How Breath Shapes Communication

You breathe on average 21,600 times a day. That’s around 15 times a minute and 900 times an hour (McCoy, 2011). Because breathing is automatic, it is easy to assume that it must also be simple. However, that is not the case.

The vast majority of clients I’ve worked with don’t breathe effectively while speaking. Breathing for speech is different from breathing at rest. Speaking requires us to coordinate breathing with voice, phrasing, pauses, pitch, volume, and articulation.

                            Breath is a key foundational skill of communication.

When I say that breath use is a foundational skill to most if not all communication skills, this is what I mean:

Breath and the Stress Response

How you breathe can influence how you feel (Psychology Tools, n.d.). When breathing and voicing aren’t well coordinated, other muscles may compensate, contributing to tension, tightness, and fatigue in areas such as the jaw, tongue, throat, neck, chest, and upper body.

          Breath is also closely connected to heart rate and nervous-system arousal.

TRY IT OUT

• Breathe quickly five times while noticing your heart rate and how you feel.
• Then breathe slowly and comfortably five times. Notice what changes.
• Do you feel more activated after the faster breathing and more settled after the slower breathing?

Quick shallow breathing, a fast heart rate and tension can lead to your nervous system being highly activated.  When this happens, the brain prioritizes responding to perceived threats. This can leave fewer cognitive resources available for skills we rely on during communication, including working memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility. These physical changes can make communication feel more effortful, which may increase stress and continue the cycle

Nervous about an interview? That makes sense. It’s a type of assessment and is important to you. Feel nervous about speaking up in meetings? That’s understandable. Effectively speaking spontaneously in front of several people is a skill in itself.

However you feel around a communication situation is valid and based on your own lived experiences. However, your emotions don’t need to dictate how you communicate. You can feel nervous and still have control over communication skills such as pacing, word choice and breath use.

Breath and Rate of Speech

Have you ever tried to keep speaking while you’re out of breath? You probably had to speak faster. Your body and brain’s main focus is to keep you alive. So if you’re running out of oxygen, you’re likely to speak faster.                 

A fast and inconsistent rate of speech is not confident.
It may communicate that you don’t care about the conversation or topic,
 or that you’re nervous or untrustworthy.

A fast rate of speech reduces the clarity and impact of what and how things are said. Your listener may miss pieces of information and also may now feel anxious and believe that they need to rush because you did. 

Increased rate of speech also reduces your ability to enunciate well, leading to dropping sounds, mumbling, sliding words together and mispronouncing words. 

Our communication partners should be able to focus on the overall message, 
not “what was that word?”.    

Breath and the Confidence of Your Voice

The key to being perceived as a confident communicator doesn’t mean you don’t feel nervous or anxious or ‘fill in the blank’. It means despite feeling XYZ emotion, you communicate consistently and intentionally.

A confident speaker is someone who:

• Speaks at a consistent and appropriate pace (about 140-150 Words Per Minute)
• Uses pauses intentionally for impact, thought generation and gives themselves time to plan what they want to say.
• Uses a consistent and appropriate volume for the environment 
• Intentionally use
• Emphasizes key words and ideas to draw attention to important information and enhance understanding.
• Uses a full, resonant voice that carries comfortably without excessive effort.
• Comes across as calm, composed, and present, even when discussing challenging or unfamiliar topics.

All of the above skills and behaviours are necessary to sound confident while speaking. Not surprisingly, all of them are enhanced through supportive breath use.

Breath and Speech Planning

Breath support gives you the opportunity to pause. The power of the pause is significant but underused. A lot of people struggle with sitting in silence. I get it, it can feel uncomfortable. You may worry someone will cut you off. But, the more you breathe, pause and continue speaking, the more familiar this pattern becomes to you and your listeners.       

1. Each breath can create a natural break in your speech, giving both you and your listener time to process what has been said. 
2. Pauses give you more time to organize and plan what to say. This allows you time to generate sentences that are concise, and direct with intentional word choice. 

 
  You already have the knowledge; strategic and frequent pausing helps you communicate it. 

When you use pausing in speech, you come across as         

•  Intentional: You give your thoughts and words space and purpose
• Thoughtful: You take time to organize your ideas and not rush to fill the silence
• Confident and Composed: You’re comfortable in allowing yourself to take up space to consider and communicate your message. 

These qualities can impact how our listener interprets us. They may also increase the likelihood that they communicate in a similar way, which builds trust and connection. 

Pitch, Volume, Stamina and the Breath

Breath control and consistency contribute to our ability to coordinate pitch, volume, and vocal endurance during speech (Casablancas, 2026).

When breath and voice are well coordinated, we have greater flexibility to vary pitch and volume intentionally. Pitch variation keeps listeners engaged, communicates meaning and emotion, and highlights key information. Respiratory control also helps us maintain a sustainable volume throughout an utterance without excessive effort or trailing off at the end of sentences.

Reflect: The way you say the end of your sentence may be how someone remembers you. Does how you communicate align with the impression you want to make?

