links

1. The CONTENT of one’s speech is dependent on the speaker’s knowledge of the subject and the thoughts he/she has are composed with the right words and sentences which depend upon the speaker’s education, cultural and environmental inputs, etc. Persons who stammer have no difficulty in this area since they ‘know’ what to say; the information is not lacking.

2. The MECHANISM for speech involves the lungs (which exhale the air needed to speak – we speak only when we exhale), the vocal cords which produce sound and the tongue, teeth, lips which convert this vocal sound into speech sounds. Persons who stammer are stuck with the habit of operating this speaking machine with the wrong ‘timing’. By ‘timing’ I mean neurological timing. The brain which sends electro-chemical impulses through the nerves for all bodily actions (including speech) becomes confused and sends out erratic (or stuttered) signals to the speech-machine thus upsetting its performance and resulting in stammering. This is the reason why even the severest stammerers don’t stammer while singing. In singing, they know exactly ‘WHEN’ to say each word of the song because they have heard it before and it has been memorized. During conversation in stressful situations, however, mistiming takes place and speech becomes haphazard and stammered. Therefore these wrong habits have to be faded out.

3. The third and probably the most important process that controls speech fluency is the EMOTIONAL STATUS of the speaker. Fear, shame, embarrassment, guilt, anger, frustration, self-pity, and a host of other emotions become attached to the act of speech and play havoc with fluency. It is here where our approach helps the person who stammers come to terms with his problem and realizes the incredible trap he is stuck in. No therapy programme can succeed fully unless the mind behind the mouth also adopts a winner’s attitude. Since this intensive counseling can only be possible in a personal setting, we encourage you to plan and make an appointment for the 3-day intensive therapy sessions conducted by me in Pune.

Your final goal is to be able to talk with anyone, anywhere, without even the thought of either stammering or not-stammering occurring to you. Just like you don’t think about walking when you walk, ‘normal’ speakers (non-stammerers) do not even think of speech fluency or dysfluency when they talk.