Rehearsing a talk alone, quietly, at a desk trains you to deliver it alone, quietly, at a desk. It’s necessary, but it isn’t sufficient, because none of the conditions that actually make a talk difficult (an audience, a time limit, an interruption) are present.
The lessons in this course work the same way. Slow breathing rehearsed only when calm may not be available when it’s needed. A pause practised only in silence may disappear the first time someone in the room shifts in their seat. The fix is to rehearse under at least some of the real conditions before the real thing happens.
Do this now. Rehearse your talk, or a section of it, out loud and standing, and ask someone to interrupt you once with a question partway through, a real question, not a scripted one. Notice what happens to your pace and breath in the two sentences after the interruption, since that’s usually where old habits reappear first, even after real practice.
If nobody is available to interrupt you, set a timer for two minutes less than your rehearsed length and force yourself to cut live, on the spot, mid-rehearsal. The panic of realising you’re out of time is a reasonable stand-in for the panic of a real interruption, and it’s worth testing on purpose rather than for the first time live.
