The Science of Longevity: A New Approach to Ageing

The fear of public speaking remains one of the most common anxieties in the UK. A 2023 YouGov survey found that 49% of British adults report some form of speech anxiety – more prevalent than fear of heights, spiders, or, famously, death itself. The reasons are deeply rooted. As voice and communication coach Alice Deville explains, being seen and judged in a group carries an ancient weight: “being ostracised as a human in a group is, in primaeval terms, probably the worst thing that could happen to you.” The fear is not irrational. It is ancestral.

What is less well understood is that the sensations we experience as fear (a racing heart, sweating, shaking) are physiologically identical to excitement. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by Harvard Business School’s Alison Wood Brooks found that participants who reframed pre-performance anxiety as excitement consistently outperformed those who attempted to calm down, and were rated as more confident by observers. The arousal is the same – the story we tell our body about it, is what changes. Deville works with this understanding practically: “nerves are excitement – it’s a matter of perspective.”

The habits that most commonly undermine confident speech are, she notes, almost always unconscious. Upspeak (ending statements with a rising inflection) signals uncertainty even when none is intended. Rushing signals anxiety. Filler words erode authority. None of these are personality traits; all of them can be identified and changed. Her recommended starting point is the self-reflective process: filming or recording yourself and watching back with curiosity rather than criticism. “Awareness is the first step,” she says. “Very often we’re just not aware of the things we’re doing.”

From there, the most transformative single habit is learning to pause. Most people are deeply uncomfortable with silence and so fill it – but pausing is what allows both speaker and listener to settle. It needs to be practised not in the moment of performance but well in advance of it, until it becomes instinctive. Alongside this, regular tongue twisters build the muscular flexibility that produces clearer, more expressive speech – the kind that holds attention and avoids the monotone that signals disengagement.

The body, too, is part of the equation. Posture influences not only how we are perceived but how we feel. Closing the body inward (hunching, crossing the arms, making oneself small) produces a measurable shift in internal state as well as external impression. Adjusting to an open, balanced, lengthened posture does the opposite. “When we change our body, we change our mind,” Deville observes. Confidence, in this sense, is not performed from the outside in – it is generated.

The connection between physical appearance and confidence is equally real, and equally underestimated. Aesthetic doctor Dr Maryam McMillan has observed a significant shift in what patients are seeking: less structural alteration; rather, skin that is healthier, glowier, and more energised. The focus has moved from correction to prevention – and at the heart of that conversation is collagen.

The skin’s primary structural protein, collagen, supports not only appearance but skin integrity over time. Its decline begins as early as the mid-twenties and accelerates significantly around perimenopause as oestrogen levels fall – however, an emerging category of regenerative treatments addresses this directly. Polynucleotides (long chains of DNA building blocks, typically sourced from purified salmon or trout DNA, which stimulate collagen production at a cellular level) are a starting point. Sculptra, a poly-L-lactic acid biostimulator, encourages the body’s own collagen type-one production, producing luminosity without altering structure. Lasers, from the gentle Clear + Brilliant to more intensive resurfacing treatments, address pigmentation, rosacea, fine lines and texture – though the latter are best reserved for the winter months to avoid post-treatment sun sensitivity.

None of this replaces what happens at home. McMillan is direct: “sun does more damage to your skin than smoking.” SPF use remains the most impactful daily habit available to anyone. Beyond that, topical peptides represent an increasingly well-evidenced and accessible addition, particularly effective around the eyes. The most sophisticated clinic treatment is built on foundations laid at home.

Confidence, however, does not begin or end with the visible. Sound healer, spiritual hypnotherapist and energy practitioner Charlie Christie works from a different premise: that most of the limits people experience have been outsourced. To other people, to devices, to an external world that is relentlessly noisy. “The more we can get to know ourselves on all our layers,” she says, “the better we know ourselves, we will realise there are no limits.”

Her work (which encompasses sound healing rooted in a Himalayan lineage, spiritual hypnotherapy, theta healing and yoga) is united by a single principle: the mind and body are not separate systems. The soma, from the Greek, is the body as experienced from within. Somatic practice in all its modern forms is simply the ancient recognition that physical awareness is a gateway to emotional and mental processing. Sound, felt before it is understood, is a particularly effective entry point – it creates a physical opening through which deeper work can follow.

In hypnotherapy, Christie uses an indirect approach: rather than directing the client, she follows them. The goal is empowerment of the person’s own healing journey, not the imposition of one. “I want people to leave a different person to the person they walked in as,” she says – but she is equally clear that she cannot do the work for them.

Her most practical observation concerns a quieter epidemic: the degree to which people have handed themselves over to outside opinion. Wellness devices, social media, other people’s frameworks – all of it, over time, can erode the instinct to trust oneself. “Become aware of how you may be outsourcing yourself to something else,” she advises. “When we bring our awareness back to ourselves, our alignment will only become stronger.”

What connects the voice, the skin and the energy body is not a single discipline but a single direction. Confidence (in whatever form it has been lost) is recoverable. It asks for awareness first, tools second, and the willingness to understand that the most confident version of yourself is not a performance. It is simply you, with less in the way.

Drive deeper into the ‘Limitless’ conversation with Alice Deville, Dr Mayam McMillan and Charlie Christie on our Youtube Channel.