Research and Media Articles

• Evidence for Sound Therapy
• A Non-pharmaceutical Treatment for ADD
• Doctors Use Mozart
• Environmental health for children
• Katie’s Blocked Ear
• Listening that makes hearing possible – For Probus Magazine Part 2
• Mozart is Sound Therapy
• Sensory Integration Dysfunction
• Sound Therapy - A sensory access to higher consciousness
• Sound Therapy helps anxiety and depression
• Sonic Birth to Open the Ear
• Sound Therapy for children with hearing loss
• The Psychology of Hearing
• Tomatis, the Irrepressible Pioneer
• Triumph Over Tinnitus
• The therapeutic effect of high band pass classical music and antioxidant supplements
• Tinnitus and the brain
• Treating Meniere’s with Sound Therapy
• Triumph Over Tinnitus
• “What? I can’t hear you!”
• Why Aren’t I learning?

Evidence for Joudry Sound Therapy

Rafaele Joudry M. Psych

Rafaele Joudry is the Founder and Director of Sound Therapy International. She has authored three books and designed a practitioner education program on Sound Therapy. She has completed her Masters and is currently undertaking her PhD and leading a team of practitioners in Sound Therapy research. She is looking for Doctors interested in collaboration.

www.soundtherapy.com.au

Premise
Joudry Sound Therapy is an effective treatment for tinnitus because it directly stimulates the ear mechanism in such away as to improve both the mechanical, muscular function of the middle ear and the sensorineural function of the cochlea. It also activates many brain centres simultaneously, thus promoting the creation of new brain connections and better neural integration between auditory centres as well as integration with other sensory pathways.

Definition and Scope of Joudry Sound Therapy
Joudry Sound Therapy is a treatment system based on the discoveries of the ENT Dr Alfred Tomatis. New treatment protocols and improved algorithms have advanced the therapy to render it more potent in the treatment of tinnitus and other ear related problems.

Music Therapy. Extensive evidence exists for the efficacy of music therapy in altering stress, mood states and assisting with a range of health disorders. In particular the music of Mozart has proven beneficial in assisting mood and also stimulating neurological connections and improving intelligence and short term memory.

Tinnitus - is learning to live with it still the best answer?
Because no suitable drug therapy has been found for tinnitus there is a tendency to accept that the condition is untreatable. However stimulation and retraining methods have been found to deliver relief for the majority and in some cases total recovery.

Masking. Tinnitus masking was discovered in 1977 by Jack Vernon who observed that an external sound is easier to tolerate than an internal sound and went on to develop specialised devices for masking tinnitus. While helpful to some sufferers, this method was found effective in providing temporary relief only.

Habituation theory. In the 1980s Dr Pawell Jastreboff and Dr Jonathan Hazel, developed the theory of habituation which holds that tinnitus only becomes a problem if the limbic system is activated and the patient associates the tinnitus with stress or another negative emotion. Jastreboff developed Tinnitus Retraining Therapy which uses counselling and sound generators to train the patient not to pay attention to the tinnitus.

This method has gained wide acceptance in the audiology profession. It provides a measure of relief but requires a fair time commitment, and cost, as subjects must attend a course of training to learn the method.

Intermittent masking. In the 1990s a program was developed by Dr Paul Davis and marketed under the brand name Neuromonics. This program delivers a more tailored form of masking which has proved more palatable as it is delivered via music, giving an intermittent effect at a level tailored for the patient. However, the cost is prohibitive for many tinnitus sufferers. The efficacy of this method has not been verified by independent research.

Ear rehabilitation. Dr Tomatis’s discoveries provide a unique approach wherein ear function is rehabilitated using classical music processed with particular algorithms to create a stimulating effect for the ear. His work has been largely overlooked in the audiological field due to the fact that the short term treatment possible in the clinic setting was usually insufficient to produce the needed changes to affect tinnitus. However, the portable program developed by Joudry uses a different protocol which allows for more intensive, long term treatment, and is now proving to be highly effective in this area.

The improvements made to the Joudry program include:

The physiological basis of Sound Therapy
Dr Tomatis in the 1950s invented a method of Sound Therapy where the frequencies in classical music are altered to provide a physical stimulus for the ear as well as the brain.

Tomatis advanced some radical ideas about the ear and nervous system for which he was acclaimed during his lifetime by the French academies of medicine and science. Several of his theories were tested and confirmed at the Sorbonne University. His premises, established through clinical observation included the following:

Efferent impulses activate the ear
The middle ear mechanism is an active organ which responds via efferent nerve stimulus to incoming sounds. While generally thought of as passive, the middle ear muscles tend to be ignored in seeking remedial solutions for ear problems. Their only recognised role is generally the impedance of loud sound, which could damage the ear. However, Weeks and Richards through investigating the role of the cranial nerves and efferent impulses arising within the Superior Olivary Complex in the brain stem, confirmed that there is a voluntary and proactive component to our hearing. In fact it appears that we are continually tuning the middle ear in order to focus on sounds that we deem to warrant our attention.

Sound can improve ossicular performance
The middle ear muscles can be activated by alternating high and low tones, leading to permanent improvement of their functioning. Tomatis made this discovery after many hours of clinical experimentation with his filtering device, the Electronic Ear. Though more interested himself in psychological aspects of hearing, and in treating autism and dyslexia, he laid the foundation for others to exploit his breakthrough for “ear physiotherapy.”

High frequencies reactivate the cilia
Moving through to the cochlea, Tomatis found that presenting the ear with increasing high frequency sound enhances the capacity of the ear to respond to high frequencies. He developed a program which progressively increases the high frequency content of the sound, increasing both tolerance and capacity for frequencies of 8,000Hz and above. Standard medical advice holds that if the cilia are damaged by noise or infection, they have most likely been destroyed and no improvement in hearing can eventuate. This has been called into question by a growing body of evidence that listening to the Joudry Sound Therapy, (an extended version of Tomatis) sometimes results in significant hearing improvement for sufferers of sensorineural hearing loss. This can only be explained by the premise that the hair cells in some instances were not destroyed but only damaged, and that the repeated stimulation by gradually increasing high frequencies helped to reactivate them.

Better ear function increases appreciation of sound
Tomatis asserted that the ear can be re-trained to receive a greater range of sound by repeated stimulus to “exercise” the middle ear muscles. Listeners to the Joudry method frequently confirm this finding by observing that their appreciation of sound improves, musical and vocal ability improve and they are able to hear birdsong and appreciate music in a new way. Along with this, following a conversation becomes easier, they can hear better in different environments and many report being able to turn down the TV so they can listen without annoying the rest of the family.

The right leads language integration
Tomatis discovered that singing, speaking and all language skills are enhanced by ensuring right ear emphasis, which creates a shorter, more direct brain route for processing sound in the left hemisphere. While it is generally accepted that the primary processing centre for language is on the left, no one apart from Tomatis has used this knowledge to create a simple, auditory remedial program for laterality confusion and the resulting learning and language problems. Tomatis discovered this phenomenon by accident when working with singers who he found greatly improved their vocal range, control and fluency when monitoring themselves with the right as opposed to the left ear. He found that subjects could be trained to be right ear dominant by consistently supplying louder sound to the right ear.

High frequency bombardment improves brain energy and integration
Perhaps the most groundbreaking of Tomatis’s discoveries was that intensified high frequency sounds, primarily in the range of 8,000 to 16,000 Hz, consistently supplied, serve to stimulate and enhance brain function. This has implications for a wide range of brain disorders from depression to epilepsy, but also explains the benefit of the method to stress, anxiety and general wellbeing. Tomatis said that the brain needs to receive 3 to 4 billion stimuli per second for at least 4 ½ hours per day in order to function at optimum potential. Various forms of brain stimulation have been looked at for their therapeutic impact on dystonia, stroke rehabilitation, depression and chronic pain. By using classical music with augmented high frequencies, Tomatis found a way, via the auditory system, of making brain stimulus more acceptable and universally beneficial to the nervous system.

Supporting evidence for Tomatis’s discoveries
Enhanced Brain states. Davidson of Madison University has studied the ability of humans to create and maintain positive emotional states and has integrated Western medical investigation with the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism by engaging in extensive enquiries with the Dalai Lama and other leading Tibetan lamas. Davidson’s research shows that certain centres in the left hemisphere of the brain, which are activated by meditation, contribute to more positive emotional states. This corroborates Tomatis’s discovery that stimulating the left hemisphere via the right ear emphasis produces beneficial results.

Classical music. Tomatis and Joudry Sound Therapy are delivered through classical music that has been altered to enrich the high frequencies, provide a right ear emphasis and present the ear with constantly alternating sounds of high and low tones in a particular algorithm, using Tomatis’s purpose made filtering system, the Electronic Ear. Western classical music is most suitable for this system due to the fact that it uniquely combines complex rhythm, melody and harmony to a greater degree than any other form of music, thereby stimulating numerous parts of the brain at one time. This is believed to enhance brain connectivity by causing connections to be formed by many diverse regions of the brain. Through experimentation Tomatis established that classical music was the most suitable type of music to use for Sound Therapy. The clinic based Tomatis method was used extensively to treat dyslexia, autism and a variety of listening or auditory processing disorders.

Tomatis research. A variety of beneficial effects of the Tomatis method have been recorded in research at specialised clinics in South Africa, Canada and Australia. These include benefits for dyslexia, anxiety and depression, language disorders, stuttering, mental retardation, learning difficulties, vocal quality and tinnitus.

Ear disorders showing improvement. The Tomatis method was made portable in 1984 by the Joudrys, so longer-term treatment became feasible as cost and convenience were dramatically improved. This led to evidence that on-going Sound Therapy can assist in certain cases with a number of ear related problems not previously considered treatable. These include various types of hearing loss: sensorineural, acquired hearing loss, industrial deafness, age related hearing loss and conductive hearing loss for which there is often a muscular component. They also include blocked ear, hyperacusis (sound sensitivity) cocktail party syndrome (difficulty hearing in a noisy room) and tinnitus (ringing in the ears.)

Data has been gathered for these effects through extensive written testimonials, surveys and clinical observations by some 200 allied health practitioners who recommend the method.

Evidence of success with tinnitus
There is extensive clinical evidence for the portable Tomatis (Joudry) method in the form of surveys, case histories and in depth interviews with clients.

A survey of Sound Therapy listeners found that 90% of tinnitus sufferers benefited from the method in that it reduced stress, anxiety and sleeplessness associated with the tinnitus. 45% experienced a reduction in the noise level and 7% found their symptoms were completely gone. Of hearing loss sufferers, 56% reported improvement. Improvements were observed through changes on audiograms, decreased volume required on Walkman or TV, being able to hear better in noisy environments, on the phone or when the speaker had their back turned. Such changes made a significant difference to the person’s life.

Numerous practitioners from various fields including musicians, psychologists, medical doctors and audiologists have become advocates and as independent practitioners actively promote and recommend the method.

Eric Jordan, a UK based audiometrician treated 200 to 300 tinnitus patients over a 2 year period and observed that 90% of patients benefited. Though not a formal study, this nevertheless constitutes objective, clinical observation of patients using the method in their day to day lives by a pracitioner interested and experienced in the tinnitus field.

As most of these results have been gathered from qualitative measures of actual clinical applications, including the personal reports from the clients on the impact on their lives, they are more informative than single quantitative measures from controlled research situations. More extensive research is needed to determine more precise statistics for the potential results in each category of hearing disorder. However, the information gathered so far leaves no doubt that Sound Therapy is beneficial to most people suffering from a hearing related complaint and that in many instances it can be quite life changing. The affordability of this method makes it a very favourable and low risk option for tinnitus sufferers when compared to other treatments available.

A Non-pharmaceutical Treatment for ADD

Sound Therapy in the Treatment of Dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, Delayed Speech, and Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Today more and more parents are looking for non pharmaceutical treatments for the increasing levels of learning difficulties affecting their children. Creating a toxin free environment is of vital importance so that growing children do not become overloaded with chemicals that the liver cannot process. Early exposure to chemicals is being linked to developmental delays and learning disorders.
In addition to good nutrition and assistance with detoxification, a very important aspect of treatment, too often overlooked by learning difficulty specialists is treatment through auditory retraining, or Sound Therapy. This treatment is now available as a home based therapeutic listening program which assists listening, brain function and language development. Evidence points to the potential benefit of Sound Therapy in counteracting today’s environmental assaults on the developing child. Dr Veira Scheibner, who is well known for her extensive research in the vaccination field, suggests that Sound Therapy is an important treatment to assist the child’s brain to recover from the damage caused by vaccination or other environmental toxins.

Why the ear
Dr Tomatis the ear specialist and originator of Sound Therapy said “We read with our ears.” This theory is founded upon the fact that the ear is the only primary sense organ which is registered at all three levels of the brain, the brain stem, mid brain and cortex. In contrast the visual sense is seated only in the cortex. It is for this reason that Tomatis believed that perceptual problems often need to be addressed through the auditory function.

Julia, Dive, a tutor specialising in Sound Therapy explains the importance of listening when a child is learning to read: “if children can’t hear the sounds, if they can’t relate a sound to the symbol, then they have trouble having it register in their head and then relating that sound again to that symbol next time they see it. They need to able to understand, see the letter, hear the letter and reproduce the sound of that letter next time they see it. And then they need to be able to blend that letter in with all the other letters that form a word and be able to reproduce that sound again. And Sound Therapy, I think actually helps that process of what happens after the sound goes into the head and then where it goes inside your brain and what your brain does with it and how it spits it back out again at the other side.”

For this complex decoding process to occur, millions of brain connections are needed. Susan Greenfield, a leading educator on the human brain, explains that axons and dendrites, the tiny filaments which enable communication between the neurones, are created in response to stimulation of the brain. This stimulus could simply be from thinking about something of interest, or it could be a sound, particularly a high frequency sound. Dr Alfred Tomatis who developed the Sound Therapy program in the 1950s, made crucial discoveries on the neurological and psychological fronts. These included the fact that the brain needs a concentrated input of high frequency sound in order to function at maximum potential, and that the baby’s brain develops much of its basic structure from hearing language while still in utero. The growing foetus actually hears the mothers voice.

Dr Veira Scheibner explains that Sound Therapy creates new brain connections, restoring some of the damage done by vaccination. Once the nutritional and detoxification aspects have been addressed, many practitioners believe Sound Therapy is an important tool for restoring neurological functioning.

Other leading specialists have reached the same conclusions as Tomatis about the importance of the ear in learning. Dr Levinson, author of Smart but Feeling Dumb has specialised in the clinical treatment of dyslexia and ADD for several decades and, like Tomatis, concludes that these problems are somehow related to the ear. His approach, however, is to treat the ear with pharmaceutical remedies, while Dr Tomatis treated it with sound.

Conditions treated successfully with Sound Therapy
Dyslexia. Word reversal, one of the typical symptoms of dyslexia, is according to Tomatis’s theory, linked to left ear dominance. Sound Therapy encourages right ear dominance, thereby improving the efficiency of the brain in delivering sounds directly to the left hemisphere which is primarily responsible for language.

ADD/ADHD Sound Therapy improves attention by increasing high frequency perception, processing speed, and the ability to inhibit action and therefore decide on the appropriateness of an action before jumping in.
Autism is typified by hyperacusis or phonophobia (sensitivity to or fear of loud sounds.). Sound Therapy increases the resilience of the ear in accommodating the full range of frequencies. It also improves language integration and increases the ability for meaningful communication.

Speech problems such as stuttering and delayed speech development are frequently remedied by Sound Therapy. If there have been ear problems or emotional problems at a crucial stage of development, neural patterning may be interrupted. Sound Therapy stimulates the process of speech patterning and allows listeners to catch up with speech development.

Down’s syndrome. Research in recent years has shown that hearing problems play a major role in the disabilities experienced by children with Down’s syndrome. As both hearing and auditory processing are improved, children with Down’s syndrome show significant social and learning improvements.

Pre natal development. Dr Tomatis investigated the role of sound in the unborn foetus and demonstrated that much of the neuronal patterning of the brain is laid down as a result of the child listening to its mother’s voice while in the womb. When the mother listens to high frequencies, her voice is stimulated, having a beneficial effect on the developing foetus.

Inner ear dysfunction
The ear has been described as “the Rome of the body,” because so many of the cranial nerves are linked to a some part of the ear. The auditory nerve has branches surrounding the ocular motor nerve, indicating its control of eye tracking. Dr Levinson says, “The inner ear system has been proven to direct and guide our eyes and tracking responses automatically during the reading process.”

Through thousands of case studies Levinson came to the realisation that in every case of dyslexia the unifying factor was inner ear dysfunction. He realised that dyslexia affects every aspect of ones life, auditory and visual processing as well as motor coordination and balance, both waking and sleeping. Hence, he says: “I came to view the inner-ear system as a fine-tuner for the entire sensory input and motor output system.” This led to understanding of the role of the cerebellum, which could be seen as the grand central station linking the local exchange of the inner ear to the final destination of the cortex.

The cerebellum
The cerebellum plays a significant role in sensory coordination, both visual and auditory, and has been dubbed by Susan Greenfield the ‘autopilot of the brain.’ Levinson believes that any learning difficulty associated with auditory processing problems is linked to the cerebellum.

The following graphic description of the cerebellum and its vital gate-keeping role in the human body is from a Scientific American article by R. Snider. With a group of outstanding neurophysiologists he reached these conclusions after completing a series of animal experiments.

“In the back of our skulls, perched upon the brain stem is a baseball sized, bean-bag shaped lump of grey and white brain tissue. This is the cerebellum, the “lesser brain.” In contrast to the cerebrum, where men have sought and found the centres of so many vital mental activities, the cerebellum remains a region of subtle and tantalising mystery, its function hidden from investigators….Its elusive signals have begun to tell us that, while the cerebellum itself directs no body functions, it operates as monitor and coordinator of the brain’s other centres and as mediator between them and the body…”

Many other studies have corroborated the evidence for the inner ear dysfunction theory. When numerous dyslexics tested at four leading hospitals with electronystagmography (ENG), a special physiological inner-ear testing method, 90% showed definite evidence of inner-ear dysfunction.

Correspondence with Tomatis’s views
Levinson analysed 35,000 dyslexics, the largest sample ever he claims. He paid great and detailed attention to all symptoms he observed, and eventually wove the symptoms together into a new understanding of dyslexia. His conclusion was the same as Dr Tomatis’s, that dyslexia is caused by an inner ear dysfunction, which can affect capabilities in any or all of the following areas.

