How to Be Confident in ANY Room with Kathryn Woods
Communicating Confidently: The Foundation
Today we're diving into confident communication. Kathryn Woods—a Communication Trainer and Speaking Coach with over twenty years of experience as a Speech-Language Pathologist—is here today to teach us not only public speaking tips but how to be a better communicator, how to handle a high conflict situation, and how to be confident.
Exploring Narcissism with therapist, Darren Elliott
Kathryn shares her journey from painfully shy child to confident communicator, revealing how our nervous system, posture, and breath affect not only how we sound — but how we feel when we speak.
Listen to the full episode:
In this episode with Kathryn Woods—Founder of Confident Communications—You’ll Learn:
🌿 Why confidence follows courage — not the other way around
🌿 The real reason posture and breath change your brain chemistry
🌿 How to build communication confidence through “baby steps” and body awareness
🌿 The four nervous-system responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) — and how to find calm when you’re stuck in one
🌿 How to reset your body before high-stakes conversations
🌿 Why listening is as vital as speaking — “People aren’t really listening to you until they feel heard.”
The Courage to be Confident
If you’ve ever waited to “feel ready” before speaking up, this conversation will remind you that confidence is built one breath, one posture shift, one brave sentence at a time.
Chapters
00:00 – Welcome & Why Confidence Feels Hard
Ryann introduces the episode and welcomes communication coach and “recovering shy person” Kathryn Woods. They explore why confidence often feels like something we have to earn before taking action — and why that’s actually backward.
02:00 – From Painfully Shy to Purpose-Driven
Kathryn shares her childhood story of being so shy she couldn’t make eye contact — and how small daily challenges, like smiling at three classmates, helped her slowly build confidence and courage.
05:20 – The Path from Speech Pathologist to Speaking Coach
How Kathryn’s professional journey — from speech-language pathology to corporate communication training — taught her the deeper meaning of confidence and connection.
07:30 – Courage Comes Before Confidence
Why waiting to “feel confident” keeps us stuck, and how courage — taking small, messy, brave actions — actually creates confidence.
10:30 – The Nervous System’s Role in Communication
Kathryn breaks down how our bodies communicate with our brains, how posture sends powerful signals, and why “factory default settings” matter for calm, connection, and charisma.
14:40 – Posture, Presence & the Body-Brain Connection
Simple ways to align your body and open your posture to communicate confidence — without faking it.
17:30 – The Overwhelmed Woman’s Nervous System
Ryann asks what happens when we’re depleted, over-giving, or exhausted. Kathryn explains how posture and breath become the most essential forms of self-care.
19:50 – Diaphragm Breathing & The Science of Calm
Kathryn teaches why most of us have forgotten how to breathe properly — and how to return to diaphragmatic breathing to regulate stress, focus, and creativity.
21:30 – Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn (and Why Women Often Fawn)
A deep dive into the four nervous system responses — and how “people-pleasing” is often a form of survival.
25:40 – The One-Minute Breath Reset
A guided practice: Kathryn walks listeners through posture and breath alignment you can do anytime, anywhere — for free.
30:30 – How to Prepare for High-Stakes Conversations
What to do before walking on stage, hitting record, or having a tough talk: posture, breath, and Kathryn’s surprising favorite tool — yawning.
35:00 – Moving the Energy: Dance, Shake, or Walk It Out
Ryann and Kathryn discuss using movement to release stress hormones and shift nervous energy before big moments.
39:00 – Listening as a Superpower
Kathryn shares why regulating your nervous system improves not just speaking, but listening — “People aren’t really listening to you until they feel heard.”
41:45 – Empathy, Understanding & Changing the World Through Communication
How empathy, curiosity, and listening create connection — and why communication might just be the bridge our world needs.
43:30 – Why It Matters: The Power of Purpose in Communication
Kathryn shares her favorite question: “Why does it matter?” — and how asking it helps every message land with clarity and heart.
46:00 – Rapid Fire with Kathryn: What’s Bringing Her Joy
Kathryn shares what she’s reading, what’s bringing her joy, and who’s taught her the most.
48:30 – Closing Reflections: Courage, Calm & Connection
Ryann closes the episode with a reflection on how confidence begins in the body — and how communicating well is an act of self-love that ripples outward.
Up Next: Breaking Free from Cultural Narcissism with Darren Elliott
Resources: The ‘Best Books of All Time’ Curated Booklist for Mindful Moms and Conscious Parents
Full transcript of this conversation with Ryann Watkin and Kathryn Woods, Founder of Confident Communications
Ryann Watkin (00:01.496)
Hi, Kathryn, welcome to the Reasing Wild Hearts podcast.