When breath and voice aren’t well coordinated, you may notice:

• Your volume drops toward the end of sentences
• Your throat becomes tired or tight after talking
• Your voice becomes monotone or loses variation
• Your pitch becomes less predictable or rises when you’re nervous
• Your voice cracks or becomes raspy
• You experience vocal fatigue or difficulty sustaining your voice

These changes can reduce clarity, engagement, and vocal impact

Habits and Myths

Myth: Breathe only through your nose during speech

Breathing through your nose does have benefits such as filtering air and adjusting temperature  and humidity of inhaled air. Also, some sounds specifically require nasal airflow such as the ‘n’ and ‘m’ sounds. However, nasal breathing often engages more muscles and takes more effort and time to get a supportive breath. That is why we also need to optimize on mouth breathing during speech.

Myth: “Good breath support” means simply taking a huge breath

A supportive breath engages and coordinates the necessary mechanics to sustain your voice, manage your phrasing, pause intentionally and communicate without unnecessary effort

Mechanics of Breathing

The Inhale 

A lot of people breathe very short and shallow; their shoulders lift too much and the chest expands excessively, with minimal outward movement of the abdominal area, specifically the diaphragm. 

The diaphragm is the primary muscle of breathing. 

• At rest, the diaphragm sits in a dome-like shape beneath the lungs and ribcage.
• When you inhale, the diaphragm contracts and moves downward, while the lower ribs expand outward. 
• As the diaphragm moves downward, there is a gentle outward movement of the abdomen front, sides and back. 
• This downward movement increases the space inside the chest and creates a change in pressure that allows the lungs to expand and draw air in.
• Air enters through your nose or mouth, travels through your throat and larynx, passes through your open vocal folds, and continues down your trachea (windpipe).
• The trachea then branches into smaller airways called the bronchi, which carry air deeper into the lungs.

TRY IT OUT

1. Put your hand on your abdomen, just above your belly button, below your ribs. 

2. As you inhale you sense:

• Your hand moves out with your abdomen, as your diaphragm moves down and out.
• Your lungs and ribcage expand slightly, with additional help from the intercostals – the muscles between your ribs. 
• Your shoulders elevate slightly

Images retrieved from NIDCD (2011) and Headspace (2022).

The Exhale

A significant amount of people hold their breath while speaking. The thing is, the voice needs supportive breath to effectively be produced.  

Here’s how the exhale works:

a) The diaphragm relaxes and moves back and up under the lungs in a dome-like shape. This along with the recoil of the lungs and chest wall help drive air out of the lungs.

b) The airflow from your lungs travels up to the top of your trachea, below where the vocal folds are located (subglottis), in the larynx (voice box).

c) Air pressure builds (subglottic pressure) and helps push the vocal folds apart and airflow passes between the vocal folds. 

d) The elastic properties of the vocal folds along with aerodynamic forces, contribute to the opening and closing cycle that creates vibration and produces sound* (Ali et al., 2026). 

 *Anatomy, hormones, vocal fold length, weight and tension differences impact the rate of vibration and subsequently change the pitch

• Vocal-fold vibration = the physical movement
• Frequency (Hz) = how many times the vocal folds vibrate per second 
• Pitch = how we perceive that frequency

e) The sound then travels through specific resonating cavities: the throat, mouth and nasal cavity that shape and modify the sound.

f) The way you position your mouth, tongue and lips continues to shape the sound into recognizable speech sounds. 

That wasn’t simple, was it? Breath isn’t simple, and an alarming amount of communicators don’t yet know about the powerful, and equally detrimental impact of the breath.

TRY IT OUT

    1. Put your hand on your abdomen, just above your belly button, below your ribs.
    2. As you exhale you sense:

• Your hand moves inward with your abdomen, as the diagram goes in and up towards your lungs
• Your lungs and ribcage muscles relax as they go back passively to their resting position
• Your shoulders relax 

Spend some time noticing how you use your breath while speaking. Your goal is to understand your own patterns and how they may affect your communication.

TRY IT OUT

Consider the following questions:

•  Where does the movement occur most in your body while you breathe? 
•  How often do you breathe while speaking? 
•  How long are your breaths? 
•  Do you experience physical tension, tightness and/or fatigue during or after speaking? 
• What happens to your breathing when you feel nervous? What about when you feel calm?
• Think of a communicator you admire. How often do they pause and breathe? What do you notice about how they use their breath?

To be confident, successful and impactful communicators, we need to be able to use and sustain our communication skills,  and that starts with the breath. The breath is more than just how you get air into your lungs. It provides a foundation for how we use our voice, pace, pauses, pitch, volume, and other communication skills intentionally and effectively.

A Speech-Language Pathologist is trained to assess and support breath use for communication. If communication is becoming difficult or effortful, let’s start with the thing that physically powers spoken communication: the breath.

• John Casablancas. (2026). How breath control singing improves performance confidence.https://www.jcasablancas.com/how-breath-control-singing-improves-performance-confidence/
• Headspace. (2022, September 27). A neuroscientist explains how breathing impacts the brain [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HojLhKlJto
• McCoy, R. (2011, February 8). The air we breathe. Respiratory Therapy. https://respiratory-therapy.com/public-health/healthcare-policy/environmental-news/the-air-we-breathe/
• Psychology Tools. (n.d.). How breathing affects feelings. Psychology Tools