In response to Geoff Johnston's article entitled "The Great Benefits of Stuttering on Purpose", Anna Margolina posted the following E-Mail:

Hi, Geoff,

This is a very good and and a very well written article. To those two methods of voluntary stuttering that you describe, I would like to add the one I used. I tried to imitate my own stuttering as close as possible. In order to do this, I had to observe exactly what I was doing. By the way tomorrow, I am going to speak as a guest speaker at a demo Toastmaster meeting and I will start my speech with a close imitation of my stuttering.

To me the fact that I was able to do this - to reproduce exactly what I did during the real block - was one of the evidences that brought me to the understanding that my stuttering was caused by behavior and not something physical that was a permanent condition. I realized that the cause of my stuttering came from something I had learned in my childhood and not something that happened involuntary. I used this Voluntary Stuttering also to shun away the real blocks. When I felt like blocking, I jumped ahead and did it intentionally. When I did this, the tension I felt would go away and I had significantly less blocking. I don't do this anymore, but at some point it was something that started the positive change in my speech.

Anna

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