It's good to talk

Talking is something most of us take for granted, like walking and eating we do it automatically and it is a vital part of our lives.

Imagine being unable to say what you want, when you want. To know that what you are thinking - even the simplest of sentences, words or sounds that you have formed in your mind - will come out of your mouth as something completely different, usually unintelligible.

That's what it was like for Michael Mondesir, who had a severe stammer for 26 years, from the age of nine.

"It was very bad. Most days I was barely intelligible. Simple things like giving my name and address to people would take ages and I would have to repeat myself often," he remembers.

"I would be, basically, just making strange noises. It was very frustrating. It was also physically painful and tiring. The actual physical effort involved in trying to pull words out of me was sometimes exhausting," he recalls.

Michael, who is a musician and appears at Southampton's Turner Sims Concert Hall on Sunday with the Django Bates' band Quiet Nights, says he was lucky. His stammer did not affect the course of his career as he chose to play the guitar, and he had lots of love and support from his family especially his brother, Mark, who has also had a stammer for most of his life.

"It did limit me, though, because obviously, I couldn't do interviews. And I know many others whose lives have been adversely affected by it," he says.

Michael and Mark were referred to numerous specialists and speech therapists over the years, who attempted to help them overcome their stammers with varying degrees of success.

Michael says they were shown techniques intended to disguise the stammer, which were largely counter-productive.

"We tried ways to cover up the stammer, but often replaced it with something else which sounded worse," he says.

One of the techniques they were shown, called block modification, encouraged stammerers to speak in a slurred way or in syllables or to avoid certain sounds, which he says was very difficult, especially at school.

"Trying to live a normal life while focusing on avoiding using certain sounds or words was a problem," he admits.

The turnaround came for Michael after his brother met a recovering stammerer at a party last year, who told him about the Michael McGuire Programme. On the four-day course the brothers learned something called non-avoidance technique - the opposite of everything they had been shown before.

"We are taught not to avoid any word, sounds or situations. For example, standing in a queue to buy a train ticket. This wouldn't be a problem for a fluent speaker - but for a stammerer there are all kinds of thoughts going on in our heads about what might happen when we get to our turn, like wondering what the people in the queue behind are thinking. It is very stressful, which makes it worse and it becomes a vicious circle," he explains.

The Michael McGuire Programme also concentrates on teaching a breathing technique called Costal breathing - similar to that which actors and singers learn as part of their training.

Michael stresses that it is a technique and not a cure, and he refers to himself and others on the programme as "a recovering stammerer."

"Like all techniques that work, it needs to be used constantly. It is possible for anybody to learn it, but if they don't continue to use it, they may relapse," he warns.

"The other therapies and techniques I have tried have focused on trying to stop the stammering, the McGuire Programme focuses on eloquence and the enjoyment of speaking."

Michael and his brother Mark attended the programme in July and it was such a success that Michael has joined Toastmasters International (a club for articulate, eloquent speech-makers).

In addition, Michael has been learning to rap, which is what he will be doing this Saturday when he delivers his version of Frank Sinatra's My Way at the Turner Sims Concert Hall.

Learning to overcome his stammer has had a big impact on Michael's life, he recently came fifth in the World Speed Reading Championships.

"When I came off the course, I found that I had more brain space because I no longer needed to concentrate all my energy on trying to get a word out.

I read a lot more and I met up with a woman called Anne Jones from Leicester, who is the world speed-reading champion, and became her student. I can now read up to 2,344 words per minute!"

But Michael says, best of all, for eight months now he has been able to articulate his thoughts and feelings for the first time ever and recently he has been learning how to teach other stammerers the Michael McGuire technique.

"My life has changed dramatically, I'm doing things now that I wouldn't have done before. I've been producing records and teaching at the Royal Academy of Music."