The Art of Great Storytelling in Public Speaking

I can’t write a post about storytelling for public speaking without opening with a little confession of my own.

When I was around 7 or 8, I had a secret love. Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. We were only allowed them once a year at Easter, which, I think even Jesus would agree, is just not often enough.

Every Wednesday after school, Mum and I would do the weekly shop before she dropped me off at ballet. (Yes, I did ballet. Yes, I was terrible. Imagine a small fairy elephant in a pink leotard trying her very best.)

And for some reason, 1992 was the year I began my brief but passionate career as a tiny criminal.

• Storytelling is the most powerful tool in public speaking. Your audience is wired to respond to stories, not facts alone.

• A personal story – especially a funny or nostalgic one – instantly calms nerves. Remembering, not reciting, softens your body and brings you into the present moment.

• Stories create emotional connection. They help your audience see you as human, relatable, and trustworthy.

• Real moments beat polished perfection. Even tiny, ridiculous memories (like my Creme Egg crime spree) can illustrate big ideas with clarity and warmth.

• Your yoga practice supports your speaking. Self-study, breath, and grounding help you share stories with steadiness and ease.

• When you feel safe telling the truth, your audience feels safe hearing it. That’s the magic of storytelling in public speaking.

Storytelling for Public Speaking: The Confession

Storytelling for Public Speaking: What Next?

On a chilly Wednesday afternoon, after trailing Mum through the supermarket aisles, I just…sort of… slipped a Cadbury’s Creme Egg into the pocket of my Paddington Bear duffle coat.

The JOY. The high. The sense of victory as we strolled out – no alarms, no security guards sprinting after me. I ate it in bed that night, in secret, feeling very accomplished. And then I did the same thing every Wednesday.

For almost a year! DREADFUL DAUGHTER!

Around 50 Creme Eggs were quietly pilfered and consumed in the dark. Until one day, as all great criminals eventually do, I got cocky.

This time, I didn’t wait until bedtime. I wanted to show off my treasure to the girls at ballet. I tried to really revel in my illegal success. So after class, in the changing room, I proudly displayed the egg. On the exact day that my mum walked in early.

“Where did that come from?” she inquired, giving me her best Paddington Bear stare (pensive and intense).

I froze. Then pointed at the nearest unsuspecting girl, Vicky, and whispered, “She gave it to me.”

Vicky looked utterly confused. Her mother looked confused. My mother definitely looked confused. I distracted her with another lie: “I saved half for you!” as I handed over the remains of my sticky, melting treasure, much to Mum’s mild disgust.

What replaced it was guilt. Massive, overwhelming, stomach-churning guilt. I was sobbing in bed most nights for weeks after, fully convinced that Mum knew… which meant Dad knew…which meant the supermarket knew… which meant the police surely knew.

I imagined being dragged away from home, separated from my beloved teddies, Arlo (a panda) and Two-Socks (a bear with white paws), and thrown into a Creme-Eggless prison for life. Relief finally came in an unsurprising form:

The supermarket went bust!

Naturally, I assumed it was because of me and my chocolate thievery. (Years later, I learned security was so lax that half the neighbourhood’s youth were pocketing goodies. It wasn’t just me after all. Not so special.) No longer was I looking over my shoulder or sobbing myself to sleep. Nor was I tempted ever to pilfer a Creme Egg again.

This, by the way, is the first time I’ve ever admitted any of this publicly and in writing.

My mum and one of my brothers read these emails, so: Surprise! (And, sorry, Mother Bear, you were an unwitting accomplice). (And brother – I’m 98% sure you’ve done worse, so let’s call it even.)

Stories like this are GOLD for public speaking – especially if you get nervous. Here’s why:

When you’re a nervous speaker, the human mind can feel like a villain in your story – full of stage fright, catastrophising, and imagining every worst possible scenario. But here’s the powerful tool most public speakers overlook: the human mind is wired for stories, not data. When you share a personal story, even a brief story about a stolen Creme Egg, your audience’s attention sharpens instantly. We’re primed to follow main characters, relatable characters, a simple structure, and a clear message. Raw data makes us zone out; the form of a story wakes us up. It’s the most effective way to make complex ideas feel simple, memorable, and emotionally resonant.

Great speakers know this instinctively. One of the most successful books of this century delivered research and data in the form of a story. The most popular TED Talks are full of personal anecdotes because storytelling works. It’s the best way to create an emotional connection while delivering an important message. Even a well-structured story with sensory details (melting chocolate, pink ballet leotards, Paddington Bear coats) gives the human mind something to latch onto. Those vivid descriptions become tiny anchors that help your audience remember your point long after the talk ends.

Here’s something I tell every client and student: your nervous system is your real stage manager. If you’re spiralling into performance anxiety, no amount of clever scripting can save you. But a personal story – especially one you’ve told before and feel comfortable with – is a potent tool for calming your body from the inside out.

Why? Because you’re not reciting. There’s no pressure of a memorized data-packed script relying on perfect recall. You’re remembering. You’re dipping into your own experiences, not abstract concepts. It’s not just your mind that is remembering, but your body is, too. Every time I tell the Creme Egg story, the joy, the elation, the guilt, the remorse, the anxiety, and the relief – it all comes back. I’m much more animated and alive telling these stories than I am simply regurgitating data and opinion.

That shift alone relaxes your breath, softens your shoulders, and improves your body language. You stop trying to “perform” and simply share. That’s when your facial expressions come alive, your eye contact becomes real rather than rehearsed, and your delivery techniques become more natural. A well-told story lowers the stakes for you – and raises the connection for your audience members. They trust you, not just for the vulnerability you’re sharing but because of the authenticity that comes with it.

