Free From Stutter Success Stories is a series of interviews
with people who reached freedom from stuttering or are on their way there.
Freedom from stuttering it's when stuttering is not holding you back in your life.
It can be either achieving fluency, a real progress on that path
or it can be reaching your goals and making a difference despite stuttering.
So we're going to press for specifics how are they doing that,
what can we learn from them and what can we apply in our life?
Today we'll talk with Steve Clarkson.
He hasn't written any books on stuttering, but
he has a great resource called stutterfreesteve
packed with information about breathing, meditation, visualization,
and how they can help with stuttering.
Ok, today we're having Steve Clarkson.
Hello, Steve!
Steve is very active again in the Facebook groups about stuttering.
And I went to your website stutterfreesteve.weebly.com, and I really loved that.
Recently, I had couple interviews, and it happened so
that these people wrote some books about stuttering.
And your website why I love it because maybe I don't have enough patience to read the whole
book, to go in every detail.
Your website is pretty concise but at the same time pretty jam-packed with information,
but I still have many questions.
I still have many questions, so the first question actually you write that at the age
of 40 you decided to fix this thing, right?
Why it happened at 40, why not before?
I can suggest that you had a mild stuttering or something like that.
I was always fairly good around friends and family.
I was reasonably fluent.
I had blocks where I got on the telephone or dealing with customers or suppliers.
And the reason that I really got into curing it at the age of 40 was a career change, a
mid-life crisis that's what you might call it, but I was forced to look for another source
of employment.
I have been self-employed after that time producing accessories for furnituring, coffee
tables, lamps, that sort of things and the market fell out because they opened up New
Zealand to imports.
I used to let the products do the talking for me.
You produce something, and then you go out and sell it, the merits of the product would
sell it.
But as that fell apart I was having to
I went into sales which was something for a personal status, and it was pretty critical
to begin with.
One thing I've always realized was that I was reasonably fluent when I was relaxed.
It was when I got tense that I start to stutter and everything that I've learned since has
backed that up, that it's the arousal of our nervous system that is the problem.
Yeah, so.
Okay, but I still want to
Sorry for keep digging for this but a bit of a personal story.
When you started to stutter, what was the development of that thing before 40 years?
Well, since as long as I can remember presumably I stuttered at the age of 3 or 4 like most
people or earlier.
I've never really got to the bottom of its appearance.
It was something I guess, a lot of people who stutter, it's the elephant in the room,
and it's sort of ignored.
Then you get older, you know, and you talk about it.
Presumably, my parents have been told from an early age that there's no cure and all this sort of carrion.
Yeah, it just wasn't talked about.
Okay.
How did it fit into because the major struggle usually is about work and career, how did
it fit into your job and how much did you have to speak?
Or you became self-employed at an early stage?
Sorry if I missed that.
Yeah, you know, early on yes, I worked for other people who were generally the small
businesses.
They were possibly more sympathetic.
So, and as I say I wasn't completely disfluent, I could hold a conversation but it was just
telephones and the usual I think that hits everybody, we have to say something specific.
I got pretty good at avoidance, dodging words, skipping around words, substitution, whereas
when you have to say something specific like your name and address or your telephone number
or a specific set of dimensions or something like that, then that always used to cause
a problem, yes.
Got it, got it.
Usually in that case probably can you say about yourself that you were covert stutterer
or that's not the right...
No, it was a combination of struggle behaviors and avoidance.
I used whatever employ I could.
Okay, got it.
I read on your website and you know to me again that's my perspective how I see it,
how I feel it.
It's like you felt like in a certain situations you're fine, you're fluent, in certain situations
you're not, so you came to a conclusion that it's mostly about how you feel and it would
be great to feel the same way like same confidence, same being relaxed in all situations, right?
So you kind of tried to transform and tried to somehow make that relaxed and confident
state happen in every situation, right?
So that was kind of the idea if we put it in simple words.
At that particular time, I didn't know what I know now.
I've learned what I know now by attempting and researching and attempting to understand
why I feel the end of fluency.
At that time, I just knew that if I could learn where it derives more then hopefully,
I'll be more fluent.
Sadly it didn't happen overnight, it took time, but I happened to pick up a little book
on relaxation written by a psychologist and a therapist, not a speech therapist but a
general therapist I guess, but I can't remember.
