throat. It's not quite there yet, okay.

Lauri: 9:22

Okay, awesome I mean not awesome that you have that, but you have an awareness of that. My feeling is, if you are aware enough to be able to name what's going on, you're more in your whole self than if that takes over and you try to pretend it's not happening and barrel forward. You become like a disconnected head, or we all, when we do that, become like disconnected heads, and our charisma, our one-of-a-kind radiance, actually comes from our body. It doesn't come exclusively from our minds. So I am going to have you speak for one minute. I'm looking down and I'm grabbing a phone to time it. You can speak about something that you're passionate about or a time you lost your voice. Whenever you're ready, start talking and I'll hit start on the timer.

Emily: 11:40

This is where the mind blank thing goes. That happens. Somebody asked me what's your favorite song. I'm like I can't think of a song. I can't think of a single song Right now.

Lauri: 11:56

Oh, I have one. That's fun. Also, I forgot. Door number three is like a 60 second style networking introduction of who are you, who do you serve, how do you serve them, which will also give our listeners, like that, information about you if they're falling in love with you and want to hire you.

Emily: 12:15

Yeah, I wanted to do the story one but I don't know if I have like a good, like I lost my voice, my voice story, but okay.

Lauri: 12:30

You could speak about what is happening right now, if you want, okay.

Emily: 12:36

Okay, all right, so talking for one minute. Yeah, story of losing my voice. Don't have a specific story about that, but I am tapping into the emotion of what I'm experiencing right now, which is just like a pure kind of panic that happens where somebody asks me to tell a story, and I'm sure there are a billion of them, and my mind just goes blank and it gets really scary. And then I think I get like worried about the gap of time that's like passed and like I'm not talking, no one's talking, and it feels really uncomfortable and that sort of like silence then just reinforces the panic and the blank just continues to blank. The panic and the blank just continues to blank. So, which is like funny because you know, if I'm just like in a small group or I'm talking to somebody one-on-one and there's like more of an exchange, I feel really comfortable and I can come up with like lots of things on my feet and like make up jokes and have fun.

Lauri: 13:44

Oh and that's time. Yeah, so I asked you part of what's happening is I'm asked. I'm going to ask you to keep noticing what's happening mentally, what's happening physically, what's happening energetically. So I asked you when I first said you're going to speak now, what else did you notice mentally, physically, energetically and emotionally during that whole experience, until the moment I said that's time or waved the phone at you?

Emily: 14:15

I started feeling a little more comfortable talking into it. I think that's partially because I used to do this coaching group where you would do thinking sessions and you had to talk for 20 minutes and the other person couldn't say anything and you just had to talk at them for 20 minutes and the person just received, and that was so brutally uncomfortable when it started and I eventually got used to doing that, so it started feeling more like that and I was, so I started feeling a little more comfortable.

Lauri: 14:45

So there's a comfort in the. You're being received without interruption, or just I think I was like used to.

Emily: 14:55

I was like I was getting, like it was like hard to start, but like, once I started it was feeling more comfortable, I guess.

Lauri: 15:03

Yeah, yeah, okay. So I share a framework with people. I love to give people three words and then we're going to play with you experiencing those words, because on one level, it's as if I looked at somebody's three point shot and I said, in order to shoot it more like your version of Steph Curry, you need to bend your knees, you need to look at the back of the rim and you need to follow through. I can tell you that, and we could all spend the rest of our lives learning to shoot more like our version of Steph Curry. The same is true with our presence, aka our one of a kind radianceiance or our charisma, except that we were all born with it. We all had it, and then things happened in our lives and the world told us to do it wrong, like if they told me to stick my elbow out when shooting, to try to shoot like steph curry when I came into the world with the perfect form. So we're reminding your body of how to do it.

Lauri: 16:12

The three words are intend, align and invite. Intend is setting an emotional intention for what you want the audience to experience, emotional or energetic, like what's the vibe. And I did this in our kind of grounding moment together before we started. It can even be like a sound or a short phrase. You don't want it to be a novel. For people who are listening and for Emily, it's like one word, one sound, one gesture or a short phrase.