Kathryn Woods (00:05.535)
Hello Ryan, thank you for having me.
Ryann Watkin (00:08.31)
I'm so excited that you're here and I really want to jump us off with rewinding and going back to that shy woman that you were back some years ago. And you had a sense that you needed to kind of up your game, so to speak, and really become a more confident, let's call it authoritative, I don't know if you would use a different word, communicator.
And I want to hear from you what you were like in that time and also what the light bulb moment of, have to get better at this, where that came in to.
Kathryn Woods (00:46.641)
So, interestingly, this has been a lifelong thing for me. So this wasn't something I started as an adult. This was something that I started as a child. I was a very, very painfully shy child. And when I say I was shy, not only was I afraid to talk to people that I didn't know really, really well, I was afraid to even look at people that I didn't know really, really well.
So I started on this journey. I was an avid reader as a child and I felt very comfortable in that world. So I decided that I was going to start reading these self-help books that I would get at the library. And so at a very young age, I was reading all these self-improvement books, people like Wayne Dyer and all of those back in the day. And
what I realized was I wanted to be able to pull my own strings as the Wayne Dyer book says and I didn't want the shyness, the lack of confidence to control me and limit me and people always think if you're a shy it means you're an introvert but actually I'm an extrovert or at least an ambivert so I think what motivated me
is that in spite of my shyness and the confidence that I lacked at the time, I really wanted to connect with people. I was enough of an extrovert that it bothered me that I had that lack of connection due to the shyness. So without that friction point between being more extroverted but also having the discomfort of being shy, I don't know that I would have ever been motivated to overcome the shyness. So I started reading all of these
self-help books from the library and I would say that the progress for me was slow. It was very gradual. I've never been a rip-off-the-band-aid kind of gal. So for example, I would start by just
Kathryn Woods (03:01.363)
telling myself I'm going to challenge myself. I'm going to look at three people today when I'm in school, just making eye contact with them when I pass. Three people that aren't my friends. All right, well, now I'm going to try to smile with them. That's the next stage. And working my way up to saying hello or starting a conversation at our lockers. So I inched my way towards it.
And I would say by the time I was in high school, about halfway through high school, I was able to really enjoy doing oral presentations in front of the class, which would horrify me years earlier. And I realized I had this passion for helping other people communicate clearly and confidently because of the journey that I had been on myself.
So I ended up becoming a speech pathologist because I thought a lot of that was really going to be about how can I help people communicate effectively. And some of it was, but in the medical world, which is where I ended up, a lot of it was much more medical and related to swallowing, eating, drinking. I don't know if you know that's something that speech pathologists do a lot of. So I was searching for what can I really do?
to tap into this passion and so when I was looking for my next chapter, I had taken some time off of work when my husband and I adopted our son in 2012. And as he was going to kindergarten, I was preparing for this next chapter and I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew that it wasn't going back into speech pathology. So I sort of had my foot half in that door just to...
earn some income for my family for a little while. And then I decided, you know what? There are a lot of people from other countries that live in Atlanta and I have a skill set where I can help people with accent modification if their accent is getting in their way. So I said, all right, I'm going to do this. But it never really resonated with me because I didn't like the implication that there was something wrong with them the way they were. And so I didn't feel comfortable marketing it.
Kathryn Woods (05:24.763)
So it ended up that I went to a seminar and I learned about the idea of corporate communications and business communications and I fell into, I don't really need to focus on one narrow area. I just need to help people build their communication confidence and really at the end of what can we do to help us achieve our best communication performance when it matters the most, when the pressure is on.
And that looks different ways for different people. For some people, it's getting on a stage. For some people, it might be having a conversation with a family member that's really prickly for them. For someone else, it might be a job interview because they're getting back into the job market when their kids are going to school. It could be any variety of things, but how do you build your confidence and build this sense of composure so that you can communicate and connect effectively with other people when it matters to you?
Ryann Watkin (06:24.492)
I love that you brought your story back to childhood. I think there are so many breadcrumbs. If we look back at our childhood during various stages, it sounds like you were a teenager. And what we loved to do then, what we had this passionate wild curiosity about then, oftentimes reflects back to the thing that we're meant to be doing as adults. And so I'm...
obsessed with the idea that you're this teenager reading these Wayne Dyer books, really trying to hype yourself up to simply look people in the eye. That must have felt really scary.
Kathryn Woods (06:58.217)
Yeah.
Kathryn Woods (07:06.029)
It was. It was. And I mean, I was really only 12 or so when the whole thing started. It was a multiple year evolution. But yeah, absolutely. Those little baby steps were scary. And that's why I'm so careful how I define, like, what is a high pressure communication situation for you? Because it's different for different people.
