Hey Reader,

I've been teaching public speaking and presentation skills for over a decade now, everything from how to research and structure a talk, to the delivery techniques every public speaking guru swears by. I've taught all of it, without question, for years.

And then I met Max.

Max was one of my students, in a class where every few weeks small teams had to stand up and present their work to the group.

He'd done everything right for his turn. His slides were organized, research ship-shape, points clear and succinct, and he'd rehearsed right up until the very last minute.

And when he stood up in front of the class, it all fell apart.

His notes were shaking in his hands so badly I could hear the paper rattling. He shifted from leg to leg. He repeated the same half-sentence over and over, until eventually a teammate had to step in and take over. I watched him trudge back to his seat, completely defeated. It broke my heart.

And it wasn't just Max. It was most of the class. Most of every group that came through my course.

And it wasn't just my students either, it was me too, every time I gave a presentation at a conference.

We were all doing, and teaching, the exact same conventional advice. That's when it hit me: none of it had ever actually worked. Not for them. Not for me. I sat there wondering if I should even keep teaching, if everything I'd given him wasn't making a difference.

So before I impulsively handed in my resignation, I started asking a different question: what had actually helped me feel grounded, outside of presentations?

The answer came quickly. My yoga practice. What if that was the missing piece nobody was teaching alongside conventional presentation skills?

For the rest of that course, Max, his class, and I worked through breathing, grounding, and movement practices, alongside everything he already knew about research and structure. I didn't have a name for it yet. I just knew something was starting to click that hadn't clicked before.

At Max's final presentation, he was still nervous. He forgot a line mid-sentence. And I watched him take two breaths and visibly coach himself back. Someone in the audience murmured, "I think he's crashed, Miss" And Max said, "no, my CPU just needed updating." The room laughed. He then successfully brought his team over the finish line.

That's not the story of someone who stopped being nervous. It's the story of someone who finally knew what to do with his nerves. And it's exactly what I see now in the high-achieving women I coach, who freeze mid-presentation, not because they don't know their material, but because nobody ever taught them what to do with what's happening in their body.

I'm putting something together to help with this.

I'm working on a free PDF report answering the questions I hear most often about presentation and public speaking anxiety. Things like:

Why does my mind go blank mid-sentence?
Why does my heart race before I even start speaking?
What do I do if I freeze mid-presentation?
Is public speaking anxiety just a confidence issue?
Why doesn't exposure alone fix speaking anxiety?

I'd love to make this genuinely useful, so if you've got a question of your own, one from your own speaking experience that you've never quite found a straight answer to, let me know. I'll be reading everything that comes in, and I might include your question, anonymously, in the report.

Steady together

Ellie