Nexus - 0401 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Sound Treatments for Good Health Sound for Treatments Good Health Vibration permeates everything, and sound affects everybody, whether we realise it or not. Here, we explore two approaches to the use of sound in improving health. ow seriously should we take the modern menace of noise pollution? Last year (1991), environmental health officers in Britain received over 100,000 com- plaints about noise, while the US National Institute of Health estimated that more than 10 million Americans are regularly exposed to noise levels that could cause hearing loss, with discos and personal stereo systems the chief causes for con- cern. Potentially most harmful, therefore, are the ‘recreation’ sounds we purposely seek and depend on for pleasure and escape, or the everyday urban cacophony to which we eventually become impervious. As Professor Chris Rice, Director of the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research in Southampton, points out, the real danger is that "you don't become accustomed to noise, you become deaf to it." And if not deaf, then function- ally impaired in other subtle, less obvious ways. According to Europe's leading pioneer in the field of Audio-Psycho Phonology (APP)—the study of the relationship between ear, voice and psyche—although hearing is probably the first of our senses to develop, it remains the least researched and understood and is taken largely for granted by all except those with diagnosed hearing problems. Yet having devoted a lifetime to analysing and improving the function of the human ear, Professor Alfred Tomatis concludes that the most powerfully far-reaching of all the senses generally remains the most defective. The eponymous Tomatis 'method' seems at first to be informed as much by New Age philosophy as medical science. The apparent unorthodoxy of some of Tomatis's views— for instance, that from four-and-a-half months the foetus begins listening to its mother's voice, distinguishing it from the background of visceral rumblings, and becomes depen- dent on an intra-uterine ‘dialogue’ which then develops throughout infancy—belies his background as a practising ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist with 45 years' experience of successful treatment of learning, audio-vocal and behavioural problems. In the 150 centres around the world—where Professor Tomatis's ‘listening cure’, pio- neered in his Paris clinic, is now available—teachers, musicians, psychologists and speech, music and occupational therapists are successfully applying the technique to a variety of learning and communication disorders. Tomatis's thesis, which is that all com- munication or learning disorders have their origins in impaired or under-developed listen- ing skills, is gaining credibility among others working in the field of speech and hearing. Such disorders as illiteracy, stuttering, dyslexia, inability to learn languages, impaired concentration and memory, lack of verbal fluency or coherence, as well as more gener- alised problems including depression, fatigue and shyness are, according to Tomatis, linked to an impairment in auditory skills which causes us to become disconnected from our environment and so unable to communicate as well as we might with the outside world. The crucial distinction between hearing (essentially a passive sensory process of absorbing sound) and listening (the voluntary focussing on specific sounds), is integral, says Tomatis, to the understanding of how and why ‘natural’ self-expression and commu- nication often falter or break down altogether. Even non-vocal skills such as writing, which translates sounds into graphic form, may suffer if the sounds of language are poorly integrated. In extreme cases, withdrawal from normal life and communication may be chronic, as in the case of the actor Gérard Depardieu, who, until coming to Tomatis in his late teens, had been too inhibited to talk freely with other people. The son of an opera singer, Tomatis has an innate musical ear. It was his early experi- Based on material supplied by Kay Distel Sound Education (Australia) 3 Coutts Place, Melba, ACT 2615 Phone: (06) 259 1364 Fax: (06) 258 5530 Kay Distel Sound Education (Australia) 3 Coutts Place, Melba, ACT 2615 Phone: (06) 259 1364 Fax: (06) 258 5530 NEXUS - 45 1. THE TOMATIS® METHOD GETS A WIDER HEARING Based on material supplied by DECEMBER 1996 - JANUARY 1997