Ryann Watkin (07:31.332)
Yes. So I want to, I want you to teach us, those listening and me, what confidence really entails because we have an idea that confidence comes before the action, that we have to be confident and then do that thing we're meant to do. So teach us why that's likely not true.
Kathryn Woods (08:01.151)
That's such a trap, isn't it? Because if we wait for the confidence, then we aren't doing the things that would actually help us to build the confidence. Because what helps us build confidence is getting out there and doing something, maybe succeeding, some of the times maybe not succeeding, but finding out in the process that the world doesn't stop turning and that we're still here. Nothing tragic happened.
we can pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and start over the next time. And so the courage to act and do something really does precede the confidence almost always. And that goes back to, for me as a little girl, that courage looked like, I'm just going to look at a few people today in the eye.
and make eye contact with them in the hall. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It doesn't have to go from here to here in one step. Sometimes there are baby steps in between. And if you want to take a big giant step, great, go for it. But a lot of us need those intermediary steps to gradually build our confidence bit by bit. And the really important thing here with these baby steps
is to just keep taking them. We have to keep on going. If we're going to do the baby steps, that's great, but we need to keep on upping the challenge to ourselves in order to grow.
Ryann Watkin (09:43.044)
What I'm hearing you say is that it's a process of titration and very small actions at a time. We don't run a marathon by jogging around the block once. We run a marathon by showing up probably for months or years and every day going a little farther, a little farther, a little farther. And so that
thing that you have in your mind, everybody here with us right now, that you really want to do, but you're waiting for the confidence to do it. Remember what Catherine just said is that it's baby steps. It's small steps at a time. It does not make it any less comfortable though, does it Catherine? Like what do we do with that discomfort that we feel when we're stepping outside of our box?
Kathryn Woods (10:36.691)
Well, a great way to learn to manage the discomfort, and this is the other part of confidence and having this positive mindset and setting yourself up to connect with people that nobody tells you is, a lot of times we talk about mindset and things like, I'm gonna tell myself, I've got this, I can do it, and that's great. That's really good, and that's only part of it.
The other part is just like our brain sends messages to the rest of our body, like I've got this, I can do this, I can do this marathon, I can do this extra half mile or whatever today. Also, it's a two-way street. Our body, the rest of our body sends messages right back to our brain, which is the command center. And so...
This is where I get into using a lot of the knowledge I gained as a speech pathologist about the body and the brain and how they work together because after all it shouldn't be shocking there's a body brain connection since your brain is literally a part of your body, it's the command center. So imagine you touch the stove and it's hot. That
finger that you touch it with sends a signal very quickly back to your brain and in a microsecond you move your hand. There's other ways that our bodies send our brains other types of signals too. So imagine that
you're hunched over like this all day at your desk because you're working. So you're over your laptop, you're typing, you're looking down, you're hunched over, your head is forward, your chin is down, your shoulders are rounded, your back is hunched over. And this isn't our fault. We're set up this way by the demands of modern society. We're not doing anything wrong by doing this. But let's face it, assuming we're born,
Kathryn Woods (12:41.749)
healthy, we're lucky enough to be born healthy. We are born with a healthy posture and healthy breathing habits. But then we get to be in kindergarten and they sit at us a desk and they don't let us get up till we retire pretty much. And so over years and years, we start to gradually more and more hunch in on ourselves. So now taking this back to your body sending your brain signals.
So what kind of a signal do you think it would send to your brain when you're hunched over like a turtle all the time? Because you're working.
Ryann Watkin (13:22.063)
I'm tired, I'm like, you know, unfulfilled, maybe I'm bored, I'm small.
Kathryn Woods (13:31.37)
Yeah, okay, that one, all right? So it is definitely a signal of withdrawal and disengagement. So you're literally curled in on yourself. If someone were to look at you, they would see someone who's not open, engaged, warm, confident, composed. They would see someone who's just in their own world.
And so think about what that does to the likelihood that they're going to reach out to connect with you and you're going to make a mutual connection.