Reading, writing, spelling, mathematics, memory, direction, time, speech, hyperactivity, overactivity, impulsiveness, concentration and distractibility, ADD ADHD, phobias and related mental behavioural disorders, balance and coordination.

ADD ADHD
Levinson found that ninety percent of children diagnosed with ADD/ ADHD have inner ear related problems similar to dyslexics. He therefore concludes that both dyslexia and ADD originate from the same cause, but have been slightly differently defined leading to different diagnoses. However, both have proved responsive to treatment with Sound Therapy, corroborating both Levinson and Tomatis’s view that finely tuned ear function is fundamental to learning.

Pre-Natal Listening
Dr Tomatis, made significant discoveries about the role of the ear and sound in the prenatal development of the brain. Sound is the first sense to develop fully in the womb. The foetus's ear is ready to perceive sound at four and a half months. The baby listens to its mother's heartbeat, respiration and digestive sounds. Dr.Tomatis believes that the baby can also hear the mother's voice and becomes familiar with this sound before birth.
 
The sound of the mother's voice with its familiar tone and rhythm is what provides continuity between the prenatal and post-natal worlds. The infant is particularly accustomed to the high frequency sounds of the voice as heard in the womb, and therefore is immediately reassured when presented with high frequency sounds filtered to a similar level.

When the mother listens to Sound Therapy during her pregnancy, the benefits she receives are passed on to the infant. The effects of listening for the mother are a soothing of her whole system and a stimulation to the cortex of the brain from the high frequency sound.

The hormonal shift experienced by the mother at birth sometimes causes post natal depression. This can be greatly alleviated by the continued use of Sound Therapy after giving birth, as well as by herbal treatment to balance the hormones.

Dyslexia
The left hemisphere of the brain is the main center for processing language. In order for speech sounds to reach the brain efficiently the right ear must take a leading role in listening, because the right ear communicates most directly with the left brain hemisphere.

Dr. Tomatis contends that children with dyslexia have failed to achieve right ear dominance and that therefore the order in which they hear sound becomes jumbled. The balance between the two hemispheres of the brain is of fundamental importance in overcoming dyslexia. Both hemispheres play a role in processing language, but the roles they play are different. The eye must combine with the power and the quality of the ear to make sense of the written sounds. This co-ordination happens easily when the left hemisphere deals primarily with audition and the right hemisphere deals primarily with vision. In dyslexia, the route which allows for phonic analysis has been damaged. Sound Therapy restores the functioning of this route and eliminates the cause of the problem.

Sound Therapy stimulates and exercises the ear, teaching it to receive and interpret sound in an efficient manner. Music is a highly organised series of sounds that the ear has to analyse. Therefore, listening to music is an excellent way for a child to learn how to perceive sounds in an organised fashion, or in other words, to listen. The higher volume of sound to the right ear, which is built into all Sound Therapy recordings, means that the right ear is educated to be the directing ear. When this right ear dominance is achieved, the problem of reversal will frequently disappear.

Autism spectrum disorders
Many children with autism spectrum disorders exhibit extreme sensitivity to noise. Some frequencies are actually painful for them to hear. Dr. Tomatis suggests that in order to shut out painful sounds or other unwanted stimuli the child closes down the hearing mechanism so that certain sounds cannot penetrate the consciousness. On a physiological level, this closing off of the ear is achieved by a relaxation of the muscles of the middle ear. Over time, these muscles lose their tonicity. Sounds are then imprecisely perceived and as a result incorrectly analysed.

Sound Therapy offers a child with autism the opportunity to re-open the listening capacity. The fluctuating sounds produced by the Electronic Ear gradually exercise and tone the ear muscles, teaching the ear to respond to and recognise the full range of frequencies. As this happens, communication takes on new meanings and the child begins to respond where before he or she was unreachable.

Sound Therapy recreates the pre-birth experience of audition and enables emotional contact to be made first with the mother and then with other people.

Children with autism respond to Sound Therapy by showing a greater interest in making contact and communicating with the people around them. Interactions with their family members become more affectionate and appropriate. There is often increased eye contact and the children have a longer attention span.

Attention Deficit Disorder
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are believed to be caused by a deficiency in the transmission system which relays messages between cells in various parts of the brain.

The majority of children with ADD/ADHD have auditory reception problems. Although they can hear they cannot make sense of what they hear, because the ear and the brain are not working efficiently to process the sound. They have difficulty tuning out unwanted input and focusing on selected sounds.

It is this indiscriminate reception of auditory input which leads to the inability to concentrate on a selected topic for any length of time. Where hyperactivity is part of the child’s condition, there are additional problems of impulsiveness, behavioural problems and poor social skills.

Sound Therapy provides this rehabilitation for the ear and re-organises the auditory transmission in the brain. This process reduces stress and tension in the whole nervous system as the child becomes able to attend to a chosen stimulus instead of being constantly distracted by every sound in the environment.

Very dramatic results can be achieved with Sound Therapy for children with ADD/ADHD. The first change to be observed will be a marked decrease in activity (for overactive children) while under active children will become more energised. As the listening discrimination is retrained, memory and concentration improves so that learning can be achieved with a great deal less effort. Sleep and appetite problems are resolved as the whole system becomes calmer and less erratic. The behavioural difficulties, such as impulsiveness and aggression, are now brought down to a manageable level. The child is now able to pay attention in class and to understand and follow instructions and is motivated to communicate and learn.

Speech Problems
Unless there is a deformity in the vocal apparatus, most speech difficulties are caused by some interference or distortion in auditory reception. Although the hearing may test as normal, the relaying of verbal information to the brain may be impaired. Hearing your own voice is a source of constant feedback while speaking and any confusion in the sequence of received sounds can cause confusion in speech output. The results can be substitutions of one sound for another, stumbling over words or a flat and toneless voice.
Most people use the left hemisphere of the brain as the primary integrating centre for language. Some studies have shown that stutterers process language primarily in the right hemisphere or a mixture of the two. The right hemisphere is less efficient for processing auditory information, so the result is problems in the timing of speech output such as stuttering.

Speech difficulties frequently lead to problems in other areas where language is used, such as reading and writing. The element which is the basis for all these skills is the ability to hear and process sound accurately.
Dr. Tomatis made an important discovery about the relatedness of the ear to the voice. He established that the larynx emits only those harmonics that the ear hears. A lack of tone in the voice indicates a lack of tone in the hearing. Sound Therapy fine tunes the hearing and restores the ability to hear missing frequencies.

Sound Therapy is flexible, portable, easy and fun
Listening can be done during sleep, play, homework or travel. If the child wishes to listen at school, parents can ask for the consent of the teacher. This will likely be granted, as listening in the classroom will often help the child to concentrate and perform better.

Sound Therapy is used on a personal cassette player with headphones
The total listening time required for most children to receive the full benefit from the program is approximately 100 hours. Most children have an instinctive response to the acoustic stimulation of Sound Therapy and will take to the listening keenly.

Close to two hundred practitioners in Australia now recommend the method. However, the portable program means that parents can use Sound Therapy at home without needing to see a practitioner.
In its portable form, Sound Therapy is affordable, portable, easy, harmless and requires no special testing or supervision.

For more information on Sound Therapy readers are referred to the book: Why Aren’t I Learning? : Listening is the Key to Overcoming Learning Difficulties, by Rafaele Joudry

This can be obtained through your local bookstore or from Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd. Phone Australia 02 4234-4534 or 1300 55 77 96

info@soundthrapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Doctors Use Mozart

Ngare Ring lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and practiced for many years as a speech pathologist, before being struck by a mysterious 21st century disease. She says “from one day to the next, my energy disappeared and I was baffled as to the cause of the problem.” But the disease, despite its debilitating effects, has proven to have changed her life for the better.

Ngare’s father, the late Dr. Frank Ellis (1912-1974) used to play Mozart and other composers to his patients during surgery when they were under local anaesthetic. He found that the music soothed and calmed them, making the experience much more comfortable and even pleasant. He adopted this procedure after spending time in the USA with the famous ear, nose and throat surgeon, Dr. Morris Cottle, who loved music and began the practice of using music during surgery. This was in the 1950s and the music he used was on a large reel-to-reel tape player. Many music connoisseurs still claim this is the best sound reproduction system ever invented.

Dr. Frank Ellis was one of Australia’s leading ENT (ear nose and throat) surgeons between the 1950’s and 1970’s and was president of the Otolarygological Society of Australia for a time. He was a pioneer in Australia in the use of microsurgery to remove austic neuromas (benign tumours of the auditory nerve).

Ngare was led to speech pathology due to her father and a lifetime interest in language which, she remembers, began even as a toddler. She believes that she was very fortunate to have been raised on classical music as it has greatly enriched her experience of speech and language. While working in California, she was able to combine her interest in language and learning with her fascination for foreign languages and became fluent enough in Spanish to work as a bilingual Special Education teacher with immigrant children from Mexico.

Ngare worked as a speech pathologist/special educator all her life until 1995 when she found that several amalgam dental fillings were cracked and she was advised by her dentist to have the fillings replaced. Being ill informed, like many dentists, on the dangers of mercury in the amalgam; the dentist removed her fillings without taking precautions to protect her from the toxic effects of gases and particles that were released during the drilling process. He then replaced her fillings with fresh mercury amalgam, which increased the level of toxicity.

That was when Ngare’s energy disappeared and, from one day to the next she, was faced with an enduring and inexplicable illness: including lethargy, migraine headaches and vision problems. Ngare was told by another dentist, who finally diagnosed her problem, that she had a very severe case of mercury poisoning along with gangrenous areas in her jawbone where wisdom teeth had been extracted. Because of all this she was also showing signs of early Multiple Sclerosis.

She sought help from many practitioners, and while pharmaceutical medicine made her condition worse, she received some relief from chiropractic and naturopathic treatment. But the beginning of the real turnaround came when she discovered Sound Therapy. Prior to this, Ngare undertook some rebirthing sessions in the hope of getting to the cause of her problems. One day the therapist asked her “tell me what you love most in the world.” Ngare was surprised to notice that the first three things she mentioned all had to do with music. During the rebirthing session, Ngare had what she describes as an incredible out-of-body experience where she saw herself sliding into a pool, surrounded by beautiful music. It was this experience that renewed her great interest in music and which eventually led to her discovery of Sound Therapy.

It was soon after the rebirthing experience that she came across the book “The Mozart Effect” by Don Campbell and from there was led to Sound Therapy, a portable self help listening program based on the work of the French ENT Specialist, Dr. Alfred Tomatis. Ngare read with fascination of the work of Dr. Tomatis who, using the reel-to-reel tape machines of the 1950s devised a listening program which not only could improve speech and language function and was a highly effective treatment for learning difficulties, but also helped to stimulate brain pathways and replenish energy systems in the body. Plagued as she was by chronic fatigue and constant severe migraine headaches related to heavy metal poisoning, Ngare was eager for anything that could give her back her vitality. She began using the Sound Therapy tapes and very soon her energy started to improve. The filtered music also gave her a feeling of hope and, from this time on, she was led to all the other things she needed. Beginning Sound Therapy was a real turning point for Ngare.

Along with a new sense of positivity, Ngare found she had an incredible new musical awareness. She says “I always loved music, but now I can’t live without it. It opens my heart.”

Dr. Tomatis, who knew of the healing power of Mozart for learning and emotional healing long before it was scientifically tested and proven, said “Mozart is a good mother.”

Given courage to seek further healing, Ngare found a Holistic dentist who replaced her amalgam fillings with the new composite type, but this time used proper protective measures such as rubber dams, oxygen supply, proper sequencing to reduce the battery-like effect of dissimilar metals in the mouth (mercury fillings and gold caps) and, of course, safe disposal of the amalgam material. She experienced immediate improvement in her health once the mercury fillings were removed. She also continued to benefit from Sound Therapy and began introducing the method to her family and clients. Ngare says that all members of her family have seen remarkable improvements from the therapy. Her husband has experienced a lowering of blood pressure and, with the reduced stress, he is like a different man. He no longer gets upset about minor things and sleeps like a baby for the first time in years. He uses the Sound Therapy while working in front of the computer. "One of the great benefits", explains Ngare "is that you don’t have to concentrate on the therapy as it works on your ear at an unconscious level, so it is very suitable for busy people."

Ngare’s mother, aged 86, had severe insomnia for many years, but now it is rare for her to have any sleeping problem. Her hearing has also improved; she had a loss of high frequencies in her left ear, which is no longer apparent. She now looks and acts like a woman 20 years younger than her actual age!

Ngare’s sister has been through some very stressful years. Since using Sound Therapy, she has become much more positive and is sleeping a lot better. She says: "I can cope with just about anything these days thanks to Sound Therapy. I keeps me calm and centred." Ngare’s twin nieces who are typical of identical twins, being very emotionally, close have also been through trying times; so Ngare suggested they try Sound Therapy. One of them took up the listening and, as a result, her grandmother describes her as “a different girl.” She now has a much more positive attitude, is sleeping better and no longer waking every night at 2 am.

Ngare is particularly excited by the possibility of using Sound Therapy in conjunction with speech pathology. Having had to give up her practice due to her illness, she intends to resume it in a new form, combined with Sound Therapy. Ngare loved her work but found there were some clients she simply could not help. Coming from a medical tradition of using Mozart in the surgery, Ngare is undeterred by convention, for she has experienced first hand the remarkable healing power of music and is determined to gain for Sound Therapy the recognition it deserves in her field.

This article was written in 2001. Ngare is now retired and prefers not to take enquiries.
For more information please contact Sound Therapy International 02) 4234-4534 or 1300 55 77 96

e-mail info@soundtherapyinternational.com
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Environmental health for children

By Rafaele Joudry

Protecting your baby from toxic and dangerous interventions
Mothers who took thalidomide did not know until their babies were born that the drug would cause birth defects. The last generation of people who took to smoking cigarettes did not know what a serious health hazard they would prove to be. All the workers who installed asbestos in the 1950s, 60s and 70s did not know they were setting themselves up for mesothelioma and asbestos lung cancer. Likewise, mothers today do not know the implications for their children’s future health, when undertaking procedures such as ultrasound and vaccinations. There is sufficient evidence that these procedures may be harmful, to warrant every parent undertaking careful investigation before deciding if they will expose their children to these procedures. A few hours of research beforehand could save years of remedial therapy and thousands of dollars. It is my hope that many parents will read the following sections in time to make their own informed decisions at least for their next child.

Ultrasound
Ultrasound technology is based upon ultra high-frequency sound waves, which bombard the child in the womb at an extremely high rate of speed. To get an idea of what this may do, think of the situation where a woman with an extremely high voice can break a glass by singing an extremely high-pitched note. That is an example of what just ONE relatively slow sound wave can do. Ultrasound is super high frequency, which may have more detrimental effects. Ultrasound waves in laboratory experiments have been known to damage chromosomes, produce internal cellular heat which damages cells, retard the normal development of cells, and many other phenomena.

According to the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Report, ‘It is not clear at this time whether ultrasound foetal monitoring is beneficial to the mother or foetus in terms of pregnancy outcome...If there is no generally acknowledged benefit to the monitoring, there is no reason to expose patients to increased cost and risk. The question of benefit has not yet been resolved...and the potential for delayed effects has been virtually ignored.’

Ultrasound technology carries potential risks which have not yet been evaluated, yet it is assumed to be completely safe and doctors are telling women that there is no risk. Having an ultrasound is not essential to a healthy pregnancy. However, most doctors are trained to use expensive technology and not trained to use hands-on skills. The fault is not with the doctors, but in the way they are trained.

Before you allow an ultrasound to be done on you, do some research, thoroughly question your healthcare provider about safety as well as the value of the information which would be received from doing the procedure. Don't be afraid to refuse the test if you are not comfortable with the information you have discovered. It is your legal right to refuse any tests you do not want.

Evidence has been uncovered by scientists suggesting that ultrasound scans on pregnant women cause brain damage in their unborn babies. Several studies done in the 1990s hinted at this. In the most comprehensive study yet on the effect of the scanning, doctors have found that men born to mothers who underwent scanning were more likely to show signs of subtle brain damage.

Research has suggested that subtle brain damage can cause people who ought genetically to be right-handed to become left-handed. In addition, these people face a higher risk of conditions ranging from learning difficulties to epilepsy.

A team of Swedish scientists compared almost 7,000 men whose mothers underwent scanning in the 1970s, with 170,000 men whose mothers did not, looking for differences in the rates of left- and right-handedness. The team found that men whose mothers had scans were significantly more likely to be left-handed than normal, pointing to a higher rate of brain damage while in the womb. Crucially, the biggest difference was found among those born after 1975, when doctors introduced a second scan later in pregnancy. Such men were 32 percent more likely to be left-handed than those in the control group. Premature babies are five times more likely than normal to be left-handed. According to the Swedish researchers, the human brain undergoes critical development until relatively late in pregnancy, making it vulnerable to damage. In addition, the male brain is especially at risk, as it continues to develop later than the female brain.

Ultrasound scans in late pregnancy are now routine in many countries. It appears that as many as one in 50 male foetuses pre-natally exposed to ultrasound is affected.

The growing evidence that ultrasound affects unborn babies may cast new light on the puzzling rise in left-handedness over recent years. In Britain, the rate has more than doubled, from five per cent in the 1920s to eleven per cent today. Researchers have estimated that only twenty per cent of this rise can be put down to the suppression of left-handedness among the older generation.

Dr Francis Duck of the British Medical Ultrasound Society said, ‘When the first study suggesting a link came out, it was possible to ignore it, but now this is the third,’ he said. ‘What it demonstrates is the need to investigate the link further, and to look at possible mechanisms.’

Other research by scientists at University College, Dublin, confirmed the findings of earlier American research that ultrasound tissue-heating creates changes in cells and can cause bleeding in mouse intestines.

Patrick Brennan, who led the research, said, ‘It has been assumed for a long time that ultrasound has no effect on cells. We now have grounds to question that assumption.’ Four and a half hours after the mice were exposed, the rate of cell division had reduced by twenty two percent and the rate of programmed cell death had approximately doubled. Mr Brennan believes there will be similar effects in humans.

