#84 The Science & Soul of Speech Communication with Dr. Phil Schneider
“So long as there’s life and there’s breath, there’s possibility. ”
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How do you show up when you feel different?
It’s easy to hold back when your speech is unstable, your voice is shakey, your body tremors and sense of self is doubtful.
Dr. Phil Schneider has spent a lifetime helping people find their voice. But when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he found himself on the other side of the therapeutic relationship, learning how to live with a tremor, navigate shame, and reclaim agency in a body that no longer behaved the way it used to.
In this episode, Uri sits down with his father, mentor, master clinician, and co-founder of Schneider Speech, for one of the most personal and moving conversations on the podcast to date.
Together, they explore Phil’s decades of work helping people find their voice, and how his understanding of communication deepened through his own health journey.
What helped him move forward wasn’t hiding. It was naming the tremor, talking about it with family, and choosing connection over shame. Opening up was the moment he began reclaiming agency. Resilience didn’t come from isolation. It came from letting people in.
This episode is full of warmth, story, and hard-earned wisdom on voice, vulnerability, and what it really means to be present with another human being.
In this episode on connection and resilience, you’ll discover:
How a nonverbal girl found her voice on stage and transformed Phil’s career
What Parkinson’s taught Phil about stuttering, shame, and self-acceptance
Why communication is about connection, not correction
How being seen is more healing than being “fixed”
The hidden cost of hiding, and the freedom of naming what’s hard
How moments of presence can shape the course of a life
And more invaluable insights
BIO
Phil Schneider, Ed.D. CCC-SLP is the founding partner of Schneider Speech Pathology. Recognized as a master clinician and teacher, he has been practicing and teaching for over 50 years. He holds the title of Professor Emeritus of Communication Disorders at Queens College, CUNY.
Phil has been honored with the New York State Speech-Language-Hearing Association Distinguished Clinician Award, the New York City Speech-Language-Hearing Association Professional Achievement Award, and the Queens College Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2004 he was named the Speech Pathologist of the Year by the National Stuttering Association; in 2006 he was awarded the highest Honors of the New York State Speech-Language-Hearing Association, and in 2013 he was given the Advocacy Award by the Stuttering Association of the Young (SAY). Phil is a spokesperson for the Stuttering Foundation of America and has appeared on NBC, ABC and WOR-TV; he has presented more than 200 inspirational and innovative seminars across the United States and around the world.
His first documentary, “Transcending Stuttering: The Inside Story” aired on PBS in 2004, and has been viewed (free) online by tens of thousands of people worldwide. It is viewed and studied in universities around the country. His second documentary, “Going with the Flow: A Guide to Transcending Stuttering” featured the process of therapy, including real footage of Dr. Schneider engaging two young adults who stutter. His other publications include basic vocal physiology as well as applied clinical topics related to voice disorders, stuttering and principles of therapeutic change.
He enjoys roller-blading, hiking and spending time with his family. In response to the challenge of Parkinson’s, he has been enjoying weight lifting, boxing, and table tennis and volunteering to motivate others who deal with PD.
*Board Certified Specialist in Stuttering & Fluency Disorders
ABOUT OUR HOST
Uri Schneider, M.A. CCC -SLP is co-founder and leader at Schneider Speech; creator and host of TranscendingX podcast community; and former faculty at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS / TIME STAMPS
01:10 Meet Dr. Phil Schneider: A Legacy in Communication
03:03 How His Career in Speech Therapy Began
08:54 Learning from a Student: A First Encounter with Stuttering
13:38 The Power of Belief: How Gladys Found Her Voice
17:09 Connecting Through Communication
26:22 Teaching, Mentorship, and Shaping Future Therapists
29:29 Why Emotions Matter in the Therapy Room
30:39 Transformative Voice Therapy
34:35 Shame, Parkinson’s, and the Cost of Hiding
36:54 Openness, Vulnerability, and Reclaiming Agency
48:29 The Heart of Therapy: Growth Through Honest Connection
53:57 What Parents and Young Adults Need to Hear
57:06 Final Thoughts and Reflections
MORE QUOTES
“ You don't really know what a person needs or wants, and the only thing you can do is really listen and try to care and try to understand.” - Dr. Phil Schneider
“ I realized this sense of being diminished by being out of control of your body in front of other people, and even without other people, was intrinsically shaming. It didn't require any other people.” - Dr. Phil Schneider
“ Challenge can be an invitation to growth, and it can lead to intimacy, to being really open with people.” - Dr. Phil Schneider
“ So long as there's life and there's breath, there's possibility.” - Dr. Phil Schneider
“ Parenting is scary because it'll always feel like it's your fault” - Dr. Phil Schneider
RESOURCES
Transcending Stuttering Documentary Films:
My Parkinson’s Challenge (Video)
Just Say the Word (Mishpacha Magazine Feature)
Nachum Segal Interviews Dr. Phil (JMintheAM Radio)
Contact Schneider Speech here.
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Phil Schneider: Speech is a physical act, but that's not the goal. If your speech is the goal, the room could be empty and you could speak out loud, and maybe there's a tape recorder listening, but there's no connection going on.
[00:00:11] I think that's been a big part of my teaching with other people is to be able to connect with people. Not necessarily hear them in the physical sense or understand them in the intellectual or psychological sense, but you feel a connection.
[00:00:25] Uri Schneider: Welcome to TranscendingX. Whether it's stuttering, public speaking, or crucial conversations, all of us have something that holds us back. What if there was a way through it? I'm Uri Schneider from Schneider Speech, where we help people talk more and fear less, and I'm the host of the TranscendingX community.
[00:00:48] Join me as we talk to high performers, researchers, and everyday heroes to discover how they transform their challenges into breakthroughs, and most of all, find ways for each of us to transcend X in our own lives.
[00:01:10] In this episode, I sit down with my absolute favorite guest, my father, Dr. Phil Schneider, the GOAT. Um, not only do we dive into things and stories that you've probably heard or maybe you haven't, I. But we get behind the scenes and we listen to what was it that made him interested in the field of speech, language pathology?
