Mihir Karia © 2002
(February 2002)
www.stuttering-cured.com
www.stammering-cured.com
Stuttering therapies and fluency shaping techniques seem to discriminate on an individual level. What I mean by this is that while we all stutter, to some degree or the other, what works for one individual might not necessarily work for another. Stutterers are heterogeneous; therefore, a "one size fits all" approach does not work well. We each need to find your own way out of the forest. Breadcrumbs left by experimenting stutterers may not lead you out of the forest. Each of us needs to take charge of our own fluency.
I see three aspects of stuttering: physiological, neurological and emotional. In order to formulate a self-therapy strategy, we need to understand how each of these affect our fluency and take steps to mitigate any interference caused by them in an effort to ameliorate their dire effects on our fluency. This poses a challenge since the causes of stuttering are largely unknown!
Faced with this same challenge, Mr. William D. Parry, struggling with a severe stutter since the age of four and frustrated with existing theories and therapies, decided to conduct his own research into the cause of stuttering. His tenacious effort and several years of experimentation led to the Valsalva Hypothesis. His seminal work is now available in the form of a lucid and succinctly well written book:
Whether you are a speech therapist/pathologist or a stutterer, I highly recommend that you buy this book. It demystifies several aspects of stuttering, including the speech blocks that we so often experience. It explains the neurological confusion between speech and the valsalva mechanism and how this affects disfluency. It explains why males predominate the stuttering population by pointing out sexual differences in the valsalva mechanism. Mr. William Parry also provides a self-therapy program called Valsalva Control, which he has successfully used to control his own stuttering.
After reading this book, for the first time,
I was able to get non-stutterers to personally experience the closing of the larynx and other physiological symptoms of a stuttering block created by the valsalva mechanism.
This book gave me the "Ah-ha! That explains so much." feeling.
The valsalva mechanism is a natural bodily function that assists us in exerting effort and in forcing things out of the body. Medical science has known about it for over 200 years. It takes its name from Anton Maria Valsalva, an Italian anatomist.
The following has been extracted from an article written by Mr. William Parry, titled "Stuttering and the Valsalva Mechanism: Introduction" which provides a brief and very interesting introduction to the Valsalva Hypothesis.
The purpose of a Valsalva maneuver is to increase air pressure in the lungs, in order to help a person exert physical effort or force things out of the body.
This is how it works: Your abdominal muscles tighten up, squeezing the intestines and organs in the abdominal cavity, so that they press upward against the diaphragm - the dome-shaped muscle that separates the abdominal cavity from the chest cavity. This causes the diaphragm to bulge upward, compressing the chest cavity. Certain chest muscles also tighten to bring the rib cage down, which compresses the chest cavity even more.
Meanwhile, the larynx is neurologically programmed to close tightly around the upper airway to keep the air in the lungs from escaping. The more the abdominal muscles squeeze, the greater the air pressure becomes in the lungs, and the tighter the larynx closes. The larynx is doing one of the basic tasks for which it is designed. It is called effort closure.
We are all familiar with the other function of the larynx, which is phonation. That occurs when the vocal folds in the larynx are brought gently together across the airway to make the sound of our voice. But when the larynx performs effort closure during a Valsalva maneuver, it behaves very differently. The entire inside of the larynx closes tightly, like a fist, to block the air completely. As we saw in our exercise, the lips and tongue can also do this job. If for some reason your lips or tongue are blocking the airway when you start a Valsalva maneuver, they will be recruited to continue the closure. They will automatically press harder and harder to keep the air from escaping.
The following paragraph is largely taken from the back cover of his book:
Mr. William Parry is a trial lawyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers and Who's Who in America. Mr. Parry founded the Philadelphia Area Chapter of the National Stuttering Association in 1985. He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Stuttering Association and as Chair of its Advocacy Committee. He has conducted workshops on the Valsalva Hypothesis at numerous NSA conventions, as well as at international conventions for people who stutter.
I was so overcome with gratitude toward Mr. Parry for his Valsalva Hypothesis that I telephoned him at his office to thank him for it. We spoke for about an hour. During our conversation, I discovered that the proceeds from the sale of the book are used for charitable purposes and that Mr. Parry does not profit monetarily from the sale of this book. Mr. William Parry seems to genuinely want to help the stuttering community and indicated that the reason he chose to donate the proceeds to charity is to distance himself from any perceived personal gain in putting forth the Valsalva Hypothesis. He hopes that this will stimulate the adoption of the Valsalva Hypothesis and related research without banal scrutiny.
Personally, I have no qualms about Mr. Parry keeping the proceeds from the sale of his book. Stuttering research has foundered in recent years. There have been no significant strides made, that I am aware of. Mr. Wiliam Parry has relentlessly pursued the mysteries of stuttering with admirable vim and gusto and at his own expense. He has provided an invaluable and profound insight into the physiological aspects of stuttering and the value that I have received from his work is unquantifiable. Mr. Parry deserves my $25 and then some.