Mihir Karia © 2002
(February 2002)
www.stuttering-cured.com
www.stammering-cured.com
I attended the 5 day Stammering Cured Course offered by Andrew Bell, starting Nov. 11, 2001, in Kirkcaldy, Scotland.
Of the 20 total course participants, there were 15 males and 5 females. This corresponds with known statistics that suggest that 25% of all people who stutter are female. Of the 20 participants, 5 of us have imperceptible stammers in most situations and 5 suffer from severe stuttering. The rest fall somewhere in between. We ranged in age from the late teens to the mid 40s.
As I look back at those 6 days in Kirkcaldy, the only thing that I'm able to salvage from my experience is that I met some very nice people there. I made a few friends for life. We were all confronting our deepest fears with a single resolve to obtain a cure; our ticket to a fulfilling life.
In my opinion, there really isn't much substance to the course. All course participants were required to stay at the same hotel. The course was conducted in a conference room at the hotel. Instructions began at 9:00 am every morning with the exception of Friday, the last day of the course. On Friday, we started the course at 8:30 am. For all days, the instructions would end by about 6:30 pm. We would get about 30 minutes for lunch around 1:00 pm and a 5 minute break around 3:30 pm.
Ninety percent of our time was spent doing two exercises. The first comprised of opening our mouths wide and straining our vocal cords with an "aaah" sound which Andrew Bell insisted should be loud, deep and "sharp". The second exercise consisted of speaking phrases using, what Andrew Bell called, "Vowel Presses" (link opens in new window). These exercises were done standing in a "U" formation with Andrew Bell at the open end of the "U".
Some of the phrases we spoke were:
"Concentrate on my deep, sharp voice."
"My deep, sharp voice speaks for me."
"I'm imposing my deep sharp voice on you."
"My confident voice speaks for me."
... and other phrases with similar wording.
On Friday, the last day of the course, we had the privilege of making fools of ourselves as we practiced our vowel presses, for about an hour and a half, on unsuspecting shop owners in a local mall.
Andrew Bell also spent a negligible amount of time discussing public speaking, job interviewing techniques and in having us do a few exercises that we did once and only once. I saw no point in doing them.
Our evenings were spent delivering our individual drink orders to the bartender at the Dunnikier House Hotel before dinner. We would all line up at the bar, approach the bar one at a time, take a "spiked" stance (Bell's terminology meaning to stand erect with feet apart about shoulder width) and deliver our drink orders to the bored bar tender in our slow vowel pressed speech while the regular patrons of the bar looked upon us with amused curiosity. This process took about an hour each evening. To us it seemed like eons. We would then go into the dining room for our dinner. Andrew Bell did not dine with us except on the last day of the course.
During our stay at the hotel we were not allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio or read books. We were not even allowed to leave the hotel for any reason. These rules were introduced on Monday morning without any prior notice. Had we known about this in advance, we would have got our foreign exchange, cigarettes, sanitary and other required supplies, as anticipated for the duration of our stay.
Andrew Bell claims that he takes a holistic approach to curing stuttering. Here's what he says on his web site:
"The course is totally unique, as it takes a holistic approach to curing stammering, in dealing with all aspects of fluent speech, whilst instilling High Self Esteem and a High-Success Mental Attitude to bring about confident fluency of speech."
He certainly has a strange way of instilling "high self esteem". According to Bell, we should look down upon others in order to feel superior to them. He believes that he is superior to everyone else and says so, in no uncertain terms, throughout the course. He suggests that we intimidate others with our "deep, sharp and imposing voice" as he does. He refers to other people as OPs which stands for Other People or Other Persons. He says that we should not look up to anyone and that once we go home, after the course, we will immediately notice faults in people we once looked up to and we would then consider them as dirt and pathetic. He even made us take negative affirmations (yes, that's an oxymoron) such as:
"You are absolute scum."
"Go back into the gutter from where you came."
"I am superior to you."
"You are absolutely pathetic."
... and so on and so forth.
