Does your mouth hurt when you speak in English?

Does your mouth hurt when you speak in English? I remember when I was living in the US and I was working long hours, long shifts at the restaurant or at the bar talking to people. I felt like at the end of the day, everything here was so painful. I felt my jaw so tight, my tongue was heavy, my throat was sore, I felt exhausted, I felt my brain was about to explode. And. And generally I felt like I have put in so much energy just to speak in English. If this is something that you are experiencing, or maybe sometimes experiencing, this episode is for you. But even if you're not experiencing this and you want to learn how you can feel more effortless and casual in English without putting a lot of effort, and then you are going to want to stay and stick around here as well. If you are new to my channel, then please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Hadar. I am, as you probably already understood, I'm a non native speaker of English. Even though I'm very passionate about English, I love English and I. My job here is to help you speak English with clarity, confidence and freedom. I have a lot of free resources for you on my website, hadarshemesh.com totally free. So go check it out and download whatever you need. And you can also find me on Instagram at Hadar Accentsway with daily tips and insights about pronunciation, mindset strategy and fluency. So come say hi. I'll be waiting for you there. Now, let's talk about what to do when your mouth hurts. So again, what does this look like? It looks like, first of all, feeling exhausted after speaking for 10 minutes or one hour. The longer, the more painful it is. You feel like your jaw is really tight. You feel like your tongue is heavy and maybe swollen. Maybe you have cuts and bruises on your tongue. Maybe you feel like your cheeks are hurting. Like after you've been smiling for a long time. Maybe at a family reunion. Hi. Good to see you. Hello. Yes, of course I remember you. What's her name? I don't remember her name. Okay, cheese. Let's all smile for the camera. So you know this feeling. And also I think it has to do with the voice, like, feeling like you are almost running out of voice and vocal power and maybe your voice is a little hoarse at the end. So all of that happens. And I want you to know that it's okay. Right? It's not just you. It's not just you. Because I know that this has been the case for many of my students and as you heard for me personally, thankfully, this does not happen again. And I'll tell you how and what has worked for me. But I think that this is something important to understand and why this happens, and also to understand that this is not what we want when we're so concerned about grammar and vocabulary and definitely pronunciation, when we try so hard to be clear, which is an important part of pronunciation and speaking a second language, but not when you are actually doing the speaking. You don't always want to be so focused on what's happening here. And the reason is because it's going to take up a lot of energy and a lot of effort and ultimately what happens, and let me explain why. What happens is that you're investing a lot more energy than you need to first by focusing on so many different things instead of just like, okay, how do I communicate this thought and allow it to come out and connect with the other person? But also, you know how you use your muscles to articulate the sounds that you're using. The reason why that happens is A dealing with a lot of things. B, inefficient pronunciation. Inefficient pronunciation is that you have a perception around how you are supposed to pronounce a certain sound. Let's say the th, right? You know that you need to stick the tongue out, and you have practiced it in a certain way that required you to put in a lot of effort, right? You're so concentrated on the sound that the. All your facial organs are taking part in the pronunciation of the th theory. Authentic something, right? And then you use more muscles than you should actually use. Because when it comes to the th, all you need to do is stick the tongue out and nothing else. Th. Not your lips, not your cheeks, not your throat. You don't want to grab your throat, you just release air. The tongue just happens to be out there, and you don't also have to push it against the upper teeth, right? So that's just one example of how much you can invest so much more tension than needed. I see that with open vowel sounds like ah. Sometimes people invest a lot of energy into pronouncing the ah sound, where in fact it's just drop your jaw a lot of times. Working on your pronunciation is also making sure that you're only using the necessary muscles and not more, even though the result might be the same in terms of the quality of the sound. Ah. Ah, right. It's the same sound, but a totally different experience when you're practicing and definitely when you're speaking. Now, if you have a lot of these vowels and consonants when you're speaking where you invest a lot more energy than needed. Of course, you're going to feel like your mouth is burning at the end of the conversation. And of course you're going to feel exhausted. And this is why it's really important to make sure that your pronunciation is efficient. Another reason is that maybe you invest and hold a lot of tension in your throat, in your shoulders, in your arms. And tension brings tension. So you want to make sure that everything is loose and you haven't developed an unhealthy habit of holding tension when speaking, because that gets into your voice. It affects your voice, into your pronunciation, and into your overall experience speaking. And the result is that you're going to feel tired and your mouth is going to hurt. Now, as I said, this is something that I experienced when I just moved to the US in the first two years that I was living there. Definitely, you know, the first year a bit more, because I was also more nervous communicating. But this feeling of, like, you know, overusing my muscles was very prevalent in the first couple of years. Then I went to an acting school and actually had speech and pronunciation classes. And that's where I learned how to pronounce all the sounds of English. And I think that that's when I discovered how I was mispronouncing things or had the different perception around how to pronounce sounds. And the feedback I had received really helped me to let go of a lot of tension, a lot of unnecessary tension. Also, I was working on scenes and memorizing monologues. And in a way, I had to work with English a lot. And when I had a lot of tension, it was not serving me, not when it comes to English, but also not in my acting, in my ability to connect to my emotions and to understand how to deliver this text in the most natural, authentic way. So. So I have learned how to pronounce the sounds properly and then lost a lot of the tension that I was holding. But also just the work and the practice on texts has helped me let go of a lot of the tension. Another thing that helped me is that we had vocal classes. And in the vocal classes, we learned literally how to let go of tension, vocal tension and physical tension when speaking. And that also helped me understand how to become a vessel for. For my voice and how the articulation organs are just helping form the sound that comes out of my mouth. And I don't need to overdo it. So these two things, along with a lot of practice and a lot of speaking and a lot of Text work has helped me let go of tension and stress. And when I teach my students, for example, in my new sound program, I take all of that into consideration. So pronunciation is a big part of part of my training. Not just because I think that, you know, you need to know pronunciation or master pronunciation, to sound like a native. No. But to speak efficiently and not to feel like your voice is on fire after speaking for a few minutes. So that is the main thing. And of course, to sound clear and build confidence. And when you know you are confident in your pronunciation, that affects your fluency because you're more confident, you don't get stuck stuck on things. So pronunciation is a big part of it. And this is why it's a big part of my training. So now I have a question for you. Does this happen to you? Do you feel pain when you are speaking in English? Does your mouth hurt? If so, let me know which part of it hurts the most. Is it the cheeks? Is it the tongue? Is it the jaw? That means tension here. Is it just like feeling exhausted after speaking? And maybe you can't point exactly where it is. Maybe it's your voice feeling like your voice is hoarse, like a sore throat, something like that. So I'm very curious to know how that looks like for you. I would love for you to share that in the comments. And also if you want a training that will help you overcome this challenge, I highly recommend for you to get on the wait list for New Sound, because I will teach you how to do that, along with reaching limitless fluency and building the confidence, the freedom and the joy when communicating in English. And I have to tell you that this program and framework has helped over a thousand students transform their English. So if you're interested in that, get on the wait list. Thank you so much for being here. If you haven't subscribed to my YouTube channel, please do that so we can stay connected and come say hi on Instagram. Hadar Accentsway. Have a beautiful, beautiful rest of the day. Take a deep breath, let go of tension, focus on just communicating who you are and what you have to say. And don't think so much about the form. Do it when you practice, not when you are speaking. Thank you so much for being here. I'll catch you next time in the next video. Bye.