Although supposedly said to work with sound waves, ultrasound waves are not in the audible range, so their high frequency is not natural to the body. Dr. Mendelsohn wrote, ‘Ultrasound produces at least two biological effects—heat and a process called 'cavitation', in which bubbles are created that expand and contract in response to sound waves. The first time I saw this cavitation process in action, a chiropractor turned on the therapeutic ultrasound machine in his office and placed a few drops of water on the part of the machine that was applied to the patient. I wish every reader...could have been with me to watch that water suddenly boil and bubble’

Dr. Mendelsohn has done extensive investigations to learn the truth about ultrasound. He eventually ortained copies of documents researching the procedure, which anyone may receive by writing to: WHO Publications Center, 49 Sheridan Ave., Albany, NY 12210, asking for ‘Environmental Health Criteria 22: Ultrasound.’

Experiments cited in these documents indicated reduced foetal weight and reduced foetal organ weight in animals who received ultrasound. Researchers are noticing a small but definite reduction in newborn birth rate among human infants exposed to ultrasound. There is evidence that the immune systems of laboratory animals exposed to the procedure are affected. The procedure also affects the blood platelets which allow the blood to clot. This could lead to problems with circulation because of travelling blood clots. Of even greater concern, changes in the structure and composition of cells, including genetic material, have been suspected. In experiments with animals, these changes have resulted in defective embryos with a variety of problems. Much more is not known, than is known, and researchers postulate that it may be twenty years before we really know the problems incurred by ultrasound, including the possibility of cancer and, most commonly suspected, leukaemia. The mother might also experience congenital malformations.

Reading this information, one cannot but suspect that the increasing use of ultrasound is responsible in part for the increase in learning difficulties today.

The vexed question of vaccination
Vaccination is a complex and emotion-fraught question which all parents must address. My mistake was not arming myself with information sooner. My parents were well-informed on issues concerning natural health and stopped vaccinating their children in my early childhood, so I received fewer vaccinations than most.

However, I failed to fully investigate the reasons and pass on the knowledge about the dangers to my foster daughter, in time. Her active, healthy boy returned from his first round of vaccination with respiratory disturbances and fretful behaviour which had not been there previously. After the second round of vaccinations at eighteen months, his symptoms worsened. As he became a toddler, behavioural abnormalities showed up which were finally diagnosed as ADHD. His mother then informed herself, found supportive professionals and did not vaccinate her second child, who shows none of these behavioural disorders.

This alerted me sufficiently, and I decided to seek out well-informed scientific information. I went to visit one of Australia’s leading authorities on the subject of vaccination, Dr Viera Scheibner, who lives in the Blue Mountains. My eyes boggled as I walked into Dr Scheibner’s archive room. On the shelves were two hundred magazine holders, each containing about thirty scientific articles on vaccination, and another two hundred ring binders containing more articles. I asked if she had read them all; she had. It was clear that she is a true authority on the subject.

Of Slavic origin, Dr Scheibner holds a PhD in Natural Sciences. After an eminent scientific career, during which she published three books and some ninety scientific papers in refereed scientific journals in Australia and overseas, her study of babies’ breathing patterns and cot death in the mid 1980s clearly pointed to vaccines as being behind the majority of cot deaths. Together with Leif Karlsson, an electronics engineer, she developed Cotwatch, a breathing monitor to be used for babies thought to be at risk of cot death or ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ (SIDS). The team soon realised that the Cotwatch was sounding alarms when babies were affected by a range of stressful events, the most prominent being vaccination. In her own words, ‘It took over three years of research before we looked at each other and said, “Vaccines are killing babies”’. This introduced her to the subject of vaccination, which she has, as a result, been avidly studying ever since.

Despite extensive examination of orthodox medical research published on vaccines over the past one hundred years, Dr Scheibner told me she could find no scientific evidence that these injections of highly noxious substances prevent diseases. To the contrary, she found that they increase susceptibility to them, in addition to causing a host of immune disorders and other damage to the body, including the brain. She was therefore forced to conclude that they represent nothing but a medical assault on the immune system. Having vaccinated her own two daughters when she was a young mother (and also, more recently, having insisted on being given a tetanus vaccine herself) this was not easy to come to terms with.

Numerous other doctors who are true investigators in their own right, in that they are willing to go outside their standard medical education and search out their own evidence, have reached the same conclusions. Here are some quotes from some of these experts, featured in the video:

Vaccination: ‘The hidden truth’

‘... [my daughter’s] symptoms were intensifying after each vaccine...So I wrote to the governments and got figures.…I realised there was a lot of information that we were being told... which wasn’t true...’ Dr Isaac Golden—Homoeopath, Teacher, Author: ‘Vaccination: A Review of Risks and Alternatives’

‘They say openly in the [medical] legal system that if you advise against vaccination the A.M.A. will push to deregister.…These are symptoms that, if they were seen in a child who had not just been vaccinated, all us doctors would be a little concerned that this child perhaps had a type of viral meningitis. We wouldn’t just sit back and say, ‘That’s fine. Take some Panadol and it will go away.’ Dr Robyn Cosford—Medical Doctor

‘It is a well documented fact that the incidence and mortality from infectious diseases fell by 90% well before any vaccine was even introduced...This is not a rare occurrence. Epidemics in fully vaccinated populations are a rule rather than an exception....So [in the U.S.] they mandated vaccination and it resulted in a three-fold increase in whooping cough...’ Dr Viera Scheibner, Ph D Principle Research Scientist (Ret.), Cotwatch Monitor researcher.

‘Babies are injected with bits of animal, bacteria, viral DNA. They can be incorporated into the human genome.…Why is it that only since the ‘40s have autism, brain damage come about? Because this was when immunisation was introduced to a large extent.…Vaccines are a billion dollar industry, and there are at least a billion good reasons there why it’s continued.’ Dr Peter Baratosy—Medical Doctor, Author: ‘There is Always An Alternative’

‘Even once they’ve stopped vaccinating, residue results through infertility, arthritic conditions,... dogs have one seventh of the length of a generation that a human does, so what we are seeing in dogs today is what we will see in the future with humans, and that’s a really frightening thing.’

Ashleigh Oulton - Registered Dog Breeder: ‘Before he (Louis Pasteur—the “father of modern medicine” and originator of the Germ Theory of disease) died, he changed his mind. He ended up saying it’s not the germ, but the conditions within the body...’ Ian Sinclair—Natural Health Lecturer, Author ‘Vaccination: The Hidden Facts’

‘They don’t tell us that if your child misses the whooping cough vaccine it is less likely to develop asthma, ...measles vaccine...inflammatory bowel disease, Hepatitis B or Hib vaccine ...diabetes, ...rubella vaccine ...arthritis...’

‘I call it a cultural trance .…Most health experts... very rarely read their own professional journals—most of them are so busy….We believe health is not bought in a bottle or a syringe. Health is a direct result of healthful living, and natural health, there is no other sort.’ Greg Beattie—Father of 7 children, Author ‘Vaccination: A Parent’s Dilemma’

The evidence against vaccination
In our life times we were taught, and passively believed, that vaccination was a good thing and that it reduced disease.

Statistics were offered which showed a decrease in disease which was attributed to vaccination. In fact, deaths had already declined by more than 90% during the 20th century before vaccines were introduced. The main reason for the decline was, in fact, improved sanitation and better living conditions.
There has been no properly run, randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled trial to prove the effectiveness of vaccination. This will not occur because the pharmaceutical industries control all of the research and have too much to lose, since vaccination is a billion dollar industry.

Many articles in medical journals present evidence that vaccination works, and claim effectiveness. However, unbiased independent researchers who have examined the evidence have noted that many unscientific methods were used in these studies.

These include:

• The use of toxic injections used in the placebo group.
• Comparing groups which historically did not vaccinate, ignoring the fact that the reasons for this may pollute the evidence such as:
      - May have been already immune-suppressed
      - Low socio-economic status, leaving them more susceptible to disease due to poor nutrition and living  
        conditions
      - Excluding participants on other technicalities which may falsely influence the statistics...

For those who will look, there are vast amounts of statistical evidence that vaccination is harmful. This is not widely published, and has been gathered by dedicated doctors who place their commitment to the truth ahead of their acceptability and recognition by the normal circles of the medical establishment. Dr Viera Scheibner cites the following evidence that disease outbreaks actually increased dramatically after the introduction of vaccines.

• Whooping cough has been rising in the US since 1978, when vaccination was mandated for school entry.
• The incidence of cot death dropped in Japan when the DPT vaccine was stopped.
• Measles, which had virtually died out in Europe, rose again when measles vaccination programs were started.
• Vaccines which the mother received herself in childhood, weaken the tranplacentally-transmitted immunity that should be passed on from mother to baby.

Vaccines are known to contain bacteria, viruses (or their protein envelopes) and a number of toxins with specific neurotoxic activity. An injected vaccine doesn’t go through the immune system. It actually gets direct access to vital organs. There is no natural filtration.

According to Dr Scheibner, the entire precept on which the theory of vaccination is based, is in error. The fact that the body produces antibodies in response to the vaccine, is the evidence used to say that immunity has been achieved. This is a false assumption, and a gross oversimplification of how the immune system actually works. For example, for immunity to be created there must be activation of the secretory antibody IgA, which plays an important role in the whole process. This, and many other processes which occur in the outer levels of defence, are bypassed by injections, leaving the immune system damaged and compromised instead.

In a properly functioning immune system, after a disease has been contracted, the person becomes immune to that disease. However, it has been found that vaccine recipients are not only still as susceptible to the illness, but that they can contract it more than once.

Development of the immune system is retarded by vaccines, so that by adolescence it has only reached the stage it should be at in childhood. This immune damage means that only those who have been vaccinated are contracting atypical forms of the disease—where the disease heads straight for the internal organs, bypassing the mouth, nose throat and respiratory system which are designed as the body’s natural immune defence system.
Oral vaccines do not eliminate this problem, as Dr Scheibner explains: ‘…What would be the difference between natural infection, which is through the gastro-intestinal system, particularly in polio, and the oral polio vaccine? The difference is this. When you get the natural infection, you get 10 cells of bacteria or 10 pieces of crystals of viruses. This is published. Vaccines contain billions of organisms, so it’s like a septic shock. It’s a massive overdose of infective material.’

Dr Scheibner says that what vaccination achieves is sensitisation, not immunization. Sensitisation is really the opposite of immunisation. Sensitisation, also called Anaphylaxis, creates increased susceptibility by confusing the immune system. Interestingly, immunologists themselves are becoming more uncomfortable about the fact that vaccine injections can only stimulate a significant IgG antibody response if they include toxic sensitising substances, referred to as ‘adjuvants’, in the concoction.

Vaccination can in fact lead to the development of auto-immune diseases, because of this confusion. What happens is that the immune system’s detection ability is damaged so it cannot identify the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’, resulting in the body attacking its own cells.

The importance of information Dr Scheibner believes in having full knowledge, and insists that it is imperative that parents educate themselves about the whole issue, because, as she says:‘Some of them may continue vaccinating their children. Or the other children in the family, thinking that it only happens to one in a million, which is not true. Every child is affected. Vaccinated children are not the same as unvaccinated. There is some damage in all of them. Allergies are number one. Or eating problems, mild digestive problems, it still is totally unnecessary.’

A network of concerned parents and professionals have dedicated themselves to making this information available to the public. The Australian Vaccination Network is an association which provides up-to-date information—that is not biased by pharmaceutical company interests—on the latest knowledge and research into the effects of vaccinations, alternatives and remedial therapies to deal with vaccinations’ after-effects. Thanks to the internet, it is now easy for families to access this health-saving information. If you are convinced that you do not want to vaccinate, visit www.avn.org.au to learn more about the AVN and their resources. Their magazine, Informed Choice, is an excellent resource for parents and practitioners wishing to keep informed.
If you need to know more in order to make the right decision for you, a very informative website on vaccination, which includes easy to understand scientific articles and many resource books and videos, is www.vaccination.inoz.com. There you can order the video, ‘Vaccination: The Hidden Truth’. This is a highly informative exposé of the facts about vaccination, with interviews by over twelve doctors, researchers and parents who have in-depth knowledge of the issue. The flier for the video asks, ‘Should we shoot first and ask questions later?’ Parents who like to make their own decisions will want to see this video before giving their children any further vaccines.

The medical and educational establishments exert great pressure on parents to vaccinate. It is very hard for a parent who is less educated than their doctor to refute apparently well-informed arguments put forward by a medical practitioner; and not to be intimidated when the day care centre says they must vaccinate. However, it is constitutionally illegal for vaccination to be mandated. A form stating conscientious objection, which must be signed by a sympathetic medical practitioner, will give the child access to educational facilities. Parents can join the AVN to get the necessary resources and referrals. Go to www.avn.org.au and then click on related links and then conscientious and medical exemption forms. However, be aware that if you take one of these forms to an average medical practitioner they may try to persuade you to vaccinate. The form requires that they inform you of the potential risks of not vaccinating your child. Most parents will need to find a supportive practitioner to give moral support if they are to go against the sanctioned medical position.

As a person armed with such extensive information about vaccination, Dr Scheibner is concerned about the fact that most parents simply believe what their family doctor tells them, when in most cases the doctor is simply following the established medical line with very little information. ‘We also need to tell the doctors,’ she says ‘ because they get a very limited education, and they believe anything they are told.’ Dr Scheibner’s concern is well-founded as she has confronted this ignorance in many settings, including courts of law. She explained to me in our interview: ‘As an example, the United States keeps publishing that there are only 12 cases of vaccine-caused poliomyelitis in the United States per year. One GP said that to me and I said ‘And you believe it?’ Learn to ask that question – ‘And you believe it?’ Well, don’t believe it. Because they only mark one in every 154 cases of vaccine-caused poliomyelitis per year. From the statistics I have examined, I estimate that the United States must have 12,000 cases of vaccine-caused poliomyelitis. And that’s about the size of it. Well, I said 12; you know—they just lost some zeros. They feel better like there’s some truth in it.’

For more information on this subject read the very informative article, ‘Do vaccines protect against diseases at all?’ by Bronwyn Hancock 1999.

Shaken baby syndrome
The following is an excerpt from work by Dr Viera Scheibner on her extensive research and advocation work in the area of so-called ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome.’

‘Recently there has been quite an ‘epidemic’ of the so-called ‘shaken baby syndrome’. Parents, usually the fathers, or other care-givers such as nannies have increasingly been accused of shaking a baby to the point of causing permanent brain damage and death. Why? Is there an unprecedented increase in the number of people who commit infanticide or have an ambition to seriously hurt babies? Or is there something more sinister at play?
Some time ago I started getting requests from lawyers or the accused parents themselves for expert reports. A close study of the history of these cases revealed something distinctly sinister: in every single case, the symptoms appeared shortly after the baby's vaccinations.

While investigating the personal medical history of these babies based on the care-givers' diaries and medical records, I quickly established that these babies were given one or more of the series of so-called routine shots—hepatitis B, DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus), polio and HiB (Haemophilus influenzae type B) —shortly before they developed symptoms of illness resulting in serious brain damage or death.

The usual scenario is that a baby is born and does well initially. At the usual age of about two months it is administered the first series of vaccines as above. (Sometimes a hepatitis B injection is given shortly after birth while the mother and child are still in hospital. However, a great number of babies now die within days or within two to four weeks of birth after hepatitis B vaccination, as documented by the records of the VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] in the USA.) So, the baby stops progressing, starts deteriorating, and usually develops signs of respiratory tract infection. Then comes the second and third injections, and tragedy strikes: the child may cry intensely and inconsolably, may stop feeding properly, vomit, have difficulty swallowing, become irritable, stop sleeping, and may develop convulsions with accelerating progressive deterioration of its condition and mainly its brain function.

This deterioration may be fast, or may slowly inch in until the parents notice that something is very wrong with their child and then rush it to the doctor or hospital. Interestingly, they are invariably asked when the baby was immunised. On learning that the baby was indeed ‘immunised’, the parents may be reassured that its symptoms will all clear up. They are sent home with the advice, ‘Give your baby Panadol’. If they persist in considering the baby's reaction serious, they may be labelled as anxious parents or trouble-makers. So the parents go home, and the child remains in a serious condition or dies.

Until recently, the vaccine death would have just been labelled ‘sudden infant death’, particularly if the symptoms and pathological findings were minimal. However, nowadays, with an alarmingly increasing frequency, the parents (or at least one of them, usually the father) may be accused of shaking the baby to death. The accused may even ‘confess’ to shaking the baby, giving the reason, for example, that having found the baby lying still and not breathing and/or with a glazed look in its eyes, they shook it gently—as is only natural—in their attempt to revive it. Sometimes, ironically, they save the baby's life, only to be accused of causing the internal injuries that made the baby stop breathing in the first place, and which in fact were already present when they shook the baby to revive it.’

Our choices
This information about the potentially damaging effects of chemical toxins, ultrasound and vaccination, will inevitably bring grief, remorse and anger to parents who find out too late what they might have avoided. However, it is better to be informed than not. On the encouraging side, the reports in Chapter 8 detail the positive changes which can be achieved in healing children with supportive therapies.
It is never too late for a child, or even an adult, to improve. Nature and the human body are incredibly resilient, always striving to heal, always recreating cells, always processing and clearing out foreign matter which the immune system rejects. Given half a chance, remarkable healing happens. So please be heartened by the new knowledge you have, by the fact that you have choices every day as to which chemicals, foods and other stimuli your family will be exposed to. Use this information to exercise those choices and help to create a toxin-free, naturally nurturing environment for your loved ones.

Rafaele Joudry is the founder and director of Sound Therapy International and the author of three books on Sound Therapy, including, Why Aren’t I Learning? Listening is the Key to Overcoming Learning Difficulties. Contact: Sound Therapy International, Phone (Int+612) (Aust 02) 4234-4534 or 1300 55 77 96

info@soundtherapyinternational.com
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Katie’s Blocked Ear

Excerpts from interview with Katie Fitzgerald for Sound Therapy video 2002.

Katie Fitzgerald was also featured in the Sydney Morning Herald column “Why I…” on Oct 14th 2004

My health generally is outstanding, I’m a very healthy person, I don’t get sick, I don’t get colds, I’m really fit and healthy, I eat well and I don’t drink very much. I go to yoga three times a week. I play tennis, really badly. Somebody told me Sound Therapy helps tennis, I’m waiting for that to happen.