I think that these are excellent ways to gain deep-rooted emotional insecurities not high self-esteem. I believe that you cannot respect yourself if you have no respect for others. I also got the distinct impression that, while we were instructed not to look up to anybody, Andrew Bell enjoys basking in the reverence that a couple of participants adorned on him.
As late as Friday evening, Andrew Bell was suggesting that it is natural to have doubts about the course but that during our after dinner social session we would realize our fluency and be amazed at our transformation. Late on Friday evening, just as we were preparing to go order our drinks at the bar, a couple of concerned participants asked Bell if they would be required to speak in vowel presses after the course since Bell had not speeded up our speech significantly as he had promised. Our speech sounded very abnormal indeed. They were wondering what happened to the "normal" speech that he had promised. Bell replied that "normal" was relative and that we would be expected to use vowel presses even after the course.
Soon after that one of the female participants indicated that she had difficulty with "g" sounds. Andrew Bell said that she should use her vowel presses to alleviate the problem. Then, as he usually does when he wants to avoid a difficult question, he said:
"Take this phrase: The gregarious goat jumped over the fence."
and he made the entire class say this using vowel presses. Whatever happened to "normal" speech without having to think about the words as we spoke them? Whatever happened to the promised "cure"?
Hearing Bell's reply infuriated me. I could not let him get away with this so easily and I confronted him in front of the entire class. I told him that I was getting more and more uncomfortable as the day came to an end and I wanted to know if I would be cured. I then asked him how he expected to cure anybody when he himself stammers. Andrew Bell denied that he stutters. He said that "doubling and tripling is normal in speech"; whatever that meant. Additionally, he said that I should wait until after dinner for the grand transformation that would occur in all of us. At that point, I realized that it was futile discussing this with Andrew Bell.
Despite the gravity of the situation some of us couldn't help but be amused by Andrew Bell's view of the world and what we perceived as his insecurities. I've outlined some of the funnier moments here. There were numerous others and I could write a small book if I were to list them all.
Andrew Bell, in his attempts to instill high self-esteem, gave us this example in maintaining composure:
He said that if a chandelier were to fall on his head, he would not get flustered. To demonstrate, he acted out the scenario. He pretended as if something fell on his head. He then calmly looked down at the floor, presumably at the debris, realized what had happened and then looking straight ahead again, in a very calm and collected manner, he said "Ouch!" Then, while still in demonstration mode, he proceeded to continue having a conversation with whomever it was that he had been talking to when the incident occurred.
I could just about maintain a straight face and with great difficulty, I might add. I looked around the room and saw similar reactions on several participants. Several thoughts occurred to me: It is natural to react to circumstances, like a chandelier falling on one's head, with alarm. It is, in fact, this startled reaction that might save your life in the event that the rest of the roof collapses soon after the chandelier gives way. If you jump out of the way and away from the area where the chandelier fell on your head, hopefully, you would avoid getting buried under the roof. Also, given the grave and unpredictable nature of the situation, it is highly unlikely that the person you are interacting with when the incident occurred will calmly resume the conversation as if nothing had happened. The calm manner in which he said "Ouch!" was funny too. One does not say "Ouch!" to merely acknowledge getting hurt and certainly not in a calm manner.
Bell talks about "hold-back" which he defines as a pause before you start speaking. He says that we should take our time in starting a conversation and use as much of a hold-back as we require. Fine and dandy so far. I couldn't agree more. He continued, however, by relating an incident in which he intentionally used a very long hold-back in order to make a salesperson uncomfortable. He said that he had visited a clothing store specializing in men's suits and when the salesperson approached him and asked if he could help him, he stood there with a spiked stance and looked the salesperson in the eye without uttering a word. Bell said that he stood there for at least 30 seconds without saying anything while staring down the salesman. He delighted in saying that the salesman was really flustered.
We joked about this later that evening. Several course participants suggested ways in which they would have handled the situation, had they been in the salesman's shoes. Andrew Bell's hold-back story provided much entertainment and a riotous evening at the bar. Having witnessed Bell's quirky mannerisms, imagining him standing there, not uttering a word, when he was there to buy a suit and the salesman was merely trying to assist him was hilarious to conceive.