Emily: 16:47

It's like one word, one sound, one gesture or a short phrase.

Lauri: 16:51

So if you were in a group and somebody asked you to tell a story and you said okay, I'm, I'll tell a story, what might your intention be?

Emily: 17:05

I mean usually it would be like to relate probably with the other person or connect with the other person.

Lauri: 17:13

Okay, okay, let's remember that. Okay, so it's to connect and this can serve you in a lot of different circumstances and this can serve you in a lot of different circumstances. And then you mentioned when you're in conversation and there's a more natural ebb and flow back and forth that feels more comfortable to you than the like. Here's a microphone, everyone's staring at you.

Lauri: 17:35

Go, yes, the inviting of intend, align, invite is going to draw on that natural skill. You have to be in conversation and listen to their half of the conversation. That's what you're going to do. As you're inviting, you've set an intention to connect and underneath the story that you're telling, whatever is coming out of your mouth, you're listening to their nonverbal half of the conversation, their facial expressions, their body language, any sounds that they make and possibly even feeling the vibe in the room. When there's a lot of people, you can sometimes feel when it's like it's dead or it's fractured in here and when it's become connected, the people look different and the room has a different feel in it. So you're doing all of that with your inviting. Interesting, any questions so far?

Emily: 18:48

No, let's keep going.

Lauri: 18:51

Any ahas so far?

Emily: 18:57

Yeah, there's something interesting in like thinking of speaking more as a conversation than necessarily like a performance. I think I think of it as a performance and that's probably why I act performative. Um, yeah, yeah there's a it.

Lauri: 19:14

It makes sense because it's like it's a wall of chairs and we're the only one with the microphone. And in theater, if I'm up on stage with my scene partner, we're in it together. And the beautiful reframe with public speaking is to start to understand or treat your audience as both your scene partner and your audience. And one other hack or trick for you and others when you look out at a sea of faces and you really start to listen to their half of the conversation, you'll probably notice about a third of the people seem to have kindred eyes. They're already more open and connected, so look at them first. Interesting, while hugging the whole space and this is getting into a line. I'll get into that in a second so that everybody feels like they're a part of it, just like if I'm on stage with four other people, I might be looking at one other character and everybody, from the other actors on the stage to the audience, are all a part of this live experience that we're having in the same space. Gotcha, yeah, and I'll be the kindred eyes and the plants and the Coco Peles behind me will be the ones who are a little bit more neutral.

Lauri: 20:42

When you start Now, aligning is aligning your body, your breath and your energy with your most expressive self. What tends to happen is we're born as babies and we breathe these luxurious breaths and our spines are nice and long and our hearts are open to the world, and then somebody tells us don't be too big, don't be too much, don't take up too much space, don't be too emotional children should be seen and not heard and we start suppressing our breathing, which then that's not our most expressive self. It starts to become hardened in the body. We get emotional masks like the jive and jokester, or I have a deranged mannequin, or the heady hipster is one of kind of like that I've used during my life, where it's like I've got like this smart face. That's sort of neutral. I've actually been informed it doesn't work as well for me as I thought it did because I have like no poker face, nice. So we get like an energetic armor in front of our hearts and an emotional, protective, possible smiling mask, possible smart face, neutral face, which is not how we show up when we're connected to our closest friends.

Lauri: 22:08

So if we bring the body, the breath and the energy back to the wisdom that we came into the world with as babies and pair that with that intention that helps us to feel more in a state of flow, more quickly, like we're still going to probably feel some quote-unquote nerves, or I like to start reframing it as sensations. You're feeling your heart going faster, you're feeling a bubble of energy rising that's going like from your solar plexus to your heart and then your throat, and right now your habit is to suppress it, to hold your breath more. Rather than setting intention, stack your body up with an open heart and then breathe more air, more air, and let the air carry the passion, the life force, the caring, the connection that is inside of you across the room. So there's an alignment of the body with an open heart. There's breathing in more air and using that air to support the voice. There's also pauses. We've sort of been trained to speak like this in the world Right, and I'll read this for people listening the message.

