If you are an expressive person (aka a hands talker), it’s typical for your hands to flail wildly as you speak. Or at least it feels like that.
For those who gesture without reservation, your hands are where most of your emotions live (don’t confuse this with intensity). When this happens your emotion is not in your voice. It’s in your hands.
Why? Because you are relying on gestures to carry all the emotional energy of the speech. And when you talk with your hands, all that emotion flies out the tips of your fingers. What’s happening is you’re flinging feeling everywhere but your voice.
When you take the hands away, the body redirects that energy into the voice.
So do one of two things (or both):
1. If seated and speaking, sit on your hands. Don’t let your hands free. And feel the difference that makes. I’m being serious. Sit on your hands!
2. If you’re standing, have someone wrap an exercise band or belt around your torso so that your hands and arms can’t move. If you don’t have someone to wrap it around you, put your hands in your pockets. If you don’t have pockets, hold your hands behind your back. Do whatever you need to do to not allow your hands to move.
You should feel the difference immediately. I’ve had people cry when they did this because all that emotion is now coming through their voice. I’ve seen numerous times where a speaker’s torso convulses as if they are pushing their emotion from the deepest parts of themselves up through their mouth.
And don’t free your hands until they are no longer trying to break free from their shackles.
When you do release your hands, your gestures will be more natural. They’ll reinforce the action in your words.
Your voice will start to sound like how you feel and your gestures will be a natural reflection of your speech.
