The assumptions underlying the Valsalva technique are flawed. It is not good science. It is merely old wine in new bottles. Case in point: The Valsalva maneuver requires increased muscle effort of the laryngeal muscles. However, during speech adults who stutter use less laryngeal muscle activity than adults who do not stutter. Below is taken from the abstract of [this 1996 paper](http://jslhr.pubs.asha.org/article.aspx?articleid=1781045) >The adults who stutter had a lower operating range for these muscles during conversational speech, and their disfluencies did not produce relatively high activation levels. In summary, the present data require us to reject the claim that adults with a history of chronic stuttering routinely produce excessive levels of intrinsic laryngeal muscle activity. This therapy technique needs to go the way of the dodo bird.