One afternoon, during the course, Andrew Bell asked if we knew what NLP is. NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming and it is the science of how the brain codes learning and experience. He said that a lot of what he teaches us is based on NLP principles. Then he made a ridiculous statement: He said that he has been practicing NLP long before the world was introduced to NLP, that he was really the pioneer of NLP and that the recognized fathers of NLP had copied him. I looked for signs of levity but failed to detect any. Andrew Bell was deadly serious! Again, some of us found it difficult to keep a straight face.
Throughout the course, Andrew Bell implies that some divine, inexplicable, supernatural phenomena occurs to provide a cure by saying things like:
"This only happens in Kirkcaldy and with me and I don't know why."
"I'm not a religious person so I don't know why I was given this ability."
"It's not coming to me ..." with fingers of both hands on either side of his temple.
"Ah! I see it now and it is clear what I should do."
Andrew Bell feels the need to impress upon us that he works very hard for us. He attempts to make us feel guilty by saying that he did not celebrate his son's birthday just prior to the course because he needed to concentrate his mind on the course. He also told us that his beloved pet dog was ill and that he could not tend to his pet because of the course. On several occasions he said that he had a migraine and that he was ignoring the pain and discomfort in order to focus on the course.
Bell compares himself to Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. Tony Robbins is a highly paid and very successful motivational speaker in the US. Deepak Chopra imparts spiritual knowledge in the US. He is the author of numerous books, audio and video programs and several television shows on public channels in the US. Andrew Bell seemed to be piqued that his fame and fortune have not spread to the extent that is enjoyed by Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra. He believes that he imparts similar knowledge in his stuttering cure courses. Bell is now in the process of offering motivational courses to corporate clients.
I suspect that if Andrew Bell could retract that fateful Friday evening and replace it with events of his choosing, he would do so in a heartbeat. Bell said that he would honor us with his distinguished presence at the Friday night dinner, which he unfortunately did, and that after dinner we would sit in the lounge and chat until late into the night. This chat in the lounge turned out to be a disaster.
Some of the participants were sitting in far corners of the lounge, unable to deal with their disappointment, while others gathered around Andrew Bell and stuttered their gratefulness. I was furious and upset and when I could not stand the hypocrisy I would intermittently walk over to the bar for a smoke before returning to the lounge. Other participants would also leave the lounge and wander around. On one such occasion, as I sat at the bar puffing my cigarette, one of the course participants came up and stood in front of me without uttering a word. I looked up, mustered a languid smile and said "How you doing?" His lips quivered and he broke into racking sobs. My heart went out to him but I could not utter a single word of consolation. At that instance there was nothing I could have said that would have eased his pain. He stood there for quite a while. Tears streamed down his face in a futile attempt to wash out the anguish and disappointment. I had a huge lump in my throat too. He was one person who deserved to have been cured, had a cure been possible, for he had worked the hardest among all the participants. He had never once broken any of Andrew Bell's rules and had followed all of Bell's instructions faithfully and with uncanny diligence. I later learned that his family had arranged a welcome-home celebration party in anticipation of his cure.
Back in the lounge, the discussion had turned to other stuttering cure courses that some of the participants had attended. One of the female participants, a young girl of about 19 with a severe stutter, was relating her recent experience at Stephen Hill's course. She said that Stephen Hill had told her, at the end of the course, that she was the only person he could not cure. As she stuttered through her testimony, Andrew Bell said that Stephen Hill had been a student of his. As per Bell, Stephen Hill had asked his permission to establish a course of his own and Bell had told him that he could not stop him from doing so. Andrew Bell's expression at that point seemed to say "Tsk, tsk! Go forth and err, my wayward son." He shook his head in avuncular concern as the girl continued to stutter through the rest of her experience at Stephen Hill's course.
As the evening wore on, the entire weeks fatigue descended upon us. Andrew Bell's stammer got worse and the more he attempted to control it, the more pronounced it became. The flock, upon seeing their shepherd stumble, ran amok and their uncontrollable stuttering bore the ultimate testimony to the failure of the course.