They're, and they're not even thinking this consciously most of the time. It's all this subconscious thing. So it's hard to really mediate that and be a different way about it if you're the other party because you're not even conscious of making these judgments. Just like we're not conscious of the signals we're sending out most of the time. So I start with posture.
restoring the default setting. Like think about this like your factory default settings. Let's bring ourselves back to our factory default settings because there's nothing wrong with the way we're built and designed. It's what happens to us over the course of our lives and we sort of become like this. So little kids, their postures generally aligned pretty well until they start looking at iPhones.
and your ear lobes are over the center of your shoulders, your jaw is parallel so you're not looking down, you're not looking up, you're just looking straight out of the world, shoulders are relaxed, they're back but not
Kathryn Woods (15:24.461)
attention, you're not in the military necessarily, but your shoulders are back and they're down away from your ears and they're relaxed and your shoulders are lined up over your hips and if you're standing your hips are lined up over your knees and your knees are lined up over your ankles and your feet and that is a confident open body posture that brings other people in and it also sends a signal to our own brain
that we're open, engaged, and confident. So it's not just the signal we send to others, it's also what are all the parts of my body saying back to my brain? Because my brain is going to respond to that. And other people's brains are going to respond to that subconsciously or consciously. So if we wanna build a sense of confidence, composure, openness, engagement with the world, we have to
embody that. It is not faking it till you make it. A lot of people call this faking it till you make it. It's embodying it so that you become it.
Ryann Watkin (16:33.186)
I'm obsessed that you're bringing up the nervous system right now and the way that our body communicates with our brain. And it's such a crucial thing to explore in our lives. And many times we've talked about this on the show. I love that right now we're doing it in the context of communication because if we don't communicate with others, we don't get anything done in our lives, right? We have to communicate everywhere from
the bedroom to the boardroom to the play dates, right? Depending on what season we're in. And I wonder what are some common nervous system responses when we as women are feeling depleted and overwhelmed and we're over giving. We have little kids or very demanding workplaces or maybe both and
We feel just so almost like a shell of ourselves sometimes, right? And so what is our nervous system doing in that situation specifically when we're just like the only word we can think of is like exhausted, like so tired? What is our nervous system doing in that moment? Are we shutting down? What are we doing?
Kathryn Woods (17:50.837)
you
Kathryn Woods (17:58.002)
So, I mean, this is gonna depend on the moment and this is a big question with a lot to unpack here. So first of all, I am a big believer that we can't pour from an empty cup. So we have to have a basic level of at least minimal self care in order to be able to function the way we were built and designed to function. We aren't doing anyone any good or ourselves.
if we are not having a basic level of self-care and to me the very most basic minimal level of self-care is I need to take care of my posture so that I feel open and engaged with the world because that fuels me and also I need to breathe
Most people don't think enough about how they breathe and we're just breathing in this pattern. it goes back to, so we talked about what happens with our posture over the years when we're sitting at a desk, looking at our iPhone, reading books, writing, you know, back in old school when you actually wrote assignments out, hunching over things. Well then guess what?
we stop breathing from our diaphragm, which is this big sheath of muscle that looks like a dome that's under our rib cage. And this is a big, thick muscle. It was meant to breathe for us every second of our life. But because we're sitting so much hunched over things, it makes it hard for us to activate our diaphragm to breathe properly. So we end up doing a lot of upper body, upper chest breathing. You can either see my collarbone.
and shoulders move and
Kathryn Woods (19:48.33)
This is what happens when it's hard to activate your diaphragm because you're sitting over like this all the time. And what happens, there's a domino effect there. So these muscles, first of all, we're not meant to do the work of breathing every day. They're thinner, smaller muscles. So they get exhausted, they get tense, they get sore. They can be part of why we have sore shoulders, a sore neck, whatever.
and then it really is a compounding effect because then we're trying to do things in a way that's not mechanically sound and we hurt ourselves. So there's this big domino effect that comes with that but the breathing is so important and it's dependent on the posture and the breathing is a very basic form of self-care because if we can again go back to our factory default settings which is diaphragm breathing
Not only is it an efficient way to get our body oxygen, which is extremely critical for all body functions and for how we think in our brain.
Also, when we breathe from our diaphragm, we trigger the part of our nervous system that is the calm part, the rest and digest part. That doesn't mean boring or sleepy. It's also the part where we can get creative because we're in a state of flow, because we're calm. A lot of people think, I need to juice myself up and have the energy drank and be really hyper in order to have flow.
But what that actually does is put us in the part of our nervous system that's called the sympathetic part of our nervous system, which is typically known as fight or flight, but really broadly is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Have you ever heard of the fawn part? Okay, yes. So for those that haven't heard of it, fawning is people pleasing. And I...
Ryann Watkin (21:36.568)
Yes.
Kathryn Woods (21:45.44)
had a friend I did some work with who's a licensed clinical social worker who teaches all about EFT and tapping and her background was as a trauma psychologist in a children's hospital. And she did a lot of work with this tapping, this EFT, her name is Mary Seiss. And she talked about the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So imagine what this looks like in your life and we all can have reactions from any one of these places.
