The voice is an oft-neglected part of body language.  I mean the tone of voice, its pitch, and everything else you do with it. 

Let’s look at the basics.  Voices need both resonance and presence.  Resonance is the quality of the voice that makes it pleasant to listen to, and it’s created by good breathing and support of the air in the lungs.  In an earlier blog I talked about good ‘belly breathing’; both singers and yoga practitioners know how to breathe this way.  Basically, you take air into your belly, by expanding it, not into your shoulders by lifting them up, which is the way most people breathe.  That actually makes your lung capacity smaller and gives you less resonance.  Instead, take the air in (your belly should expand out) and then tense the diaphragmatic muscles below your rib cage to hold the air.  Let it trickle out as you speak, and you’ll have good resonance.  A good choir director or yoga instructor can give you a more thorough course in proper breathing than is possible in a blog.  If you breathe properly, your voice should stay strong and clear throughout a day of speaking.  If you’re one of those whose voice gets tired, or hoarse, or weak, then you’re not breathing and supporting properly.   

Presence is the opposite quality — it’s the timbre of the voice that allows it to be heard.  Basically, you need to have a little bit of your voice coming from the nasal area.  That creates presence.  Put your fingers on either side of your nose and relax your mouth.  Now, make a noise like a cow.  If you can feel vibration in the nasal passages, that’s presence.  Too much presence and you sound like a dentist’s drill and no one wants to listen to you.  Just the right amount and you will be heard. 

After that, voices need what I call the authoritative arc.  Listen to Martin Luther King, Jr speaking.  His voice rises up in the middle of the sentence, and then comes down toward the end, almost as if he were singing.  That’s authoritative.  Too many people today say everything as if it were a question?  They let their voices rise in pitch at the end of the sentence?  That confuses people?  Because we lose the semantic difference between a question and a statement?  Don’t do it!

After that, you need variety.  Loud and soft, fast and slow, rising and falling in pitch, dramatic pauses — the voice is an amazing instrument for meaning, persuasion, and emotion.  Don’t neglect it.