It came down to breathing; breathing was a great way to relax and using your diaphragm
and the calming breath, yoga type of calming breath was pretty essential in my recovery.
That just I still use the calming breath till today, it's so powerful.
Yeah, so what you said is tummy breathing and visualization were the main ingredients
of my fix with meditation being the act that bound it altogether.
Yeah, but that sounds like you know... we'll talk about the therapy and what you think
about it but that sounds like a dream come true because what I usually think about is
like having some technique which is very different from our usual speaking.
What we think about therapy, right?
And then you try to go with this in your real life and it's very awkward so your idea of
being more relaxed, being more confident seems awesome but as you say it took a long time
and usually people see like before and after...
Can you tell how that transition was happening exactly like how did you see that you're making
progress?
We're all kind of more or less aware about like maybe not all but people mostly are aware
about tummy breathing, it's great.
People usually think how can it really change anything?
You say it was long process, how did you have the patience to really see how you get better?
Because people often wait for some like sign that I'm getting better, so with that tummy
breathing and visualization, how did you see that it's working and that it's helping?
Well, I always believed that if I could be fluent some of the time there was no reason
I couldn't be fluent all the time.
I just couldn't see a reason.
That makes sense for many people because people keep asking me again, I see many people saying
all the same thing, I'm fluent most of the time or in some situations, in some situations
I'm not, so what can I do?
So that's the question.
What happened is that the speech therapy industry has told people that it's a neurological problem
and that's the way it is.
And unfortunately, that has just robbed people of any way of positive thinking.
It's our thoughts that actually make our world.
If you're thinking that it's over, there's no cure, this is it, this is the way it's
going to be; well that's where you end up.
As simple as that.
So you've got to keep hope alive and you've got to keep driving towards it.
And effectively what happened with the breathing that actually lead me to a very simple meditation
on the breath.
And when you meditate, you're very, very focused and then we need to be focused to learn anything
whether it's anything academic or whether it's a physical skill such as a or sport;
you need to be very focused to learn it or else it will take a long time to learn it;
effectively, the meditation helped with that because when I got into
And the problem associated with meditation people think it is some sort of virtual or something,
it isn't that bad, that's a very simple meditation on the breath, it's just about focusing the
brain and getting where all the noise occurs every day.
You think about what you're having for dinner, what he doesn't say, all other things that
happen during the day.
So meditating on the breath you just completely focus your brain.
And I've done that daily.
I did it lying down.
People lie down on the bed so in the evening I was on the bed.
I came to a realization that breath was an essential part of speech.
When I was doing a tummy breathing that gives you a max amount of air to play with.
It also instead of breathing with your upper chest which is that sort of thing which uses
all the muscles right up here and gets you all tight, it takes all the muscular activity
right down at the diaphragm so at least this area is nice and relaxed.
And that's how I started to see things and then I thought when I was very focused and
relaxed like that I started to whisper the same phrases and my mouth worked perfectly.
So I thought, well.
You know, like, my name is Steven Clarkson. My telephone number is.
When you whisper you're using a lot of air because that's how you can make yourself heard.
I just did that as a practice and it builds up the confidence that I could
speak if I was focused on what I was doing.
And the meditation also lead to the visualization.
The visualization is not about visualizing the end goal; it's not about visualizing yourself
standing on the winning dice, it's about visualizing the process that's going to get you there.
The process that was going to get me there was taking in plenty of air with the diaphragm
and having a loose relaxed mouth.
If I could let that air slowly come out with a loose relaxed mouth then things had to work.
I mean it was about discovering natural speech.
Any form of the technique is a form of control.
And essentially stuttering is a form of control.
Yeah.
You're trying to...
It's sort of bad habits learned early.
And possibly you'll see that as I'm talking I have small blocks, I just consider them
as disfluency.
You know, there's no struggle, I'm not interrupting the conversation, you're not getting embarrassed,
I'm not getting embarrassed, I'm not dodging the words.
And stutter if I have little minor blocks hesitation, prolongation that's just natural
speech and people do that.
A brilliant example but I haven't been able to show it on Facebook because a couple of
videos are unable to be loaded, but these are one of the psychiatrists or I say my psychiatrists
one of the ones that I follow is a fellow by the name Jeffrey Schwartz and he gives wonderful speeches
along in the YouTube.
