Free From Stutter Success Stories
is a series of interviews with people who reached freedom from stuttering,
or are on their way there.
Freedom from stuttering - it's when stuttering is not holding you back in your life.
It can be either achieving fluency, or real progress on that path,
or it can be reaching your goals and making a difference
despite stuttering.
So we're going to press for specifics: how are they doing that?
What can we learn from them?
And what can we apply in our life?
Today we'll talk with Peter Louw
an author of the book "Coping with Stuttering."
You can find his videos on YouTube about passive airflow technique.
He also created a Facebook group about stuttering as a mind-body disorder.
I'm very curious about these two topics.
So let's dive into it.
Hello, Peter!
Today we are having Peter Louw with us and thank you for coming, and I have many questions
hope that will cover most of them.
First of all, I see you in many Facebook groups about stuttering; you have a YouTube channel,
Facebook pages.
So, I see you're very active, and you're very into that.
Can you say why?
Okay well, stuttering was always a problem for me since I was about 3 or 4 years old
and especially at school it really messed up my life also at university especially when
starting jobs and during my employment.
So, this obviously was frustrating, and fortunately...
I did have some speech therapy when I was still a child which didn't help much.
When I was a student, I actually went to a psychologist because I was convinced that
it was a mind thing.
That helped because he taught me to relax and to... well you know, to not get stressed
and that helped.
But my big change came when I was in my 30's in 1980 when I got a workshop with Dr. Martin
Schwartz who is an American; he was a professor in speech science at the time, he's retired
now.
And that workshop really helped me, and it inspired me to work on myself, to improve
my speech and in the process also try to help others because by trying to help others you
also help yourself because the more involved you get with stuttering self-help, the better
it's for your own speech.
So, yeah that's really why I started and I've been involved with self-help groups for decades
and as a result, I mean I've been doing this for about 30 years now and more and I'm in
my 60's now, and really the longer I got involved, the better my speech became.
Yeah, that's a great idea that you said that when you try to help others, that's maybe
the best way to help yourself because to teach others something you need to really get it.
Okay, and can you say just a couple words about like when people say what do you do,
what do you say?
Like about you said it affected you in your like jobs.
How did it affect your career choice?
It affected me terribly in the beginning, in the first 30 years of my life because I'm
a qualified lawyer but...
Wow!
Yes, but I never could practice you know which was even own fault, I should never have studied
law, but I thought that legal qualification would improve my own fluency.
I had that funny idea which is completely incorrect, but at the time I thought that
my legal qualification would improve my confidence.
But when I finished my law degree I found out that I couldn't even make a phone call,
you know things like that.
So, I didn't become a lawyer; I went into languages I became a journalist and translator
and things like that where speech is not that important.
Got it...That's because I also qualified as a lawyer but I didn't go to courts much really
because I struggled, didn't go much to you know public authorities where you need to
speak, I mostly worked in like corporate thing where you talk with your colleagues, I think...
yeah.
Okay.
Got it, that's a really interesting thing.
And can we talk first about the airflow technique because when you describe your way through
stuttering, you first say that you first discovered this airflow technique and it helped you?
I understand there are videos on YouTube and I'll give the links to those but can you like
may be describe in a couple words how does it work?
Yes, certainly.
The airflow technique is based on a fantastic idea that stuttering is actually not coursed,
but the vocal cords are sensitive to tension and stress, and of course, vocal cords are
here, and due to excess stress, too much tension like it tend to freeze or lock down.
The vocal cords are like this you know, and they vibrate continuously but for us for some
reason when there's too much stress on the vocal cords they tend to freeze they kind
of lock into fixed position.
That happens for a fraction of a second, it happens extremely fast and then it gets freed
again it gets loose again but it can freeze all the time, and that's actually what we
call a block, and the block is really what results in what we call stuttering.
The word repetitions or all the funny things we do repetitions and prolongations and that
that is really our way of trying to deal with this block, this vocal cord block.
So Dr. Schwarts developed the air flow technique, and he taught me or he taught us to let this
small slip of air come out of your lips just before speaking because that apparently that
relaxes the cords a bit and it opens it slightly and then also you have to slow down the first
syllables of the word which also reduces the tension on the cords.
So, that's really the basics of the airflow technique, so you first let some air out of
your lips like I'm doing now.