[00:01:31] How did he become interested in the world of stuttering and voice, and some stories that you've definitely never heard, including the journey with Michael. And Gladys. Gladys was a girl who didn't have a voice. She was restricted to a wheelchair, but for some reason he was obsessed in the belief that she had a voice and he was gonna help her bring it out, and how he helped Gladys go from that wheelchair onto the stage where she performed in the school play.
[00:02:00] It's a moving conversation. It's inspiring, it's informative, and I know you'll leave feeling empowered and uplifted. I hope you enjoy the episode.
[00:02:10] Wow. So, you know, I don't know how to begin sitting with the goat, sitting with my father. The original Dr. Phil, um, very excited to, uh, bring out more of your stories and share more of your goodness. So many lives you've touched. Wherever I go, there's usually, oh, oh, you have no idea what it meant to be your father's student, or you have no idea.
[00:02:34] My brother, just yesterday, you have no idea. My brother was having such a hard time and my mother looked high and low, and then she found this guy nearby in the Bronx in Riverdale. It changed his life. And, um, it's such an honor and a privilege to be your son and to be here and to do this. And thanks for being you.
[00:02:56] Um,
[00:02:58] Phil Schneider: Back at you Uri.
[00:03:00] Uri Schneider: So we said maybe we'll start at the, at a, at a sort of beginning. There are many chapters in our lives, we'll get to the current chapter, but, um, let's start with your first, what brought you into the work with people who stutter? Because people think. You must stutter people. Give me that comment.
[00:03:17] I think it's the greatest compliment. But you don't stutter. I don't stutter. So what brought you into the curiosity and the commitment and the devotion that you have in working with people who stutter?
[00:03:30] Phil Schneider: So it's very clear start point. The first day of my first job in my life, so I was sort of an adult for the first day, uh, walked into a junior high school in the, in the Bronx.
[00:03:40] And had a, a list of cards of the children who were supposed to get speech therapy. And the first card was name of the child and the word stuttering. So I went to the classroom to meet this kid. The teacher said, speech therapy, you And, uh, I was extremely nervous because I just didn't know anything about this.
[00:04:04] This short kid, a racial and cultural minority. Slowly walked up to the front of the room, put his finger up toward my face and said, I don't need you. Get the outta here. And he turned around and he walked back to his seat and there was a moment of silence and the whole class broke out and applause because this short fellow.
[00:04:37] Not only was not worried about somebody else, but in fact had tremendous courage and tremendous self-esteem, I guess, to basically say what he needed and what he didn't need, and he wasn't gonna take any guff. And I walked outta the room and I stood outside the door thinking, oh my God, am I gonna lose my first job?
[00:04:56] Uh, is this, I gonna deal with this much rejection? And then it hit me that I had no idea what I would've done with him if he came outta the room with me, and I had no clue. And so I wrote a note and I gave him my phone number and I said, you know, I don't know anything about this stuttering thing. Uh, it looks very interesting and if you'll teach me, I will pay you.
[00:05:24] And I left my phone number. These are the days before cell phones, and I got a call in the house at night.
[00:05:33] How much, and I seem to recall, I offered him a dollar an hour. He wrote back, or no way. It wound up at $5 an hour, which probably was more than I was making. And I sat down with him and I said, I, uh, well, he actually said, what do you wanna know? And I said, I don't even know what I wanna know. Start wherever you want.
[00:05:55] And he said, it's very simple. This is how I talk. I don't have a problem with it. My parents don't have a problem with it. The doctor says it won't kill me. Some people have a problem with it. They can go for help. Like, wow. I said, what else do you wanna know? I said, I think that's enough for my first lesson.
[00:06:17] And as I'm sitting here with you now 50 plus years after that event, I realized. That he was my first teacher and he taught me that you don't really know what a person needs or wants and the only thing you can do is really listen and try to care and try to understand. You never get all the way there, but try to understand.
[00:06:44] And I understood from him that it was not an issue, it was not a barrier. And in fact, I watched him do many things that folks who don't have any speech issues are afraid to do and can't do. Standing up to the principal. He became the president of the student Council, and in fact, I followed his life into adulthood.
[00:07:00] He became a criminal defense attorney stuttering in the courtroom. And from him, I really learned that it's not the issue of physically having interruptions in your speech. It's the issue of how you view yourself in all parts of yourself, the parts that you like, the parts you don't like, but the issue is really about being comfortable in your own skin regardless of anything else in the world.
[00:07:25] Uri Schneider: You know, being curious, not assuming you have all the answers, very powerful, very important. I think there's another ingredient that I learned from you or that I observe and I try to pay forward, is to believe in people. Yesterday I gave this presentation. And I've been doing this recently and often on the days that I give a talk and you know that I'm giving a talk, you'll send me this encouraging message.
[00:07:55] In the morning, you'll send me a little WhatsApp. You know, I hope you enjoy sharing your gifts with the world, and I recognize not everyone has a father that would send a message like that. Not everyone has someone in their life that would send a message like that, but I sometimes share your message.
[00:08:16] With the audience and I say, you know, whether or not you have someone like that in your life, you could be that somebody for someone in their life. And so whether it's your friend, your partner, your child, or the person who's your client, the believing in people when other people don't believe in them, you're believing in people even when they don't believe in themselves.
[00:08:43] And for me. The, the anchor, the reference is in none of the published journal articles, but it's in the story of how you helped Gladys. You wanna tell that story?
[00:08:56] Phil Schneider: I finished my master's degree and I got what I thought was gonna be the most challenging job I could find, and I thought the other speech therapists in this institution were gonna teach me a lot of things.
[00:09:08] It was a, a brand new school for children who were too handicapped to go to any handicap program. Had to have three areas of handicap. So if you were blind, that was one thing. If you were deaf it was another, but you had to have both perhaps and maybe add on top of that cerebral palsy or autism. So it was quite a collection of, of young people.
[00:09:29] And I was handed a list of the names of the kids that I was to work with, and there was a girl that I saw in the school every day, and she was never with anybody else. And I was told she was blind. And I was also told that she'd never been heard to make a sound, a voice. She'd never been heard, to cry, to laugh, to sing, to speak.