The reason that I came to Sound Therapy was because, probably for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a really strange ear. The best way I can describe it to you it’s like if you have a cold and your head gets blocked. Or if you’re in a plane or a lift, that sensation of your ear being blocked. So that was very specifically the reason that I came to Sound Therapy. I think I’ve always had it, but in the last 3 to 4 years I became really aware of it because I took up singing, and I think the reason that I hadn’t ever sung before was subconsciously to do with my ear.

Other treatments
First I went to a regular ear, nose and throat specialist and he diagnosed me as having a patulous Eustachian tube. He said, sometimes happens that it’s either too open or too closed and that kind of sounded right. He gave me these drops that are made out of sugar and he said to put them down my nose, before I wanted to sing, because that’s when I’m most conscious of it. He said it will irritate the back of your Eustachian tube and will make it closed, and that then I’d be fine. But it was very short term and very immediate, it wasn’t an ongoing fix.
In fact it made me feel sick, so it didn’t work at all for me.

Then I went to an acupuncturist and I think that helped a little bit. I had lots of acupuncture and little black pills, but again it wasn’t ongoing. Next I went to another ear nose and throat specialist and he gave me a cortisone spray and that didn’t help at all. Then he put me in hospital and put a grommet in my ear and that didn’t help at all. In fact that made it worse and I knew within a week or so that it wasn’t going to help, because I still had the same blocked sensation, but I also had this other weird sensation of having a hole in my eardrum, which is what I had. So it was actually worse. So then he put me back in hospital 3 or 4 months later and took it out again. And when I went back to him, he actually said to me that he didn’t know what else to do, which I knew was what he was going to say.

Finding Sound Therapy
My regular GP mentioned Sound Therapy to me about 3 years ago, but I think I just wasn’t ready to hear it at the time. At that point I was seeing her because I wanted a referral to the ear nose and throat specialist, and I just dismissed it, but you know funnily enough 3 years later Sound Therapy was actually the very thing that’s worked for me.

I saw the Sound Therapy book in a bookshop. I don’t know that I was consciously looking for anything at the time, I may have been, because I’ve been singing and, and my ear always seems very blocked up when I sing, because it was an emotional issue around it as well. So I saw the book and I read it and I just knew straight away that it would help me. So I rang Sound Therapy and decided to try it.

It was a bit strange at first, walking around with these things in your ear and you try to listen to the sound but you try not to listen to it, so you just try and be normal about it which is a bit funny, but you get used to it.

The healing
After I got used to physically having it in and just sort of incorporating it into my day, I went through a period, maybe a few weeks into listening when I found myself getting really irritated. I don’t know directly what that was from but I rang Sound Therapy International and spoke to Cath about it and she just encouraged me to keep going a little bit more. Then all of a sudden, within a period of a week, I remember it distinctly, my ear just cleared by itself and then it would get blocked up again and then it just seemed to keep clearing by itself. And each day, over a period of about 3 or 4 days it just got significantly clearer and not blocked. And it stayed like that. So I rang her and told her that it was a miracle!

The cause of the problem
I had had the problem, I think, all my life. One of the ear doctors said to me that it was probably anatomical. I became really conscious of it a few years ago because I wanted to sing. But I also think there was an incident in my childhood where a singing teacher told me not to sing. She told me just to open my mouth but nothing would come out. And then I think that the message I internalized to myself was that I wasn’t to be heard. So I think my ear tried to not let me hear myself, if that makes any sense. So there was definitely an emotional component that was compounding, probably a potentially weak ear. So I think that it had actually been there all my life but I just became really aware of it in the last 2 to 3, years as I was having singing lessons. And I’d get really emotional around singing and I, I’d tell my singing teacher about my ear. So I had this need to spend half my singing lesson talking about my ear. I worked my way through it emotionally as well, but I just know that listening to the tapes did something, probably on a physical level, but maybe on emotional level as well.

Singing is something that’s really important to me, not because I want to be a world famous singer, but I find that it’s a really basic expression of who we are. I love singing with people. There’s a lot of lovely connection and communication and creativity for me that’s connected to singing and it’s something that I spent most of my life not being able to do, because of my ear. I feel totally comfortable with my ear now. And I sing! I sing in a choir and it gives me a lot of joy and a lot of pleasure in my life. And I couldn’t do that before because I struggled so much with my ear. Sound Therapy was really the thing that finally worked for me. So I would really recommend it to people. It’s not going to hurt you.

Intuitively I think what the ENT Dr said was probably right. I think that I probably have some sort of physical weakness in my ear. And the way he described what the Eustachian tube does, that there was too much air in there some how or other, I think that was correct, but I also think from reading the Sound Therapy book, our ear is very intricate and delicate and there could be tiny little things that were affecting it. So I don’t know whether the music enlivened those little bits of my ear or bought them back to life. Maybe something like that was happening that just made a slight physical difference to a part of my ear but actually made quite a profound difference to how I hear.

On medical practice
All I can say is how it was for me. I think the medical profession can be quite conservative and unless they can really articulate very clearly why something’s happening I think they tend to dismiss it. I think there’s a lot of things going on with our body and our mind that we’re not necessarily totally aware of. And I think we’re really connected to sound and vibration, I think that’s a real part of us. I can totally accept and I can feel that Sound Therapy can work on a physical level as well as some other, maybe more intangible level.

I admire Dr. Tomatis for exploring all those areas probably at a time where he was seen as not very traditional. I admire him for making those explorations and looking it at from an emotional point of view as well as from a physical point of view. And looking at how those two parts of us come together and how they work together, which is something I’ve always really believed. I think our bodies know everything. I think all of the wisdom is in our body.

The experience of listening
Listening to the Sound Therapy tapes was actually quite enjoyable and it was nice to go in and out of being consciously aware of listening to it.

Quite often I wasn’t really conscious of listening to it, I was just doing my regular work. Every now and then it seemed that I’d become conscious of a part of the music that that had become one of my favourite parts and it was just really enjoyable listening to it. Quite often I would say that I experienced really pleasant uplifting feelings. It was just a really pleasant comforting feeling that I got from listening to the music.

The music fairly much just sounds like regular classical music so it’s very enjoyable. Every now and then you become aware that something else is going on and I find that quite intriguing. But the music is really pleasant. Sometimes the screechy bits used to make me laugh, I just found those quite amusing.

The Sound Therapy book
The Sound Therapy book was very interesting and very easy to read. It had a kind of quirky manner which I found really appealing. There were lots of stories you could relate to very easily. I liked hearing about other people’s experiences. I liked hearing about, Patricia’s own experiences with her hearing dysfunctions and her own journey, and the trouble that she went to at one point in her life to actually go to the monastery and listen to the tapes. And just lots of little discoveries that she’d made about how she was becoming a bit more technical and how the sound of brown paper bags didn’t drive her mad as much as they used to. It was written in a very easy to read, friendly fashion. And it wasn’t too technical. There were little bits that were technical about how our ear works, if you wanted to read that. Reading the book was what convinced me to do the Sound Therapy, so it worked really well for me. I’ve read it lots of times, I’ve referred back to it and I often still do when I don’t know something particular that I’m trying to work out. 

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Listening that makes hearing possible – For Probus Magazine Part 2

An article on Sound Therapy was published in the autumn 2000 issue of Probus magazine. Due to the huge response we received from that article we thought that some follow-up information would be appreciated by our readers.

Over the last few months Rafaele Joudry, author and Director of Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd. has been invited to speak to many Probus groups around Sydney and in other parts of Australia. There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to her talks as Sound Therapy is very relevant to people of a mature age and has proved to be of great interest to Probus members. Rafaele is an entertaining and knowledgeable speaker with twelve years experience in the Sound Therapy field.

We were asked some valid questions by the people who responded, and we have printed the answers to these questions. We thank the many hundreds of people who showed interest and hope that the following information is useful for you.

The previous article explored the use of Sound Therapy to rehabilitate the ear and stimulate the brain using enhanced classical music. It has been useful in treating cases of: Hearing loss – degenerative loss due to aging or nerve damage, caused by viruses, noise, surgery, ear infections.

Tinnitus – noise such as ringing or buzzing heard inside the ear, due to inner ear damage caused by industrial, loud or sudden noise, viral damage, surgery, stress or a build up of certain drugs or toxins.
Cocktail Party Syndrome – An inability to differentiate sounds, e.g. difficulty following a conversation in a noisy room. Caused by various forms of ear damage.

Hyperacusis – Hypersensitivity to sound – loud, shrill sounds etc.

Pressure problems –popping in the ears or difficulty equalising the pressure when flying.

Meniere’s Syndrome – dizziness/vertigo/loss of balance, nausea, vomiting, tinnitus, hearing loss – caused by too much fluid pressure in the inner ear resulting form twitches or spasms in the stirrup muscle.

Other areas that Sound Therapy has been useful in treating are ‘selective’ hearing, short attention span, memory loss, lack of vitality and energy, learning difficulties, insomnia, and stress.

Commonly asked questions

Q. What does ‘enhanced’ classical music mean?
A. Sound Therapy uses music from composers such as Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach and Hayden. The music is recorded through a device called the ‘Electronic Ear’ which was developed by Dr Alfred Tomatis, a leading ear nose and throat specialist. This device filters the music, enhancing the high frequencies, diminishing the lows and constantly altering the pitch. The music is recorded so that it is louder in the right ear than the left in order to correct imbalances between the two sides of the brain.

Q. Why enhance the high frequencies?
A. In nature, the most common sounds that you hear are things such as running water, wind in the trees, birds singing, frogs croaking; all high frequency sounds which naturally occur in abundance. Low frequency sounds include waves crashing, thunderstorms or large waterfalls. These sounds are a minor component of the hearing ‘diet’. If we relate this natural balance to the sounds that surround us today, there is a frightening discrepancy. Lets simply look at our homes: refrigerators, computers, air conditioners, exhaust fans, vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, washing machines… the list goes on. These machines all produce low frequency sound. Dr Tomatis believes that low frequency sound drains our energy and you may have noticed a sense of relief when the refrigerator motor turns off, or the next door neighbor’s lawn mower stops.

The human body has wonderful survival mechanisms. With an onslaught of low frequency sound, the ears simply shut down. Therefore the ear is not even receptive to the high frequencies it may be exposed to. Sound Therapy restored the ear’s sensitivity to high frequencies so that the ear allows them in to its inner chambers. This then rebalances the ‘hearing diet’.

Q. How do high frequency sounds affect the ear?
A. High frequency sound has many physical effects in the rehabilitation of the ear. Firstly it stimulates damaged cilia [the hearing hairs in the inner ear] to an erect position after they have been flattened by damaging noise. In the case of tinnitus, the flattened cilia may be touching each other, causing a short circuit and therefore, noise.
Hearing loss generally occurs in the higher frequency range first. Dr Tomatis found that 60% of the 30,000 hearing receptor cells are intended to hear high frequency sounds. When this stimulus is missing the result is feelings of weariness and lethargy.

Secondly the stimulation introduced by Sound Therapy improves the overall vitality and flexibility of the ear mechanism. This sometimes assists in clearing mucous build up which is causing infection or sinus conditions.
Thirdly, the tiny, but important muscles in the middle ear, are exercised by the changes in pitch occurring in the music. These muscles mobilise the bones which, in turn regulate tension on the middle ear hearing apparatus. They also regulate fluid balance within the inner ear. When the fluid is imbalanced in the inner ear, it can lead to dizziness, vertigo, nausea and travel sickness.

Last, but not least, high frequency sound stimulates, energises and recharges the cortex of the brain, resulting in increased energy, greater learning capabilities, better memory, creativity, and a feeling of connection with others and the world around you. The nervous system responds positively to high frequency sounds because ten of the twelve cranial nerves are connected in some way to the ears. Therefore what we hear has an immediate impact on our nervous system and stress is usually significantly decreased by Sound Therapy.

Q. What does the treatment entail?
A. Sound Therapy is a self help, portable listening program consisting of 4 audio tapes that are listened to in order through a personal cassette player, with a specific high frequency response. It is easy, enjoyable and takes no time out of your day. It requires no clinical visits and is available at a minimal cost. Usual treatment consists of a minimum of 3 months listening, depending on the severity of the condition. It is very successful for preventing damage or further damage to the ears.
Comments from listeners

Many of our listeners report that their health practitioners have told them there is no treatment available for hearing loss or tinnitus. Surgery is occasionally recommended, if there is an obvious cause but in most cases there is no obvious cause for tinnitus. Sound Therapy obtains good results in most cases and is entirely safe. Most listeners experience secondary benefits such as better sleep, less stress and greater vitality.

Elaine Sax says of her tinnitus:
“I was told ‘yes it is tinnitus, and there is nothing much you can do about it’. It was just continual. I would get a break of maybe a minute or two, and it would take off again’.

She reports that her tinnitus ‘was debilitating’, and goes on to say “Initially there was a very very positive result within 3 months. I was noise free, and at that point, my hearing had definitely improved.”
Elaine is now generally free of tinnitus, although a lower gradient noise reoccurs occasionally. She says “At least I’ve got the means of helping control it if, and when it does comes back”.

Elaine also says that she enjoys the extra energy that Sound Therapy has provided.

Lee Heffelle is 74 and has experienced bouts of Meniere's Syndrome which she describes as “horrific, and terrifying; to the point where I was almost suicidal at one stage”

Her episodes occurred weekly, and took a week to get over, by which time the next one would hit. Lee used mineral chelation therapy in conjunction with Sound Therapy. Now several years later, Lee reports that when she used Sound therapy, her Meniere's attacks stopped entirely.

Lloyd Evans is 81 and still works as an historian. He has suffered from tinnitus ‘for as long as I can remember, and that’s a long time!” He says his tinnitus hadn’t affected him greatly “it was just a nuisance”, that he had learned to put up with it, although in the last few years it had “become a bit of a problem”.

After using Sound Therapy, he says “I have noticed that since using the tapes, at first it made quite a dent in the incidence of the tinnitus, and then it settled down to a very low level, and it just hasn’t returned. Over the last 4 weeks or so, it just virtually disappeared”. Lloyd adds how calming Sound Therapy is at moments of what he calls ‘intellectual agitation’.

The excerpts above are taken form interviews with listeners recorded by Rafaele Joudry for her new book Triumph over Tinnitus, due to be launched later this year. Her current book Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge your Brain is currently available through bookstores nationally, or by mail order from Sound Therapy International Pty. Ltd.

For further information, please contact the trained consultants at Sound Therapy International Pty. Ltd.

Sound Therapy International Commercial Unit 2, 9 Bergin St Gerringong NSW 2534 Ph: 1300 55 77 96 Ph: (int 612) (Aust 02) 02) 4234-4534 Fax: (int 612) (Aust 02) 4234-4537 Email: distributors@soundtherapyinternational.com Web: www.soundtherapyinternational.com

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Mozart is Sound Therapy

The music of Mozart has gained great attention in recent years for its supposed therapeutic benefits, yet it is still a minority of Australians who actively seek out classical music. Two crusaders for the public benefit of classical music have teamed up to bring Mozart into new realms within Australia. The following is based on a discussion between Rafaele Joudry and Michael Clark.

Rafaele Joudry is founder and Director of Sound Therapy International, an organization devoted to bringing Sound Therapy to the masses, in the form of a home based listening program based on the work of the pioneering French ear specialist, Dr Tomatis.

Michael Clark is the Founder and Artistic and Musical Director of the newly formed orchestra, the Sydney Mozart Players. Originally from Bathurst, Michael undertook this ambitions project of forming a new orchestra after a very successful ten year musical career in Europe as a conductor and pianist. He was engaged as repititeur at London’s Covent Garden and was acclaimed for his readings of Mozart and Verdi when he conducted at opera houses throughout Germany.

His wish now is to contribute in a more significant way to his home country, not only to carve out a niche for himself but to expand the community’s interest in classical music and create performing opportunities for the many other talented musicians.

Having noticed a dirth of opportunities to hear live music in Sydney he says “ There’s a need in a lot of parts of Sydney, the western parts of Sydney, the regional areas as well, Bathurst, Orange, so forth.” He believes audiences are crying out for live music events. The orchestra will also provide opportunities for the development and exposure of local artists. Michael says, “There’s so many musicians, soloists, even other conductors that are missing a platform to perform regularly, and to record. There’s a real need for this in Australia and I’m making that platform.”

Michael cuts a dashing figure with his tall stature and brilliant red hair. His modest and unassuming, yet confident manner makes it easy to believe he will succeed with this ambitious undertaking. So far, he has received a wonderful response from all parties. “The musicians have been very excited about the project and the audiences have been great,” he says. Other conductors of standing such as Richard Bonynge SP?, Patrick Thomas, have also been very supportive and very complimentary about what the new orchestra is doing.”

Michael’s initial interest in the work of Mozart stemmed from his response to the movie, Amadeus, which came out when he was nine years old. He says, “ I’d seen the movie and as a child I’d thought it was so amazing, because that’s exactly what Mozart is all about, this amazing music created in such a joyful way. And looking back on it and seeing it again recently, I was impressed that the people who worked on the music in that movie were very good. Neville Mariner I respect very, very much. His group, St Martin In The Fields, which he established 30 years ago, does a magnificent job, especially with Mozart. The music in the movie was magnificent. But the more I look into the music of Mozart the more genius I see in it and the more freshness, the more -- just amazing amount of energy in the music.”

Michael shared particular thoughts on the unique genius of Mozart. “It’s not necessarily just the sounds that go together to make music. What’s also in the composition, is an intrinsic energy in the way he put notes together. And so another composer, if they’re not doing it as well, is not going to provide the listener with such a high octave of -- such a high level of resonance or energy in what they put out. It’s like comparing a Ferrari to a VW. They both go along the road, but one’s outputting a much higher level of perfection and tightness in the way it’s produced.

Michael points out that “Mozart sounds quite simple when you listen to it, but when you come to perform it, there are certain things that aren’t simple about the way it’s made up. The structure of the phrases is not simple, it’s not obvious where the new phrase begins. So, it’s actually, I wouldn’t say uneven, but it’s actually structured in a very asymmetrical way. And you would never expect that, listening to it, because it sounds so right, so it’s like a tree. It just doesn’t go straight up and down, there’s some way that it grows that’s not symmetrical, it’s actually organic. And this element of organic construction actually makes great music.”

