As a SLP and a person who stutters I strongly believe that we have what I call a “stuttering brain”. There is definitely a disconnect between our speaking and our breathing. We have a brain that does not understand the relationship between our Valsalva response and our speech. A fluent speaker has a brain that tells the vocal cords to stay open and allow easy and continuous airflow when speaking. The stuttering brain tells the vocal cords to close or open intermittently during speech which I believe is the root cause of stuttering. Once we can train the brain to breathe for speech we can work towards becoming fluent. This is what I did which allowed me to become fluent. I have never had a relapse.