"My name is Peter Louw."
Oh!
Got it.
So, it's like because speaking is breathing air out, so we kind of start already breathing
out and then like our sounds go on top of that air that begins to get out, right?
Yeah, that's the airflow has to be very slight because if you push it it's not going to
work, so you have to let it slip out.
It's a very slight amount of air, and it can be picked up by a microphone.
So, when you learn it and when you practice it you actually record that airflow.
It makes a characteristic sound when that little bit of air hits the microphone so that
it can be tested externally - the airflow.
Okay but just to make it clear, if I understand it correctly, so airflow technique is when
you start your speaking like before you speak you grasp some air go off you like out, right?
Yeah, like I'm doing now at the moment I'm talking with a bit of airflow before I speak.
Can you notice it?
Not really.
Because maybe you practiced that a lot.
Maybe at first when you because every technique at first needs to be you know like broken
down into pieces and you go deep into that piece after you practice it kind of looks
like more like a whole thing, yeah got it.
And my question then about this airflow technique, again in your experience, does it give you
like a confidence that you can start any phrase, any word with this without speech impediments?
Well, yeah that's a good question.
Look, the airflow is not full proof; it depends on your stress level for instance.
So, if you're hardly stressed, and you sit like this, and you are really uptight then
obviously it's also going to affect your vocal cords, and you probably won't be able
to do really apply with technique as it should be applied.
So, it's not full proof like I said if you're in high stress it's going to be difficult
to apply that so but it's wonderful for reading if you want to read it's fantastic.
Since I've learned the airflow, I never stutter when I read because when you read you are
more of in control, you know.
You can focus on what you are going to say.
So, there it works and it works very well for me in day to day conversations with my
wife and my family and friends.
But if you want to use it in hard stress situations you first have to gradually practice those
particular situations.
For instance, if you want to use it on the phone you have to first start at a low level.
First, use the airflow technique when you are not really speaking with somebody on the
phone.
For instance, you can have a fear now your kind of practice on the phone, and you use
sentences, but you don't actually speak to the person and then can gradually you start
this with let's say a friend of yours or a family member where you feel comfortable.
Let's say you gradually work at to real life phone calls with an unfamiliar person and
that goes for speech making and all those difficult situations.
You can't just jump into the deep water as it is you have to start with baby steps.
Got it and when you say when you're tense and when you're stressed it's difficult, my
question is because it seems to be like that, is this airflow technique also can of relaxes
you, because when you do it, it seems like you get a bit relaxed when you start this
thing.
Yes, absolutely it has a relaxing effect.
In fact, there is a requirement Dr. Schwartz taught us that as you flow out, as you flow
that air out of your mouth you actually suppose to relax in body and mind.
So that's something which you have to practice, you practice and as you flow out you relax
your whole body like this and you have to relax your mind too because it's not going
to work if you focus on that feared sound or feared words you have to empty your mind
before you flow out and gradually by means of conditioning by means of habit you learn
to relax as you flow out.
Got it.
So, in other words, it helps it really helps, but you wouldn't say that it gives like 100%
confidence that I can say it without speech impediments or if you do it more slower more
like in a training mode you know that you will say it 100% just to make it clear.
Because you know I think that's my observation, I want to talk about it that when we have
that confidence it kind of changes something so I see that many may be not all but many
techniques anyway have that technique or you know something that gives you that confidence.
So, what do you say?
Does it, if you do it may be more like if you do it slower do you feel that you'll say
it you can say it without speech impediments 100% or it's not like that?
Look I think any fluency technique has its limitations.
It's not going to solve all your problems.
I wait on the air flow technique for about a few decades but even, so there were fears
you know fears of certain situations which I had still a bit.
It did help me enormously, but the one big limitation of a fluency technique is that
it's hard work.
You have to practice it.
At first, you have to learn it, although the learning itself is the easiest part.
It is not that difficult but to practice it and enjoy it, because it has to become a bit
of a habit.
That takes time.
But also the psychological adjustment to that technique, to better fluency that's also a
big problem and that caused me lots of problems.
Now, that's a whole different theory really, but I think I should mention it, I mentioned
that in my book which I wrote.
I did write a book on stuttering.
I actually have it here, I can show it to you, but it's online anyway.