But most of us have one or two that are our go-to. So fight is obviously you're going to stir the pot verbally. You're going to physically start a fight. You're going to make things scritchy for people when you're not happy. Flight is obviously you're just running. It might be the person that walks off the job when there's a challenging client. It might be someone who just physically walks out of the room during an argument. Freeze is just your
You can't think of anything to say. You might think of everything good you wanted to say an hour later, whatever. Fawn is, I'm gonna people please. So think about this in primitive terms. Fight is like you're gonna fight the tiger for your survival. Fleeing is you're gonna run from the tiger. Freeze is you're just gonna sit there and get eaten. And fawn is you're gonna try to convince the tiger not to eat you. And all of this is done for a really good reason.
trying to maintain homeostasis and just get yourself back in a calm place. But what we really need to do is breathe from our diaphragm because that triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, which is essentially at the opposite end of the spectrum from the sympathetic fight or flight part. It's what's known as rest and digest, but it's not about sleep. It's
joy and fun and relaxation being in a state of creative flow. We can't be in a straight state of creative flow when we're in fight or flight because these are two different parts of our brain. And so when we go into fight or flight you have your outer cognitive cortex of your brain with all your higher thinking functions basically all of your best human resources.
Kathryn Woods (24:05.181)
your wisdom, your training, your knowledge, your experience, your preparation, all of your best intentions. And then you have your lizard brain, your amygdala, which is your survival brain. So as soon as our nervous system sends us over into fight or flight, that amygdala, that survival brain is the one in the driver's seat. And it's like the higher cognitive cortex, all the things you've done, all your best intentions, all your preparation.
rehearsing what you wanted to say to the person in the difficult conversation. All of that part of your brain is sitting in the back of the car behind a glass partition going, hello, hello, let me in, let me in, but can't quite get through.
Ryann Watkin (24:50.277)
Wow, so I toggle between all of those nervous system responses depending on the given day. I was cracking up when you said talking the tiger into not eating you because that's, I'm like, let's like negotiate. Like, listen tiger, do you see that over there? That might be a little bit better. And I feel like so oftentimes the people pleasing one really hits home for us women because we're trying to do all the things for all the people and
just every single thing. And so I'm so glad you brought that up. Your presence just makes me feel calmer. Like when you were talking about breathing and posture, I found myself like sitting up straighter and breathing and doing that, you know, diaphragmatic breath. And yes, do I feel calmer? Absolutely, I do. And I think just the way that you be
in the world and in this interview in particular is a living, walking, breathing example of what you're talking about. And so for those of us listening, how do we use our breath in under a minute to get ourselves in that centered place? We talked about posture. What's one breath that we could do just right now that would show us how
It's powerful and free, none to mention. mean, you talked about self-care being posture and breath. We're out here spending thousands of dollars on red light therapy and salt rooms and this sauna and that thing and this gadget and this schismo and this supplement. And you're saying, hey ladies, just breath and posture, breath and posture will do. So let's talk about right now a breath we could do to center ourselves.
Kathryn Woods (26:20.231)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Kathryn Woods (26:38.485)
you
Kathryn Woods (26:44.681)
Yes, so it doesn't have to be fancy. So if you put one hand just under your collarbone in the center and then the other hand just under your rib cage, I'm going to stand up for a moment, just under your, my rib cage ends right here so I'm going to put my hand here, and then you're going to breathe from the bottom hand. I don't know if you can see me. My top hand is not moving.
And what you want to do is breathe from that bottom hand. sometimes this is easy for people and sometimes it's not. So I want to say a couple things that if this is challenging for you can make it easier.
First of all, as we talked about, posture matters. So you want to line up your posture the way we discussed. If you're standing, start with your feet about hip width or so apart to give you a stable base. All this is about giving you a stable base for your lungs and rib cage. Knees over ankles.
hips over knees, and this is important. A lot of women, we stick out our butts, we tilt our tailbone back out backwards, and you want to not tuck it under too far, but you want to create a level base with your hips and pelvis. Think of that, this is Halloween month. Think of the skeleton that's hanging and how the pelvis is level. It's not tucked, it's not tipped, it's level. That's what's gonna give us a stable base for the rest of our body.
our lungs. then you want to breathe from that bottom hand. forgot shoulders stacked over your hips, gently rolled back without force, not hunched up around your ears, head and neck so that your earlobes are about over the center of your shoulders and level. Not looking up, not looking down.