There’s another reason personal stories are such a powerful story device in public speaking: they make you human in a business world that often asks us to be polished robots. In corporate presentations, business presentations, and even high-pressure panel events, great stories cut through information overload. They give people something to feel, not just something to understand. And when people feel something, you leave a lasting impression.

This doesn’t mean every story needs a huge drama arc. The best stories are often small, real moments that reveal something true about you. A flat tyre on the way to an event. A historical event you misunderstood as a child. An urban legend you believed for far too long. Or, in my case, a sustained chocolate-related crime spree. A business buddy of mine recalled how, during a presentation at a large conference, she opened with an unscripted moment that immediately hooked her audience, made them laugh, and relaxed everyone in the room. The conference location had elevators with a mind of their own. No one could figure out how to use them. She had snapped a photo of herself outside the elevator, looking bewildered, added it as a first slide, and opened with “Don’t tell me I’m the only one in this room who couldn’t figure out how to use the elevators!” garnering an immediate laugh. She’d tapped into a shared experience, and in one sentence had told a story that had everyone connected.

A compelling narrative isn’t less about shock value and more about emotional resonance. It’s about creating a personal connection by telling the right story at the right moment. Professional speakers use this all the time: a simple, relatable human moment that leads gently but clearly into the important points they want to make.

Before your next talk, whether it’s an open mic, a business presentation, a Ted-style talk, or simply a team meeting, ask yourself these two foundational questions:

1. What personal story can help me illustrate the important message I’m trying to share?

2. What simple structure (beginning → middle → end) helps my audience follow along easily?

3. Where do I leave the story hanging, and where do I pick it back up in my presentation? 

Even a short, 90-second personal story can transform the entire speech. Good stories are the most powerful communication tools we have because they don’t just transmit information; they transmit humanness. And that is what people remember.

Yoga teaches svadhyaya, self-study. Not the polished, Instagrammable kind… but the honest, gritty, slightly-uncomfortable, deeply-human kind. When you tell a true story, especially one where you messed up, you’re practicing yoga. You’re meeting yourself without judgment. You’re softening the long-held grip of shame. You’re letting your nervous system learn, even on some small level: “It’s safe to be seen. It’s safe to tell the truth. It’s safe to be human.” And when you feel safe, your audience feels safe, too. That’s the real magic of a story. It regulates, reveals, and reconnects us – to ourselves and to each other. And if that isn’t yoga, I don’t know what is. Let’s take a deeper look:

Here’s the part most people miss: svadhyaya is secretly one of the most effective storytelling techniques you’ll ever learn. When you practice self-study, you’re not just learning about your patterns; you’re discovering your story structure, the arcs you’ve lived through, and your own personal experiences that shape who you are when you stand on a stage.

Public speaking isn’t about polishing yourself into a robotic speaker. It’s about letting yourself be a real person. Yoga teaches us to meet our experiences with curiosity rather than judgment. That curiosity is exactly what turns a personal story into a great story. It helps you recognise the essential elements: what mattered, what changed, and what the moment revealed about you.

Nervous speakers often think the goal is to hide their nerves, but yoga offers a more compassionate strategy: regulate your body so your audience can regulate with you. A story is one of the best examples of this in action. As you tell a personal story, especially one where you’re willing to laugh at yourself, your breath deepens, your shoulders settle, and your voice steadies. You’re more grounded, which helps your audience feel grounded too.

Storytelling public speaking becomes a feedback loop:

• you calm your nervous system,

• which calms theirs,

• in turn this relaxes the room,

• which relaxes you even more.

It becomes a circle of steadiness and presence.

This is the deeper level where yoga and public speaking fully merge. Telling the truth about your own life—even when it’s messy, even when it’s embarrassing—is a form of being seen. For many speakers, the real fear isn’t forgetting words; it’s being witnessed. Observed. Misunderstood. Judged. Yoga teaches us to soften into visibility, to recognise that authenticity is not a liability—it’s the most powerful story we carry.

All those times on the mat:

• placing ourselves into unfamiliar shapes,

• breathing through sensations we’d rather avoid,

• or sitting in stillness while a whole chorus of thoughts rushes in

None of that is just about flexibility or achieving some blissed-out state. It’s rehearsal. It’s practice for meeting ourselves honestly, without flinching. Yoga helps us become comfortable in our own skin, and when that happens, steadiness starts to seep in. Softness follows. We learn that being with ourselves is safe.

One of the first yoga sutras I teach is “Sthira Sukham Āsanam”—the posture is steady and easeful. It’s often interpreted as guidance for physical poses, but its reach is so much wider. The sutra points to a way of being: grounded yet soft, alert yet at ease, expressive without strain. And this is exactly what happens when you share your story from a place of self-understanding.

Svadhyaya—self-study—helps you recognise the shape of your own story, and Sthira Sukham allows you to inhabit that story with steadiness and ease. Not gripping. Not posing. Simply being.

When you speak from that place, a personal story told with openness becomes a bridge between two human beings. It’s one of the most effective stories you can tell because it reminds everyone in the room that perfection is optional. Presence is enough.

Storytelling works because it reveals the thread connecting your personal life, your professional world, and your inner growth. It shows your audience the real person behind the talk—the public speaking coach, the human, the person with a long time of learning under her belt. The more you balance storytelling with your message, the more you become a good storyteller without even trying.

And, just like yoga, the more you practice it, the more natural it becomes.

Suppose you want more confessionals from your favourite breathwork and public speaking coach. In that case, I’m running a Steady Speaker Advent Calendar this month in my Instagram Stories – little daily tools to ease the chaos of Christmas and bring you back to joy, generosity, and being able to exhale through it all. This is my first of several confessionals. Buckle up – it’s about to get WILD.

And if you want to go a little deeper – that’s exactly what the Steady Speaker Circle is for. We’re exploring the same themes there, but with more space for support, grounding, and practice.