To produce music like this, Michael believes that Mozart had to be working beyond the level of the intellect, certainly without planning. He was a prolific composer for his 35 years, producing a quantity of material unparalleled by any other composer.

“But he certainly did it from instinct,” says Michael. “He had such an instinctual feel for the construction of the music and it just came out of him. Someone like Beethoven thought about it, so he’d write something down but then he’d change it and he’d take out a bar here and put a note there. But Mozart basically wrote it like a channeller. So even when you see the difficulties and mess that he had in his life, he still was able to focus and channel the music, and write it down.”

In wanting to bring his music to new sections of the community, Michael Clark has some innovative ideas on presentation. In order to make the concerts more dynamic and alive, particularly for younger audiences, The Mozart Players integrates theatrical lighting with the music. Michael says, “ I think the use of colours and lighting can actually bring the audio and visual into sync for people. The visual stimulation helps the aural recognition of the energy of the music and focuses that listener. Because not all people are aural, some need a largely visual stimulus as well.”

Michael may have touched on a key factor which has been explored until now only in the field of learning difficulties, where much has been learned about brain processes and integration. Specialists are discovering how links between different sensory systems are crucial in our overall learning ability. The ear specialist, Dr Tomatis 50 years ago in France, pioneered a method of treating dyslexia using specially recorded tracks of Mozart. Filtered classical music improved ear function and auditory processing, yet amazingly this also assisted the ability to correctly see and interpret the written word.

Rafaele Joudry, Director of the Sydney based company, Sound Therapy International, has made the Tomatis method of Sound Therapy accessible to thousands of people with a portable listening system on cassette tape. Rafaele says, “with Sound Therapy we are integrating all the senses, but particularly the auditory and visual. Tomatis pointed out that the ocular-motor nerve, which controls eye tracking, is surrounded and controlled by the auditory nerve, so you cannot really stimulate one sensory system without affecting others.”

In the early nineties world headlines reported the amazing discovery that Mozart made children smarter. Researchers found that if students listened to Mozart before their exams they performed better. They were only reporting what Dr Tomatis had been saying for forty years, that Mozart improves brain function. But Tomatis was achieving this at a more concentrated level with his filtering technique, points out Rafaele Joudry. When used continuously, for several hours a day over a period of a few weeks, the filtered music has been found to rebuild brain pathways, stimulate cortical activity, improve memory, concentration and language abilities. It also assists voice quality, musical appreciation, verbal expression and conceptual skills.

Those parents who have introduced Sound Therapy to their children and teenagers have been amazed at the improvements in attitude, academic performance, sleep patterns and self esteem. The fact that the program uses classical music is seen as a hindrance to some, since teenagers don’t usually go for it. However, according to Rafaele Joudry who has worked in the field for nearly fourteen years, contrary to expectations, those who try Sound Therapy often get hooked on the benefits and modify their musical taste.

One of the aims of the Mozart Players is to take Mozart into the schools and to attract younger audiences to their concerts. Michael says “ I think the stigma or the misconception of classical music has to be lifted, and this only begins if we educate young people so that this music becomes more accessible and they see groups of musicians or singers or pianists. They see them perform and they think, ‘yes this is a great thing.’ It’s not just a toffee nosed concern but something that they can grasp, that they can appreciate and actually listen to and enjoy.”

Michael also wishes to use the medium of video to make classical music a more immediate experience.
“I think children or young people seeing a video of a live performance experience a different relationship to an orchestra and to classical music. Then when they’re introduced into the concert hall and see actual concerts they have a different attitude, they have recognition of what’s happening, they know what’s happening because they’ve seen it up close through a video.”

Rafaele Joudry and Michael Clark are currently collaborating on the production of a new video to be released on VHS and DVD about the therapeutic possibilities of Sound Therapy, the work of Dr Tomatis and the involvement of the Sydney Mozart Players in this work.

Sound Therapy has great potential application in schools to assist with learning and the structural development of the brain. In addition it offers surprising benefits for those with hearing problems. Michael’s first contact with Sound Therapy was through his father who used the program to overcome his tinnitus, (the name given to a condition of persistent ringing or buzzing in the ears.)

Michael’s father, who was an engineer and building inspector in Bathurst, had suffered from an industrial tinnitus for many years. Michael relates how his father had put up with this constant ringing for 20 years or more, almost as long as he can remember. He had tried various methods to try and repair the damage or get some relief but had no success until he came across the Sound Therapy method. He read Rafaele Joudry’s books on Sound Therapy and tinnitus very thoroughly, and after much deliberation, decided to try the tapes. He did his work while he was listening, which he did religiously, as much as he could, for the time suggested which was 300 hours. He experienced initially great improvement and gradually total betterment of his tinnitus, “and he seems to be very energetic and pretty happy about everything,” according to his son. Michael noticed another significant difference in his father after he used Sound Therapy, which was that he could now attend a social function and follow the conversation instead of being isolated by his inability to sort out the mix of voices. Michael’s mother also found that the tapes helped her to sleep better.

Due to these personal experiences, Michael is very enthusiastic about this therapy which has helped many thousands of people. He is intrigued by the ideas behind it, the concept and the scientific basis. “The fact that it is so easy to use in its portable form makes it really practical and terrific for people,” he says.

As an expression of his total support for the Sound Therapy program, Michael has agreed for the Music from the Mozart Players concerts to be used in future Sound Therapy recordings. He says “ Well I support the venture totally and I like the idea of our music being used in the tapes. I think to maximize the effect of the therapy its important that the music that’s used should be as good as possible, which I hope our music is. And the energy contained in the music can also go towards any healing process.”

In order to fully preserve the energy inherent in the music, Sound Therapy has always been produced using analogue recording methods. This is an area where musicians and engineers sometimes differ.

Michael says, “ There’s long been an argument, analogue versus digital. I think the difference can be measured by a number of things. If someone looks at the pure technical aspects of it, of an analogue tape or a digital comparison, certain results come up. And one can say digital has these and these qualities and picks up this and this sound and analogue only goes to these levels of hertz and so forth. But that’s actually a very cerebral view and only looks at the scientific values that are associated with measuring things. It actually ignores the qualities which people can pick up. An analogue tape however, being a physical substance, being an actual metal or magnetic substance, can be influenced by sound, by surroundings, by everything, and therefore, in my opinion can actually absorb more of the energy and transmit that from the recording source that it comes from. A digital source being zeroes and ones, can only actually pick up what information it receives and it doesn’t have a physical source of recording. So the argument can be seen in both ways and that aspect of the quality can be heard differently from the two sources.

“ I’ve listened to a lot of music played on various sources. For instance, if you hear an old 78 record played on an old gramophone, now the sound quality is not particularly good as far as what we judge good these days, but the level of energy in the sound that it produces is incredible. It’s like you get in the throat of the person singing or you’re transported into the very core of that. And why is that? For me it’s because it’s a physical thing. I’ve listened then to old recordings that were obviously done in analogue version, either from cut records or analogue tape and they’ve been converted into CD. I find these still have that intrinsic energy in them and I can only, from my perception, explain that perhaps it’s because of the recording process. I’ve heard now obviously a lot of digitally remastered recorded work in the last, few years since it’s existed. I’m finding a lot of these new recordings to be lacking in energy. I’m finding that there’s a dryness to the energy that it’s transmitting. One can say, yes it sounds good, very clean, even perfect, but a certain energy is missing. And what are we trying to do here? Actually transmitting energy!”

Rafaele adds to this discussion a debate that she held for many years with her mother, Patricia Joudry, who was the originator of the portable Tomatis method. She says, “My mother used to have very strong opinions about computers, which she never learned to use. We’re both writers, and we’d joke about how people would say ‘well computers are so great because you can move things around.’ Its true, its very convenient with all the cutting and pasting on the screen, but you can easily lose the flow of the original inspiration that came through. My writing never has the flow that my mother’s did. She never moved things around on a computer, she just listened to the muse, a bit like Mozart! And I wonder if that’s what may be happening with the level of fiddling around that can be done in studio digital recording?”

Michael agrees that it could be. “And there certainly is often a lot of adjustment, trying to find that warmth in the recording or find the sound that may be lacking. Unfortunately we often think because it’s new technology, that can’t be avoided. We have the telephone, we love the telephone, it’s handy -- a mobile phone, everyone goes for it. We get a computer and we’re excited by this idea of technology. But stop for a moment and think what you get from it and maybe you make another judgement.”

Sound Therapy approaches sound from an entirely different level to other audio systems. The Tomatis method grew from discoveries that Dr Tomatis made about the effect of the mother’s voice on the unborn child. Earlier researchers had established that if baby birds did not hear their mothers sing before they were hatched, they would never learn to sing later. This raised questions about the foetal development of the auditory system in humans. The listening program that Tomatis developed is designed to give the listener an experience of rebirth through sound. Brain pathways that may have been established but not fully developed for emotional or cognitive developmental reasons, can be accessed and reactivated with the highly filtered Mozart. This reenactment of pre natal listening means Sound Therapy is impacting the nervous system at a more profound and structural level than any other sound experience. For this reason the quality of the sound and its direct, energetic impact on nerve impulses is of paramount importance. Rafaele believes that only a person with a highly developed ear, a highly sensitive person or a talented musician can have the sensitivity to evaluate the potential impact of different recording methods.

Michael Clark states, “I think it’s possible that staying with analogue recordings can actually boost the intrinsic energy or retain the intrinsic energy in the recording and therefore give the edge and the beauty and the love that’s in a sound coming to a Sound Therapy listener, which is what we all want. It’s sort of like this idea about the mother’s voice that Tomatis wrote about. The mother’s voice when in the womb, it doesn’t sound like much probably but it has some intrinsic quality of energy or love that we all need. So that’s one of the things that you may be interfering with if you bring in a digital signal.”

Sound Therapy International will be making analogue recordings of Sydney Mozart Players concerts for exclusive release as Sound Therapy programs.

The Sydney Mozart Players’ gala opening concert takes place on October 26th 2001 at Angel Place Sydney.
For more information on Sound Therapy and their products, courses and practitioner training program contact Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd. Phone 02 4234-4534 or 1300 55 77 96 or visit www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Sensory Integration Dysfunction

Rafaele Joudry asks is this yet another label, or a key to unlocking learning in the brain?

The past few decades have generated more and more labels to explain why children have difficulty learning. Dyslexia was replaced by ‘specific reading disorder’ or ‘visual processing disorder’ or dyspraxia. ADD became ADHD ‘inattentive’ or ‘hyperactive’ and now is also broken down into ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ and ‘Conduct Disorder.’
Autism was extended to include Aperger’s, Higher Functioning Autism, Developmental Disintegrative Disorder, Retts disorder and eventually it was safer just to say ‘Autistic Spectrum Disorder.’
Parents may be bewildered by the spectrum of labels and feel fear and apprehension when these start being applied to their child. What does this mean about his or her future potential, and how will it affect the way the child may be treated by the school and community?

Now we are hearing the term ‘Sensory Integration Dysfunction’. Is this yet another label for the experts to add to their bag of tricks, or does it perhaps represent a new level of our understanding of the whole neurological system?

Let us first look briefly at how the brain works. We have eight senses. ‘Eight!’ you exclaim. You may have thought there were only five: hearing, sight, smell taste and touch. New knowledge about the brain, however, requires that we add three more: Vestibular, Proprioception and Interoception. Vestibular is our sense of movement and balance which are detected in part of the inner ear called the semi circular canals. Proprioception is signals sent by our joint receptors to tell us the position and movement of our limbs. Interoception is the sense of our internal organs which lets us feel things like pain, nausea or butterflies in the tummy. These senses are every bit as important to our daily functioning and learning as the well known five.

Sensory information is constantly fed into the brain from our world and our body. All this information, it is now known, enters first through the cerebellum, a cauliflower shaped lobe, about the size of the fist, located at the back of the brain near the brain stem. This is by far the densest part of the brain, containing as many neurons as the entire rest of the brain. It has been called the ‘grand central station,’ for all incoming sensory signals must be processed in the cerebellum before being sent to the right cortical section or ‘department.’ Visual stimuli then goes to the visual cortex, auditory stimuli to the auditory cortex etc. At that point cortical function — i. e. thinking — enables the person to interpret the stimuli and choose appropriate action. Unless all these billions of signals, arriving every second, are downloaded and integrated accurately, the final decision of how to act may not be the best one socially.

Sensory Integration Dysfunction is made up of a number of things. It may be an inability to recognize the ends of your body. Some children will overreact if someone touches them lightly. It may seem as if they are in another world so it takes a bit of effort to get them to communicate. They tend not to move very well through space and may find it difficult to flow throughout the day.

For example, say your boy has been branded difficult and aggressive, and keeps getting hauled up to the headmaster’s office for hitting other kids. Maybe he is a little poorly co-ordinated and kids tease him in the playground. During recess, Smarty pants comes up and yells ‘boo’ from behind, while his offsider waves his arms in front of your boy’s face At the same time his mate accidentally bumps into the boy’s shoulder throwing him off balance. Suppose your boy’s cerebellum isn’t quite firing the way it should. Suddenly he has to process an unexpected noise, quick movement close up in his visual field, being bumped, which jars his tactile receptors, and being thrown off balance which creates havoc in his vestibular system. Not having time to integrate all this stimuli and work out what it means, a fear reaction is triggered in the limbic system, the seat of instinctive emotions in the brain. He automatically hits out at his classmates, and ends up again being branded as a trouble maker.

Of course these difficulties with processing incoming sensory input make it very hard to handle the learning environment. There are always distractions and multiple stimuli in a classroom. Unless these can be assimilated and processed instantaneously it is so easy to get left behind, ridiculed and left out. It is much easier to play up, so often learning difficulties are mistaken for behaviour problems.

How can you help your child, when his brain simply isn’t able to give him information in a fast and orderly enough manner for him to handle our amazingly complex world?

Carmella Kendrick-Smith has been through the experience of helping her child to improve his sensory integration. At preschool it was noticed that her son was having problems moving from one activity to the next. It was almost as though the switch was off so he couldn’t hear the teachers instructions if she asked him to move on to another activity. Carmella was concerned that when he went to kindergarten it would be very hard for him to cope in a larger environment.

When David started kindergarten, which was at the local primary school, he went into an environment that was much more stimulating and overwhelming than the Montessori pre-school he had been in. From day one the teacher was very concerned with his aggressiveness. She said he couldn’t cope in the playground, was falling over and claiming to be pushed.

Carmella was told that her son had Sensory Integration Dysfunction in his final year of preschool. It was recommended that he see a particular occupational therapist who recommended that he receive at least 12 sessions of occupational therapy in conjunction with Sound Therapy.

Carmella’s first reaction was to be very concerned because she thought it was something that was permanent and could not be fixed. She had noticed that he was different to her eldest child in that he was less physical and didn’t seem to like touch. He never sought out hugs and kisses but Carmella thought this was just his personality and didn’t realize he had a problem with people touching him in a light way.

She was very concerned however that he was going to be branded a ‘naughty boy’, because she realized that he had a tendency to lash out and overreact if he was approached from behind.

Carmella had never heard of Sensory Integration Disorder so she decided to inform herself and went to the library and borrowed a book called Why Aren’t I learning? which she found was a useful resource book on sensory integration treatments including Sound Therapy. Doing this reading helped as it made her realize that sensory integration is taken seriously by professionals.

Her son started Sound Therapy at home which she found was the most convenient and cost effective way to do it. The program involved him listening through headphones to specially filtered stories and music that stimulate and rehabilitate not only the ear but the whole auditory system. She would put the headphones on and take them off once he’d fallen asleep. She found that he would actually seek it out and enjoyed going from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales to the Aboriginal stories and even reciting some of the poems.

Carmella quickly noticed that home became more peaceful. The changes in her son were that he was able to feel and see in a better way. It seemed that his senses were actually responding differently. She reports that he now communicates better, is more focused and can move more freely from one activity to the next, without the previous high levels of frustration on his part. She no longer fears that he will have to be labelled a naughty boy. She realizes that his previous behaviour was due to a lot of pain that he was going through, the frustration of not being understood and not wanting to be bumped and touched lightly.

Carmella says ‘I believe he’s less hostile because he’s happier with himself. He now reacts differently to touch and he realizes that deep pressure hugs are good for him.’

She is also aware that his auditory receptivity has improved noticeably. ‘In the past you would talk to him and it was almost as though he wasn’t aware that you were trying to communicate whereas now it’s getting through to him a lot quicker and he does give the eye contact, which he never did before.’

In the early years, David had a set of the classic symptoms which so often seem to accompany learning and behaviour problems. He had chronic ear infections from when he was born. He has allergies, hay fever, croup, and has had his tonsils and his adenoids out.

Every winter he would be on antibiotics and Carmella now believes that a lot of damage occurred then. She thinks Sound Therapy has opened up his ears and repaired a lot of the damage which probably explains why he is now responding better to people talking to him. At the same time the occupational therapist worked on the vestibular system through movement activities and helped him to understand his body better and to be more grounded and stable.

The field of sensory integration gives new insight into many of the commonly known learning difficulties. Not only that, but it offers up treatment methods that are non invasive, drug free and harmless, because they simply use the body’s own sensory pathways to provide a therapeutic stimuli to the brain.

Sensory Integration Disorder was first identified by the occupational therapist, A. Jean Ayres Ph D, about forty years ago. Dr Ayres led her profession in developing intervention strategies through physical therapy programs. Her work is outlined in the fascinating and highly accessible book The Out of Synch Child, by Carol Stock Kranowitz, MA. Kranowitz describes how Sensory Integration Dysfunction plays a significant part in ADHD, autism and learning difficulties.

Other pioneering educational specialists have added to our understanding of how to treat this disorder with different forms of sensory input, in particular Sound Therapy. Dr Tomatis discovered the vital role that the ear plays in our co-ordination, and how that affects learning as a whole. His life work was to develop a method of filtering sound so it provides a gymnastic rehabilitation to the ear muscles.

Dr Levinson, a world renowned psychiatrist and neurologist, also did ground-breaking work in the 1970s and 1980s on the role of the vestibular system and the cerebellum in learning difficulties. After examining over 35,000 subjects, Levinson concluded that 90% of learning problems originate in the ear.

Dr Levinson states: ‘ Only inner ear/cerebellar vestibular mechanisms can explain all the signs and symptoms characterizing ADD/ADHD, dyslexia/LD mood/anxiety, psychosomatic and balance/co-ordination/rhythmic disorders.’

