You want to sound confident, and you can. You don’t have to live with a small, weak voice that fails to express who you really are, but trying to make your voice sound more confident will usually result in fatigue, discomfort, and the sense that you’re not being authentic. What strategies will help you find a strong voice that is sustainable and genuine?

The easiest part involves grounding. When you work with an awareness of having solid ground under you, your body is more likely down onto that secure support. As a result, your voice will tend to drop into your body, feeling and sounding stronger with not increased effort. For some people the result is surprisingly immediate and very noticeable.

The most important component of your strong voice is breathing. Since the human voice is essentially wind instrument, it’s powered by breath. To find more voice, you need to move more breath. It’s a generous outflow of breath that will engage your whole voice. Without that power, you have no alternative but to squeeze sound out of your body. As you may know from experience, that doesn’t feel good or sound good.

The third element of a confident, authoritative voice is resonance. Resonance naturally amplifies the sound of your voice. You need to cultivate sound vibrations throughout your body, especially in your torso. Speaking from your throat and mouth makes your voice sound small, high, and young. Speaking from your whole body makes your voice sound full, deep, and strong.

Kristin Linklater, one of the foremost voice coaches of our time notes that the strength of the voice does not lie in muscular effort. The muscles of the voice are not big and strong. The strength of the voice lies in relaxation, breath and resonance. When you need a strong voice, you need to find your connection to the ground, move more breath, and create more space in your body for sound vibrations.

When you open up and speak with your whole body rather than pushing harder and forcing your voice lower, you unleash a voice that’s clear, rich, full, and very effective. You speak with real power and your listeners will respond. For a complete program to develop your strong voice, go to the products page at voiceandspeech.com and purchase the mp3 program Your Confident Voice.