Customer Reviews

Yoga for Stuttering: Unifying the Voice, Breath, Mind & Body to Achieve Fluent Speech

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I ordered this book with great expectations and was profoundly disappointed in the results. Ms. Balakrishnan obviously has the credentials as a licensed speech pathologist and clinician to know very well the subject she talks about. But, after a promising introduction in which she gives several anecdotal synopses of stutterers she has treated using Yoga combined with other therapies, the book becomes simply a very rudimentary primer on Yoga (and a not very good one, at that). A few basic asanas and breathing exercises having nothing directly related to the complex phenomenon that is stuttering, do not make for anything worthwhile therapeutically to any moderate or severe stutterer. Ms. Balakrishnan includes in the subtitle to her book "Unifying the voice, breath.....to Achieve Fluent Speech"! Really? FLUENT SPEECH? She offers nothing to back up such an extravagant claim. Clearly, YOGA is good for everyone and can contribute to anyone's overall well-being, both physically and spiritually. But the author is peddling her book as something more: as a potential "cure" for stuttering and I for one, am not buying this inflated claim. As someone who has tried ALL the remedies out there, I know full well the daunting challenge anyone has when attempting to find an effective treatment for stuttering: the "cure" word should never be mentioned, as there appears to be none. Certainly the book is worth perusing for a few moments in a bookstore, but I doubt any stutterer would gain any real benefit from the meager exercises and suggestions contained within. The author's heart is in the right place. What is needed is something more than this scant volume provides to the millions of people suffering from the baffling disorder that is chronic adult stuttering.

Nice try-but no cigar: far from it.

What a refreshing approach. This results-based and sensitive therapeutic system empowers the student to proceed at a pace set at his/her own comfort and suggests workable, personal and flexible objectives. Its east-meets-west approach is a refreshing alternative to traditional therapies that too often reinforce the very pressures that trigger stuttering."