Carmella says of her experience, ‘It’s made me feel good that I’ve been proactive in assisting David get to where he should be, and that is taking in all the senses in a good way. I feel very good that we have some safe and non invasive therapies that have made a difference. Its a safety net for him, and I feel very good about it.’

Rafaele Joudry is the author of the new book, Why Aren’t I learning: Listening is the key to overcoming learning difficulties.

For more information visit www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Sound Therapy - A sensory access to higher consciousness

By Rafaele Joudry

We are in the physical body for a reason. This limited, mundane existence gives us concrete experience of cause and effect, which develops our strength, our wisdom and our soul.

We have been given extraordinary sensory pathways to enable us to learn about this world, and through it, about universal laws. Each of these sensory pathways can be developed as a route to higher consciousness. Some forms of meditation teach to focus on a candle, or an imaginary point of light, and through the intensifying of that light, samadhi comes. Other techniques use the physical senses, as in yoga or Vipassana meditation, and the more awareness is channelled through the physical sense, the more it leads to the opening of consciousness. Many forms of meditation use the mantra, or prayer, or sacred song to open up spiritual levels of our being. The sound current, reported by those who have reached a higher level of attunement, can be followed to cosmic consciousness.

Now a new technology is available to assist with opening on the auditory plane and speed spiritual development. Sound Therapy works in a very physical way by retraining the ear to be responsive the full range of frequencies, especially the high frequencies. To be able to let the high frequencies into the inner ear, the muscles of the middle ear must be flexible and in good shape, so Sound Therapy provides a gymnastic workout for the middle ear muscles. This can cause a little mild pain, but it soon passes and often gives way to brighter, clearer hearing and a new sense of energy and aliveness. Once the ear is open, listeners report deeper meditations, increased intuitiveness and better memory.

Readers who use the method have reported their clairvoyance being heightened to a new level, an opening of the crown and third eye chakra and an improvement to overall physical wellbeing which also helps to open the spirit. Clairvoyants with tinnitus (ringing in the ears) have had this clear up which meant going into a trance was easier.

Sound Therapy was developed by the brilliant ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis who found he could improve the vocal range of singers by rehabilitating their ears. Now, the program is available in a portable form that is easy to use, takes no time and can enhance sleep, work, concentration and communication. It is used on a portable player with headphones, but played at very low volume so it is not distracting. In fact it gives a sense of brain integration which is very pleasant and makes it much easier to deal with stressful situations. One user remarked “As soon as I heard the music I felt as though someone had put a warm hand between two wet blankets in my brain.” The therapy helps to connect different parts of the brain and so brings untapped abilities to light.

For Reverend Sarsha Carpenter of The World Light Fellowship and founder of The Self Empowerment Centre, Sound Therapy has made an enormous difference to her own healing journey.

Sarsha was introduced to Sound Therapy while studying for her psychology degree, to help her tinnitus which had left her house bound. Immediately Sarsha found she was sleeping through the night for the first time in years. Then her tinnitus faded and her dizzy spells, caused by Meniere’s syndrome, disappeared. She realized that her hearing had improved, when she asked her son to repair the blinker on the car that was making a strange clicking noise. He informed her that the noise had always been there, she just never heard it before!

A grave setback came when, in her final year of study, Sarsha had two strokes and lost her ability to speak. Doctors said she would never finish her degree. She listened to Sound Therapy 24 hours a day and in two months had made a full recovery and graduated the following December.

Sarsha now cares for her father, who has dementia. She started him on Sound Therapy and was amazed that he suddenly became a caring person, interested in hearing about her day. The workers at his day care centre also reported remarkable changes in his attitude and abilities.

Sarsha has also found that Sound Therapy has heightened her intuition and accuracy in tuning in to the spiritual plane. She finds that when her clients use Sound Therapy they open up more, making it possible to achieve healing at a deeper level.

For more information contact Rev Sarsha Carpenter 0414 914 197
 

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Sound Therapy helps anxiety and depression

We hear about depression being the emerging epidemic of the 21st Century.
Clinical depression with its symptoms of despair, guilt, exhaustion and anxiety is affecting increasing numbers of people. Severe sufferers find it hard to become motivated or enthusiastic about life.

Rising rates of teen suicide are an alarming warning that depression is growing rapidly. Current trends show that by 2020 depression will be a greater threat to human health than heart disease or cancer.
The good news is, new solutions are now available to families in Sydney’s west which can make these problems much more manageable.

The spiral begins, according to counsellor, Karen Quinn of Change Counselling in Blacktown, because people don’t know how to deal with life’s problems. This leaves them feeling anxious, depressed and out of control.

Karen has a special interest in helping families in the western suburbs. She explained that troubled family break-ups or conflict in relationships can leave people with a lot of unresolved feelings. “This affects our quality of relationships at work or play. Strong and troubled feelings come out in our behaviour and negative patterns repeat themselves,” she said.

Post natal depression, experienced by up to 14% of women, may result from hormonal changes and difficulties adjusting to new demands. Sometimes what’s holding us back is unfinished business like past or current emotional traumas. “Counselling can help you when you are ready and motivated,” says Karen.

Karen helps her clients to become more aware and learn new ways of dealing with tricky situations. She has found ways of speeding up the process, so a lot can be achieved in a short time. “I introduce my clients to Sound Therapy,” she explained, “because it helps reorganise your reaction to early memories, clears your thinking and makes you calmer and happier! It is a drug free treatment that can bring relief and also helps to address the deeper issues.”

Sound Therapy is a home based listening program that is pleasant and easy to do. Karen Quinn at Change Counselling is happy to receive enquiries from people in need of help. Ph 02 9676 4333.
 

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Sonic Birth to Open the Ear

By Rafaele Joudry

Rev Sarsha Carpenter, Psychologist and healer, has travelled her own long road to recovery. She was introduced to Sound Therapy during her studies, to help her tinnitus which had left her house bound. Immediately Sarsha found she was sleeping through the night for the first time in years. Then her tinnitus faded and her dizzy spells, caused by Meniere’s syndrome, disappeared. She realized that her hearing had improved, when she asked her son to repair the blinker on the car that was making a strange clicking noise. He informed her that the noise had always been there, she just never heard it before!

A grave setback came when, in her final year of study, Sarsha had two strokes and lost her ability to speak. Doctors said she would never finish her degree. She listened to Sound Therapy 24 hours a day and in two months had made a full recovery and graduated the following December.

Sarsha now cares for her father, who has dementia. She started him on Sound Therapy and was amazed that he suddenly became a caring person, interested in hearing about her day.

Sarsha now offers Sound Therapy as part of her healing practice at the …..healing centre

While it helps ear disorders, stress, sleep problems and learning difficulties, one of the most interesting areas of Sound Therapy is its impact on psychology.

The role of psychology in our hearing and the psychological implications of the whole hearing process were explored in depth by the French ear doctor, Alfred Tomatis, over the past fifty years. Tomatis distinguished between hearing as a passive process and listening as a conscious, intentional act. We are capable of tuning out our listening or of focusing it on a subject that interests us. The ear is directed by the mind, and without this direction it does not function.

Both the physical and psychological aspects of hearing begin earlier than we may think. Hearing is our means of verbal communication and thus it is the foundation upon which human relationships are built. The first of these relationships is always the relationship with the mother, which begins in the womb. Dr Alfred Tomatis was one of the first to investigate the auditory environment of the foetus. His theory was that the auditory relationship between baby and mother lays the foundation for all our other relationships and is therefore the crucial point of intervention to bring about change in the person's psychological response to sound and language.

Opening the Ear
Dr Tomatis speaks of ‘the opening of the ear’, an occurrence which happens on the combined physical and psychological levels. It can be gradual or sudden, dramatic or almost imperceptible. It means that the ear has regained its natural, full responsiveness to sound. The degree of noticeable effect depends on the degree to which the ear was closed off to sound. It also means that the psyche has adjusted and opened its receptivity to sound and that early traumas have been released.

One of the ways that Sound Therapy brings about this opening of the ear, is by using sound to exercise the middle ear muscles. Another component can be the rearranging of the route by which sound is conveyed to the auditory cortex so that there is more efficient relationship between the ear and brain.

The effect, once the ear has opened is that the brain is receptive to the re-charging effect of high frequency sounds. At this point, listening to Sound Therapy music will increase the energy levels of the listener as well as helping in many cases to resolve deep, psychological blocks. Tomatis states that the original functions of the ear in our evolution were to maintain balance and to provide the brain with energy. Language is a secondary and later function in our evolution.

Healing at the Breast
The following is a quotation from the book Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry.

“Dr. Sarkissof, a psychoanalyst, speaking at the International Congress of the SECRAP in 1972, describes certain patients whom he had agreed to analyse, rather reluctantly, not holding a great deal of hope for their cure. He states: “The results of these analyses confirmed my doubts as to the possibility of completely curing these patients. The more time passed the more I doubted that I could succeed in obtaining anything more than an improvement of their condition -- I decided to let them undergo treatment with the Tomatis apparatus. Not only did they accept willingly, but they accepted with gratitude and high hopes, and I realised, although they had not spoken of it, that all of them were fully aware that treatment by psychoanalysis alone could not completely cure them. The material they offered at the sessions then changed radically. In each of them the Tomatis apparatus brought to light fantasies of a return to the mother’s breast and to birth, and the analysis of these fantasies was accompanied by a clearly visible transformation of their entire personality. All these patients shared a core of unconscious autism: their emotional contacts were without warmth and life, their analyses went round in circles without uncovering any particular cause of resistance, which meant a basic difficulty in communication. Sound Therapy rapidly reduced this core of autism. In the space of a few months, the autism gave way to a joyful, outgoing self-awareness, and their co-operation in the analysis became fruitful. My personal reservations regarding these patients gave way to great optimism as to their ability to get well completely.”

Sonic Birth
It has been said that we are all homesick for the womb. In the days just after birth the infant’s ear is still filled with liquid, so it continues to hear through a liquidian milieu. When the ear drains, it has to adjust to hearing through air, and this is when birth becomes realised on the auditory plane. The filtered sounds of Sound Therapy imitate the uterine auditory environment so that the listener re experiences the birth through the auditory sense. Sometimes this is accompanied by visions or memories of the birth or of being at the mother’s breast. Sonic birth is the reliving of the birth experience and transition into the world through sound.

Author and speaker Rafaele Joudry BSW was raised in the fifties by a radical mother who believed in unconditional love, extended breast feeding and respect and nurturance for the child: many of the child raising ideas that have become a lot more accepted today. Rafaele and her mother popularised the work of Dr Tomatis with their books and portable audio cassette program and Rafaele and other practitioners now lecture to many groups on the use of the method in Australia. Her second book, Triumph Over Tinnitus includes a variety of treatments both wholistic and conventional, physical and psychological to assist with the troubling condition of ringing in the ears. Her most recent book, Why Aren’t I Learning? : Listening is the Key to Overcoming Learning Difficulties, underscores the importance of early intervention and sensory integration for children experiencing learning, sensory and psychological problems.

For more information and a referral for a free consultation in your area contact:
Sound Therapy International on Aust:1300 55 77 96 NZ 61-2 4234-4534
www.soundtherapyinternational.com 
 

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Sound Therapy for children with hearing loss

In the world of hearing impairment very little attention is given to the possibility of actually improving natural ear function. Today, parents of hearing impaired children are well informed about hearing aids and special educational options but not much attention is paid to the question of whether the child’s hearing could be improved through natural means. With the greater emphasis on prevention and holistic care moving into many fields of health, it is time to explore what can be done to help the ear function better.

Rafaele Joudry, founder and Director of Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd is the author of two books on Sound Therapy and a booklet for children entitled Listening Helps Learning. Rafaele has a commitment to assisting adults and children to improve their hearing and learning ability through natural means.

“Improved aural functioning is a possibility for some children and adults if the right supportive therapies are given,” says Rafaele. Her research has indicated that in some cases chiropractic treatment or cranial osteopathy can have a major impact on hearing loss in a child. A misalignment of the neck or cranial damage from birth can put undue pressure on the cranial nerves which can be quickly remedied with a few treatments.

Nutrition is also an important factor in hearing. All organs depend on the right balance of nutrients, enzymes and minerals for their optimum functioning. Ensuring these are available at all stages of development is particularly crucial when assisting a child with a sensory deficiency such as hearing loss. According to Rafaele Joudry, the ear is a very nutrient rich organ which needs high concentrations of anti oxidants and the right balance of trace minerals to work at optimum function. The difficulty of getting children to eat all the right foods is well known, so Sound Therapy International also recommends a selection of supplements to complement the Sound Therapy program. If young people get the right nutrients this has been found to have significant impact on hearing levels in some cases.

The most specific and relevant therapy for hearing improvement is Sound Therapy. The French ear specialist, Dr AA Tomatis developed, throughout his lifetime, a listening program which assists ear function and auditory perception. The program, known simply as Sound Therapy is now used or recommended by almost two hundred practitioners in Australia. It can be used at home or school, while travelling sleeping, reading or during other normal daily activities. Different practitioners find a variety of uses and benefits for the program.

Julia Dive, a mum and casual tutor says: “I’m passionate about Sound Therapy because it works, because it helps my son and because it helps me and I think because of the way I came into working with children with learning problems. The direction I took with that is fairly unique. Sound Therapy fits in really well with all the other things I’ve learned about the vestibular system and how important your balance and all your other senses are in learning to read and write. If you don’t have certain things in place, reading and writing becomes too hard, you can’t do it. Sound Therapy helps to establish some of those pathways that for some reason or other, some children miss out on establishing. Essentially I’m passionate about education, and so I guess I’m passionate about Sound Therapy because I see it as a prime tool for helping kids who aren’t being able to reach their educational potential.”

Helen Milbourne, a former infant primary school teacher now owns and operates the Albury/Wodonga GymbaROO Centre. Helen immediately saw many potential applications for Sound Therapy for children: eg. poor sleep, emotional problems, speech problems and many sensory/motor skill challenges as well as hearing issues.
The more she looked into Sound Therapy, the more she realised that by listening to this wonderful filtered music the brain is being stimulated and getting just as much of a workout as she was giving the children at GymbaROO. By offering Sound Therapy as well, she says, the children get a sort of “double whammy.”

Donna Alder, a teacher of hearing impaired children says:
“The children’s poetry tape has been a Godsend for my hearing impaired students. They love it! Their attention spans have increased dramatically since they have been listening regularly to the tape. My one very hyperactive youngster has settled down to her schoolwork because she knows she can listen to the tape as soon as she’s finished. The tape has become a reward!
“It’s amazing to me that for the 35 years that I have been teaching hearing impaired children, this is the first auditory training tape that uses only speech to which the children can listen comfortably. Patricia’s speech is articulate and soothing. You have chosen the poems carefully so that they are amusing and hold the children’s interest as well.”

Here are a few answers to questions often posed about Sound Therapy and hearing loss.

Will Sound Therapy help severe hearing loss?
This is a difficult question as each case of hearing loss is completely unique, and so is the individual’s potential to heal. To take a position of optimism, if there is some hearing, then it may be possible to improve that hearing to some extent, especially in a young person. Every little bit of residual hearing is important to the hearing impaired person, so improving that even a little bit is worthwhile. The only way to improve ear function is to provide the ear with the right chemical (nutritional) and vibrational (sound) stimulus. The natural way to do this is with natural supplements and high frequency sound. These two inputs will work synergistically, meaning that each augments the impact of the other. People with severe hearing loss have reported improvements through Sound Therapy. Not only does it stimulate the actual ear function, the muscles and the cilia, it also reduces stress, gives a sense of being centred and makes concentration on the auditory stimulus easier.

Will Sound Therapy help someone with a cochlear implant?
We do not know the answer to this question yet, as we have not had direct feedback from implant users. However, since implant users can enjoy music, it is quite possible that Sound Therapy could help in the process of retraining the brain and adjusting to auditory stimulus. We have yet to see the results when some implant users decide to try Sound Therapy.

Why does Sound Therapy focus mainly on high frequencies?
Because the high frequencies are usually lost first, and because they are the most crucial for understanding speech and the subtle meaning -- the mood of speech. The human ear can potentially hear up to 16,000 Hertz, or 20,000 at the very highest. It is these very high sounds that are particularly emphasised in Sound Therapy as they give most stimulation to the ear and also improve brain energy and auditory perception.

Why don’t they test for frequencies between 8k and 16k?
Hearing tests normally only go as high as 8,000 Hz for two reasons. One is that they are primarily concerned with sounds in the speech range which is mostly below 8,000 Hz. The other is that if a sound above 8,000 Hz is played too loud it can potentially damage the ear. Sound Therapy is never played very loud, but even at an inaudible level, the higher frequencies are stimulating the cilia and improving the responsiveness of the auditory system.

If someone has a loss above 8,000 Hz they would not seem deaf but their audio sensitivity and musical appreciation would be reduced. Sound Therapy can re-awaken the perception of these high frequencies and listeners with ‘normal’ hearing are often amazed and the sense of expanded auditory awareness they discover.

How does Sound Therapy help conductive hearing loss?
By exercising and strengthening the middle ear muscles. The hammer and stirrup muscles play an important role, according to Dr Tomatis, in controlling the type of sounds that reach the inner ear. It has also been noted that those with difficulty equalizing their ear pressure or a persistent sense of blockage and fullness in the head achieve relief through Sound Therapy, once the middle ear muscles have regained their proper tone. This verifies Tomatis’s claim that Sound Therapy has a direct impact on middle ear function.

How does Sound Therapy help sensorineural hearing loss?
By gently stimulating the cilia and restoring their function. Sound Therapy is unique because it is the only place, apart from natural sounds such as birdsongs and frogs, where we hear concentrated doses of high frequency sounds at low volume. Most of the sound we hear today is machine noise which is nearly always in the low frequencies. Sound Therapy differs from nature sounds because it uses classical music made up of complex melodies, rhythms and harmonies, and is also rich in high frequencies, which have then been further augmented by the special recording program. Though clinically controlled experiments have not yet been done on hearing loss, sufficient numbers of listeners have reported improved hearing to indicate that Sound Therapy does achieve this in some cases.

If I or my child uses a hearing aid how can we use Sound Therapy?
You can either listen with or without your hearing aid. It is recommended to use the aid about 50% of the time, depending on preference. By starting out with the aid you allow the muscles to be stimulated. Listening without the aid is also beneficial as this means more of the very high frequencies, above the range of the hearing aid, will get through.

