People decide about you before you speak.That part is trainable.
I work with entrepreneurs, presenters and professionals who have to represent something — a company, a product, their own expertise. Not to hand you a script, but to make you present enough that you don't need one.
In English, Portuguese and Spanish · sessions online
Twenty years of being watched
Most people who teach presence have studied it. I had to produce it live, on air, in three languages, with no second take — hosting for an audience of millions across Latin America before I was thirty.
None of it was talent. It was rehearsed, corrected and rehearsed again by directors who told me precisely what wasn't landing. That is the part almost nobody outside the industry is ever given, and it is the part I now give to other people.
Interview subjects over those years included Willem Dafoe, Demi Lovato, Joe Jonas and the astronaut Marcos Pontes.
How I got here
I'm Yasmim Manaia — a Brazilian-Portuguese presenter, actress and singer. I started early in entertainment and spent close to twenty years in television, musical theatre and international campaigns, learning things nobody names as skills: presence, emotional awareness, and how to keep listening while you are the one being watched.
The pandemic ended that chapter and made me look properly at what I had actually been trained in. It was never performing. It was the ability to walk into a room and be entirely there — which matters more to a founder pitching an investor, or a specialist finally asked to present their own work, than it ever did on a set.
So I built the Aura Method. I teach communication as human formation rather than technique: not tricks for looking confident, but the presence that makes confidence unnecessary to fake. The people I work with are usually very good at what they do and tired of that not coming across.
“I'm just not a natural in front of people.”
“Neither is anyone on television. They were coached.”
What we actually work on
The Aura Method rests on four things. They're not modules to get through — we return to all four, weighted towards whatever you most need.
Presence
Breath, posture, where your eyes go. How you occupy a room before you have said anything, and what tension quietly does to all of it.
Emotional awareness
Recognising what you're feeling while it's happening rather than afterwards — and knowing which part of it belongs in the room and which doesn't.
Deep listening
Most people rehearse their next sentence instead of listening. Attention is the thing an audience actually feels, and it can be trained like any other muscle.
Sustaining meaning
Communication isn't transmitting information. It's keeping meaning alive across a whole conversation, a whole pitch, a whole room — including the silences.
Training
Three ways in, depending on whether you want to work on yourself, on something specific you have to deliver, or alongside other people. Both private tracks open with a diagnosis session, which is not charged — that is where I find out what is actually in your way, and whether I am the right person to help.
Aura Essence
To find out what is in your way
€750incl. VAT
The diagnosis session is mostly me watching. How you breathe. Where your weight sits when you are asked something you did not expect. What your voice does when the subject gets uncomfortable, and how long you can hold a silence before you start filling it. From that I build the four sessions that follow.
Online works well for this, and that is how it runs most of the time. The same handful of obstacles keep returning across the people I work with, which is why I know the terrain — but which one is yours and what shifts it is different every time.
Aura Eleva
For something you have to deliver
€1.650incl. VAT
For when there is a real thing coming: a keynote, a presentation to the board, an interview for the role above yours. Alongside everything Essence covers, we take your actual material apart session by session — the slides, the opening, the question you are dreading.
This normally happens in a room together, because the work is physical — you have to feel what you are being told, not only understand it. Where that is not practical, or where you live too far away, we work online instead. We film you in the first session and again in the last, so you can see the distance you covered.
Aura Circle
For four to six people, together
€345per person, incl. VAT
A small group of people who all have to stand in front of others. You practise in front of each other, which is uncomfortable for roughly ten minutes and then becomes the most useful room you have been in. Everyone gets the same tools; what each of you does with them is where it gets interesting.
Sign up on your own and I put a group together, or bring a group you already have. Sessions run online, and where the group lives close enough we do one of them in person. You pay once the group is complete, not before.
Paying through your company? The invoice goes out in the company name with VAT stated separately, so it can be booked as professional training. Mention it at the intake call and I will arrange it.
In-company
Everyone who meets your customers is doing brand work, whether anyone has trained them for it or not. The person at reception, your service team on the floor, your specialists at a conference, your founders on stage. They are your brand ambassadors, and almost all of them were hired for something else entirely.
I come to you. We start with a conversation about what is actually happening — the front desk that sounds like a script, the team that goes quiet in front of clients, the pitch that keeps not landing — and I build the programme around that. Everyone works in front of the group, because it is the only way to practise it.
How it works
A free half hour
You tell me what you're working on. I tell you honestly whether I'm the right person for it. No preparation needed and no obligation either way.
Sessions built on what you bring
Before each session I prepare around your material — your pitch, your talk, your situation. We work on it directly rather than through exercises invented for a general audience.
Practice that outlives the sessions
You leave each session with something to rehearse on your own. With Aura Eleva we meet again months later to see what actually held.
What people say
Maybe your name belongs here, telling someone else how far you got.
Your name, and what you do
Questions
Is this public speaking training?
Partly, but it starts earlier than that. Public speaking training usually works on the talk. This works on the person giving it — how you arrive, what your body does under pressure, whether you're actually listening to the room. That transfers to a pitch, a negotiation, a camera or a difficult conversation, not just to a stage.
I'm not nervous, I just want to be better. Is that enough of a reason?
Yes, and it's often the more interesting starting point. A lot of the work is with people who already function well in front of others and want the difference between competent and compelling.
Essence, Eleva or Circle — which one?
Essence if you want to know what is in your way and fix the fundamentals; no particular event required. Eleva if there is a real thing coming that you have to deliver, and you want it worked through with you. Circle if you would rather do it alongside other people, and the price of one-to-one is more than you want to spend. We can settle it on the intake call.
What happens in the diagnosis session?
We talk, and I watch. There is nothing to prepare. By the end of it I know what to build the following sessions around, and you know whether you want to work with me. It is not charged, and if I think someone else would serve you better I will say so and point you to them.
Does online work as well as in person?
For Essence online works well and is how most of it runs. Eleva is normally in person, because that work is physical, with online where distance makes it necessary. Circle runs online, with one session together where the group lives close enough.
Where do sessions take place?
Private sessions are online. With Eleva we also meet in person, at a place we agree or in the meeting room where I work in Amsterdam — we decide together what works best. For in-company work I come to your offices or a venue of your choosing. Travel beyond 25 km of Amsterdam is agreed before we start.
Which language will we work in?
English, Portuguese or Spanish — whichever you'll actually be performing in. If you present in a second language, we work in that one, because presence changes when you're not in your mother tongue.
Can I put this through my company?
Yes. The invoice goes out in your company name with VAT stated separately, so it can be booked as professional training. For employees whose employer is paying, I can add a short alignment call with your manager beforehand and a written summary of goals and progress afterwards — never the content of the sessions themselves.
Start with a conversation
Tell me briefly what you're working on. I'll come back within two working days to arrange a free half hour, so we can find out whether I'm the right person for it.