[00:09:54] And she liked music. There was often, it was the time of rap music. It was the early, early to mid seventies, and this was Spanish Harlem. And she would like, if there was music playing, she'd be dancing in her chair or whatever. And I like music and dancing. Well, I don't know what it was, but I became fascinated and I just, I just finished my graduate class in voice disorders and I had not a clue where to begin thinking about how somebody could go through this world without a voice.
[00:10:25] And the principal was adamant that, uh, was not, she was not helpable. She was 12. And I should help the kids I could help and move on and leave Gladys alone. And it, it, I couldn't let go of it. Um. I had this unchangeable belief that there was a voice inside of Gladys and that somehow it would come out. And so I started looking for articles about things to see if I could find an article that would give me a clue. And I, uh, found a professor, uh, about a mile or two away at Columbia University who was writing articles about physiology of voice production.
[00:11:06] And I reached out to him and I said, I'm, you know, down here we've got this kid. She has no voice. What do you mean she has no voice? She has, she's never been heard to make a voice. In any case. He agreed to see her. And uh, he stuck a tongue depressor in the back of her mouth. And she gagged and he puffed air down her throat and she coughed and he said, look at all the equipment, seems to work.
[00:11:26] Why She doesn't use it to make a voice. I don't know. That's your problem. And so against the principal's will, and without his knowledge, I began meeting with Gladys. And, um, doing all kinds of silly things to try to create sounds and have fun together, making sounds. And by the end of the first school year that I knew her, she began to sing and she sang in the school show.
[00:11:50] She hadn't yet spoken, but she, she sang in the school show and I began to cry standing in the back of the room. And, uh, this professor said to me, what are you doing for the rest of your life? And I said, I'm doing it. And he said, well, would you like to. Be my student, you know, my doctoral student here at Columbia.
[00:12:07] And like, that sounds pretty interesting. Uh, uh, I said, but, uh, I'm supporting my wife and myself. I need a job. He said, well, if we can deal with that, would you do it? And I said, well, I have another request. I want to really become a clinician, not a bench scientist. In any case, Gladys sent me back to school for five years.
[00:12:26] Gladys sent me on a career of teaching and of being in academia and, and doing research as well. And, uh, I may have contributed to her life in some way, but she certainly changed the course of mine
[00:12:41] Uri Schneider: For all the lives, the Michaels, the Gladys, and so many countless more. What stand out as ways that your life was in enriched in addition to your doctorate?
[00:12:54] In addition to different relationship with professors and great people? What are, what are the different ways that. The Michaels, the Gladys, and the countless others, specifically dealing with communication challenges have taught you, enriched you.
[00:13:11] Phil Schneider: I never had a roadmap of where I was headed. I mean, I knew that I, I, I heard one talk about speech therapy and I went like, that's for me.
[00:13:19] But I never mapped out what that was gonna be like and where I was gonna work, uh, and the various things that were gonna occur. So I think that. That story of the Gladys is really the, the kingpin for me and turned me into a researcher, which I was not. Got me interested actually. When you start to study breathing and voice production in human beings, it takes you to spiritual places.
[00:13:43] Why is that? Well, you start to realize that we, we have some differences from other creatures, and even the fact that we're upright is related to our ability to speak.
[00:13:53] Mm-hmm.
[00:13:54] And you start to realize that when a, a child typically begins speaking when they become upright, not before that. And then you start to look at the differences between breathing when you're not speaking and breathing when you are, and you realize there are only two, two ways to do it.
[00:14:08] And that that occurs, that it unfolds. It's, it's pre-planned. Uh, I'll give you one other example. I was studying breathing in babies and adults. Um. And the word for air coming into your body is inspiration. And there are two ways we think of that word. One is to feel impassioned, energized with a sense of purpose, and the other is to air to flow into you, which gives you the oxygen to be alive.
[00:14:40] And that first inhalation requires no muscles. The lungs pop open, and the air is sucked in or blown in, if you will, from an outside source. The pressure outside coming in, and that gives you the power to express yourself in this world. So it's your source of inspiration and literally your oxygen for being alive.
[00:15:03] So those thoughts, when I started to look at the physiology of how we design and how it works, and to realize how amazing that is, it makes you think about the, the engineering team that's really running the show.
[00:15:17] Uri Schneider: I think the other thing is the inspiration takes work. If you just let go and do nothing expiration, you expire.
[00:15:24] But to inhale it goes against gravity. I think you said that in anatomy and physiology in undergrad had the privilege to be your student. You just shared some of the scientific, um, concepts and ideas and things you paid attention to. In your studies, in your teaching and your clinical work, what are other remarkable things about speech and voice and communication that you think, not just your students in anatomy and physiology should know, but that you would wish more people would get to hear some of the amazing things about the science and the magic of speech, of voice of communication.
[00:16:04] There's so much,
[00:16:06] Phil Schneider: Well. Uh, one thought that hit me when you were saying that was that, um, you were strapped to my chest a fair amount of the time during the doctoral studies and, uh, witnessing the birth of your, of a child, of a new human being. I think most people, regardless of your cultural background or your lifestyle, a profoundly.
[00:16:30] Aware that something just occurred. That's beyond anybody, any human being to do a new, a new being, a new soul. A new body is coming to the world and it's got an internal design to unfold. And so seeing your birth and, and, and being with you and nurturing you and loving you and holding you and comforting you and you know, just your presence was physically with me intensively during those times.
[00:17:00] I think that changes you, you start to think about larger kinds of things in the world.
[00:17:09] Uri Schneider: I think about how you talk about the root of communication that so much of the field and, and the world, you know, even public speaking or a speech coach, it's like just working with an individual in isolation and something that I think of as something that's like one of your rally calls.
[00:17:27] Is to put communication back, you know, frame everything around communication. You wanna share your, your insight about the root of the word communication.
[00:17:37] Phil Schneider: Well, to commune means to come together to connect. Speech is a physical act, but that's not the goal. If your speech is the goal, the room could be empty and you could speak out loud, and maybe there's a tape recorder listening, but there's no connection going on and.
[00:17:54] You were. I think the first part of my noticing this intensely was that the first part of connecting with another being is eye contact. Maybe eye contact when you have to get a sense of what's in your mind, but physically, visually connecting eyeball to eyeball. And you were in one of these things, I think he called it a snugly, and you were up on my chest tied and we'd look at each other eye to eye.