Lauri: 23:32

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silent scream. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act. Let who you are ring out and resonate in every word and every deed. So how it's written is there are no spaces, all the words are just run together on this piece of paper that I'm holding up on our video version. This is the aligned version of breath, the message. Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity, but silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is a message, just as doing nothing is an act. The words and the silences between them dance together to create the meaning. We emotionally and mentally digest it better when you give yourself the time and space to take those pauses. So it's a win-win-win for everybody. And I'm telling this to Emily's mind and all of our listeners' minds. And when you speak again, I may stop and start you because you even said it yourself like the silence and the filling the silence, right now your body has nearly a fight, flight or freeze response to that silence. So by setting the intention and connecting with people and taking breaths in those silence, we're going to remind your body that you are safe, that there is a beautiful interaction that can happen, rather than monologuing at them and taking all of the pressure of the speaking on yourself. So we'll play with breath a little bit and then the energy piece is, instead of pulling our energy in and being really, really small, it's including the audience with your, your body language, your breath and your energy, so you allow your energy to fill whatever space you're in, and I spoke about this when we connected to each other before we started. It's like we've each got an energetic set of arms and we're hugging the space in the vibe of that intention. So when Emily speaks again, she's going to do her first draft of hugging our space in the vibe of connection.

Lauri: 26:00

Part of what happens from all of this is, instead of having the inner critics in charge and scanning so her controlling stage, mothers are were potentially looking for things like how could you fuck this up? And let's not do that. What could you say wrong? How could you pause for too long? Are you going to set anyone off? Are you to bore people? I'm saying she's nodding her head and I'm saying a lot of examples because I imagine Emily has some of those and other people listening probably also have some of those. Emily, which of those soul-sucking thoughts ring true for you?

Emily: 26:39

Oh yeah, the not being entertaining one. That is the, that is the big one, yeah.

Lauri: 26:44

Yeah, yeah. So we talk fast and we try not to have the silence because we're trying to outrun the possibility of their boredom.

Emily: 26:54

Right.

Lauri: 26:55

It's funny.

Emily: 26:56

I love. I love hearing this because I think it relates really well to comedy and editing as well. Like something I learned early, early on is like you can't just have like joke to joke, to joke to joke, like you need the negative space for the laughs or the audience is just gonna like laugh over the next joke and it's wasted yeah, yeah, and then eventually the jokes don't come, so it becomes that controlling stage.

Lauri: 27:20

Mother is worried about boring them and in reality, the way to actually engage them the whole time is to give them the space to laugh. This place to be confused before you say the thing that might create the laugh. Right, and in editing a movie you don't do hard cuts. For one hour and 45 minutes, things fade and the next scene you know, know, there's crossfades. Yeah, and there are moments in movies that go completely to black.

Lauri: 27:49

And then you know, on occasion, right, right, yeah, yeah, so let's click, yeah yeah, so, um, it looks like we've tapped into your creative self, so you can even start to have fun with the pauses playing around like you're in the editing room going. Well, which type of edit do I like better? Do I like a pause here more, or do I want like a quicker pause in this other section? Let's do a little bit of breathing together. First is the harmonica breath. It's actually a breath that I stole from my friend and one-time singing instructor, lauren Barbeau. The harmonica breath is we will hold our hands as if we're holding a harmonica between our pinky and our thumb, and then these three fingers become like the teeth of the harmonica the pointer, the middle and the ring finger. For those of you listening, we're going to place those three fingers in between our upper and lower lips and inhale through the space, just like people do when they're holding a harmonica, and then we'll pull the hand out and exhale on an S sound.

Lauri: 30:03

And we're going to do that inhale and then exhale on an S a number of times and now that you've done it once, start to notice where is your torso moving between your collarbones and your pubic bone. And you've got all the time in the world. This thing that we're doing with the harmonica is designed to be a filter that slows the whole process down so that you can notice things. So don't feel like you need to gasp like you just held your water, held your head underwater for three minutes. Allow it to be a nice slow, take your time. Breath I'm noticing much more ease. Where are you noticing your torso moving as the breath comes in and goes out? I'm noticing much more ease.

