Proprioception & Meditation are two of the best exercises to treat 90% stuttering. Works so great for me! Literally made me much more fluent than before. Here is how to do these :

Proprioception & Meditation are two of the best exercises to treat 90% stuttering. Works so great for me! Literally made me much more fluent than before. Here is how to do these : ===== PROPRIOCEPTION ===== * For this, you need to learn & understand these 3 terms carefully : Syllabes, Articulators and DAF technique * Read these slowly and try to understand every point. Because you have to apply these things in real-life while talking : * 1) Syllables : When you say a word, how many times your chin goes down, that is called as syllables. * For example, put your index finger on your chin and say the word 'Water', you will see that your chin goes down 2 times, which means there are 2 syllables in the word 'Water'. This word can be separated as WA-TER (1-2) * Another example, in the word 'Articulator', if you do the same thing, you will see your chin goes down 5 times, which means this word has 5 syllables. This word can be separated as AR-TI-CU-LA-TOR (1-2-3-4-5) * The word 'Electronics' (which was one of the most scary word for me to speak. Now I can speak it clearly). Do the same and you see your chin goes down 4 times, hence 4 syllables in this word. This word can be separated as E-LEC-TRO-NICS (1-2-3-4) * 2) Articulators : These are the things which you need to make sound for any word you speak. Things like jaw, tongue, teeth, lips, roof of mouth etc. You need to figure out which word uses which articulators. It may be hard in the beginning, but it will become easier once you start doing it. All words of any language in this world, uses these articulators. Now, speak the below examples slowly and carefully observe your speaking. See which word or letter uses which articulator * For example, the word 'Water', which has 2 syllables 'WA-TER' * Another example, the word 'Articulator', which has 5 syllables 'AR-TI-CU-LA-TOR' * One more example, the word 'Electronics', which has 4 syllables E-LEC-TRO-NICS * More examples for single letters like for the letter 'P' and 'B', speak these and you see your lips join each. You can do this for every other letters and observer yourself which articulator is used in making which letter or word. * Mainly your tongue and lips are the most important articulators to produce letters & words, and other articulators support these main articulators * 3) DAF Technique : After learning syllables & articulators properly, you need to learn how to speak without focusing on your ears, but rather focusing on your articulators. * It's hard initially, but you will get used to it and later speak more focusing on your articulators rather than focusing on your own voice via your ears. * Basically, you need to stop yourself listening to your own 'defective' stuttering speech, and replace it with your correctly articulated speech. * You need to temporarily use DAF technique, which means Delayed Auditory Feedback. Basically, it makes you focus less on your speech, so that you can focus more on your articulators. Day by day, you will see your focus is automatically going into articulators. After you see you have successfully start focusing on your articulators rather than listening to your own speech, you can stop using DAF technique. * If you think your focus is again going to your speech, you can again use DAF technique, but only for temporary period of time. * To do this, you can use any DAF app in your phone or computer. There are nice DAF apps in phones. Plug your earphones. And set delay to 2 or 3 seconds or anytime you want. What it will do, it will take input from your speech from your mic, delay it for few seconds, then output to your ears. So, you will listen to your own speech, not real-time, but after a delay of few seconds, which will make you lose focus on your own speech. * Then meanwhile, try to focus on your articulators while speaking with DAF app. Speak slow in the beginning. Focus on each and every articulator of every single letter you speak. You may find it a bit tricky to speak like this, because of the delay you get in your ears. But that's okay, you will later get used to it. * Basically, speak that much slow that you can articulate each and every syllable of every word properly. Then gradually you can speed up your speech, but don't compromise with the articulation. It's very necessary to focus the articulation of each and every single syllable properly * ALWAYS REMEMBER : * **Correct technique** : Applying correct technique with slower speech is better than applying wrong technique with faster speech (just like how lower weights with proper gym is better than higher weights with doing wrong gym. This will lead you to muscle strain, right?) * **Speak slow in controlled manner** : Just speak smoothly, no need to rush. If you rush, you will lose proper articulation, which leads to non-fluency or even stuttering. People say to stutterers to speak slowly. This is actually what they mean, except that they don't know the proper terms. So, this is the correct way to speak slowly while focusing on each and every single articulator while speaking. * **Articulate gently, not harshly** : If you find problem in articulating particular word, like for example 'P', then see where you are facing problem. For the letter 'P', the articulator we use are lips. Often stutters over-join the lips while speaking 'P'. Their upper & lower lips forcefully touches each other, which cause tension, and further cause stuttering. So, take a break, and just speak the word 'P' with gentle closing of your lips. It should be smooth, not harsh. Practice it right now. Say 'P' with harsh closing of lips, then take a break and again say 'P' with gentle closing of lips. You will see how unnecessary tension got released when we gently use our