[00:18:19] Um, and I think that's been a big. Part of my teaching with other people is to be able to connect with people with your eyes to make sure if you're gonna stand up on a stage, that you look at other people. And when you need that moment for it to stop, you wait. But if you're speaking to a paper as a public speaker, standing up with your notes and you're reading the paper, the audience gets that. You're not connecting with them. You're connecting with paper. So seeing public speaking or interpersonal speaking as being sure to start with your eyes and maintaining that connection you feel things, not necessarily hear them in the physical sense or understand them in the intellectual or psychological sense, but you feel a connection and I had a powerful experience.
[00:19:16] Meeting a famous world leader after he'd had a severe stroke and couldn't speak at all.
[00:19:22] Uri Schneider: I was actually sitting right where you're sitting on Modi's podcast and I told the story and I I was hoping you would go there. So you're talking about the Lubavitcher Rebbe?
[00:19:34] Phil Schneider: Yes. And um, the people who were his cohorts and leading the, that movement.
[00:19:43] Were seeking someone to fix him, that he should become the man that he was for 90, 91 years,
[00:19:50] Uri Schneider: and you were seeing him after what had happened.
[00:19:53] Phil Schneider: He'd had a profound bi bilateral stroke, and there were apparently no volitional movements. Even with his, he could track a little bit with his eyes, but he couldn't close and open.
[00:20:07] So he had a little bit of eye tracking and, uh. When I came into his presence, we locked eyes and I had this sense that I had to be rigorously honest with every word and had all, so it became very soul searching for me, and he just, and his eyes were like laser beams. I, it was a profound experience and I just felt like we connected.
[00:20:39] Of course then the challenge was, could I do anymore? Could I do, could I help something or could I be a, um, part of a, some kind of recovery? And what, what evolved from that was I redefined my job was it was to help this community, his, his, his community, communicate with him and him to communicate with his people.
[00:21:03] And he had been isolated from everybody. And so I started getting people to listen through, looking through hi to his eyes and holding onto his eyes and asking questions, which could be answered yes or no in different languages. So I did one language, someone else did another language, someone else did another language, and we found that if we really locked eyes and they tell me, what should I watch for to figure out what his answer is?
[00:21:28] I said, I don't know, but just keep your eyes there and keep your mind and your heart open. And it turned out we all, in the three different languages, three different people, we got all the same answers. Wow. I don't know what to make of that, but uh, it had an impact on me to make sure, to encourage people to make this kind of connection.
[00:21:51] And as it relates to the issue of stuttering or other speech issues like NR sound and as a particular sound, that's not so clear. There are great, great communicators, meaning connectors. Who have all kinds of different speaking styles, and it's not the issue. And in fact, it could be endearing. Everyone has their own personal stamp, their own blue, their own fingerprint, and the issue is communicate.
[00:22:22] So I worked with a man who is very kind of famous, one of the top broadcasters in the country and in the broadcast industry. It was like the one who was. The best got the most money because their station got the biggest commercials. And so he said he was competing for number one. He was like the number two guy in America as a broadcaster.
[00:22:43] And he has this one problem that's plagued him all his life. And he was in his mid fifties, I think, as I recall, the R sound. And I knew he didn't have an R, he had a different kind of R sound and he'd been to therapists his whole life and I, and I said. Why are you here now? Do you really think your R sound is the difference between being the number two guy and the number one guy?
[00:23:08] I said, I'll tell you something. If you spend your energy focusing on your R, your ratings are gonna go down because you are successful because you're a communicator, which means I want to communicate with you. But if I'm doing that and I'm thinking about how am I coming across, how am I looking? I'm no longer really connecting with him.
[00:23:31] I'm connecting him and connecting with my own self. So I discouraged him from pursuing that, and he became number one with his particular R, which was his R.
[00:23:42] Uri Schneider: I think of that coming into play. Often when I work with people, they're fixated on some specific speech dynamic or parameter. They're putting 80% of their attention on managing it, on, concealing it, on, fixing it.
[00:23:58] Which only leaves 20% for anything else. And that thing as important or unimportant as it is, if it comes at the expense of being present and showing up for who they really are, so of being connected to themselves instead of being checked out. And if it gets in between the purpose of talking and communicating, connecting with the audience, whether it's one person or whether it's a room of 8,000 people, if we're caught up in our own heads about our own stuff, we're not connecting with.
[00:24:27] What are they here for? What, what vibe do we want to tap into? What message do we wanna transmit? What kind of feeling do we want to give them? It is remarkable. I, I shared with you last night a clip of this fellow I worked with, AI engineer reached out to me two weeks before going on the stage for like a Ted Talk 20 minute piece, and he was convinced that his stutter and his non-native English accent was gonna be the end of him.
[00:24:57] Two weeks later, he rocked the stage. And when we had a conversation afterwards and we talked about how it was, he says, well, the most remarkable thing is before we met, I was so obsessed. I was so fixated on these things, and I thought, until I nail those, there's no way I'm gonna be able to do this. And two weeks later, after we gave the talk, which was amazing, he said, those things aren't even on my mind anymore.
[00:25:22] I'm much more focused on my message. I'm much more focused on what are they hearing, how is it landing, how am I connecting? And uh, it's amazing. And I think it's such a, such a different way than a lot, a lot of our colleagues think about it. So if you were, if you were teaching, which you did for how many years?
[00:25:41] Phil Schneider: Oh, about 30.
[00:25:42] Uri Schneider: About 30. Um, you would have office hours and um, I remember when I was your student in undergrad, some and grad. Some people would think, well that would be awkward, you know, nepotism and so on. And I said, well, it would be if it was someone else's dad, but for you, the door was open to every student as much as it was open to me.
[00:26:05] And your office hours would have people, you know, lining around the halls and lining around the building, coming to talk about all sorts of things, way beyond anatomy and physiology and um, that was amazing. But as I talked to instructors now, the new academic instructors and clinical instructors. What would be some wisdom, what would be some tips that you might offer for instructors of the next generation of speech language pathologists to do, to do the work in the way that changes people's lives?
