Sunday, March 17, 2013

5 minutes on Stuttering: Is coastal breathing effective?


Patience. I am still not very good at speaking unprepared: I mess up my English at times, and swallow words. It's probably because I spend a lot of resources to come up with a message...

6 comments:

Ora said...

Tom,

Please tell us about your own speech. You've written that you had periods in your earlier life when your stuttering was a real problem for you. But it seems like you're now at a place where you're comfortable with the way you speak. It's clear that you stutter, but you don't seem to be especially bothered by it.

How bad was your speech in the past? How did you arrive at your current comfort level? Has speech therapy helped you? Do you have periods nowadays when your speech is really troublesome? Do you have speech techniques that you're using all the time? Do you have fallback techniques that you can switch on when necessary, to get you through the rough times?

Clive Bixby said...

Thanks Tom,

I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my question!

Some interesting ideas there.

Do you mean that those people who benefit from techniques like costal breathing might have common psychological traits that make them able to achieve psychosocial adaptation?

It would be interesting to see that investigated in a study.

I'd also be interested to see a meta-analysis of studies into costal breathing, prolonged speech, vocal fold management etc to see if success and relapse rates in these different approaches were comparable.

Tom Weidig said...

>> Do you mean that those people who benefit from techniques like costal breathing might have common psychological traits that make them able to achieve psychosocial adaptation?

No I say that costal breathing or any other technique is always effective as it has to be delivered in a social environment where fellow stutterers are present. Their presence help you to see stuttering in perspective and helps changing your attitude towards stuttering permanently.

Anonymous said...

By definition if this were true then the mere meeting of stutterers with other stutterers would lead to immediate results - have you evidenced that? I haven't.

Costal breathing is never used solely in a therapy so why would you single it out for attention. Would you judge a car by it's wheels alone?

Matt said...

Tom,

Do you or anyone else reading this have any information about Anna Deeter and her stuttering "cure". I know it sounds hokey, but some of her videos suggest some compelling ideas. The fact that I can't find anything about her method, other than from herself, is suspect. I have been a moderate stutterer forever and have tried many therapies with no lasting benefit.

Arold said...

Hi, I've tried various breathing exercises as a way to reduce my stuttering problem, but it turned out none of them worked. Do you know one which is proven to be effective regarding dealing with that speech impediment?