8th meeting of Jammu SHG

On 29th Nov(Sunday) we had our 8th meeting of Jammu SHG. This was the longest one. Started at 11 am and went on to around 2:45 pm. We started our meeting with usual discussion.Rajesh cleared the 2nd round of the interview and got selected. Then we moved on to Sharing our Ambitions.

Each and everyone of us is very Ambitious and we talked about that from our school time to present day Ambition. Bcoz we are having some kiddish Ambitions in school and as we grew up and responsibilities increases, our Ambitions also changes.

Then we started discussing our fretful encounters with something supernatural or Paranormal Activities like Ghosts,spirits etc, if any.All this was increasing our excitement and triggering stammering but we tried our best to handle this excitement and control our stammering.

After a long discussion of our encounters with supernatural things I began to tell them about the concept of Parallel universes,CERN's Large Hadron Collider(LHC) experiment. Then we discussed few more interesting topics such as UFOs, Aliens,Area 51,John Titor(the Time Traveler) etc.

All the topics were very interesting and thatz why it took around 4 hours to discuss it all. We started these topics bcoz I think that we got bored of talking about stammering and techniques and other stuff related to stammering. So we should have this kindaa chat sometimes in our SHG meetings.

This meeting was very much interesting, especially for me, bcoz I was having a lot about these things within me and finally It came out and now I am feeling very very relaxed. Same will be with Addy and Rajesh too . We also discussed about girls,love etc. So this was even more interesting.....jus kidding.

So this was all about our 8th meeting.Stay tuned to get more on our 9th meeting.

7th meeting of Jammu SHG

On 22nd Nov, we had our 7th meeting of jammu SHG. Aditya didn't come bcoz he was not well.So it was only Rajesh and me. I am in contact with 2 more pws from last 3 months and every time they promise that they will come to attend the meeting but they never show up.
So its their bad luck that they doesn't want to help themselves.

We started the meeting with some casual talks. Then we talked about Rajesh's interview that he had yesterday.Rajesh is already working in a finance company but he is looking for a better job. So he went for an interview in a Sub-sis of Intex. There was an opening for an Accountant.

About his Interview :-

There were around 50 people and out of them 10 were applying for the same post for which R is applying.Each and everyone of them was having lots of experience.Someone with 10 yrs,5 yrs and the least was with 2 years of experience. And here was Rajesh with only 6 months of experience.But still he went for the interview. The interviewer asked him to introduce himself. He started with a lil bit of hesitation and thus stammering. He was a bit shy at the beginning bcoz of his stammering. But suddenly the thought of Acceptance came into his mind and without any shame he started his Introduction.

The interviewer thought that he is a lil nervous and asked him to relax. Then R became more confident and kept on answering without any hesitation. He explained each and everything regarding Accounts in detail. And he cleared the 1st round.

At the end of the interview, the interviewer was so much impressed by his communication skills that he even gave his personal contact number to R. Out of 10, only 2 were selected and R was one of them. Now he is waiting for their call for 2nd round. I bet he will clear that too.

He said that he just used the simple techniques like slow speech, costal Breathing and prolongation and his communication was just perfect.
After that we disscussed a few more things about the Movie "The Unspeakable" and few more things.

6th meeting of Jammu SHG

On 15th Nov, we had our 6th meeting of Jammu SHG. This meeting was attended by three members which started at 11 am and went on to 1:30 pm. According to the Photograph, starting from the left, it was Rajesh ,me and Aditya.



We started this meeting with a lil bit of Bouncing and Voluntary stammering.On our way to our meeting place ,We saw a guy sitting on a bench at a distance. Aditya went to him and asked him to take our photograph using some Bouncing or Voluntary stammering. This time Aditya was quick and confident.

Then we sat at our usual meeting place and discussed about stammering in our life. Rajesh said that today he has achieved so much in his life just bcoz of his stammering. He said that instead of being here, he would ve been somewhere else doing wrong things like most of the young people are doing for example taking drugs or wasting time & money by going after girls etc.And I totally agreed with him. Bcoz I think that stammering makes us much more Hard working, Determined and above all a kind hearted person who understand the pain of someone else.