[00:26:35] Phil Schneider: Thanks for that opportunity. I didn't know that was gonna come up, but I think that's a real, really important opportunity to share some thoughts. Um, people get paid to quote, be teachers in standard academic settings. Yeah. First thing a person does is to try to find a textbook. There's a culture in in, in colleges and like in any profession, there are cultures, and this is the way the culture goes.
[00:27:03] There's a textbook. You assign a textbook, the students have to buy the book. You assign chapters, and then who knows what goes on in the classroom. Typically, the teacher then talks about the stuff in the textbook. And the textbook has created some kind of a, it starts often with, uh, let's say one in stuttering might start with incidents.
[00:27:20] You know, how much does, how many people in the world have this condition? Uh, what are some theories that people have of why they have this condition? What are, uh, how can we break down a couple of approaches people have to treatment? And the teacher then follows this book, and it's often the case that the person doing that in the role of teacher.
[00:27:41] Has not had much experience working with people with these issues.
[00:27:44] Uri Schneider: This is the moment that the goat of voice therapy is gonna practice what he preaches. Take a pause, take a sip, reset the voice.
[00:27:57] Phil Schneider: Thank you. Um, and so when students get their a in the course, because they can say back the questions, asked what basically was in the textbook and was mentioned in the lecture.
[00:28:08] And if you can say it back. And remember those things, you get an A, then you finish and you get your master's degree, and you go out and you meet a person with a problem and you realize you haven't learned anything about what that role is in life and how to conduct yourself in a way that will be helpful to another human being.
[00:28:29] So one of the things that, uh, uh, happened to me or ha or I, or I, I did. I always made sure that every, every class involved me interacting in a clinical way with somebody who had that problem so that the real interaction could be, and that experience, which is not, you can't just nail it into an outline, became something they got to witness and observe and feel.
[00:28:58] And following those people week to week during the class session part of every class session hopefully involve me trying to. Help somebody deal with this kind of an issue. And so they at least they wanna know some image of what that journey would be like.
[00:29:16] Uri Schneider: I think we're feeling beings. Hmm. Dr. Phil never thought of that, but uh, yeah, your Israeli friends always have trouble with the Phil that, that vowel.
[00:29:27] So they always say, Dr. Feel.
[00:29:28] Phil Schneider: How, how do you feel?
[00:29:29] Phil
[00:29:29] Uri Schneider: So Dr. Phil is all about the feels and when I. In a recent presentation with a large group of speech language pathologists, I showed him a clip from transcending stuttering from the documentary that you made. It wasn't a dry eye in the room, and I suggested to them, invited them to consider that in their work.
[00:29:52] In our, in our work, in the encounters, in the sacred encounters they have with the people they work with, there should be feelings. It shouldn't just be a transmission of tips of where to put your tongue and how to breathe and how to do this and how to do that. But there should be a feeling, there should be an experience both on the receiving end for the person who's the client, but there's also a reverb for the person who's the therapist, who's the professional, who's the guide.
[00:30:19] So the idea of feelings, Dr. Feel, I think is so important. Um, when you talk about demonstrating that clinical work, what's one. One example or one experience that stands out of something that played out in one of your, in one of your lectures or one of your classes.
[00:30:39] Phil Schneider: So let's take the area of voice for a moment.
[00:30:42] Um, person may begin coming to you when they're finding they're either very hoarse, they're dys, phonic, their voice disturbed, weakened, limited, stressful. Or in fact no voice. And they may come with a, uh, photograph that a laryngologist took of the status of their vocal folds, which may show an injury. And let's say over the course of 15 week academic semester, the students get to witness that person change by doing some simple tasks and being encouraged to.
[00:31:16] Do a few little hygienic kinds of things, whether it's sipping water or avoiding too much coffee or whatever that little ad wi advice is. If you get to witness that as a student, you just don't have, you don't simply have the information about labels, oh, that's a this and this is a that, but you recognize you are awed by witnessing change.
[00:31:42] Um, okay, so one case that fits in there is a woman came who had almost become completely voiceless, and she was a classroom teacher, and her real dream in life was to be a singer, a professional singer, and she could sing. I never heard her sing. I met her when her voice was barely audible. And over the course of the 15 weeks, she recovered her voice, her vocal folds healed.
[00:32:08] And she went back and in fact, over the next year or so, got back into her career as a singer and gave up the teaching to the students who were witness to that. As I was witness to it, it changes you because then you recognize that it doesn't mean everybody else is gonna have the same story, but you recognize there's a potential.
[00:32:28] You also get, I would bring parents of children into the classroom to talk to me about their experience, and the students would get to see this and. Take the time to cry with a mother because when someone cries in your presence, you don't necessarily know their story, but you feel their cry and you cry too often.
[00:32:47] So I think that people and I cry easily often when I tell these stories. I tear up and, um, I think the students find out, find out that the professor, professor isn't just a, a book that's moving start to feel, but has feelings and. And care. And, and care. And you can see the caringness as I and work with a person, I can, I become, they become part of my circle that I care about, and that gets experienced by the students.
[00:33:19] So I think that people going to become college professors and lecturing about how working with people who don't have a chance or create the opportunity for themselves to actually do the thing and be like teaching dance, but you've never danced. And the students have never seen dance, but they're learning, oh, okay.
[00:33:36] Left foot, right foot. They're reading a script. Move the left over here, move the right over there. They don't get the passion, they don't have the feelings. Uh, and they, they miss the whole, they have all the, the numbers, but they miss the hope, the whole joy and the story.
[00:33:52] Uri Schneider: The process that you talked about unfolding, the idea of transformation of someone who thought that their dream of singing would be forever.
[00:34:02] Just a dream, just another unfulfilled dream. And seeing someone go from being so hoarse, they had no voice, they couldn't teach. Not only being able to do that job, but being able to pursue their dream. Those transformational experiences, when you witness them, when you're part of them, well, when you witness them, it's inspiring and it gives hope and encouragement.
[00:34:23] But when you're present, and like you said, when you're mirroring, they're crying, you're crying and, and their breath. You're mirroring their breath. There's a transfer there. And I think, uh, one of the things we wanted to talk about was as you started to realize that you had Parkinson's, I remember you said to me, now I understand stuttering.