For more information on how Sound Therapy can be applied to hearing issues for both children and adults, and how to obtain and use the program, readers are referred to the following books.

Why Aren’t I learning? by Rafaele Joudry
Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry
Triumph Over Tinnitus by Rafaele Joudry

These can be obtained through your local bookstore or from Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd. Phone (international +612) ( Aust 02) 4234-4534 or 1300 55 77 96
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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The Psychology of Hearing

By Rafaele Joudry

The role of psychology in our hearing and the psychological implications of the whole hearing process have been explored in depth by the French ear doctor, Alfred Tomatis, over the past fifty years. Tomatis distinguished between hearing as a passive process and listening as a conscious, volitional act. We are capable of tuning out our listening or of focusing it on a subject that interests us. The ear is directed by the mind, and without this direction it does not function.

Both the physical and psychological aspects of hearing begin earlier than we may think.
Hearing is our means of verbal communication and thus it is the foundation upon which human relationships are built. The first of these relationships is always the relationship with the mother, which begins in the womb. Dr Alfred Tomatis was one of the first to investigate the auditory environment of the foetus. His theory was that the auditory relationship between baby and mother lays the foundation for all our other relationships and is therefore the crucial point of intervention to bring about change in the person's psychological response to sound and language.

Dr Tomatis was one of the first to postulate that the foetus hears in the womb.
He was fascinated by an observation of Negus, author of The Mechanisms of the Larynx, that if the eggs of songbirds are hatched under silent foster mothers they produce songless young. Tomatis surmised that the audio-phonitary conditioning which occurs in the womb prepares the ability to speak. Later Konrad Lorenz, Nobel Prize winner 1973, spoke and sang to duck eggs in an incubator and so proved that ducklings became accustomed to his voice in the egg and responded to it after hatching. Tomatis’s belief that this also applied to humans was confirmed by Andre Thomas who did experiments where a baby less than ten days old responded to the mother’s voice by falling in her direction. Is 1962 Dr Lee Salk proved that the foetus is aware of the mother’s heartbeat. Tomatis, however, was the first to assert that the foetus hears and acclimatises to the mother’s voice in the womb. He takes this further and says that the foetus draws all of its emotional material from its mother’s voice.

Dr Tomatis speaks of ‘the opening of the ear’, an occurrence which happens on the combined physical and psychological levels. It can be gradual or sudden, dramatic or almost imperceptible. It means that the ear has regained its natural, full responsiveness to sound. The degree of noticeable effect depends on the degree to which the ear was closed off to sound. It also means that the psyche has adjusted and opened its receptivity to sound and that early psycho-accoustic traumas have been released.

One of the pre-requisites to the ear opening is the rehabilitation of the middle ear muscles. Another is sometimes a psychological shift which allows sound to impact the psyche on a deeper level. Another component can be the rearranging of the route by which sound is conveyed to the auditory cortex so that there is a direct and efficient relationship between ear and brain.

These changes can be effected by the Sound Therapy listening program which Tomatis developed and which is now available as a self help program on cassette tape.

The effect, once the ear has opened is that the brain is receptive to the re-charging effect of high frequency sounds. At this point, listening to Sound Therapy music recorded with Tomatis' Electronic Ear filtering method will increase the energy levels of the listener as well as helping in many cases to resolve deep, psychological blocks. Tomatis states that the original functions of the ear in our evolution were to maintain balance and to provide the brain with energy. Language is a secondary and later function in our evolution. The larynx is part of the breathing system and the mouth, lips and palate are part of the digestive system, also put into the service of speech and language.

The following is a quotation from the book Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry.

“Dr. Sarkissof, a psychoanalyst, speaking at the International Congress of the SECRAP in 1972, describes certain patients whom he had agreed to analyse, rather reluctantly, not holding a great deal of hope for their cure. He states: “The results of these analyses confirmed my doubts as to the possibility of completely curing these patients. The more time passed the more I doubted that I could succeed in obtaining anything more than an improvement of their condition -- I decided to let them undergo treatment with the Tomatis apparatus. Not only did they accept willingly, but they accepted with gratitude and high hopes, and I realised, although they had not spoken of it, that all of them were fully aware that treatment by psychoanalysis alone could not completely cure them. The material they offered at the sessions then changed radically. In each of them the Tomatis apparatus brought to light fantasies of a return to the mother’s breast and to birth, and the analysis of these fantasies was accompanied by a clearly visible transformation of their entire personality. All these patients shared a core of unconscious autism: their emotional contacts were without warmth and life, their analyses went round in circles without uncovering any particular cause of resistance, which meant a basic difficulty in communication. Sound Therapy rapidly reduced this core of autism. In the space of a few months, the autism gave way to a joyful, outgoing self-awareness, and their co-operation in the analysis became fruitful. My personal reservations regarding these patients gave way to great optimism as to their ability to get well completely. One of the patients expressed his astonishment at noting that he had suddenly become capable of making great progress, readily and without anxiety, while he remembered that before the treatment, the efforts demanded of him in psychoanalysis seemed immense and completely out of proportion to the slight progress he made. He considered the Tomatis treatment a very valuable short cut, which made him feel that he was making a game of his difficulties.”

Sonic Birth
It has been said that we are all homesick for the womb. In the days just after birth the infant’s ear is still filled with liquid, so it continues to hear through a liquidian milieu. When the ear drains, it has to adjust to hearing through air, and this is when birth becomes realised on the auditory plane. The filtered sounds of Sound Therapy imitate the uterine auditory environment so that the listener re experiences the birth through the auditory sense. Sometimes this is accompanied by visions or memories of the birth or of being at the mother’s breast. Sonic birth is the reliving of the birth experience and transition into the world through sound.

Sound Therapy and Autism
Tomatis describes autism as an animal state in which the person’s deep sorrow imprisons them in darkness, removed from the world of human emotions. Yet, he says, just a glimmer of awareness could reanimate them. Tomatis used his method in the clinical treatment of autistic children over some years. He observed that in the early stages of Sound Therapy the child may become quite distant and indifferent, but there would be a stage where he comes to accept his mother’s voice and at that point he would often burst into a flood of tears. After that there was usually a great rapprochement with the mother, an increase in language and a willingness to risk emotional expression.

Treating the mother
Tomatis always treated the mother as well as the child. He found that by connecting the mother to the same wavelength as the child Sound Therapy made it easier for the two to communicate. This helped to remove blocks, resentments and misunderstandings that may have existed between the mother and child. This was helpful in treating any patient, but was particular relevant when dealing with autism. A highly sensitive being, the autistic child needs to feel total acceptance before it will emerge from psychic isolation. The attunement with the mother introduced by Sound Therapy helps to make this possible.

Involving the father
Tomatis believes that the father represents the experience of ‘other’, the first experience of reaching beyond the inner circle of self and mother from which the child takes its safety. The father also represents the introduction of language and the articulation of the self as a separate entity in the world. The involvement of the father in Sound Therapy therefore allows for this next step in our early development to be re-experienced in more positive circumstances so we can take new stock of our first creation of ourselves as autonomous and separate beings.
In some instances Sound Therapy could be beneficially applied to adoption. Tomatis recommends that when the birth mother is not available for the mother’s voice technique, the adoptive mother’s voice can be used with success, if the adoptive mother is in fact capable of loving the child.

A replication of involving the mother and father in treatment is possible with the special affirmation tapes which are now part of the portable program. Powerful affirmations with a female or male voice, filtered using the Electronic Ear can be used in a way that reprograms the listener’s original self concept and mother-self paradigms. Likewise, the father’s voice tape can be used to assist in recreating the experience of first reaching out to the ‘other’ in a linguistic sense.

To begin with, a new listener must start with the basic music tapes to acclimatise the ear to the filtering. Filtering is always introduced gradually because if the filtered sounds were introduced too suddenly this could produce a refusal to accept such a sudden shift into another world. The unaccustomed ear may find the sounds grating or painful. The listener musts be gently led into the new world at a pace that the psyche can easily handle.

The auditory pre-birth experience
Once the listener’s ear has opened, the listener is in a receptive psychological state similar to the state of the infant. The recreation of the auditory experience of embryonic life enables the listener to connect with a past distant enough to be untouched by any negative experience. It is as if all obstacles which locked her in a painful situation were finally removed. Going back to this pre-pain time allows for a rebuilding of self, beliefs and behaviours, perhaps now with the benefit of time, and the therapist’s guidance to start creating a fresher and more functional being.

Emotional acoustic blocks may be caused by many events such as the lack or prolonged absence of a mother, emotional indifference or inadequacy on her part, the hospitalisation of the baby at the breast, or the isolation of a premature baby kept in an incubator. Where there has been a traumatic childbirth it may be useful to relive the experience after creating more favourable conditions than existed the first time.

Author and speaker Rafaele Joudry BSW was raised in the fifties by a radical mother who believed in unconditional love, extended breast feeding and respect and nurturance for the child: many of the child raising ideas that have become a lot more accepted today. Rafaele and her mother popularised the work of Dr Tomatis with their books and portable audio cassette program and Rafaele now lectures to many professional groups on the use of the method in Australia. Her second book, Triumph Over Tinnitus includes a variety of treatments both wholistic and conventional, physical and psychological to assist with the troubling condition of ringing in the ears. Her most recent book, Why Aren’t I Learning? : Listening is the Key to Overcoming Learning Difficulties, underscores the importance of early intervention and sensory integration for children experiencing learning, sensory and psychological problems.

For more information contact:
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Tomatis, the Irrepressible Pioneer

Sound Therapies have gained huge popularity of late and new methods of sound healing are appearing at each new health Expo. One of the true pioneers and still the sound guru who has penetrated perhaps the most profound levels of our psyche through the ear is the inventor of audio psycho phonology, (the psychology of speech and hearing), the late Dr Alfred Tomatis ENT. His brilliant method was launched in a more accessible, portable form by mother and daughter team, Patricia and Rafaele Joudry as described in humorous and intriguing detail in their book, Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain. The following article is based on excerpts from Rafaele Joudry’s second book, Triumph Over Tinnitus and Dr Tomatis’s autobiography, The Conscious Ear.

Dr Tomatis was one of the remarkable pioneers of our time. An inventor, innovator and researcher, he gave us the practical application of Sound Therapy, a unique and valuable tool for healing and education.

Marilyn Ferguson, author of The Aquarian Conspiracy, called him an irrepressible pioneer. Others have called him a genius. Another great man, Buckminster Fuller, says “There is no such thing as a genius, some of us are just less damaged than others.” If this is so, Ferguson suggests, Tomatis is one of the less damaged. To be so, after the trials and vicissitudes of his background is testament to the optimism and resilience of his inner nature.
Tomatis was born in Nice in 1919. His father was Nicoise and his mother Italian. His birth was apparently not wanted or anticipated. His mother was only 16 years old and had done everything to hide or suppress the growth of the baby, including wearing the restrictive corsets of the time. Tomatis was born two and a half months premature and weighed just under three pounds. The midwife took one look at him and immediately discarded him in a waste basket, believing he was dead.

Tomatis would never have lived were it not for his paternal grandmother who had herself borne 24 children and had much wisdom on matters of birth and life. She retrieved him from the basket and revived him.
Tomatis says that he owes his later work on the importance of prenatal life to his own painful beginning. He believes this engendered his desire to search for and understand that lost nirvana of the womb from which he was ejected too soon.

Tomatis’s first language was Nicoise, a fifteenth century language which had more in common with local Italian dialects than with French. He did not become fluent in French until his early teens. He did very poorly in his early schooling due to an unstable home life and repeated childhood illnesses. Tomatis’s relationship with his mother was fraught with difficulty and lack of rapport. Her family background was one of superstition and poor linguistic ability. Her only area of excellence was her cooking. She saw Tomatis as an obstacle to her closeness with his father, as he restricted her ability to travel with her husband on his many tours as a celebrated singer. Yet Tomatis, far from taking a victim stance in relation to this poor maternal bond, instead expresses gratitude for the insight this difficult relationship gave him and how it later fuelled and informed his pioneering work in the field of psychology.

His father, on the other hand was the source of many of Tomatis’s exceptional character traits and the parent who gave him his sense of personal value as well as both the emotional and practical support to excel in life. Tomatis writes in his autobiography, “I always considered my father an exceptional being with whom I communicated well and shared a close understanding…he was an ear, a listener who was always ready to hear me with true attention.”

Perhaps it was the great contrast between one parent who could listen and one who could not that gave Tomatis his deep insights into the importance of listening.

Another great source of inspiration to Dr Tomatis was a doctor who was called to treat him during one of his many childhood illnesses. At the time he was suffering from three fevers which he had contracted simultaneously, typhoid, Maltese fever and typhus murin. A parade of doctors had failed to diagnose his condition so finally the well-respected Dr Carpocino was called. After examining Tomatis he pronounced “I don’t know what is the matter with him. I must search for the answer.” He did indeed search and succeeded in diagnosing and treating the small boy. It was his statement “I must search” which had the most profound effect on Tomatis’s development and career choice, for from that moment on he decided to do the same. He would become a doctor so that he could search for answers to what he did not know. Tomatis pursued his education with his characteristic determination and succeeded eventually in being qualified in the specialty of ENT (Ear Nose and Throat surgery.)

After World war II he pursued his longstanding desire to enter the field of medical research. His choice of specialty was stimulated once again by his love and admiration for his father. He had observed singer friends of his father’s who had vocal problems which mystified the doctors of the day. He hoped that he could help them so he decided to go into ear nose and throat medicine (ENT). His dream was to aid singers who had damaged or lost their voices.

On completing his ENT studies the only way that he could begin doing research was to acquire his own rooms and fund and set up his own clinical laboratory, which is exactly what he did. Operating on a shoestring, he started amassing clinical data on audiometric tests. He focused on aeroplane mechanics, many of whom had worked in highly detrimental sound environments during the war.

After testing in several different situations, Tomatis noticed that the same subjects produced different audiometric results depending on their beliefs about the possible implications for their career. In situations where they feared job loss, their hearing results came out quite well, but there was unprecedented change when they had heard news that hearing damage could result in a good pension. Tomatis writes, “I was surprised to discover that a perfectly sincere individual, but one who wanted to be diagnosed as deaf, was able to lower his auditory threshold by ten, twenty and even thirty decibels.” He was convinced from comparing these results with his interview experience that these motivations were entirely subconscious.

It was now that it struck him that in order to “find out what he did not know” in his medical field he would also have to investigate psychology. He was shocked to realise the huge lack of psychological content in his medical training.

Meanwhile Tomatis’s father had begun referring singers to his son, and he began prodding around in the singing literature attempting to unravel the mysteries of the voice. At the time the prevailing theory was that the voice was controlled by the larynx and if the singer could not reach a particular note it was due to a malfunction of the larynx. Initially Tomatis prescribed strychnine, the standard medical treatment for overstretched vocal chords, and also male hormones, a favourite of wartime medicine. This appeared to be working until two of his patients “choked” on the stage.

Now Tomatis had a flash of intuition which was the key to his first major discovery. He decided to subject the singers to audiometric tests, the same that he had been administering to those people with occupational deafness. He noticed a surprising similarity in the audiometric curves. Could it be, he asked, that the singers had deafened themselves with their own, loud voices? By measuring the intensity of their voices with a sonometer he established that powerful singers could reach 130 or 140 decibels, certainly enough to cause deafness with continued exposure! Especially since 130 decibels at a metre’s distance represents 150 decibels inside ones skull!
Tomatis concluded from the evidence he gathered that the voice was controlled not by the larynx but by the ear. He was able to verify from his test results that a scotoma (an absence of certain frequencies) in the audiogram exactly matches the same loss of frequencies in the voice. Thus in 1947 Tomatis came to the formulation of his first law “the voice only contains those frequencies that the ear can hear,” or as he liked to put it, “one sings with one’s ear.”

Tomatis had married by this time but, as he freely admits, the relationship was completely unfulfilling as there was no rapport between him and his wife. As he states in his autobiography, The Conscious Ear, “There was no love because there was no communication; there was no communication because there was no love.”
Tomatis therefore continued to lose himself in his work. He invented and manufactured a sonic analyser which enabled him to analyse the frequency distribution of a voice.

Tomatis’s next major discovery was that self listening and voice production is controlled by the right ear. This is because the passage of nerve impulses connecting the ear to the larynx and to the cranium is more direct on the right side of the body. The recurrent laryngeal nerves (belonging to the tenth pair of cranial nerves, the vagus) have to cover a longer route on the left side for two reasons. One is that they have to go around the heart. The other is that the central laryngeal motor area is situated in the left brain. In other words, our main speech centre is in the left brain, and this is most directly reached via the right ear. Due to the cross-over of all nerve impulses between the brain and the body, the left ear communicates directly with the right brain while the right ear is wired straight to the left brain.

This means that the right ear has the more efficient route on two counts: for language reception and vocal production. Therefore it must direct. Tomatis says categorically that all great singers and musicians are right-ear dominant. He also states, and other learning specialists confirm his findings, that it is a requirement for efficient processing of language for any person that the right ear must lead. We function more efficiently if the right ear directs our listening.

Tomatis confirmed this discovery through experiments with singers. He found that when listening to their voices through the left ear, they lost a large part of their ability, were unable to follow the beat or to make their voice give out its true sound.

Tomatis discovered that Enrico Caruso, whom he considered the greatest singer of his time, owed his superb ability to a partial deafness in the right rear. Due to an operation that blocked his Eustacian tube, Caruso was deaf to the low frequencies in his own voice on the right side. The fact that he heard and reproduced only the high frequencies led to the superb and unique quality of his voice. As an experiment Tomatis decided to give this same listening structure to other singers. He was able to do this by retraining their self-listening with his special filtering device. Not only did it improve their voices but the patients unanimously declared that they felt much better after the treatment.

This led Tomatis to his realisation that we need to receive daily doses of high frequency sound in order to stimulate the cortex of the brain and replenish its energy stores. Tomatis said that we need to receive three thousand stimuli per second for four and a half hours per day in order for the brain to function at maximum potential. This is perhaps the most important of his discoveries. High frequency sounds stimulate the brain while low frequencies deplete and diminish brain energy. If we receive the necessary daily input of high frequency, charging sounds, Tomatis found that creativity and thinking ability are enhanced, energy rises and depression is often alleviated.