It's freely online in my blog, but I mentioned that the first few months of my working with
the airflow was...It was really exhilarating on the one hand because I did much more fluent,
but psychologically I found it very difficult to adjust to better speech and I had terrible
relapses.
I think that's one point which is not often mentioned.
People tend to ignore that the psychological adjustment to fluency is a huge problem.
I've seen it often; I've watched it often with people with fluency technique.
They begin well, and they work hard, and they do get better and then suddenly they get huge
relapses.
Like I said, the psychological adjustment to fluency is being
terribly underestimated.
I'm sorry maybe I don't hear you that well as previously.
Is that better?
Hello, can...
Yeah, I can hear you yeah.
Okay.
And now?
Oh yeah, this is better.
Okay.
And yeah, so yes I had terrible relapses with myself.
One day I was totally fluent and the next day anything went wrong when I couldn't say
a word and that was really bad you know.
The same happened with other guys who were in my workshop and many of them got discouraged
because these relapses are really nasty things and you feel that you're not making progress.
So, that's the psychological part of it.
And my personal feeling is that it's the subconscious which is reacting to your fluency.
We're coming to the mind-body thing.
Okay, yes, yes.
Okay.
Just last question about air flow technique, so you said that there was a workshop, is
there like a place where people can go through some program?
Unfortunately, Dr. Schwartz has retired.
Specifically for air flow, the only thing which I can recommend is that people watch
those videos from Dr. Schwartz.
He made his own workshop which is now on my blog.
You'll see there are three videos and there's a manual and workbook.
That's about of this I can do, unfortunately.
That's great.
It's a real pity that nobody has come to continue the work which he has been doing.
Dr. Schwartz was a controversial figure at that time you know he kind of was not really
part of the speech pathology scene in the US.
Most of his colleagues really did not approve of his ideas for many reasons.
I mentioned some of them in my book.
So that is a real pity that his workers nothing continued.
I think I'm one of the few people who still have time to emphasize the idea of vocal cords,
the vocal cords freezing and that is the basis of all stuttering.
Right, I'll give the links to your blog and the book for sure.
Okay.
Now we're coming to the mind-body thing because you described them then... yeah maybe you've
done describing because...you discovered that mind-body principles that helped you, you
say.
Can you tell people...
Yeah, yeah.
Actually I'm not the first that comes to that conclusion I believe the first expert was
Dr. Howard Schubiner.
He's very well-known in the mind-body scene.
He's a medical practitioner but he's also a mind-body practitioner who has a practice
based on mind-body principles and he wrote an article in 2011 I think it was where he
said that he believed that stuttering is a mind-body disorder.
It was an article actually on that movie, The King Speech which he analyzed in terms
of mind-body theory.
I actually came to mind-body thinking in a different way, in a very personal way and
that was in 2012 which was at the time of my retirement which is actually relevent,
I'll tell you just now.
One day, I lifted my suitcase and I got a terrible lower back spasm, a terrible
pain in my lower back.
Okay, that's really a long story so, I won't bore you with that, since then my back causing
terrible pain; I had all kinds of treatment you know x-rays and a scan eventually injection
in the hospital.
As I lay recovering from that injection that I'm reading on the internet about back pain
then I came across a book by Dr. John Sarno, I actually got it here.
Here it is, Healing Back Pain.
It's a very well-known book, it's a best seller.
I read that book and it made enormous sense to me and finally just by reading that book
my back pains started to lift and it really hasn't caused me much problem since then.
That's the time when I became interested in mind-body thinking.
My back problems did not heal immediately; it took some time.
I got some relapses also and some you know but eventually at the moment it's under control
and it is being under control for years now.
Then last year I started to think, maybe my stutter is a mind-body problem.
And I thought now that can't be because stuttering is a developmental thing whereas most mind-body
issues are pains.
Then I did some more reading and I found out that mind-body issues are not only pain there
are many things in the mind-body scene which do not involve pain.
They can be skin disorders; they can be stomach disorders, migraines, headaches, septic colons
things like that.
I also began to think because in my life I have many headaches but I've also septic colons,
I've got some skin problems.
I began to think that actually most of my minor health problems because I'm actually
a very healthy guy, but most of my minor issues during my life could... were in fact
tension related that I knew that I feel that maybe stuttering too is one of those things.
So, I began to think about that and I felt it now that is too far for fetch.