[00:34:50] Phil Schneider: Yeah. Um,
[00:34:53] Uri Schneider: and I thought, I thought you knew a lot before. I thought you understood pretty well. What would you say about that layer of,
[00:35:01] Phil Schneider: I think the, the theme here, which became extremely vivid to me very quickly was shame. And I had thought, and the stories that I'd read about stuttering and, you know, the early textbooks, um, suggested that there was a sequence of events emotionally in a person's life that you learned from the way the world saw you is different to feel ashamed.
[00:35:26] Somebody mocked you, somebody turned away from you. Um, somebody told you speak differently. And that led to this shame, which is such a painful life crippling kind of experience. And then I developed this twitch in my hand. I didn't, I immediately didn't want anyone to see it, and it became a focus of my, of my inner attention.
[00:35:51] If I was sitting down with you and you were someone I was meeting for the first time, either as a student or a client, or a colleague or a friend, or just socially, my mind was like, what am I gonna do with my hand? And I found myself walking outdoors with my hand in my pocket, twitching against my leg and not wanting to be seen.
[00:36:11] And, uh, going to a synagogue where people hold a book. The book was shaking and rattling and I couldn't turn the pages. Uh, and I realized this sense of being diminished by being out of control of your body in front of other people, and even without other people, was intrinsically shaming. It didn't require any other people.
[00:36:40] So for a year or two, I tried to hide it. And a lot of energy went into that and a lot of pulling back from different things went into that. But it was, it was always a focal, it became a focal point for me all the time. And so over the, it's 10 years or so about now that I'm dealing with this, and I often now find that the most comfortable thing for me to do is to bring it up.
[00:37:08] Uh, so everybody, so like, I don't have to wonder what you're wondering. And, um, that's made things much. That's been a good coping strategy for much, as opposed to, I don't want anybody to know. And in fact, it's gone to the other level. It's gone beyond that, which to realize, you know, I can, I can help other people by talking about my situation and hearing their story.
[00:37:34] So I wound up spending time. Nice. Working and helping and supporting other people who are dealing with this particular kind of challenge, and also the word disease and disorder compared to the word challenge. Challenge can be an invitation, as Dan was saying, to growth, to building muscle, uh, and it can lead to intimacy, to being really open with people.
[00:37:58] Which creates an opportunity to really, if you're saying what you're really dealing with and what you would naturally wanna hide, then the other person feels open, safer to open up and share what their own uncertain uncertainties and challenges are. So, um, that's another level. You know, you can never really be in another person's shoes, but it makes me think about how distracting it could be to have an involuntary motor.
[00:38:27] Intermittent and involuntary. The intermittent is important. 'cause let's say I'm not tremoring and I say to somebody, by the way, I have Parkinson's. Well, oh, you look fine. That's the first natural response. And a person perhaps who stutters may say, you know, I do, stu, I have trouble because I stutter. I've never stutter.
[00:38:41] And that's such a difficult moment. And it happens even in my marital, marital relationship where, uh. Where my, where your mom and my wife will say, you know, you're doing, you're doing fine. Which means, I guess I wasn't doing fine. The, you know, I, it doesn't comfort. And I feel we haven't really gotten it yet.
[00:39:04] And I'll have to say, well, what you need to know is this is something that has its own arc. Uh, I hit a rough stage right before while Dan was talking and I was going like, you know, how bad is my shaking gonna be when we sit down to talk? And then it. For whatever reason, it's calmer now and in another moment you can start to, and then also people think of it as direct correlate of your emotional state.
[00:39:28] And does your emotional state can have an impact or not? Mm. It's not one-on-one and stuttering is like that as well. Sometimes there are people when they really feel they're, they need to really speak up and do a great job somehow. The nervous system just gets it together. There are other people in the reverse.
[00:39:53] Uri Schneider: I think on the one hand, people that know you or people that are listening now think of you as a very kind, emotional tender, but also very strong person, very confident person. I think that's what people would think as you went through dealing with this tremor. I remember a time, it was right before we went to Chicago together for a conference, and you sat down with Ima and you kind of sat me down for one of those big conversations in the living room.
[00:40:29] Phil Schneider: I think I was still in the hiding mode at that point. Oh, yes.
[00:40:31] Uri Schneider: This was your coming out moment where you wanted to reveal to me that you were going through something that I had been observing for two years and you said, um, you know, Ima and I just want to tell you everything's okay. We are dealing with a lot of appointments to figure out what's going on, and the tests just came back and we've been sitting on it and we've decided it's important to share with you that you should know that I have Parkinson's and I tried to, um, I actually had this like second layer of what do, what do you need to hear?
[00:41:09] What does Ima need to hear? What do you need to feel from me? But the other voice was like, yeah, uhhuh, uh, not a secret, was pretty clear, was pretty evident. And I'm, I'm so glad you're bringing it out into the open. So I thought maybe you could share like that with all your knowledge, all your training, both uh, training, but also you trained others.
[00:41:35] You'd been through this process with so many people in a similar way of the hiding and the shame, and then the value of kind of opening up. Then living through it. Can you just kind of put a finger on what are those things that drive people to stay in a circle of shame and hiding and paying the price, the invisible price, the invisible cost, uh, of you putting your hand in your pocket.
[00:41:58] Walking in places where you knew you might lose your balance, but if your hand was in your pocket, you wouldn't be able to brace yourself. But to have your hand out was, was too embarrassing, was too frightening. So you paid the price. Of putting your hand in your pocket and hiding the tremor, but losing the safety of being able to brace yourself or paying the price of not getting together with someone because you weren't sure if they would notice the tremor.
[00:42:18] Like even though you're paying the price, there was something motivating you to hide. Can you talk about the motivation to hide and to preserve secrets of this nature and then what it takes to kind of get to the other side where you get to a point and what's the upside of sharing?
[00:42:37] Phil Schneider: I think that. This is a thought. So intellectually, I think that we know that we're all connected as human beings and we all have similarities. We're all connected in some kind of root core way, I think. I think at the same time we know that we're also each unique and very often some of the things that we go through feel like completely us.