Emily: 31:40

Where are you noticing your torso moving as the breath comes in and goes out? I mean I felt like a big expansion in my chest and it did seem to like low, like I don't know. Like I dropped more into like my stomach, a little bit more Like it felt like it I don't know kind of like yeah, went down.

Lauri: 31:57

She pointed at her chest at first and said chest, and then it's also like going below where the camera. Both of our hands are going below the framing on the camera, down to like the middle of the torso and all the way down to the top of the pelvis. Let me invite for Emily and anyone who might be doing this in their car while listening. We're going to play with an image now, which is that we're like pear-shaped balloons. So the top of the pear-shaped balloon is the neck.

Lauri: 32:27

It's hardly going to move at all. It will move a little because we're connected from head to toe by muscles and fascia and bones In the chest area. It will move a little more because the ribs are actually expanding there, but they don't expand as much as lower because they're connected in front, on the bone Down below, where the camera is, the belly area, the sides of the body and even the ribs on the back of the body. That's the bottom of the pear-shaped balloon and I think this may have already been happening for you, emily. We're now just kind of bringing our attention to it so your body can remember the bottom of that pear-shaped balloon can actually expand 360 degrees a little bit in every direction. So let's do a couple more now with a z sound like a buzzing bee on the exhale cool.

Lauri: 33:44

Awesome, how's that?

Emily: 33:45

feeling yeah, you can definitely feel it reverberate down my bass. Nice nice.

Lauri: 33:52

Now let's toss away our harmonicas and we're going to inhale through the mouth, filling up that whole pear-shaped balloon, and then the air is going to help support that Z sound Inhale, inhale.

Emily: 34:29

And as you inhale, again see if you can make it even easier on your body.

Lauri: 34:38

Okay, now let's do one more. We'll do an om sound like in a yoga class and bring in that intention. So to connect, to relate or connect, and imagine that you inhale neutral air molecules. They swirl around inside of you and when they come out they're like vibrations of connection and at the same time, you're allowing those energetic arms to hold me in the vibrations of connection as well. Inhale, so now you're going to speak again about. You can do a networking introduction. You can do a time you lost your voice, or you can do something you're passionate about Inhale, set that intention, be looking for signs of more connection happening in me and align your body, your breath and your energy. So allow yourself to inhale and see my half of the conversation when you're inhaling, and I might pause you this time or remind your body to inhale if it looks like it's regressing to its old fight or flight kind of habits. Any questions? No, let's just give it a whirl.

Emily: 36:09

Awesome, all right, whenever you're ready, okay, awesome, all right, whenever you're ready, okay, um. So a story that I lost my voice. That didn't come to me, but the first time I did public speaking did um. So it was in kindergarten and uh, all this, they we were going to do a thanksgiving play and most of the students were going to get roles that were like gobble, gobble, quack, quack, like just be a little animal on a stage. But then the teacher offered, uh, their narrator role and was like this is going to be a really hard role. You're going to have to say a lot of lines, you're going to have to be very prepared. Who wants to do that? And my arm shot up and she was like great, emily, you can do that. And I just remember that initial feeling of like what the hell did I just do?

Lauri: 37:08

And that's about 60 seconds. Okay, how was that different from the first one? For you?

Emily: 37:21

seconds. Okay, how was that different from the first one for you? Um, I mean, I felt like I was taking my time a little bit more. Um, yeah, I didn't feel as like. I didn't feel as on the spot. I guess I felt a little more comfortable, maybe not comfortable I felt a little more comfortable. Maybe not comfortable, but a little more comfortable.

Emily: 37:36

Um, yeah, yeah, I did notice like okay, yeah, like when you, when you told me to take a breath, it was like okay, yeah, that's when it it did feel like it was kind of like falling off a cliff a little bit. Um, so, that was kind of interesting, yeah, yeah.