And he's perfectly fluent.
He gave an interview on the Bernstein show.
An American television interviewer.
And on this particular interview, he makes repetitions.
They don't interfere with the interview but that's just obviously his nervous system has
somewhat aroused, he's talking off the cuff and he's quite excited about what he's talking
about so his nervous system is slightly aroused and he's making reputations but it's not
stuttering it's just a disfluency.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Yeah, speech therapists for a while, well, some speech therapists, I shouldn't generalize
but there was certainly some.
They used to sit you down.
They used to count the number of disfluencies you had.
Hey, you've exceeded the score that needs to be exceeded.
It's crazy stuff.
Yeah, I'll have a question about the therapy but I wanted to get back to your belly breathing,
so what in particular did you do or you are doing?
Is it just belly breathing and concentrating on it or just any particular exercise?
I don't use the breathing; I don't use any technique with my speech.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
I understand but you say that you did belly breathing anyways at home, right?
As a practice, so is it just meditation and kind of feeling it, focusing on it, being
there and that's it?
Well, yeah, I totally agree.
I mean that I must say that with the belly breathing and the calming breath I used
to do it anywhere and everywhere.
Particularly in the car driving it's a wonderful endeavor for a road ride.
And anywhere and everywhere.
And I still do it to this day.
I literally practiced belly breathing until it became my normal way of breathing.
If you watch people who stutter and there are quite a few of them on YouTube it gets quite obvious
that they're breathing with their chest and their shoulders, all this thing and gain up
and down.
It takes a lot of energy to breath through the chest.
Whereas when you breathe from the diaphragm a lot less energy is used.
The energy is used in breathing in but the relaxation of the diaphragm just gently pushes
the air out across your vocal cords which is what you want to be happening.
That's half a problem.
When we stutter on a block and carry on we end up breathless.
Got it, yeah, absolutely.
We usually struggle with doing...
Ok, so this is some practice you're doing at home all the time.
But then the moment of speaking comes and usually we kind of switch into a different
state, right?
We forget about everything.
And here probably visualization helped you and is helping.
So what is that...
Because for most people, for me everything goes away, all my previous practices, what
I did just one second before speaking - I forget about everything.
I got into this state, right?
And I feel, oh, yeah, I got there, I stutter, everything is useless, hopeless.
That's it.
And you feel like a loser; there's no hope.
It doesn't make sense to try.
So how this process happened for you.
How you managed to, how you brought this actually into that moment when it happens, that speaking
happens.
When you're at the front of the lunch queue, and you happen to order this baloney sandwich,
remember this?
Small successes build on small successes.
Before I started speaking, I would visualize that process that I needed,
the air, the relaxed mouth.
And I've been practicing this away from the situation.
And what helped me too was I would read small passages to my wife or family out of the newspaper,
just non-challenging situations but really feeling that breath and relaxed mouth, the
lack of tension, the mouth, the vocal apparatus.
And that's, as I understand it, where self-directed neuroplasticity comes in, we can change our brains.
We can create a new pathway in our brain, but it doesn't happen quickly.
The more you practice something, the more you achieve success at it.
Ok, that's important.
So it was not only home practice and then you go into stressful situations.
You practiced with your family, friends, and you write that even colleagues.
Sometimes it's hard to get anyone, for many people it's a struggle to show or to tell
other people that you stutter and that you're doing some exercises or something.
So it's also kind of a challenge to do that, to practice in less stressful situations.
Well, we sort of build up on that.
I mean every time you get into a shop I would have asked something.
That came as a little challenge.
I would visualize what I have to do immediately before going into the shop or as I was waiting
in the queue.
And perhaps I just get the first sentence out fluently and then it all fall apart.
But as I said the first sentence was a win, so you choke up your wins.
Win here, win there, it all adds up.
The thing about the brain I understand too is that it will
always go for the easier, the more familiar way.
It will look for the easier, the more familiar route too.
So you have to build up that new pathway.
Right.
So what you're saying probably means that it's an endless adventure.
You're saying that our brain always tries to choose the easiest way.
And that means we always tend to naturally not being so active, right?
If we have a choice to go and ask and not ask probably why, why bother, right?
So is it like, my question then,
is it like an endless adventure, we always need to push yourself to be active and make
another step, another step, go and create that situation?