[00:43:02] And when you start. Opening up a little bit, you realize everybody's got something that they're dealing with and you realize that we're all again, connected at another level of vulnerability and it doesn't matter what the issue is. And so when you open up about these things, it becomes very humanizing and things can get richer in, in the quality of your connections.
[00:43:28] Uh, you realize there are things you can't or might not want to do that you used to do. And then perhaps new things open up that you never thought of. Uh, and it's almost laughable. I discovered that there was a, a physical trainer whose passion in life was helping people in mature stages of life who had Parkinson's, and he, he's living and has his gym less than a, a city block away from where I live.
[00:43:57] Uri Schneider: I like to say people think of you and they associate it with the voice box. They don't always think of boxing with a punching bag.
[00:44:04] Phil Schneider: And I would never, I never in my life spent time in a gym. I always, I never even thought it would be an interesting thing to do. And I actually look forward every morning to waking up and spending that first hour of the day with this wonderful human being who I never would've met.
[00:44:22] And in many ways, I'm in better physical condition now than I've been in my life.
[00:44:27] Uri Schneider: What age were you when you first stepped in the ring? I
[00:44:29] mean, into the gym?
[00:44:31] Phil Schneider: 68,
[00:44:32] 67.
[00:44:33] Uri Schneider: One of the other things you often would say is that people will call you and say, I don't know. You know, my son is nine, my son is 19. I am 45. I am 72.
[00:44:46] Do you think it's too late? Do you think we missed the boat? Do you think the ship has sailed? Do you think we need to just give up and resign to it is what it is? What would you say? What's your response to the person who's saying that,
[00:45:05] Phil Schneider: So long as there's life and there's breath, there's possibility.
[00:45:09] Uri Schneider: What have you seen? Thank God, in your personal journey and your personal experience with the ways that you've responded to this challenge, your Parkinson's?
[00:45:19] Phil Schneider: One of the greatest joys in it comes out in this kind of a, when you're working with somebody at a high level professional like this.
[00:45:27] Recognizing the difference between the two sides of my body and watching them become, even from the, from the work, being able to move with precision and speed when you could do nothing when you start. So in these various tasks, uh, I showed you, I think today or yesterday, this funny little ball on an elastic and punching it.
[00:45:48] And, uh,
[00:45:48] Uri Schneider: well just for a visual, it was a headband. It was a full circular headband and on it was an elastic, uh, string with a ball at the end, and you were putting your head facing down so the ball is dangling down around your belt. Your head is down and you're, you're doing like a speed bag with it, you know, and every time you punch it, it's moving in unpredictable directions and you're catching it.
[00:46:09] Phil Schneider: And smacking you back in the face. If you don't get outta the way
[00:46:12] Uri Schneider: and you're going at it right left. And you do the speed bag with your eyes closed. You send me those videos. You have a fear of heights. I remember when we went repelling when I was about 19 and you were all saddled up, had everything on, and the instructor said, okay, now's the easy part.
[00:46:27] Just lean back, nothing can go wrong. And you said, I'm outta here. And I said, that's okay. You could pass today, maybe one day. And then it was in the past two or three years, you sent that video of you all harnessed up, climbing, rock climbing a wall, because you heard rock climbing could be a good thing. So doing things outside your comfort zone and Parkinson's is the degenerative disease.
[00:46:49] And so talking about it,
[00:46:51] Phil Schneider: Let's just talk about labels. So imagine you, you think you're, why is your hand tremoring? What should I do about it? Eventually you seek out a phys, a physician, they watch you tremble. They go like, oh, you have a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Here's a pad with a script.
[00:47:06] Go. And sometimes we, our model in our profession is similar with people who stutter. We're gonna do an evaluation. Oh, this is how you stutter. I see you close your eyes. I see you grunt your voice. I see you swing your arm. I see you do this. I see you do that. Um, how long you been doing it? Oh, you know, you got a really bad case.
[00:47:27] We, we diagnose, we label it, we then talk about how bad it is, and then we make some kind of a prescription. Not a great model for really what we do in this world. You're meeting incredible a, a being with incredible infinite potential. You never know, and you have been in this work long enough for yourself to watch people catapulted by the very thing they thought was gonna bury them.
[00:47:58] That is not rare. It's often the case that something which is a challenge builds determinations. Wisdom, spiritual strength, skill, mission. And those are the things that make you feel good about your life.
[00:48:17] Yeah. It can potentially break a person and for some people it is crushing to have whatever challenge they have and the opportunity is there that it, instead of it breaking it can make, doesn't break you.
[00:48:28] It makes you,
[00:48:29] I I, my mind shifted back to a thought that I want to share, which is the issue in, in our industry, speech therapy as it relates to people who stutter. It goes through different chapters, industries. And there were camps. Just be happy as you are. Get out there. Be a bold person that stutters.
[00:48:49] Be proud of it. Um, or fix it. Learn to control it, minimize it. Make that a goal. Work on it. How do you know what to do with whom? And I told the story of that young boy who came up and said, I don't need your help. A very easy case. He knew what he needed and what he didn't need. He and so, but I wouldn't have been able to know that he knew it.
[00:49:17] And the reverses meeting a man who came to me in his early sixties who looked like he had normal speech, and in fact was hiding the fact that he started by constantly changing what he was saying and avoiding many different kinds of speaking situations. But I asked them, what, what would you like? Why are you here?
[00:49:35] Why are you spending a precious time in your life and some precious money to consult with somebody about this? And then he opened up and talked about his pain and his shame and his hiding and, and what it was costing him in his life by the time. And I just kept wanting to know more about it. And as he kept telling me more and more detail about what he had been doing in order to hide this.
[00:50:00] He became clearer and clearer about what he wanted to do about it and the flip over between that, I'm not gonna do, I'm not gonna do, I can't, I won't, and I can do anything. Was like flipping a switch. I said, so what would you really like to be doing? He said, well, I'd like to be teaching. And I said, well, how about you teach my class like next week at CL at Queens College?
[00:50:24] And he said, yeah. He was, he was profound. And the students had one of the most profound experiences of their whole graduate student career. Uh, so the how do you know what a person needs and wants? You have to ask them, and you have to listen, and you have to want to know more and wanna know more and wanna know more.