Lauri: 37:51

Yeah, and I would love for you to play with this sometime when you're speaking, and it doesn't need to be like the equivalent of the NBA finals. Right, it can be in a conversation with a friend. It can be in sort of a medium, low to medium stakes situation where you set an intention even before you go, possibly. Or if somebody says, hey, can you tell us a story, think okay, connect, relate is a good one for a story to just kind of have in your back pocket and then intend align, invite, bring your body up, get ready to breathe those deeper, more nourishing breaths.

Lauri: 38:36

Part of what's happening that I didn't say before is inspire is my favorite word in the English language because when we inspire air, we tend to get inspired with thoughts. That's cool when somebody asks you can you tell us a story? Up until this point and I was even I don't know whether or not I'll keep this in the episode or not um, probably a little bit of it like when you were having trouble thinking of which direction do you want to go, right, your body was very frozen and breathing just shallow breaths, enough to keep you alive, which is a little different than inspiring more air. So if there's a moment that comes up sometime soon, where you feel like you can't think, drop your jaw and inhale and see what happens For many, many, many thousands, thousands of people.

Emily: 39:34

When they learn to inhale, something comes to them, something that they can say next, and then they get more and more and more comfortable with those pauses interesting that's yeah, because usually now my my go-to for inspiration is like get up and walk around, but that's not like possible on a podcast or on a stage or in front of a camera.

Lauri: 39:59

Yeah, yeah, and getting up and walking around is probably um, it's intuitive, it's grounding you and it's probably getting the breath moving. For you. It's like if you're in fight, flight or freeze and you get up and you walk, you come out of the freeze. So that's a great thing to have. If you also notice your breath while you're doing it. Doing that, then you may be able to sit on a podcast where you can't just get up and walk around and have your body know when you, when you inhale, it's the same thing that you're giving to yourself ground and inspire air. It's the same thing that you're giving to yourself.

Emily: 40:34

Ground and inspire air. I love more tools. Very happy to have more tools.

Lauri: 40:46

And I may ask you Emily is planning to come back for one of our more story-driven so we can hear a lot more about her and what her journey has been with her voice. And I may ask you, when you come back, how did this kind of life, work of playing with intend, align, invite, go, and what kind of difference did it create for how speaking feels to you and what your impact is when you speak?

Emily: 41:08

I'm excited. Yeah, I'm supposed to make a bunch more content in the next couple weeks, so lots of time to practice wonderful, wonderful.

Lauri: 41:17

And what's the biggest aha or learning or experience that you're taking away today?

Emily: 41:25

um, yeah, I think it's like that, reframing the sort of how I can relate to the audience and that audience being a camera as well, potentially thinking of it more as like this energetic conversation or basically just a conversation, rather than like a performance where I must entertain and do all the work and do all the things. If it feels a little more like an exchange, like that already like makes me feel a little more comfortable in terms of yeah, yeah, not having to be this like performative thing. That makes me feel a little like ah, this isn't me. Why can't I just be me?

Lauri: 42:09

Yeah, yeah, and you said you felt less on the spot the second time and it feels like that's like. That's the key for you right now is remember it's a conversation. Yeah, your creative self, and you felt less on the spot, even though there's a camera on you. You're on a podcast.

Emily: 42:43

That's the kind of shift that starts to happen, and then it grows and amplifies from there. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to see how the breath work can do. I might even try experimenting that with while I'm writing to see if, like, I can just breathe my way into a thought. Yeah, yeah.

Lauri: 42:58

Yeah, that's fun, cause our voices, our voice is connected, so our speaking voice and our writing voice, when one starts to grow, there can be this amazing creative ripple into the other one, and if you're breathing as you're writing, you're even making that more intentional.

Emily: 43:14

Right, yeah, yeah, cause it's hard, to hard to write when you're anxious. So I yeah, similar, similar, everything's, everything's connected.

Lauri: 43:24

Thank you so much for being here and doing this, emily. It's incredibly courageous of you. Speaking is a vulnerable thing to do and a courageous thing to do, so thank you for being here, thank you for being willing to play, and I look forward to having you back in a couple weeks Awesome, thank you so much.

Emily: 43:44

This was already very, very helpful and I really appreciate it. You're welcome.