Kathryn Woods (28:39.463)
and take some nice deep breaths from your diaphragm, from your bottom hand. Now I want to correct a misconception, a deep breath doesn't mean that every breath is big. Deep breath means from deep in your abdomen at your diaphragm. A lot of times I say take a deep breath and people go,
because they're trying to breathe really big. But this is using what's called the accessory muscles of breathing. We talked about a few minutes ago, these are the small muscles that are really only meant to get us extra gulps of air in an emergency or maybe an athletic endeavor. They're not meant to do the work of breathing and they'll get exhausted relatively quickly and they'll exhaust us. It's an inefficient way to get oxygen to your body. So you want to focus on just breathing from your diaphragm. Breathe from that bottom hand.
gently and some breasts can be big and some breasts can be small. If you're having trouble doing this I will tell you the hardest position to do this in is sitting. The easiest is laying on your back.
and in the middle is standing and then walking around is somewhere in between them because you have to kind of it's like walking and chewing gum at the same time you have to build that as a habit first so that it's there for you when you're not thinking about it and that brings me to one of the biggest mistakes people make which is thinking i'm gonna wait till i get stressed or i'm about to be in a situation that makes me feel stressed and then i'm gonna do the breathing
But you mentioned earlier that I have a calm presence. Well, I'm here to tell you, Ryan, that was not always the case. And I still have my moments in full transparency. But because I do this every day all the time, and it's not like I'm breathing for, you know, two hours a day is some separate breathing process. Nobody has time for that. Or unless you're a yogi or a Buddhist monk, but
Kathryn Woods (30:41.863)
I'm doing it all day while I'm doing other things. So if you just do this breathing as part of your routine practice when you don't need it, you start to rewire your whole nervous system. We have something called neuroplasticity and it's basically the pathways in our brain and our body that we use the most are the ones that become most predominant.
So while you're brewing your coffee in the morning, standing there waiting for it to finish, while you're making your kids eggs in the morning, while you're sitting at the traffic light or even just driving in the car, because traffic, mean, you could use some deep breathing there. While you're waiting on hold or waiting for the Zoom meeting to start, there's a million places that you can squeeze it in where you don't really have to be focused on anything else and you can just be, all
I'm going to align my posture.
I'm going to take a few deep breaths for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. It doesn't have to be a fancy breathing technique. Those have their place. But the first thing I would say is get into the habit of doing this every time you have the bandwidth for it. Put little yellow sticky notes up around your house on your bathroom mirror, your computer, your refrigerator, your microwave. You can do it while you're heating something up in the microwave.
have little calendar reminders because a lot of times once you get into the habit it's great but most of us have trouble remembering to do something like this. It's one thing to say I'm gonna walk once a day. That's a relatively simple habit because it's still something to fit in but it's once a day. I'm asking you to breathe this way all the time so that is going to take several times a day even if it's 20, 30, 60 seconds and if you have five minutes
Kathryn Woods (32:43.735)
Great.
Ryann Watkin (32:45.988)
I have a feeling that everybody here, including myself, has a thing in mind of how they need a thing where they need to show up really eloquently, showing authority. You know, maybe it's something that scares them a little like a talk or a work presentation. Maybe it's a hard conversation with a family member.
Or maybe it's just like starting the project that they've been wanting to do or doing the sales pitch and getting the investor for the whatever it might be. Like we all have these different things in our lives that are coming up. So for those of us who have that thing in our mind and I invite everybody listening right now to bring that thing to mind. What is that one thing coming up in the next weeks and months that you really need to show up as your best?
What can we do, Catherine, as we're about to walk on the stage, hit record, call up the relative who we're shaking in our boots about confronting about something, perhaps? What can we do in those moments? I know breathing. I know posture because we've touched on that and we know how to do that now. So what's something else? What do we, what goes through our minds? What do we do with our bodies? Any suggestion?
Kathryn Woods (34:09.557)
So aside from the breathing and posture which are my biggest two suggestions on that, one of the things you can do, and again this is about using your body to send the signals to your brain that you want to send, is believe it or not yawn.
Yawning sends calming signals to your brain that you're safe and it also stretches out your vocal resonating chambers which are your mouth and your throat. literally I mean I'm not talking about a little delicate yawn. I'm talking about really stretching it all out.
And doing that several times, people think that that's going to make them boring or low energy. What it does is it just regulates your nervous system. And then you can show up from this place of your best self where all your resources are, again, because your nervous system is regulated.
Ryann Watkin (35:11.418)
I was not expecting you to say yawn. I have to say. When I first started speaking, this was in 2018, I was taking a coaching course at the same time. And one of the things we did in the coaching course was we did this dance. And so it was almost like a line dance type thing. And so if you got nervous, dance it out. If you were on the verge of doing the Instagram live like,
dance it out. And so at this speaking event, I actually put on a song and had everybody there dance. And it was one of the best speaking events I had done to date. And I thought, huh, maybe there's something to that. There was like a place for me to kind of move this nervous energy. What do you think about moving our bodies?
Kathryn Woods (35:53.267)
Yes.