It can't be a mind-body thing.
As I started to think more and more I started to say to myself why not, why not and that's
where I am now, I am fully convinced that stuttering is a mind-body disorder.
It's a cycle physical thing and the only thing it starts, it hits us when we are still very
young, when we are three years of age or four or five or six, most of us.
It hits us and it hits us because we repressed our emotions as a child, probably feelings
of rage or fear or whatever that we tend to repress our emotions.
Okay.
Let me just inject because I am looking at this from again you know a very consumer you
know side like a person who stutters so what I see like the very simplified approach
to this mind-body thing is like every problem comes from our mind.
But mind is usually as viewed like thinking machines so I'll tell myself like an affirmation
like I don't stutter but the next day I still stutter so people think "Oh, no that doesn't
work".
As far as I understand please correct me that this mind-body thing is more about understanding
your mind as like actually mind and body as some holistic way or something like one whole
and like mind not simply a thinking machine but more like you know our whole like a soul,
whatever though it's bigger than just our thinking but if that's the right perception
we'll get into something that we don't quite grasp, don't quite understand so with that
because we always want to be very objective like what should I do exactly?
You say I read the book and something began to change and you say about some principles
so the question that comes like what exactly should I do to kind of start changing anything?
Okay, I think we should change the way we think about stuttering.
That is a very big principle because we tend to isolate stuttering as a body thing and
it's not a body thing, okay it's partly body thing.
It's mind-body thing that requires a different way of thinking about stuttering.
And one more thing is it's one thing to say that we have to change our thinking but
that means we also have to change our subconscious thinking because the mind is partly conscious.
A very big part of our thinking happens subconsciously, that is a fact, right?
Even psychologist will tell you that.
It's not enough to just think consciously in a different way, you gradually have to
these thoughts this new way of thinking gradually has to sink into your subconscious too and
that's going to take time.
Oh got it.
That's a good answer so I was asking you like you know from this physical objective world,
what should I do and when we say do it's some technique or something we can see and touch
and understand and you say we need to approach it differently so we come back to this mind
thing, right?
So it's all about again the action is not like very physical action it's more like
we're thinking stuttering that's what you think.
Yeah that is basically it but of course it can go further too because we've been stuttering
for many decades most of us specially at my age we've been stuttering for years so there
is still a lot of neuro pathways in our brains, we've been conditioned to stutter to
a large extent and so it's going to take some much thinking and also many changes in
your way of thinking to get rid of all those neuro pathways which are formed into your
brain and that's going to take some time also and so conditioning is still there even in
my mind I mean I'm quite fluent at the moment but I know the neuro pathways are still dormant;
they are weak now and they are getting weaker all the time but you know they are still there
and you still have to be careful but I think myself is making a good progress but I still
know in certain circumstances I will still block and will still get tensed and get stressed
and have speaking problems.
And I saw you know at least like again in the group, I saw their files and there's an
interesting file which says there's a link between our like negative things like anxiety,
fear, envy all those things and our sicknesses, illnesses etc.
So, I started question myself so is it like I need to be a better person and then I'll
have less you know illnesses and sicknesses and in terms of stuttering what exactly...like
you say about principle, can you share like some practical things, what exactly can be
done and what do you do actually, what principles do you use?
In fact, I don't do much at the moment because just getting my mind changed and thinking
differently about stuttering that in itself helps me enormously but what I do try to do
in my daily life is and that I find very helpful is doing the opposite from what I did in the
past.
In the past, I tended to repress my feelings to some extent unconsciously.
And the opposite of repressing is expressing, so in my daily life, I try to be more expressive.
I try to use my hands more.
I try to do better body language whereas in the past I was sat like a robot you know, I kind of sat like ba-ba-ba
and which is very wrong.
You have to express, let your feelings come out, let people see what you feel.
That's the correct way to get rid of stuttering.
Yeah and that's a great thing you mentioned that to express as one of the things.
I wanted to ask you, what do you think about the acting thing because you know Bruce Willis,
Emily Blunt, Ed Sheeran you know people who perform, they say that they did have stutter
and now they don't have it.
In my mid it's somehow goes together with this holistic view, this mind-body thing,
so it's not just a speaking box, not our whole body but just our whole as one that
it's not only our speaking box that produces speaking, it's like something more...
Absolutely...
