1	Mastering Stuttering Introduction
2	Introductory Remarks I do not guarantee that you will gain fluency during this training – few do. I do guarantee that the material in this manual and in this training will lead you to greater fluency – It will work if you work it. I can show you the door to greater fluency, but you must walk through it.
3	Introductory Remarks This is a process – give yourself a minimum of 3 to 6 months before you start judging the results of this work. As time progresses, you will appreciate more and more the term process. This training is about the process and structure of blocking, stuttering and fluency.
4	I need from you – A willingness to follow the processes here and to become engaged and to do the exercises in the manual. A willingness to trust the process. Entering with an open mind and suspending doubts and worry until the end of the training. A willingness to create new perceptions – like being willing to take risk and to trust that which you may not fully understand.
5	Some Questions – Who will you become as you become oriented by faith, hope, and vision rather than by fear of blocking/ stuttering? What will be the three most critical “fears” that you want to completely master through this study in order to overcome blocking and stuttering?
6	Some Questions – How will mastering those fears affect your life? Your professional, personal and private lives? How will that be valuable to you? When you think about the “you” for whom the old fears are no longer a problem, what are the most exciting and significant facets of that new you?
7	Some Questions – Who will be most affected in your life by this mastering of these fears? When you fully step into the place where you have mastered the fears, what frame of mind will you be in?
8	About the Manual – It’s big…! We will not be able to cover nearly all of it in 3 days. However, my goal is to cover the foundational material in each chapter and hopefully to cover at least one exercise in each chapter. When you leave here, you should have the knowledge and ability to both understand and to utilize all the patterns and techniques on your on. It is a handbook for gaining fluency.
9	We believe – If you speak fluently in one context you can learn to speak fluently in all contexts. Blocking/stuttering happens in particular contexts triggered by specific events. The individual will then place significant meanings of fear and/or anxiety on to those events.
10	Significant Meanings Placed: Concepts of self Sense of power/ resourcefulness Relationship with time One’s relationship with others How one views the world One’s higher purpose/intent
11	We believe – Blocking/ Stuttering is a learned behavior. Since it is a learned behavior, it can be unlearned. It is very similar to if not the same as a panic or anxiety attack. The treatment is the same. Genetic predispositions may have some influence. Successful treatments will involve primarily cognitive therapies.
12	How Stuttering Begins – Non-fluency is punctuated as something bad and to be avoided. This tends to perpetuate the problem. Behaviors get grooved into muscle. In every case that I have worked with, the roots of blocking/ stuttering came from childhood.
13	How Stuttering Begins – Hurtful, even traumatic memories, become repressed in one’s unconscious mind. These memories find expression in those muscles surrounding breathing and speaking. Thus, blocking/ stuttering are similar to panic attacks.
14	Embodying Negative Emotions The end expression of stuttering is physiological. But the cause is primarily a mental-emotional state. The mind-body connection explains this. The Fight/Flight arousal syndrome is the fundamental example.
15	Embodying Negative Emotions Paruesis (Bashful Bladder) is another example of the mind directing the body to block. Contemporary Neuro-Science research validates this theory. Mind is a process – it does not have mechanical structures for storage. Higher levels of the mind sustains the process.
16	Embodying Negative Emotions Susan Greenfield, “There is no mind-body-emotion problem because it is an interconnected system in the first place, a system that cannot be broken up.” She continues, “… consciousness, memory, learning, etc. are gestalt (connected) phenomena, and not located anywhere but everywhere.”
17	Embodying Negative Emotions With blocking and stuttering, the driving emotions find expression in particular areas of the body. As a systemic whole, the mind-body system works together and cannot be separated. We actually em-body and in-corp-orate negative emotional states in our muscles and tissues.
18	Stuttering is a “learned behavior.” Wendell Johnson - Linguistics Dave Elman – Hypnotherapy “It is my firm belief that every stutter has a basic, investigable cause.” John Harrison – “As a system, stuttering involves the entire person and is not just a speech problem.”
19	Harrison – Stuttering Hexagon
20	From “Bobulating” to “Blocking” It necessitates a certain way of thinking and believing, … a certain way of looking at and perceiving speech, self, others, etc. There is a non-blocking mentality (attitude) and there is a blocking mentality.