Mathias wrote :
> .Tomatis found out that, as we age (and/or
> evolve in a specific culture), some frequencies simply desappear
> altogether from our voice or earing. In anilyzing one's voice imprint
> and making a tape including all missing frequencies, then listening to
> the missing frequencies over and over again, the person would in effect
> gradually recover the hability to percieve/pronounce such lost sounds.
> This amounts to rewiring the brain functions apparently lost with
> sounds. Resulted in encreased health, facility to learn foreign
> languages.
I interviewed Alfred Tomatis a few times, read all his books and even
underwent a "Tomatis cure" at his lab, so I'm quite familiar with him. Here
is something to complement Mathias' account.
True, we lose the ability to hear certain frequencies as we age (loss of
high frequencies), or after we are exposed to very loud noises, or after
some diseases, or even for psychological reasons (some voices we don't want
to hear when we are young... like mother or father, sometimes). True also,
our native tongue and culture fashions our ear, we become selectively deaf
to certain frequencies. And true again, after the Tomatis program, you
regain lost frequencies (which is considered as impossible by conventional
ear physicians), your health may improve, your head certainly does and you
have a better ear for foreign languages...
The method is a bit different than the above description. You put on
headphones and listen to continuous music, with weird filtering effects, for
1 hour (typical cure is 20 or 30 sessions). Could be any music, but Tomatis
sticks on Mozart's violin concertos. Filtering is constantly and rapidily
changing between normal spectrum and extremely high parts of the spectrum
(sounds quite ugly and piercing). So the tiny muscles and bones in the inner
ear are constantly shifting, and a reeducation occurs.
The method was originally designed for partially deaf people, but Tomatis
soon found that regaining lost frequencies had all sorts of unexpected
effects - on mood, cognitive functions, physical health, etc. So today the
cure may be indicated for all sorts of troubles.
Let me add that my experience with Tomatis (about 10 years ago) was
especially enlightening for me. Until then I was a "normal" science writer,
with a cursory interest for controversial science. When I did my piece on
Tomatis, I also interviewed mainstream ear specialists about him. I knew
they thought he was a quack. I wanted to know why. I found out that they
knew nothing about him. They didn't met him, nor any of his patients, they
never went to his lab, they never even read his books ! ... It was all based
on rumours. And they deemed as impossible things I had been seeing and
hearing for weeks. I guess that's when I lost half my faith in conventional
science... (Still keeping the other half, though...comes in handy sometimes...)
Cheers to all
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jean-Pierre Lentin
---------------------------------------------------------------------------