>*Anyone has any tips/breathing techniques?* Many speech therapies recommend a diaphragmetic breathing technique * Sit or lie in a comfortable place * Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen * Inhale through your nose for about 4 seconds, feeling your abdomen expand * Hold your breath for 2 seconds * Exhale very slowly and steadily through your mouth for about 6 seconds Other speech therapies that apply breathing techniques recommend: * Apply or tense the abdominal muscles, side muscles and back muscles to push the air pressure out * **Positive effect**: you control the amount of air pressure by 'tensing muscles' * **Negative effect**: if PWS block a lot by halting the movement of respiratory or laryngual muscles, or other speech muscles (for example, because of a panic response, anticipatory anxiety or fight, flight, freeze response), then the initial muscle tension to control air pressure doesn't lead to breathing out during a block and worse, in my opinion it may cause cramps in the worst case, as you experienced Another breathing technique is: * completely relax your abdominal muscles to automatically let air pressure out. It's a common misconception that air pressure can only be controlled by tensing muscles. Try this out right now, breathe in while tensing your abdominal muscles. Afterwards, completely relax and stop tensing the abdominal muscles. Did you notice that you immediately breathe out the moment you relax the abdominal muscles? * **Positive effect**: you let air pressure out automatically. Normally the '*muscle tension*' lead to cramps in your experience, but if you relax the abdominal muscles instead, then there is a higher chance IMO that the cramps will subside * **Negative effect**: it takes a while to make '*relaxing*' a habit, likely because we are so used to control muscles by '*tensing*' it Another speech therapy recommends: * Visualize the diaphragm: A) if you breathe in then visualize the diaphragm movement going downwards, B) if you breathe out then visualize the diaphragm movement going upwards. In other words, if you speak the diaphragm will always go upwards * **Positive effect**: visualizing the diaphragm is a technique to distract yourself from focusing on the panic response (and other disruptions). If the 'distraction' is successful then you won't block (in my experience) * **Negative effect**: distracting yourself from '*specific disruptions*' is extremely hard to do and takes a lot of time. Each phrase that you want to pronounce could take 30 seconds which is not realistic. Moreover, distraction could be interpreted as an avoidance-behavior, because we hide or avoid triggers which could be counter-productive and actually makes the hardwired triggers worse, the next time that we speak. In my opinion, distraction could be effective if triggers are not hardwired e.g., in children who stutter, whereas in adults who stutter it may be more effective to observe triggers to build tolerance, detach importance and disconfirm expectancy Common tips for all breathing techniques: * After breathing in, immediately breathe out so that we don't create a gap in between. Because if we allow (or justify) '*a gap*' between breathing in and breathing out, then it could lead to a conditioned panic response in my opinion (for example, we may develop a stutter habit of prioritizing '*blaming fear*' over the forward flow of speech).