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From: Peter Reitzes
Date: 22 Oct 2009
Time: 07:20:31 -0500
Remote Name: 165.155.192.86
Kimm, thank your for your question. You write, “I was recently learned that taking a deep breath or pause is not helpful, in general, for stuttering.” My experience has been that pausing and taking deep breaths are two very different things. I teach pausing and if the speaker takes a deep breath, we practice pausing without the deep breath. It is worth noting that people who stutter often “default” to taking deep breaths when learning any speech tool. For example, I have had clients automatically take a deep breath when learning easy onsets, cancellations, etc. When this occurs, we discuss it and work on it. Many speech pathologists believe that pausing is not helpful because speech should be 100% forward moving. I do not buy into that line of thinking because my experience has been that pausing has helped me and many people who stutter face our stuttering. You also write, “From what I understand it [pausing] can produce temporary fluency and become a distraction.” My experience has been that any speech tool can temporarily reduce stuttering – pausing is no different. Like any speech tool, pausing needs to be used, experimented with and discussed many times before its full worth will be discovered. Some people who stutter will choose to use pausing, some will integrate pausing into their speech tool repertoire, others will not, and others will come back to pausing. I have been using and discussing pausing for more than a decade and I am still discovering new ways to use it. Thanks again for writing.