Or I just got there, oh I'm fluent, and that's it.
No, no, definitely not.
It was a long process.
And I still have blocks today.
But they are not accompanied by struggle or avoidance.
And who knows, who cares?
I mean I don't know every little... because one of the things about people who stutter
and I think it's fairly well documented is that they are perfectionists.
You know, and we think we have to speak perfectly.
Yeah, agree totally, agree totally.
So for me, every little disfluency I have is a finger in the air to perfectionists.
Right, right.
I totally agree.
And actually, in one of my videos, I actually noticed that the best speakers they do have these repetitions,
maybe not the blocks, but real disfluencies which we would be very concerned about.
And they just don't think about it as a disfluency at all for sure.
So it's very important how we feel about it.
It's a huge thing.
We become acutely sensitive to any little disfluency because immediately it sets the
alarm in our heads, I'm gonna stutter, help!
This is part of the problem.
That perfectionism and the signal as soon as you have that block, as soon as you feel
the tension coming on, you immediately go into the alarm mode.
And that just increases the tension.
If you can recognize it, but don't respond to it, then that's when you're winning.
Then was it a part of your strategy when you were practicing and getting into speaking
situations, was that your approach from the very beginning that I should not take much
attention, not focus much on disfluencies if I have them?
No, it wasn't because I didn't really know what I was doing.
I was going a little blind.
But I was very focused on what I needed to do to be fluent.
You see what the meditation does and the current trend for meditation is they call it mindfulness
which is really, it's meditation, but it's awareness.
It's awareness of your environment.
It's awareness of what's going on at the moment, what's happening around you.
When you meditate and you practice your speech in a very relaxed environment you begin to
become aware of what you need to do to be fluent.
And it's the breath, the relaxed mouth.
That awareness is what you focus on.
Or certainly what I focused on.
The other thing I did to help the relaxation was something called "progressive relaxation
technique" which was something developed by a medical doctor in the States in 1940-s.
And I really think it stems from yoga.
I'm tensing a muscle set in the body as you breathe in and releasing the tension as you
breath out.
And the exercise on that, and that's on my website too, there are links to progressive
relaxation, but you start with your toes by tensing your toes, you move up your legs and
progressively with every breath you tense and release you move all way up - your fingers,
your arms.
And I did this for a while and it was fine, and then I realized that I give the majority
of the focus with this progressive relaxation with the tensing when you breathe in and release
of tension when you breathe out to my mouth and my neck and that area.
So I did that as part of my meditation, and my visualization and progressive relaxation
all rolled into one, you know one good exercise.
And once you get the hang of it you can do the progressive relaxation, the calming breath
as essentially progressive relaxation.
Because you then to the count of three maybe.
One, two, three.
Breathe out to the count of four.
The idea is that the outgoing breath is slightly longer that the ingoing breath.
You can feel that relaxation as you breath out.
And when you're feeling that relaxation you feel as though you sort of conquered the world.
You feel bulletproof.
And this particular thing you can do during speaking, right?
No, No, I don't do it during speaking.
That's the whole thing.
Trying to put any technique into speaking is moving to failure.
Your speech is something we do without even thinking about it.
We're thinking about the words, we're thinking about what we're saying but trying to control
your mouth or trying to control your vocal apparatus is to my way of thinking moving
to failure.
That's what stuttering is - trying to control your mouth.
I know people don't think that way but that's how I see it.
You know as a small child...
Well, no, let's put it in a simple way.
You get a block and the natural instinct is to try and push through it.
As it is when you come to a glass door.
You try and push it even though that "push" is written on the other side of the glass
you still try and push on this side.
I mean it's a human instinct to try and push.
And therefore for a moment whenever we experience these disfluencies, and it was somehow brought
to our attention when that wasn't desirable we try to push through them.
And it's that pushing that produces the struggle.
And then as you get a bit older and smarter produces the avoidance and the covert behaviors.
And as the affair comes back to recognizing the disfluency, but not responding to it.
Ok, so that's the question, that's a big question.
Again, what you're saying you're not using any of that... but you know the belly breathing
and again the meditation focusing on being present why that's not something that can
be used during speaking?
Well, it is.
Hopefully, it is.
Because I've trained myself with the belly breathing away from speaking situations.
Right.