Yes. So absolutely, because here's the thing, if you already have some stress hormones coming through your body, and by the way, the stress hormones do, we didn't talk about this when we talked about breathing, when we use this kind of breathing pattern, it sends stress signals to our brain, which then releases stress hormones. So, and then sometimes just what we think in our mind.
send stress hormones out. So if you have these stress hormones and some people might call them excitement versus anxiety or nervousness but when we have a lot of these hormones running around in our body we have to do something with them or they just sit there.
So the best way to use up those excess stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol is to move your body. Get up and dance, you know, run. You're probably not going to run a marathon and you don't really want to over-activate your nervous system even more. But doing a little dance can help with that. Absolutely. You're using those stress hormones that are already out in your body without creating more of them, assuming that you're not working too hard with that dance. Just, you know, a little bit of, you know, that can really go a long way to using it up.
So that's why that works. Did that answer your question?
Ryann Watkin (37:14.402)
So, yes, it's so interesting because I never had really considered to move my body. I'm someone who has always lived in my mind. And recently, well, since 2018, a little bit before that, I've realized that there's so much work to be done just in the body, feeling my feet on the ground.
you know, shaking out that nervous energy. And so I think that's going to be a really helpful thing for everyone here because I have a feeling we all have a tendency to live in our minds. I over identified with the word like smart or intelligent or good at school for a really long time. And so that kept my...
Kathryn Woods (37:59.093)
you
Ryann Watkin (38:03.014)
brain just super overactive because I'm like, good responses to using this thing up here to analyze and solve problems. But I forgot about the body piece for a really, really long time. And so that's an invitation to figure out what that looks like for you. Maybe it's not a line dance. Maybe it's not shaking. But what could it be, right?
Kathryn Woods (38:26.929)
yeah just even walking around the room if you're in a room with people you can even just take a couple paces around anything that is something calming that uses up those stress hormones and helps ground you in your body because i like you i identify with being overly intellectualized sometimes too much in my mental space and
That's where breath work has been so revolutionary and transformative for me as it puts me back in my body grounded again. Somewhat in the same way of a lot of people say they get great ideas in the shower or the bathtub. It's a way of grounding your body and getting out of your brain.
Ryann Watkin (39:12.092)
What a simple, right? It's so simple. And I feel like as humans, we really like to overcomplicate things. But it really, what I'm hearing you say is that communication does not have to be complicated. It's as simple as posture, breath, calming our nervous system, listening to our internal cues, and moving. This is all accessible.
every minute of every day. It's not complicated.
Kathryn Woods (39:45.75)
Absolutely, and by the way, one of the other really big bonuses in communication of having a regulated nervous system is not just about enabling us to speak our mind and express ourselves more effectively, it's also about being able to listen effectively because
The stress hormones as we talked about put us in that fight or flight state. Fight or flight state is an internally focused state. It's like in tunnel vision. It's not a state that allows us to connect with other people or listen effectively to them. So the more we can stay in that calm part of our parasympathetic nervous system, the more open and receptive we are to other people, the better we listen and really connect.
And that is where the magic can happen. A lot of people put too much emphasis.
on how they're going to speak out and that's important. Self-expression is important. I don't want to take away from that. And also sometimes listening can do the lion's share of the work for you and then you can come in and make your points when you've really listened to someone else because most of the time people aren't really listening to you until they feel heard.
So it's not about like, I need to have one more instance where I hold myself back and don't shine and don't say my opinion. It's not that at all. It's let me listen first and make someone else feel heard. And then I can accomplish what I want to say with fewer words, most likely and less tension.
Kathryn Woods (41:33.671)
It's about receptivity and once we have listened to people, they are much more receptive to what we want to say. So it's not about self-sacrifice, it's about what is going to work.
Ryann Watkin (41:47.154)
Wow, people aren't really listening to you until they feel heard. That is such a powerful idea. What comes to mind for me is that good leaders also need to know how to follow. So good speakers also need to know how to listen. I love that idea. It's not just a one-sided conversation.
It's taking things from others and internalizing that saying one of my favorite things to say on this podcast is what I'm hearing you say, right? We can use that with our people. Help me understand is also a sentence that one of my recent guests just led with. Help me understand, right? When we can all feel a little more heard and seen and validated.
Kathryn Woods (42:32.319)
Yes.
Ryann Watkin (42:41.287)
We're able to exercise the empathy. We're able to see what it might be like to stand in someone else's shoes because right now we know there are a lot of people in the world with a lot of passionate opinions and beliefs that don't align with our own. And we're not going to get anywhere by standing on the soapbox and just screaming and shouting and screaming and shouting. There has to be some sort of
that something has to give, right? And it starts with us, right? We can become better communicators, better listeners, and I believe that will change the world. So for somebody out there, Catherine, as we start to wrap up, who's thinking, I have a message to share. I want to speak. I want to be heard. I have something important to say. What's one last piece of wisdom you would leave them with?