[00:50:43] And as they try to help you understand what they want and what they need, I get to know it, but they get to hear it. When you tell someone else, you hear yourself. The more I wanna know. The more you get to explore, the more you get to know, and that's the therapeutic process.
[00:51:05] Uri Schneider: I'm a better person. I'm alive, you know, thanks to you and to, Ima learned so much from both of you.
[00:51:15] The work that I'm able to do and seeing how it transcends the traditional boundaries of speech therapy. Really the most influential piece is you and seeing what you just said, you know, seeing that there's this universal experience that we get fixated and held back by seeing the things that we think other people won't tolerate, and they become things that we don't tolerate of ourselves.
[00:51:41] And what ends up happening is the things we really want start to get dampened and turn into dusty dreams. And your work is a living example. Of helping people dust off the dreams, bring it into focus through poignant questions and curiosity and integrity and intimacy, and meeting people where they're at and seeing what they really want.
[00:52:05] And one of the questions I, I often ask that I think I got from you. Mm-hmm. So this thing stutter, voice, fear, shame. Whatever that thing is that a person feels held back, you might ask them If that thing wasn't so present, what would you be doing more of?
[00:52:25] Well, I wouldn't be doing that thing, or I wouldn't have that thing. Yeah, and and then what would you start doing more of, like you just said about this example? And so I've seen, I've, most importantly, I've seen that for the people we work with in traditional speech therapy, I've seen that for the people that I work with in all different industries, but most of all, I've seen it for myself.
[00:52:46] So I just wanna thank you for that lesson and for that influence and for that example, and also your living example. And what I was gonna say earlier that while some think of Parkinson's as a degenerative disease, the other thing that you've always said is change is non-linear. It doesn't follow the trajectory of a straight line.
[00:53:07] Not in this direction, not in that direction. And seeing what you've been able to do in the way that you've responded to the challenge of Parkinson's with sleep, diet, exercise, meds, consultations with different professionals, and just working with yourself and with others and with Ima to see that at many moments you're dealing with less impactful symptoms at some moments than you were.
[00:53:32] A long time ago kind of really defies and is an incredible resilience and defiance in the face of a disease that could take away so much from a person's life. And so I just again, wanna give a tribute and thank you and give you a chance for some parting wisdom. Let's say whatever wisdom you wanna share with parents, with individuals, collectively or separately.
[00:53:57] Phil Schneider: I'll just take a moment to talk about parenting and meeting parents and being a source of support for parents. When parents come to us, because they have a child who stutters, they're very frightened.
[00:54:14] They're frightened of the dream of a child that will be fulfilled and happy. Have good relationships, make a contribution in this world, have a meaningful life. A joyous life. A peaceful life, all these things, they become centered on the fact that their difficulty speaking or their way of speaking, it may not be difficult, but it looks difficult.
[00:54:36] But their way of speaking with interruptions that are involuntary and intermittent will destroy that dream. And that is a horrifying experience for a parent. And I think we need to make sure that we we're, we think we're aware of that when we meet that parent for the first time. That we allow them, we make it safe for them to really talk about what their fears are, and that often winds up with tears.
[00:55:08] And not to be too quick to push tissues, which suggests that we should mop up the mess, keep, keep the tissues in there, but don't, don't push 'em over. And I also, if, if I wind up crying, that's okay. I don't have to cry, but. Sometimes the the pain resonates, but our ability to listen to parents talking about their fear, about what's gonna happen to their kids, I think can become a very important part of the journey.
[00:55:38] And it's scary for us too, as therapists because. Unconsciously or consciously, we, we, we feel that we're supposed to be able to fix things, to fix people, and when the journey isn't going in that direction that the trait is going away or it's becoming easier. I think that there's a lot of pressure that many of us, that's normal for us, myself included, even after many years of doing this to feel maybe we blew it.
[00:56:09] Maybe we didn't earn our keep. Maybe somebody else could do better and you never, and maybe that's true. So we have a struggle too. When we get involved with the work. We, it's a, we take a risk that we may feel humbled. Um, but being present for parents without allowing them to talk about their fear about this without saying, well, we'll fix it or we'll do this or we'll do that and say it is scary.
[00:56:38] Parenting is scary because it'll always feel like it's, it's your fault that this should have been something you could have done better. That's a very delicate part of our work, honoring the parents' fear and concern.
[00:56:55] That's the piece for parents. Did you wanna give another part for young adults living with. Some communication challenge that they feel is holding them back. They feel they could be more of who they know they can be, but they feel so stopped and blocked by this.
[00:57:14] I think our imagination about what's possible needs to be stimulated in the process, in the, in the therapy relationship.
[00:57:24] Uh, in my own life, I saw a, a YouTube, a, I don't know how I came to see this clip, but it was some man who was suffering with his Parkinson's. Depressed, debilitated. And something, something he saw inspired him to think maybe he could become an athlete. And he went on in, in his, I think, forties to become a nationally known successful athlete trembling until the gun went off to get moving.
[00:57:52] But the challenge motivated him to go beyond normal. And that kind of paradoxical shift from the dark to the light is not. An isolated event and somehow we have to keep those sparks of possibility of things going from the dark to the light. As a whoop, we have to make, we have to energize that.
[00:58:16] Uri Schneider: I heard one of our podcast guests said, it didn't define me -
[00:58:20] it refined me.
[00:58:21] Phil Schneider: Wow. Beautiful.
[00:58:22] Uri Schneider: And so thank you for this conversation. It's been such a privilege.
[00:58:26] Phil Schneider: Thanks Uri.
[00:58:26] Uri Schneider: And we should have many more, and we should continue your legacy at Schneider's speech to bring your way and your touch and your humanity to help people find their voice and, and live meaningful lives of connection and purpose.
[00:58:39] Thank you.
[00:58:40] Phil Schneider: Thank you, Uri.
[00:58:42] Uri Schneider: Thanks for listening to Transcending X. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who could benefit from it. If you want free tips to help you talk more, fear less, sign up at transcendingx.com/email Until next time, remember, tomorrow's breakthroughs start with what we do today. Let's keep talking.