Then we discussed about a movie called "front of the class". In this movie I learned loads of things that were even missing in "The unspeakable". This movie is based upon a true story of a Guy named Brad who is having Tourettes syndrome.
Tourettes is also a sort of speech impediment in which the person keeps on making funny sounds even when he is sitting quitely.They have shown a lot of emotions and struggle that Brad goes through .He wants to be a Teacher but gets rejected everytime he goes for an interview.
But he keeps on his fighting spirit and never lets Tourettes to win. After appearing for more than 25 interviews, he gets a job as a teacher in a school.And in the end, he gets an Award of "The best gifted teacher of the year".In his last speech he says that "I got support from My family,my school family,friends and my students. But My best teacher and constant companion was my Tourettes who taught me lots of things.I wouldnt have be here without my Tourettes".
OMG Brad and Rajesh are having similar kindaa thinking.

Then we called Sachin sir on his phone and talked to him for about half an hour(28:10 exact). Sachin sir motivated all of us and also cleared many of our doubts.We also talked to JP and Romi.Romi is from Mumbai and he came to samagra to work on his speech.
He is at the right place. Nothing can be better than Samagra ashram.

After that, on our way back, we once again asked a guy to take our photograph using bouncing technique. Then we started asking him few questions about stammering. But he was a bit confused and said that he had no clue why do people stammer. He was feeling a lil bit uncomfortable.So instead of explaining him why it happens, we thought to leave him alone. It really looked a bit strange to him . Three stammering guys standing around him and firing questions. It was a lil funny.

5th meeting of jammu SHG

On 8th nov (sunday) we had our 5th SHG meeting in jammu.This meeting started at 3 pm and ended at 5:45 pm. Aditya was a little late but Rajesh reached at the venue on time.
It was also raining a lil bit at that time.Both of us discussed a lil bit about our experience of last week.

Rajesh told me that he was using the prolongation technique and slow speech very effectively. Then after about 10 mins Addy came and we started our session. We discussed few more techniques such as post,pre and In-block corrections.

Then we started playing some games that I learned from JP at samagra.After that we started a story telling session which was totally based upon our imagination.One of us was suppose to start the story by saying one or two sentences and then the next person had to use his imagination and start the story from where the other person left . It was really fun and we all enjoyed this.

Then Rajesh said that we should start speaking on a topic which triggers us to get more excited and stressed.Bcoz it is easy to talk casually and we are quite a lot fluent .But we suddenly start stammering when we get too much excited and stressed. So we started a different topic and the result was really surprising.
I started stammering and my speech got out of control. I was trying to implement the techniques but was not able to do so.My rate of speech also increased and was not able to control my breathing too. This was what R was trying to prove and he was right.
So next time we will try to have a small discussion on this kindaa topic and we'll try to control ourselves and our stammer too.

Then Addy told us about the latest movie "Ajab prem ki gazab kahani" in which both Ranbir and Katrina are playing the role of a stammerer. So this week I am going to watch this movie too.

4th meeting of jammu SHG

On 1st nov (sunday) we had our 4th SHG meeting in jammu.This meeting started at 4 pm and ended at 6:15 pm. In this meeting, there were 3 members(Aditya, Rajesh(new member) and me) .

First of all we started introducing ourselves.R is working in a finance company.He never got a chance to go for a speech therapy. So it was our duty to tell him about the few key points that would help him to manage his stammer.

R came to know about the Jammu SHG through a social networking site (orkut). So I visited his orkut profile to know a lil bit more about him.His profile was quite interesting but there was no Communities related to stammering in his community section.
So I got a hint that he is still hiding his stammer. So my main focus was to let him know the benifits of Accepting stammering.

Aditya and I focused on Acceptance for the first 1 hour or so.R also shared some of his feelings with us. R said that he is very ashamed of his stammer and that was the reason why he didn't joined any stammering community on orkut. He said that he just hated the word "stammer".
He was not having too much secondary symptoms. Then he told us that because he is working in a finance company, very often he has to speak the word "credit" and this was the word on which he struggles the most. The initial sound of kkkkk was the problem . So we started to explain him the techniques such as bouncing,prolongation ,light contact etc which would help him to speak the difficult words with ease.

We also told him about the importance Diaphragm breathing and slow rate of speech. I think that about 80% of our stammering goes away if we breathe properly while speaking and try to speak as slow as we can. The slow rate of speech wont be easy for anyone and will take sometime to get use to this rate of speech. It would be good if we keep on practicing this slow speech and implement it in real life situations .

In order to totally change his attitude towards stammering, the documentry movie "The unspeakable" by john paskievich is very important. So in our next meeting I am going to give him few documentry movies on stammering.

3rd meeting of Jammu SHG......!!!

