Contin. Beginning at 22, 23, 24 (2005) and 1, 2, 3, 4 (2006)

 One of the most important problems, which one has to face at correction of stuttering and logoneurosis, is the  disorder of "speech breath”. It can be shortage of air for pronouncing the complete phrase, the forced additional breaths within the word, attempt of speech during a breath, feeling of constraint in a breast, lump in a throat. The director of RC for biocybernetics  Andrey BLUDOV tells us, how to strive  with respiratory discomfort. 

 It is considered, that breath is one of the few functions, which, on the one hand, provides maintenance of  vitally important characteristics   of  organism, and on the other hand – is submitted to the effective volitional control. It  is much easier to influence breath, than, say, the work of heart or kidneys. Why does the nature  allow consciousness to interfere with the constancy of the internal environment of an organism? It performed this indulgence only for the sake of gift of speech! Role of breath in phonation is  fundamental. Lungs provide the air backup under the vocal ligaments, being the bellows and pipes of human body. At the correct resonant speech production, as well as at the correct singing  the loss of air in a unit of time is minimal. For provision of speech the motor speech centers intercept the breath control. And if there is a hypertone of these centers, the breath, naturally, falls into confusion. 

 It is similarly to the sea surf. It is no wonder, that the word  “breath” in the English language is cognate with a word “breathing”. If the waves from the speech center don’t come rhythmically, the rhythm of speech is broken. If they meet an obstacle – the loudness and fluency of speech is broken. If they push one another, the vegetative storm begins: spasm of respiratory muscles, stupor, feeling of irritation, etc.  

How to master  the control

 as a whole, techniques of breath arrangement can be divided into  two great groups: the group of techniques of volitional adjustment of breath and the technique of automatic adjustment of breath. 

 A.N.Strelnikova's paradoxical respiratory gymnastics   is possible to relate to the first group, which, moreover, is applied for treatment of stuttering; systems of respiratory gymnastics of yogis. They also use the respiratory exercises, which are intended for coordination of oral and nasal breathing, for  development of inferocostal type of breath with active participation of a diaphragm, for development of a long-term and economic exhalation. Usually the respiratory exercises are spent at first without speech. 

 We in our center practice the automatic adjustment of breath. In this case the training person  should not observe the duration of a inhalation and an exhalation, the depth of breath. The patient speaks into the  microphone, and the program BreathMaker increases the duration of vowels in two-three times. Thus we automatically obtain the increase in duration of the exhalation during speech (vowels are formed only during the exhalation) and a proper correlation of  “exhalation-inhalation”. The automatic adjustment of breathing is especially important for children. And for adults it is much easier not  to observe breathing constantly, but to switch the attention to another things.  

A case from the practice

 The parents of the  third-former Maxim K. have addressed to our  center.  The  boy  suffered from logoneurosis  of an  average severity. The problems  appeared, when the boy was 6. At examination it turned out, that  Maxim had  a sighting left eye, and a right response hand. The  discoordination in the work of the right and left cerebral hemispheres was observed . His speech was fast, it was interrupted by the additional breaths within  a word. The arrangement of speech breath was performed by the logopedist, but owing to restlessness of the child the results were minimal. At the test training   in our center  the boy’s correct speech breath was automatically established already in 7 minutes . The "secret" was,  that the program was arranged in such a way, that it did not allow to speak and breathe incorrectly. It was decided to continue training, which finally  helped Maxim to solve his speech problem. 

 When the conscious control of breathing is  minimal or absent at all, we recommend the trainings of automatic arrangement of correct breathing (by no means minimizing the importance of other methods). This recommendation covers also the adults.  

P.S. In the following publication we shall tell You about difficulties in perception of one’s own voice at normal hearing

Peter SINKOVSKY