So that hopefully, and I do believe it's become my natural way of breathing.
Right.
So anyways my perception of that you do something in the classroom, at home and then you nail
it, and then you anyway try to bring it into your real life.
So you say you learned to relax, to be present and then you try to bring that in real life.
It just happens.
Because your whole way of thinking changes.
And when your way of thinking changes your behavior changes.
How we think creates our world.
If you think you're gonna fail you'll fail.
Put it this way.
It's a bit like walking along a wooden beam.
It's only a foot off the ground.
The majority of us can do it quite happily.
Walking on a wooden beam you know one foot off the ground.
You put it at six foot off the ground the majority of us would fall off because we think
oh, hang on, we couldn't do it.
People that can they believe they can.
They do it.
Yeah, and probably part of that yeah belief and for me, the best way to believe is actually
do it.
Because when you've done it once and oh, I didn't fall, twice and when you do it.
So by doing it's the best way.
By doing and small steps.
You might only get your first sentence out.
But it's a win.
You say I can do it.
So I must be able to do the second sentence fluently as well.
Rather than thinking oh, I stuttered on... maybe I can't get this right, ba-ba-ba.
You know you've got to have that attitude that if I can do it once, I can do it again.
And again, and again.
Ok, got it.
That's something I really love.
Let's talk about the therapy.
So you said that therapy... you actually did take some and it didn't work and you feel
like it's same as stuttering, it's replacing one as you say set of reactions into other
set of substitution of that.
So you didn't like therapy.
I did something called "smooth speech."
Smooth speech!
The majority of these or a lot of the therapists used to have you talking funny.
Now, this is where it comes back to the brain.
The brain really doesn't like the unfamiliar.
It doesn't like something that makes you feel awkward.
It became comfortable with our stutter.
So the brain just naturally reverts back to stuttering because it doesn't like talking
funny, it doesn't like something that's awkward and unfamiliar.
The familiar thing is stuttering.
So it sticks with stuttering.
I guess an interesting parallel is the tyranny of the mother tongue which you as, you're
being presumably bilingual will understand that when you're learning another language
and having to speak and use it there's always your mother tongue at the back of your mind,
you revert to it until you get really good at the second language.
The mother tongue is always there waiting to leap in.
And that's how I sort of see stuttering.
As that it's always in the back waiting to leap in.
But you know you push it away.
And that tyranny of the mother tongue is overcome by intense focus, by being very focused.
Apparently, the American Navy SEAls that do undercover operations they when they need
to go to another country and be accepted as a local and they have to learn another language
they've developed this sensory deprivation tank.
I think that's floating, that's completely dark, there's no other sensory input and they
are completely focused on learning how to speak like a local.
And apparently, it works, you know, that complete amount of focus.
And that's what I see as the secret of the meditation.
Now with mindfulness you just become aware of your situation, you become aware of what
is, you accept what is now, what is happening right now.
If you look at it as a meditation rather than mindfulness, the mindfulness if good, don't
get me wrong, but you can use that focused ability, that ability to focus to do other
things, to progress.
That's where sports people use visualization, and they are very focused.
They are totally focused on what they are doing.
They use visualization to perfect their technique or to change their technique.
And it's that focus that actually does it.
Because you've got to change something that is in use all the time.
The psychiatrist will tell you that you can change bad habits by walking away from them,
by diverting, diversion.
And you do that with small children when they are screaming you divert them.
You say, oh here's this toy, or look at that dog.
You divert their attention.
So you can do that with a bad habit, but you can't with speech because you've got to
it's in use all the time.
You cannot in the middle of a conversation say, oh I'm sorry I just have to divert my
attention for a while.
Therefore, it needs even more intense focus if you like and visualization to overcome
that tyranny of the mother tongue if you like which is stuttering.
Ok, but my question is with the smooth speech, that's the technique, did you stutter with
the smooth speech in the classroom or in the sessions you had.
No, because I mean the overall, the goal of most of those therapies is to release air.
It's about releasing air, getting air flow across your vocal cords.
But it's an awkward way of doing it.
And that's why so many people don't continue with the speech therapy.
They can do it fine in the classroom,
and if they go out and they want to sound a little bit like a turkey put into a fate.
But if you're a young lady you don't really want to be talking like somebody out of Star Wars.
