Understanding & Controlling Stuttering (Book)

This book explains the underlying causes of stuttering blocks in a comprehensive new way that makes practical sense. It provides detailed exercises to stop stuttering blocks and to promote easier speech while keeping your own natural voice.

If you are frustrated and puzzled about stuttering blocks, here is a book, written in clear, every-day language, that fits together the pieces of the stuttering puzzle more completely than ever before. The key to its approach is the Valsalva Hypothesis – which describes the psychological, neurological, and physiological factors that interfere with a person’s natural speaking ability when triggered by the brain’s amygdala. It explains how these factors cause stuttering blocks by suppressing phonation of a word’s main vowel sound and replacing it with an impulse to exert force on the preceding consonant or glottal stop by means of a Valsalva maneuver. The blocks are then reinforced and perpetuated through a “Valsalva-Stuttering Cycle.”

This Ultimate Expanded Fourth Edition sheds new light on virtually every aspect of stuttering – its causes, its variability, its paradoxes, its many forms of treatment, and the importance of accepting stuttering rather than trying to be “fluent.” Finally, it provides detailed instructions for exercises that were developed through actual clinical experience and experimentation involving more than 200 participants in Valsalva Stuttering Therapy from all over the world.

This Fourth edition is based on an enhanced Valsalva Hypothesis that is more comprehensive than in previous editions. It features new and improved exercises and strategies designed to relax the body’s Valsalva mechanism, promote vowel phonation, dissolve stuttering blocks, and improve attitudes about speech, thereby allowing you to speak in an easier, less effortful, and natural-sounding way