Kathryn Woods (43:18.997)
Thanks
Kathryn Woods (43:42.78)
say aside from keeping your nervous system regulated, the other thing because a lot of times when we have a message we feel passionate about, we want to get down in all the details. And then sometimes the people we're trying to talk to can't see the forest for the trees. We're giving them too much details without them understanding why it matters. So a friend of mine who's an executive coach taught me this
practice that she does where she asks why does it matter and I have used this over and over again with my private coaching clients and a lot of them are experts and they know so much about their field and they want to tell people everything and then nothing really gets through and so instead of giving all the details and then at the very end we finally figured out why it matters we go through an exercise where we say well why does that matter?
Okay, well, why does that matter? Why does that matter? And when we get to the end of it, and I wish we had time to do this exercise because it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to go through it and have the example, but when you get to the end of it, you see...
Ryann Watkin (44:49.69)
Uh-huh.
Kathryn Woods (44:56.877)
my gosh, this really does matter because this person, and this is an example of a client of mine, this person is doing research that could actually lead to a revolutionary method of decontaminating water at a fraction of the cost and the environmental impact.
But all the stuff that was said before that didn't tell me that. But if you start with that, now people are hooked and they want to hear what you have to say. And now you can get them to listen to the details by asking you questions rather than you starting this monologue where you tell them all the details before they finally get to why it makes a difference. And they're not going to be with you by the time you get to the part where it makes a difference.
Ryann Watkin (45:27.537)
Yes.
Ryann Watkin (45:44.669)
they've already checked out. They've stopped listening.
Kathryn Woods (45:46.291)
Yeah, by the time they understand, by the time you get to where it matters, they've checked out.
Ryann Watkin (45:51.954)
Wow. So it's like peeling back the layers of the onion where I, and I uncovered my sort of mission statement. I believe we can change the world by starting at home in our own minds and hearts. That came from a very similar process. So why does that matter? Why does that matter? Keep asking yourself, why does that matter? Journal it out, get with a friend, have a phone call, know, call up your business bestie and switch parts of
being the listener and the talker because that is such a nugget of gold, Katherine. Where do we find you and follow your work and learn more about how we can work with you?
Kathryn Woods (46:34.207)
Well thank you for asking. My website is confidentcommunications with an S on the end. .net not .com and I'm on LinkedIn as Katherine Woods and I have a new business company page on LinkedIn called Confident Communication with Katherine. I can't remember if my last name is on it or not. In fact I just created it this week and let's see you have my information so you can paste it to the podcast for those who are
not able to write it down right now. And my email, if you have any questions, you can email me. It's Katherine, K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, at ConfidentCommunications.net.
Ryann Watkin (47:16.965)
Amazing. Thank you so much. So as we officially wrap up, I'm going to ask you the three questions I ask everybody at the end of the interview. And the first one is no pressure. The first one is what if anything are you reading?
Kathryn Woods (47:32.457)
reading so many things I hardly know what to tell you first. I am reading a book called Sleep Thinking and I can't even think who the author is and I am in the middle of another book that is Dan it's a Daniel Goleman book I think it's called Social Intelligence.
Ryann Watkin (47:51.975)
Interesting. OK, think one of is he the emotional intelligence guy, Daniel Goleman? OK.
Kathryn Woods (47:56.826)
Yes. So social intelligence is a step beyond that, but he has a number of books out.
Ryann Watkin (48:03.32)
Interesting. Okay, great. We'll have to add those to the list. The next question I have for you is what's bringing you joy today?
Kathryn Woods (48:11.753)
What is bringing me joy today is that it's a little bit sunny outside and I'm going to take a walk after this.
Ryann Watkin (48:18.937)
Amazing. Sometimes it's just the simple things, right? Or most of the time it's just the simple things I found. And then the last question I have for you is who or what has taught you the most?
Kathryn Woods (48:21.992)
It's...
Kathryn Woods (48:32.407)
my gosh, this is such a big question for me as someone who is a reader and has learned so much from so many different sources. I would say in my adult life, the thing I've learned more from than books is my network and being in a positive network of
other women who are, and men, but mostly women, who are excellence driven and growth motivated. Because I'm a very growth motivated lifelong learner so I like to surround myself with other people who are like that and that keeps me on my toes and so it's not one specific thing but it's my network.
Ryann Watkin (49:16.933)
Amazing. Thank you so much. This was a brilliant conversation.
Kathryn Woods (49:21.962)
Thank you so much, Ryan. It was a pleasure.