On 19th sep(saturday), we had our 3rd meeting of jammu SHG. The main objective of this meeting was to face our fears and the feeling of embarassment that we PWS go through.It is often seen that the attitude of a PWS and fluency in his/her speech, often depends upon the listener reaction to his/her stammer and what kind of facial looks(mostly weird) one gets when he/she stammers.We know that we are suppose to think in a positive way and dont let our emotions to control us.But it is really hard to keep on that positivity everytime we stammer and get a weird look.
This time also, it was only me and Aditya(the other pws in the SHG).At first we sat down and shared our experiences of the last week.we talked for about an hour. Then we started doing our tasks.
As there were only 2 members in the group and we wanted to have a photograph together.So we were in need of a third person who could take our photograph.So our first task was to request someone to take a photograph of both of us.This task was given to Aditya but the condition was that while speaking one has to use the Bouncing technique.We saw three gentleman standing at some distance and smoking. Aditya was ready to do some voluntary stammering by doing some Bouncing while requesting them.He prepared himself and we went to them.But at the last moment I dont know what happened to him and he forgot all of the bouncing technique. He just spoke normally to them. I think this was his first time , so he might be having that feeling of shame and embarassment in him. And here is the photograph :-






Then we saw few boys coming towards us . Once again Aditya was made to go to them and request them to take a photograph of both of us. He again prepared himself and once again he forgot his voluntary stammering and spoke normally. But I jumped in and carried on with my Bouncing technique and did voluntary stammering while asking them a few more things in front of Aditya so that he gets familiar to it.And yes , one of the boy in that group started laughing and mocking on my way of speaking. But nothing bad happened . We also started laughing and we told them about our stammering. But still he was laughing at us and was hiding his face from us . Once again we said that "We people also laugh sometimes on the way we speak and you are also free to laugh my frnd".At last that fellow said sorry to us but then I started laughing and told him to keep on laughing and there is no need to say sorry.After this we felt that there was no feeling of shame and embarassment in us. And that was the objective of this meeting.

After this we saw a french couple with their 2 very sweet kids. I didn't paid much attention towards them and went passed them . But when I turned back, Aditya was shaking hands with them.So atlast he was having that courage in him to talk to strangers, thatz good. I also went to them. The Guys name was David and they came back from srinagar just 2 days ago.They were here on a tour. That french guy was not knowing english and called his wife to interact with us. We told them about our stuttering and our purpose of coming here. We also solved some of their problems bcoz they were not able to find someone who can speak English. Although the french accent of that lady was very difficult to understand but some how we managed to interpret what she was saying and solved their problems.

At last we came out of that place. I gave one more task to Aditya. He was made to go to a shop and buy anything but he had to use that Bouncing technique . Finally ,this time he used the Bouncing technique and stammered voluntarily.

We had a lot of fun in this meeting and we also learned how to tackle with different reactions of listeners towards our stammering.

Our 2nd SHG meeting in jammu...!!

On 9th sep,2009 we had our second meeting and this one lasted for 2 hrs i.e. from 5 pm to 7 pm .In this meeting,we talked about some techniques like Per-Block,Post-Block & In-Block corrections.
After that we had a 'story telling' session. We have already planned all this a day before(on 8th sep) when Aditya(the other pws in the SHG) came to my place to get all the movies and videos related to stammering.We discussed some important things while watching some of the videos and we also decided that we will have a 'story telling' session in our meeting tomorrow(on 9th sep), where both of us have to tell a story to eachother.So from quite a few time I was preparing for a story of a movie called "If only". It was a very nice movie and after watching that movie I always used to say to myself that "how would I narrate this story to anyone if I ever got a chance to speak fluent....??". So I was having this story always in my mind and I was very excited about our 2nd meeting where I would finally get a chance to tell this story to someone, no matter if I even stammer.
After disussing about the Block corrections , we started our story telling session. We were suppose to speak slowly,with proper breathing,bouncing,prolongation etc. No matter how much time it takes us to complete the story, just be relaxed and speak slowly.So I started first and I think that I took about 20 mins in telling the story. Even though a normal person would have taken 10 mins in narrating this story but I was very happy with ma timing.Then Aditya started with his story of the movie "17 Again".He took 15 mins.But He was trying to speak at a slow rate of speech and thatz good.

Aditya says : " My 2nd meeting is slightly more intresting from first one.what matters is that you must use all the techniques in telling stories .On that day, I talked with manpreet for more than 15 minutes continuously . Next time I am not going to bother about time I take in telling story , but about the way I speak( using all techniques )".

Now in our 3rd meeting I m trying to invite some more pws and we'll try to do some tasks like asking the shopkeeper using bouncing or prolongation.I learned all this at Samagra and now I want each and every pws to try these techniques and tasks in real life situations.