articulators (instead of forcing them) * **Speaking like singing (but only with articulation without melodies)** : Have you ever wondered why speaking for stutterers is not fluent but singing even for stutterers is fluent? That's because you sing every word of song at particular period of time, which means you are unintentionally already singing with proper articulation, even your focus is on your own speech while singing, still you are unintentionally singing with perfect articulation. That's what you need to do while speaking. You don't have to speak with melody (obviously lol because that will sound weird), but you have to speak with each articulation at particular period of time (like how we do while singing) * How to practice proprioception daily? * Level 1 practice : To practice proprioception daily, you just need a reading material. It can be any book or website or even dictionary. You just need to read the words and apply all the above techniques * Level 2 practice : After enough practice of level 1, you need to do the same while talking with your family & friends. Apply proper proprioception (with proper articulation) while talking with them. Also, continue doing level 1 too. * Level 3 practice : After enough practice of level 2, it's time to do this in real-world, like you go to restaurant and order for food. Or you go to any shop and talk with people. Or anywhere outside you go and see strangers. All those people to whom you aren't comfortable with, like strangers, waiters in restaurants, staff people in banks or movie theaters etc. Make sure to apply proper proprioception. Also, continue doing level 1 & level 2 too. ===== MEDITATION ===== * Suppose, counting 1 to 100 is what you need to treat stuttering successfully. So, Propioception will help you to count from 1 to 50. Whereas Meditation will help you to count from 100 to 51. Basically, these two things work together, supplement each other. * Meditation is not only about breathing. It's more than that. It helps you not only to control your breath while speaking, but helps you to relax, it calms you, it alleviate your stress, anxiety, fear which got surrounded to you for so long time * Remember how our heart start beating fast when we have to speak with strangers? That's because of all the anxiety & fear we have gained throughout our life when we have to speak with people, especially strangers or some particular people to which we stutter more. So, we have to reduce this fear & anxiety. Propioception won't help you here, but Meditation will help you here. * When we stutterers have to talk to people, we often speak fast to end our speech fast. But this often creates more stuttering since we lose focus on our articulators. Basically, fast, un-controlled speaking kills the proprioception thing I discussed above. So, Meditation helps you to control this, which will also help you to do proprioception much more smoothly while talking with strangers or even giving a public speech * There are lots of types of meditation, but we will focus on one of the type 'Guided Meditation', where a guide guides you with their voice, and a soothing music plays behind which helps you to relax * What's the proper way to do meditation for stutterers? Well, just sit down or lie down on bed. Plug your earphones. Have at least 10 minute meditation daily or 20 minutes meditation 3 days a week. Do whatever the guide tells you to do. Nothing else you have to do. * The Guide will tell you to close your eyes, take breaths, focus on particular part of your body or anything, which can be your house, the mountains outside your house, the flowers, the beautiful scenery. They can tell you to make a story with all the keywords they give you. They can tell you to imagine particular things, particular moments. It can be anything. Just trust your guide. Believe me, it magically works! * From where you can get guided meditation audios? There are lots of meditation audiobooks freely available on Google and YouTube. There are free meditation apps for smartphones too. * You don't have to go outside. You can do this at your home. And it won't take much time. But gradually, it will give you very good reward, make you a better person, calmer person, and you will observe soon that you won't feel fear when you have to speak with someone. Your stress and anxiety will get reduce. And you can easily apply propioception with any people, at any time. =============== Doing all this can easily treat your 90% stuttering. There is no cure, since you have to do all this for your entire life. It's not like you can do all this for 1 month or 1 year and your stuttering is cured forever. But doing all this for significant period of time, all this will become so easy and so natural for you. You won't think about it and your body will start doing all this automatically. Like how we drive vehicle. For the people who knows how to drive vehicle, they don't think and their hands automatically control the vehicle. Well, mainly the mind works there the most. Similar thing happens here. Our mind is very mysterious. What about my stuttering? Well, in my case, my 60% stuttering is treated by combination of propioception and meditation. And I feel I still need to improve myself and soon my 90% stuttering will get treated too. My practice schedule : * I apply proprioception in my daily life with all people I talk to. And also read ebooks for 20 minutes (3 days per week) while applying proprioception. * And I do meditation 30 minutes, 3 days per week (because the other 3 days, I do workout, and Sunday is rest day). * So total, I give 50 minutes, 3 days per week (150 minutes in a week) for controlling/treating my stuttering. Read this again and again until you understand each and every thing from this post. If you have any queries about all this, please comment. Thanks for reading! You can even apply propioception in this post if you want :P