Yeah, but my question is that, again maybe I'm oversimplifying things, just tell me,
my idea is that why can't we combine in the therapy smooth speech with tummy breathing,
visualization, how do they contradict to each other because you're saying these are something
that cannot be combined.
Can you explain why?
Because you're trying to control your vocal apparatus.
The vocal apparatus is something that works without any conscious input.
Maybe I don't quite understand that smooth speech.
Any therapy is like you're given some technique and it works in the classroom then you kind
of... and the main idea as far as I understand to give your brain a signal that I can say
something without speech impediments.
So it's giving that feeling that I actually can say without speech impediments and hopefully
when your brain gets certain experiences and it goes to muscle memory you try to get better
and better.
We've already covered that.
People who stutter know that they, or the majority of them, know that they can be fluent
some of the time.
Particularly, when talking to babies and talking to...
Oh, I see.
We know that we can be fluent.
So why the heck we want to use some sort of technique that sounds strange?
Sorry, did you have to use that smooth speech in real life situations?
So was that part of the therapy or was that the message, the idea of the therapy that
you go and use that in real life?
Or the idea is that it should change something in the sessions, in the classroom and then
you'll be better in the real life?
Or you had to use that technique in real life?
No, because I found it uncomfortable.
It wasn't the real me.
I knew I could speak fluently, that was the real me that I wanted.
I wanted my speech to be naturally me.
I don't' want speaking with smooth speech.
That was not something that was attractive.
If it wasn't attractive it wasn't gonna work.
Yeah, sure, it works.
The thing I went for was a four or five days intensive course.
This is part of the problem I see with speech therapy is that a lot of it is being intensive
courses because they are economically viable and what have you.
And again the intensity is the focus, you're really focused for a week.
And yes, you do get reasonably professional data, but at the end of that course, you go
away with no discipline to keep you at it.
And that's the success of the McGuire Programme I believe is the maintaning, they keep you
at it, they keep you going at it.
You know it's just another method of... and believe me I think they are pretty away in
overcoming stuttering.
And everybody has to find the comfortable way of doing it.
But it is about a discipline at keeping at it and not expecting it to be something that
happens overnight.
And the thing with the speech therapies is that they... you pay money for it and under
an intensive course you come away at the end of the week or whatever it is thinking oh,
yeah, this is OK, I'm reasonably fluent, but when many get out to the real world things
all the different, I mean, as I said I've always been reasonably fluent when I felt
comfortable.
It was when I felt uncomfortable when the stuttering happened.
And I think that would be the case for most people.
But speech therapy is something that we probably need.
How do you see the future of speech therapy?
Because what you've done with yourself this is also some sort of a therapy.
You've invented that, you've done it to yourself.
How do you see, how we can, what it should look like in your vision?
Well, I think the future absolutely, and it is beginning to happen to give the industry
credit, is that psychologists and neuroscientists need to become involved, but there lies a
difficulty because and there I say it it's probably the academic world that comes down
through research dollars and who gets the research dollars and psychologists and neuroscientists
have had plenty that keeps them occupied, so they really haven't had to concern themselves
with stuttering.
To be fair, the speech therapists come from a medical background.
And in the last part of the 20th century, the mind-body thing was largely ignored by
the medical profession.
Everything had to have a physical cause if you like.
You know the mind was, didn't want to go there too hard, it's about a journey of our patients,
as soon as you get a patient, you know GP, and its patient enters
the room and you start pointing at all the psychological problems or whatever you start losing money.
I mean most things in life follow the money.
And I firmly believe, and it is happening, it's starting to happen, but I don't think
they're quite common to neuroplasticity.
The self-directed neuroplasticity because I believe it has to be self-directed.
I don't think anybody can cure your stuttering.
It has to be a personal journey, and it has to come from within you.
So what you're saying is that now the therapists oftentimes the speech-language pathologists
they oftentimes have a simplified approach, we need to widen our knowledge for the speech-language
pathology.
Because I remember my daughter had a problem with the sound "r" and some girl came and
she did some exercise and in a matter of one day it was fixed.
So with stuttering, probably that's not the case.
It's not one exercise we can introduce, and it's fixed.
Probably what you're saying is that now oftentimes we have a simplified approach and that causes
a problem.
We need to widen our approach including neuroscience and psychology as you say, right?
