Chennai meeting Report held on 12.01.2014

NON STOP LAUGHABLE MEETING

The Chennai SHG meeting held on 12.01.2014 were attended by 10 members. Now more members are interested in practicing speech therapy. One pws came 30 min earlier and completed speech therapy before the commencement of meeting.

PIC TAKEN ON THE TERRACE

There are difference of opinions about the effectiveness of speech therapies. I will not force anyone to practice speech therapy. Based one senior pws advice, now I am practicing  speech therapy which I learned in the year 2001, which I also discontinued after 6 months that time owning to my poor health for about 15 days which resulted started stammering badly. Since I got more time now after my retirement, I started practicing regularly. Now I am speaking really well though stammering occasionally. The beauty of this therapy is I need not use any technique, I need not go for word substitution, because all words are coming out fluently. But one important thing I observed was, up to 6pm, I was able to speak ALMOST stammering free speech and started stammering a little bit afterwards. The speech therapy is like charging a battery. Due to less charge in in the evenings, I was stammering. I hope it would get improve after 3 months. Let me see.

A PWS GIVING LECTURE

Coming back to what I wanted to say here was, after seeing my improved speech, everyone wanted to practice speech therapy. Now there are about 10 pws practicing speech therapy at Chennai centre and let us watch their progress.

Meanwhile I wish to inform about one pws ‘H’ here. ‘H’ was brought up in Middle east, studied engineering in India and now staying at Chennai with his grandmaa. His parents are working in Middle east now. About 2 months back, His aunt called me and told about his stammering and requested to help him. I asked them to come over to Anna Nagar park on one Sunday.

PWS INTERACTING WITH 'S'

‘H’ along with his aunt came to Anna Nagar park on one Sunday.  He was having severe blocks and could not able to tell his name even after one minute. Then I told about TISA, the acceptance of stammering etc… etc…. Next one month I was busy and meanwhile, the Chennai centre was also inaugurated on 9^th Dec. As he was living close to the Chennai TISA centre, I asked him to come regularly and make use of this opportunity. He came once and did not turned up for the next 10 days in spite of my daily remainders. After disappointing with him and also to help him, I sent one strong message informing this was my last one and it was upto him to make use of the opportunity.

WHAT A CONCENTRATION!!!

'H’ immediately responded to my message and informed that he would come regularly from next day onwards. Since he was blocking severely, I thought of teaching speech therapy to him. ‘H’ also agreed for that, learned speech therapy and started practicing regularly. After about a week of practicing, he had given one excellent lecture effortlessly using board about Middle east with less blocks in his speech. I discovered that he got abundant talent to become a lecturer but because of his speech impediment, he could not do it now.

Now coming back to yesterday’s meeting, each one of us started using bouncing technique. That is, every pws has to speak at their normal mode of speech without using any technique and whenever he stammers on his feared word, he has to apply bouncing technique on that word. About 4 pws practiced the bouncing techniques. At that time my friend ‘S’ came to the centre to give prasadham to me, as he used to go sabarilala every year. I asked him to have a chat with each pws, who will normally afraid of speaking to a stranger.

‘S’ has spent 2 hours with us ie from 7 to 9 pm. After his arrival, the SHG meeting became a non-stop laughing session. Really a God sent man and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the session. Whenever a pws started talking about his stammering, my friend immediately interrupted him and would telll he was not ready to hear his sad stories. ‘S’ forced everyone to speak fast at least 20 words even it is meaningless sentence like here is table , wall clock, chair etc etc.

To my surprise, almost everybody spoken well. ‘S’ sometimes behaved strictly (though friendly) . During those times, when ‘S’ was interacting with one pws, others started laughing. Of course it was a different story, when others term comes. ‘S’ has asked everyone to sing a song also. We all sang well without stammering and told to them that it was not a problem for a pws to sing a song. ‘S’ asked, then why pws could not speak well also. ‘S’ is a very knowledgeable person and know about the stammering very well. But his point was, do not think and talk at all about their past stammering like  “ I was a severe stammerer”, “ I was not able to give my roll call during school days” “I can sing well, but could not able to speak well”  etc  etc…. He told that it was all past stories and gone. Now think like “ After coming to TISA, my speech improved a lot”, “One day I will speak fluently”, “When I am able to sing well, I can also able to speak well” etc…etc…

‘S’ concluded his session that do not think about stammering, go on talking and whenever  blocks occurred, follow some technique that suits to them. ‘H’ also advised not to give too much importance to the stammering.

Though, I was not agreeing some of his views (normal person doesn’t understand about pws problems), I learned two important lessons from him.

1.    PWS should not speak about his past stammering life which is taking so much of energy from him unconsciously. By talking about his past life, it was very difficult for him to think positively at present.  Hence, as ‘S’ suggested we must practice some technique, go on speaking and apply the technique whenever block occurs.

2.    I learned one more important lesson from my friend.  When he asked all the pws to (though he didn't wanted me to sing, I volunteered myself and sang a song) he made an important observation that all the pws (including me) standing postures were totally wrong. He observed that all pws standing postures  very stiff , very abnormal and not at all natural. Here I learned that what we were talking about the so called “Secondary symptoms”, it was not only each pws  straining one part of his body part alone while speaking, but his straining his whole body. That is our postures are wrong and first we have to learn how to sit, stand and walk in normal posture like non-stammerers are doing.

When all the pws spoke to my friend, they had stammered except one pws. You would be very surprised after knowing who was that pws.

He was none other than ‘H’. Yes. ‘H’ has spoken fluently without blocking on a single word. A big round of applause given to him.  Now a days his face was also looking very bright. These changes took place to him, after 3 weeks of speech therapy.

Finally myself and Gnanasekaran thanked ‘S’ for conducting a wonderful session  and requested him to visit the centre often.

On the whole it turned out to be an enjoyable SHG meeting for all the pws.

That’s all from Chennai centre.