I am at  the Samagra Ashram (Dehradun) for three days. I spent a wonderful
and fruitful day at the Ashram with Dr. Sachin Srivastava, Jai Prakash and
Parmanand (will be a sin to forget Anil ji). The day started with learning diaphragmatic breathing exercises,
bouncing techniques, pausing and voluntary stuttering techniques by JP
(TISA co-ordinator of Pune, currently here at Ashram as a volunteer).
We were joined by Parmanand and we discussed our experiences at length.

In the afternoon we went to a school. We had a session with high
school students in 5 different classrooms about their knowledge,
belief, attitude and practices about stuttering  along with our own
experiences. Each session began with a brief introduction by Dr.
Sachin. We realized the importance of speaking to the students about
their opinion and the sufferings which each of us went through. I hope
that it will go a long way in changing their perception about stuttering. The response
was warm and the teachers were also supportive. We were amazed to see
an immediate response, when one of the student having speech
difficulty was brought by her seniors. The contact information was
left with the Principle and we hope to get few more students during our
next visit.

In the evening, I had a long chat with Dr. Sachin about Self-Help
Groups (SHGs) running throughout the country. We were worried about
the low presence of members in some SHGs as compared to the
attendance at private practitioners. I am also guilty of attending 4-5
SHG sessions only at Delhi. The reasons according to me are:

1) Lack of self motivation- The people who come to the SHGs can be
categorized as :

Very mild to mild stutters- they believe that they are already almost
fine and are just wasting time (around 3-4 hours) and learning no
new techniques! Some of these have already tried 2-3 speech
pathologists in the past.

Moderate to severe stutters- they believe that they should change their speech pathologist as the techniques learnt at the previous place did not work well.These are in the experimental phase.

Very severe stutters- they get very little time to speak as the
meetings are hijacked by persons from the above two groups. They
believe that they should get a treatment first by a speech pathologist
who can teach them the basic techniques. After the introduction part,
most of the time is filled by persons who have already taken therapy by sharing their
experiences. So severe stutters feel frustrated and reluctant to join
the meeting again.

Note: The above paragraph neither confirms nor denies the role of any speech pathologist. We are here to promote SHGs as a tool and means of self recovery. If we help others by teaching what we know and how we improved, it will just reinforce our committment for self benifit and in this process we will be helping others at no cost.

2) Getting something for free- sometimes does not go too well with
our mindset, we think that what we are getting for free might not be
good, while a person who is charging some money for his course might
be exceptionally serious and committed for our cause.

3) Each meeting getting repeated- each meeting starts with the
introduction part and ends with our experiences. Facilitators need to brush up their knowledge and learn new skills.

4) Large groups- making it difficult to get individual attention,
especially to those who  need it the most (I mean severe stutters).

5) Coming from a large distance at a common place- especially in big
metros, sometimes is too demanding.

6) Busy life style and the particular time not suited for everyone.


These are my personal opinions not bound to be  shared by everyone.
I have attended only the Delhi SHG and the experiences are based on that.
That might not be true representative about all SHGs. I need a healthy discussion about
it.  As our goal is common i.e. to heal  our self first and then the
others, I feel that the self criticism is some times necessary to get
rid of complacence.

Regards,

Tarun