You want to really boost your public speaking skills -- but you've hit the ceiling on help available from books, training DVDs, and speech coaches.
Raise your sights by taking an acting class.
Your goal isn't to become a good actor -- or even a so-so one. Your goal is to stretch your idea of who you are and who you can be to an audience.
Great speakers –- Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, MacArthur, and JFK -- had a touch of the actor in them.
In most acting classes, you'll be the fish out of water. That's okay. You have your own big picture strategy.
Take the acting exercises seriously and work at them. You'll have an opportunity to see how other students convey emotion and create mood. Good actors create a strong, emotional connection with the audience. This is exactly what you want to do to become a really effective speaker.
Acting is a journey out of yourself to somewhere else. Think of it as therapy, with an audience.
When your acting class is successful at making you a better speaker, you'll probably never be able to quantify what happened or why.
Your logical brain can only carry you so far. But your whole brain can work wonders when you let it out to play.