Yeah, well, the psychology is the study of behavior.
And essentially we have a behavior problem.
As soon as you mention psychology or psychiatry, people get mad and panic and think, oh I'm
not mad, I'm not...
Alright.
Psychology is literally the study of behavior.
And human beings, we behave badly all the time.
It's human nature to behave badly.
We do lots of things with our body that are about bad behavior.
That's why we end up with sprains and strains and what have you.
So that's another area that's really interesting.
There's a fellow by the name of Moshe Feldenkrais who was a originally, he
was a Jewish Russian I believe or Ukranian or something he got himself out before the
Second World War, and he got himself to France or, I forget the story, but he became a nuclear
physicist and then, the whole story is absolutely fascinating, and he was one of the pioneers
of self-directed neuroplasticity.
Just Google this guy and read his books, the descriptions of them are quite amazing.
He injured himself playing soccer, he was also the first judo black belt in Europe,
and he used the principles of judo which is about using movement efficiently and breathing
efficiently to overcome his injury that he had.
He really screwed up when he got out of France, he walked or made his way overland to Spain
and finally got to England where he was part of the English warriors and entirely brilliant.
He used the principles of judo and efficient movement to overcome the injury that he had.
And he went back to be able to do judo.
He then enters a career as a nuclear physicist and became a body therapist.
Most amazing things he was able to achieve by
again, by focusing, by using slow movement, and again I get to the whispering.
When you're in a meditation state and "my name is Steven Clarkson, and I live at..."
and doing it really slowly so you get the feeling of what your mouth is doing
and how your mouth is working and what it should be doing to be fluent.
It's his principles.
So that's self-directed neuroplasticity.
I believe everyone who has overcome stutter has used some form of self-directed neuroplasticity,
has used the mind to overcome the problem, to beat the problem.
And that's simply what it is - using your mind to overcome the problem, and not allowing
your mind to panic and make the problem worse.
Got it.
That's a really interesting topic.
It a bit contradicts to what I have in my mind so that's why it's so interesting and
it questions all, not all but some of my perceptions.
That's really interesting and yeah, we'll continue that discussion for sure.
But for now, probably the last question I want to ask is what would you say or what
would you do differently with your knowledge know if you were young like nineteen, twenty,
what would you say to yourself in terms of your stuttering and how to deal with it?
Well, one thing that I have learned is that the younger you are the easier it is to create
new pathways in the brain.
Even though it never stops you can do it right at any age, but the younger you are, the less
stored habit memory you have, the better.
But I certainly know psychiatrists, I know psychologists or neuroscientists, but I just
from what I've read, from what I've learned from these people, and there are, these people,
they are on the webpage, I have links to some of the talks and so forth from these people.
And what you learn from them is I believe so applicable to stuttering that it needs
this sort of expertise to get involved and come up with solutions.
That will really help people.
I just don't think a four or five-day intensive course is the solution because people walked away.
And as I've said with the McGuire Programme it's the mentoring and voluntary mentoring
of people who have recovered using the McGuire Programme who mentor and keep the individual's
nose to the grindstone if you like, on sort of beating the stutter.
And they keep mentally focused on the end goal if you like rather than giving up.
Because it is very easy to give up.
You revert back to what is familiar even though it's stuttering.
So I can't really provide a definitive answer on that I'm afraid.
But the general idea is not giving up, right?
What I hear.
Because you say it's hard work, it's a long journey of improvement, it's not one exercise
and quick fix.
But there is a way of probably personal journey of improving, right?
I think that anyone who has a dogma will understand about businesses and habit.
Got it, got it.
Ok, thank you so so much for this interview.
It's really interesting and it questions again many things in my mind, we'll keep that discussion
hopefully.
And I'll give the links to the useful resources you provide.
And yeah, let's stay in touch.
Ok, certainly.
I think what you're doing is fantastic.
I would like to hear a little more about you at some stage, and what is it to get you...
Okay, we can make the reverse interview. That would be great.
Let's just do that one day. We'll talk about it.
So you've got the chat. Thanks, Andrey.
Thank you so much. Bye.
If you got free from stuttering or improved your speaking or just have something to share,
let me know, tell us about your experience, become part of this project.
So do you think it's possible to overcome stuttering?
Is it worth trying? Leave a comment.
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head over to freefromstutter.com blog,
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