How do they relate this mind-body thing and this acting way how people get through stuttering?
Absolutely.
I fully agree. The whole world is expressing.
When you act you express, when you sing you express, you express your feelings.
When you have good body language; using your hands, using your head, using your eyes and
your whole body you express that's the opposite of repressing.
You don't repress your thoughts, your speech.
It's letting it out.
John Harrison, I don't know if you know him.
He's an American; he's very well-known in stuttering circles in the US and his deep
principle is not holding back, don't hold back.
That's what I'm saying, don't repress, express.
Let it come out.
You have to let it come out.
That is really what it's all about.
It's express.
Okay.
I read some of your principles what can help and one other thing I found is you say as
a principle that don't try to concentrate on stuttering just ignore it.
That reminded me of about the acceptance theory or practices when people get over and they
just start stuttering more, and so they don't let stuttering stop them from doing things.
So, what do you think about that as a way to improve speaking and you know...
That is the principle which comes from Dr. Sarno, the mind-body pioneer.
According to him, mind-body symptoms are a defence mechanism, a psychological defence
mechanism.
And the way to remove the defense mechanism is to actually ignore it, not attend to it,
to not give so importance to it because for some reason which I don't know myself, these
defense mechanisms which are in your mind they get stronger when you attend to them,
when you focus on them.
When you ignore them, they get weaker.
So, that's why Dr. Sarno says that if you have back pains or any other pains
or other mind-body symptoms, you should ignore them as much as possible.
And even try to laugh at them, but don't give them any time.
If I apply that principle to me, it means don't worry too much when you do stutter to
hell with it.
Ignore it, it's not important and the least importance you give to it, the weaker it should
become.
So, that's all part of the way to gradually dismount the defense mechanism of stuttering.
Okay, one more question I have maybe probably the last one.
You know sometimes it seems that we don't move, we don't improve like we work on our
speaking or like more holistic view and we do something, we have some improvements then
relapses, do you think that it still makes sense to make progress or
how progress happens?
What is your observation like because people are often discouraged?
I have done something and then relapse so there is no point in improving efforts if
they don't give you 100% effect.
What can you say about it?
Look, it's the old thing that it's two steps forward and one step backward.
That happens all the time.
It happened to me when I was still with airflow.
Exactly the same thing happened.
I might progress and then one step back, I just continued.
I continued relentlessly with my practicing.
At the moment I'm in this new phase where I gradually dismantle my stuttering defense
mechanism, and my speech even now gets better and better, but I also get my relapses, definitely.
Fortunately, they are not as bad as they were 20 years ago but I still have my days where
I feel that I'm not as fluent as the previous day.
That is natural, it's normal because you subconscious will always try to get back to the status
quo always, it will always fight back.
It's not easy you have to fight against it.
There is this moving forward, you move forward, and you subconscious say, no, no, no we don't
like change get back.
And then you go forward again, you say to hell with your subconscious I'm in control.
It's not the subconscious which is in control; I'm in control, so then you can forward
again and then your subconscious says, "No, no, no."
And so that is the normal way of that you do eventually get better.
Yeah, I love that, yeah.
Great.
It was a great pleasure talking to you, thank you so, so much.
And I think it was really helpful.
It was helpful to me because I'm trying to enlarge my understanding.
As you said, it's a pity that people who do something in this field they oftentimes their
ideas vanish even sometimes they do work and then if there's no one who can pick it up
and use on them...it's great that you've shared that.
Yeah I do hope that more people will be helped by this approach.
And within my group - Stuttering as a mind-body disorder, it seems that some other people
are also finding this beneficial.
They just have to start doing that reading.
They have to read those books, the mind-body books because it's what Dr. Sarno calls
knowledge therapy by increasing your knowledge about mind-body you actually start changing
your mind.
Got it.
Okay, thank you so much.
I'll sure give the links to all the resources that are available.
Thank you!
We'll keep in touch. Thank you so much.
Sure. Ok, Andrey. Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
If you got free from stuttering,
or improved your speaking,
or just have something to share
let me know, tell us about your experience,
become part of this project.
So do you think it's possible to overcome stuttering?
Is it worth trying?
Leave a comment.
For more videos, subscribe to this YouTube channel,
head over to freefromstutter.com blog,
join Free From Stutter Facebook group,
and I'll see you in the next video.
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