Engage Your Audience: The Power of Kinesthetic Narratives with Melinda Lee

Welcome to a speak and flow podcast episode. Dear

listeners, I am thrilled that you're here, I have a story to

tell you what happened the other day, I was walking in my house

barefoot on my soft carpet. And then Ouch, I stepped on

something so sharp, and almost felt like a small piece of

glass. It was so sharp, it sent a signal a stinging feeling into

my feet and up my legs and I fell to the floor because

they're hurt so much. Have you ever felt that when you

accidentally stepped on something and it hurts so much

the stinging sensation that you fill to the floor?

I get to tell you this because I want to share my experience. And

I also want to highlight how we can use the sense of touch in

narratives. So that you can share your personal experiences,

share professional experiences, share experiences that will

resonate with your audience and also bring them in to your

speeches, your presentations and keep them engage. So the reason

why this sense of touch is so important in our narratives is

because it is powerful. And it's also underutilised. Not many

people will use this technique in their stories, but yet it is

so powerful. Think about it. Our skin is one of the biggest

organs, it is the biggest organ, it spans our entire body.

And we use it to get to know the world around us. We use it to

understand the world around us. My bearded dragon is actually my

daughter's bearded dragon. I love this. His name is mu Shu,

just like the beard or the red dragon and Mulan. So we named

him mu Shu, because he's also a red bearded dragon. He's so

cute. I never thought I love a reptile so much. But he's so

cute. And so he will go around and use his tongue sticks his

little tongue out to try to get a sense of the world around him.

If he doesn't know what it is, you're sticking the tongue out

to try to figure it out. Alright, so that's what we do,

as humans will touch something to try to figure something else

out to try to understand. And the three things that we want to

learn that we get to learn is, as soon as we touch something,

the nerve endings send a signal to the brain. And that starts to

question what is the shape? What is the texture? And what is the

temperature? So when you think about that way, you can always

ask yourself, when I'm in the story, what do I want to

describe, I just described the temperature, the temperature,

the texture, or the shape.

And you want to describe Well, first you want to understand

what the purpose of your story and what the story is trying to

do, what is what is the reason for the story so that you can

therefore understand what details to include. And then

from there is the details of matter are important, then you

include the sense of touch. And, and you include you can include

really quickly in a easy simple way, texture, temperature, or

shape, and include the ones that people are familiar with. For

example, I grabbed the sponge. So what texture is a sponge? If

you think about it, ask yourself what is that texture? It's a

little it's rough, it's not. So you could describe when I grab

the rough sponge or a cotton ball, what is the texture of a

cotton ball soft I grabbed the soft sponge or the soft cotton

ball. So, resume are thicker, about different examples of

common feelings, common senses of touch, that people can

immediately get the sense of, they immediately understand when

I stepped on the greedy sand that people immediately can get

that. So describing textures, the hot plate can immediately

get the temperature of that. Or the we talked about texture, we

talked about temperature. And now we talk we can talk about

the shape, right the shape of the hot plate, the round plate.

So those are the three things that our brain wants to

understand. And it's an opportunity for you to describe

using the sense of touch, texture, shape, and also

temperature and then expanding that even more. Think about if

you want to highlight a character or the environment or

an emotion even the sense of touch can elicit even more

Mission. Let's go with character first. I'm thinking about a

beach, a surfer? How can we use a sense of touch to describe a

surfer? As he was walking along the gritty beach, the sand on

the gritty Beach, he used his hand to comb through his long

silky hair. So you can start to see the character and he took

his surfboard and went out to the waves. So you can start to

see the character, we're developing the character using

this sense of touch. What about the sense of touch with emotion?

How can we use the sense of touch to describe emotion? Let's

say I want to describe a warm feeling a warm, loving feeling.

I think about hands I think about when people are holding

hands, the warmth of her hands. When he grabbed her hand, he

felt a sense of warmth and immediately calmed his anxiety

or nerves for the day. Her hand was like a lifeline, the warmth

of her hand.

The sense of touch with connection and emotion. And then

finally, using the sense of touch to describe an

environment. I did that briefly with the with the beach, the

gritty sand the surfer, what about the when you're in a

forest, and you want to describe walking along the soil or the

ground? What does it feel like to walk on soil? Moshe, as I

walked on the mushy soil, if you're running out of ideas on

how to describe what that sense of touch what you're feeling, go

ahead and type it out into Google, Google Chat. UBT will

have lots of ways to describe what you're feeling, the sense

of touch. And then you'll spark ideas, to be able to create a

narrative describe exactly how you're feeling what you're felt,

so that it also elicits the emotion, the visceral feeling

within others. Right, describe it versus saying it. This

describe what you felt using details using visceral words,

kinesthetic words. Mushy CTA, numbing, cold, hot, so we're

going into temperature warm. And if you need some help, I've got

a speaking sprint bootcamp where you can practice how to use

descriptive storytelling, and flushing out ideas, flushing out

ways to to talk about what you're feeling, what you're

smelling, what you're touching, and what you're seeing in the

speaking sprint. So I invite you to join us, but continue to

speak continue to describe your experiences and the details of

it using descriptive storytelling. And that will

bring in a multi sensory effect within people because they will

conjure up different feelings, different visceral sensations,

and keep them engaged. So that therefore it helps solidify your

message. It also brings it back home, they cannot wait and they

cannot stop listening. They cannot help but see things and

hear things and feel things. And so that's super fun. It's so

powerful. And so I encourage you to continue practice. Join me in

the speaking sprints. And until next time, I'll see you on the

other side. I'm your sister in flow. Take care