During this period, Tomatis was developing the device which he eventually called the Electronic Ear. This machine had the capacity to feed back the subject’s voice with the frequencies altered so that they could hear themselves in the correct way. Thus their ear was reconditioned to accurate hearing, and the voice was also corrected. Later Tomatis found that he could achieve the same result by playing music through the Electronic Ear, specifically the music of Mozart. He found that provided the subject experienced these altered sounds repeatedly for a certain period of time, the effects would last.

In later years Tomatis trained many different practitioners to use his method and so it became available in about two hundred centres around the world, in addition to his centre in Paris.

Portable Sound Therapy
A portable version of the therapy was later developed in Canada by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry in the late 1980s. Patricia was helped with her problem of hypersensitivity to sound, and the inability to follow a conversation in a noisy room, known as the cocktail party syndrome. The treatment also cured her chronic insomnia and exhaustion. Once the tapes were released to the public, it became clear that in many cases, Sound Therapy brought relief for tinnitus sufferers. Because the program integrates brain functions it also helps with learning difficulties such as ADD, and functional problems of the central nervous system including autism and epilepsy.

Tomatis’s interpretation of tinnitus
Dr Tomatis saw tinnitus as a reaction of the brain to ear dysfunction. A cyclic system is established between the ear and brain, which reinforces and perpetuates itself. While the clinical Tomatis treatment is often not of sufficiently long duration to affect tinnitus, the portable therapy available from Sound Therapy International Pty Ltd has shown greater results in this area and is more cost effective.

The last International Tinnitus Seminar held in Freemantle, Australia saw three hundred tinnitus researchers from around the world exchanging results and discussing the latest theories on dealing with this baffling condition. (ringing in the ears.) The current most accepted treatment for tinnitus used in hospitals and specialist clinics is Tinnitus Retraining Therapy, (TRT) which includes cognitive and behavioural therapy in individual and group sessions to help the person habituate to the tinnitus, and is sometimes combined with noise generators to provide a soothing external sound. Other practitioners recommend Sound Therapy which, using filtered classical music, gives a more pleasant and varied sound and is believed by some to work at several levels of the brain and nervous system. Rafaele Joudry, who has observed the effect of Sound Therapy on thousands of patients over the last twelve years says, “it is a simple, cost effective treatment which has many positive benefits. It not only helps ear problems, but also improves energy levels, reduces stress and improves learning.”

Dr Tomatis died recently, but his discoveries made more than fifty years ago live on in fifty or more countries, and become more and more readily available with the greater access to technology, to portable equipment and the internet.

Training and listening programs available
Rafaele Joudry, author, lecturer and Director of Sound Therapy International, teaches a course in Sound Therapy for health practitioners and educators available by distance or in certain major cities. Sound Therapy International offers therapeutic listening programs by mail order. The two books, Triumph Over Tinnitus by Rafaele Joudry or Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain, by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry are available from Sound Therapy International, at www.soundtherapyinternational.com 
 

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Triumph Over Tinnitus

Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, is reported by the Australian tinnitus association to affect some 20% of Australians. In the age group over 65 it is 30%. Most people you speak to are either living with, related to or know someone who is suffering from this maddening condition.

What is tinnitus?
Tinnitus is different for everybody. It may occur in one ear or in both and sufferers report many different sounds in their ears including humming, ringing, or a high pitched whine like the sound of crickets. It can also be experienced at various volumes and pitch, and can be worse at different times of the day or night. Often sleeping is a problem, once the daily activities which distract from the internal noise are concluded. Other symptoms which may accompany tinnitus are dizziness or vertigo, loss of balance and nausea. These symptoms may be due to a condition called Meniere’s syndrome which is caused by an excess of fluid pressure in the inner ear.

What causes tinnitus?
The most common cause of tinnitus is loud noise. Industrial noise is a very common cause of both deafness and tinnitus, affecting factory workers who have been exposed to noise over many years. Military service is also a common cause of ear problems. Many sufferers report that their tinnitus began during the war when they worked with guns, tanks or heavy machinery and in particular aircraft. Ear protection was unfortunately unheard of in these times. Loud music is another major cause of tinnitus and many musicians are plagued by this condition.
Even living in the country does not provide protection from ear damage. Farmers commonly suffer ear problems due to hours of exposure to the noise of tractors and other farm machines. A bang on the head may bring on tinnitus, and ear problems may also stem from a virus or from frequent ear infections in childhood. Some medications can cause or aggravate tinnitus as can some foods.

Drugs to avoid
The following drugs have been shown to potentially cause or worsen tinnitus. Salycilate analgesics (higher doses of aspirin), naproxen sodium (Naprosyn, Aleve), ibuprofen, many other non steroid anti-inflammatories, aminoglycoside antibiotics, anti depressants, loop inhibiting diuretics, quinnine/anti malarials, oral contraceptives and chemotherapy.

Aspirin is found in found in: Disprin, Aspro, Ecotrin, Codral, Codcomol, Cartia, Solprin, Paytocil, Rhusal, Pirophen, SRA, Asparcod, Anacin, Aspec, Codis, Venganin, Alka-Sestzer, Hedex.
Marijuana usage may worsen a pre existing case of tinnitus and alcohol may contribute to tinnitus in some people.

Ototoxic chemicals commonly found in food:
Caffeine, found in coffee, tea, Coca cola, Pepsi Cola and chocolate. Too much caffeine for some people can raise blood pressure, cause restlessness, irritability, muscle twitches and can worsen tinnitus. Experiment with your caffeine intake to see if it affects your tinnitus.

Quinine, found in tonic water.
Aspartame, found in many diet foods including diet coke. Brand names for aspartame are NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure.

Smoking
Nicotine is a vaso constrictor, meaning it raises blood pressure. It can also directly affect the nerves, causing neuralgia (pain) or spontaneous nerve impulses which can result in worsening of tinnitus.

Medical treatments
The medical profession is generally baffled by tinnitus, not knowing what causes it or how to treat it. Drugs are sometimes prescribed but are only suitable for a small number of people. In extreme cases people have had the auditory nerve severed so hearing is lost entirely. However, it has been known for this procedure to be done and despite the patient becoming deaf, the tinnitus still prevails. Many doctors now believe this indicates that although tinnitus originates in the ear it becomes perpetuated as a feedback mechanism by the limbic system in the brain.

Retraining therapy
Years ago, before tinnitus was a well known and recognised condition sufferers were told “its all in your head.” Though it is now acknowledged that tinnitus is very real condition, the specialists are concluding that in fact the cause and the treatment are psychophysical rather than physical. The current treatment favoured by specialist audiologists is tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT), a lengthy re-education program which teaches the subject to change their reaction to the tinnitus and thereby reduce its impact on their consciousness. Many people find this therapy extremely helpful in allowing them to adjust to or reduce their tinnitus.

Sound Therapy
A very different alternative was pioneered by the French ear specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis, who invented a therapeutic listening program using specially filtered classical music. Sound Therapy provides exercise for the tiny muscles in the middle ear, improving the functioning of the ear mechanism and has been found to relieve or eliminate tinnitus in many cases. It also often helps mild hearing loss, dizziness and sensations of blocking or fullness in the ear.

Rafaele Joudry, Director of Sound Therapy International, leading author and lecturer on Sound Therapy believes that most tinnitus is caused by damage to the tiny hair cells called “cilia” in the inner ear. She says that when they are damaged they lie flat, and in touching each other they “short circuit” and create a phantom noise. The Sound Therapy program trains the ear to open and respond to gentle high frequencies so that these therapeutic sounds can reach the inner ear. These sounds stimulate the damaged hair cells to become erect again, improving hearing and usually providing relief for tinnitus. Sound Therapy is a self help program which can be used by anyone in their own home. A full and fascinating description of this therapy is given in Joudry’s latest book, Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain.

Rafaele says, “We have been treating tinnitus for twelve years now in Australia with results ranging from partial to complete relief for sufferers. Our treatment is a safe method which is affordable and enjoyable. Our clients have achieved results where they were told that no hope existed.”
Rafaele Joudry’s latest book, Triumph Over Tinnitus is a handbook for tinnitus sufferers and covers a wide range of therapies that can help.

Natural therapies
A naturopath will look at the whole system to determine where an imbalance may be contributing to the symptom of tinnitus, and look for a specific formula to address that imbalance. Tinnitus could be due to a digestive problem, which may include poor pancreatic function. Therefore, a digestive enzyme that would support the pancreas may be in order. If it’s an acid condition where there is a lot of mucus present in the body, then the patient may just need a general de-tox. A bowel disorder indicates toxicity which is coming back into the system and needs to be cleared, and could perhaps be treated with a herbal formula. Naturopaths may also use minerals to help in the bowel cleansing, and they may use homoeopathics or nutrient formulas.
Free-radical damage to the hearing apparatus can be caused by noise exposure and for this a naturopath would recommend anti-oxidants. A powerful formula including herbs which promote circulation is often beneficial to improving general ear function.

Where the tinnitus is due to industrial ear damage rather than systemic imbalances, some naturopaths would recommend Sound Therapy, and say that around 70-80% usually get a positive result.

A Chinese medical practitioner will want first to determine whether the tinnitus is due to an excess type or deficiency type imbalance. For example excessive types may exhibit the rising of liver fire; which is a way of describing a condition such as hypertension, preclampsia or emotional irritability. Another description might be phlegm-fire, which again is an excess condition involved in inflammation.

The deficiency types are from kidney essence deficiency which has to do with old age or excess of sexual activity, possibly tied up with excessive use of drugs. Also poor diet will cause a deficiency of the Chi, and conditions that are connected to the heart such as emotional conditions. Depending on whether the tinnitus is damp or wind type tinnitus, kidney, heart or liver tinnitus, the practitioner will then treat this imbalance with acupuncture or Chinese herbs.

Body work will help if the tinnitus is caused by neck tension or structural damage due to injury, stress or bad habits of posture and movement. It can be occupational, or it can be due to damage that has been done through being traumatised earlier in life, like being born with forceps delivery. To recover from this type of ingrained physical tension may take some time but is usually possible through a powerful and sensitive form of bodywork such as the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Cranial Osteopathy, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Osteopathy or working with a skilled massage therapist.

How do we avoid tinnitus?
Now that tinnitus is receiving more publicity and with the onslaught of environmental pollutants and chemical overload, many fear that it is becoming an epidemic. This raises the question, how can we avoid getting tinnitus? Here are a few tips for prevention:

• Protect your family’s ears from loud noise. Use cotton wool, ear plugs or muffs or your hands in noisy places.
• Never expose babies to loud noise. They are too young to tell you it is hurting them.
• Play music or TV quietly.
• If the music at the dance is too loud, ask the DJ to turn it down.
• Manage stress, learn yoga or meditation. Learn to relax.
• Use a quality mineral supplement, preferably colloidal minerals, to provide the ears with their basic requirements. The ears are very nutrient rich and require minerals such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus.
• Protect your ears against free radical damage with high quality, long lasting antioxidants. Besides vitamins A, C and E, find a supplement which includes second and third generation antioxidants such as ginko biloba, tumeric, pinebark and grape seed extract.
• Avoid medication that may trigger tinnitus.
• Use Sound Therapy to stimulate the cilia and strengthen the middle ear muscles.
• As much as possible avoid long term exposure to low frequency noise such as refrigerators, air conditioners, computers, traffic, tractors, aircraft and industrial noise.
• Listen to natural sounds in the upper frequency range eg birds, frogs, running water, the wind in the trees. These sounds calm the nervous system.

Rafaele Joudry is the founder and director of Sound Therapy International and the author of three books on Sound Therapy, including, Triumph Over Tinnitus, which includes a variety of treatments both wholistic and conventional, physical and psychological to assist with the troubling condition of ringing in the ears.
Contact: Sound Therapy International,
Phone 02 4234 4534 or 1300 55 77 96
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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The therapeutic effect of high band pass classical music and antioxidant supplements

By:
George B. Richards,Ph.D.
Paula J. Richards, A.B.A.
Rafaele Joudry, B.S.W.

The purpose of this paper is to present a critical review of the literature as it relates to the alternative approaches to hearing health through an overview and history of the theories of Dr. Alfred Tomatis, MD and present views toward antioxidant supplements. This review will attempt to explain these views as related to the afferent and efferent auditory neurological pathways and to explain how oxidative stress to the auditory system can be alleviated.

PART 1
A Historical Review of the work of Dr Tomatis and Supporting Literature By Rafaele Joudry BSW

Overview of Dr Tomatis’s work
In the 1940s Dr Tomatis, a Paris based ear, nose and throat specialist conducted clinical trials with singers, aeroplane mechanics and others to determine how their hearing was affected and whether it could be improved.

He went on to develop a method of treatment which addresses hearing and listening from both the physical and the psychological aspects. His work was applied most extensively to children with learning disorders and in language learning centres. Extensive anecdotal data and survey results indicate improvement for certain hearing disorders. Through his experiments Tomatis also discovered that high frequency sounds, softly played stimulate and replenish brain energy. He believed that a regular dose of high frequency sound is essential for optimum functioning of the cortex. His method also appears to assist cerebellar integration, leading to improvement in numerous neurological disorders.

Tomatis’s research
On completing his ENT studies Tomatis set up his own research rooms and started amassing clinical data on audiometric tests. He focused on aeroplane mechanics, many of whom had worked in highly detrimental sound environments during the war. After testing in several different situations, Tomatis noticed inconsistencies in results for hearing tests depending on the subjects’ anticipation of the effect of hearing loss on their career or possible pensions.

This inspired him to investigate the psychological aspect of hearing. So began the development of Tomatis’ ideas on the wholistic nature of language as it represents our evolving consciousness within our environment. He was inspired by the work of Negus who determined that ducklings could recognise the sound of their mother’s voice at birth, and from this deduced the fact that much of our neurology for language comprehension is laid down while still in utero.

Dr Agatha Sidlauskas, a psychologist and long time proponent of Tomatis’s work has perhaps the best overall grasp of how the intricate physical involvement of he ear in the entire nervous system implicates its profound role at more psychic levels of our being. “The integration of the ear with the rest of the organism means that to be able to speak one must be able to control posture, to direct his gaze, to be sure of inner dynamics and be capable of hearing sound and to analyze its intake.”

Meanwhile Tomatis had begun working with singers. He subjected the singers to audiometric tests, the same that he had been administering to those people with occupational deafness and noticed a surprising similarity in the audiometric curves. Could it be, he asked, that the singers had deafened themselves with their own loud voices? By measuring the intensity of their voices with a sonometer, he established that powerful singers could reach 130 or 140 decibels, certainly enough to cause deafness with continued exposure! Especially since 130 decibels at a metre’s distance represents 150 decibels inside ones skull!

Tomatis now began to investigate and compare the size of larynxes vis à vis the voice structure against the shape of the audiogram in relation to the voice. He had to conclude from the evidence he gathered that the voice was controlled not by the larynx but by the ear. He was able to verify from his test results that a scotoma in the audiogram exactly matches the same loss of frequencies in the voice. Thus in 1947 Tomatis came to the formulation of his first law: “The voice only contains those frequencies that the ear can hear.”

Tomatis’s next major discovery was that self listening and voice production is controlled by the right ear. This is because the passage of nerve impulses connecting the ear to the larynx and to the cranium is more direct on the right side of the body. The recurrent laryngeal nerves (belonging to the tenth pair of cranial nerves, the vagus) have to cover a longer route on the left side for two reasons. One is that they have to go around the heart. The other is that the central laryngeal motor area is situated in the left brain. In other words, our main speech centre is in the left brain, and this is most directly reached via the right ear.

This means that the right ear has the more efficient route on two counts: for language reception and vocal production. Therefore it must direct. Tomatis says categorically that all great singers and musicians are right-ear dominant. He also states, and other learning specialists confirm his findings, that it is a requirement for efficient processing of language for any person that the right ear must lead. We function more efficiently if the right ear directs our listening.

During this period, Tomatis was developing the device which he eventually called the Electronic Ear. This machine had the capacity to feed back the subject’s voice with the frequencies altered so that they could hear themselves in the correct way. Thus their ear was reconditioned to accurate hearing, and the voice was also corrected. Later Tomatis found that he could achieve the same result by playing music, mainly Mozart, through the Electronic Ear. He found that provided the subject experienced these altered sounds repeatedly for a certain period of time, the effects would last. In later years Tomatis trained many different practitioners to use his method and so it became available in about two hundred centres around the world, in addition to his centre in Paris.

Distinctions awarded to Tomatis as recognition of his early work were as follows: Chavalier of public health 1951; International Scientific Research Gold Medal at the Brussels World Fair (1959) awarded for the Tomatis Effect Electronic Ear; International Scientific Research Bronze Medal at the Brussels World Fair (1959) for the Tomatis Automatic Audiometer; Grande Medaille de Vermail of the City of Paris (1962); Clemence Isaure Prize. March 1967; Arts, Science and Literature Gold medal. April 1968.

Clinical Studies
Recent brain research by Ted Carrick, an important pioneer in the field of chiropractic neurology, indicates that rather than simply psychological factors, brain function and in particular cerebellar integration, determine the essential listening and attending component needed to complete the act of hearing, particularly the ability to focus ones hearing in the face of other sensory inputs, distractions and background noise.
In the last few decades there have been numerous controlled studies, clinical experiments and case histories, primarily in Canada, South Africa and Australia, which confirm benefits of the Tomatis method for a variety of conditions. These have been done firstly on the clinical Tomatis treatment and more recently on the portable treatment developed by Patricia and Rafaele Joudry. A brief summary of these studies follows.

Canada
The Canadian studies focussed primarily on language and learning abilities, demonstrating measurable changes on a variety of indicators. Under-achieving children performed better when compared against control groups according to objective tests and observations by parents and teachers.
Sandislands and Lethbridge, (Sandislands 1989 ) compared 32 underachieving children with a control group of 40. The treated group showed greater improvements in listening, oral reading and behaviour.
Likewise, Wilson (Wilson, 1982 ) found that a group of pre-school language disordered children showed statistically significant improvement in their ability to express thoughts and feelings in words after Tomatis therapy.

Gilmor (Gilmor, 1982 ) found improvement in children and adolescents’ self concept, social and family relations and certain language and motor skills.

Rourke and Russel (Rourke and Russel 1982 ) compared experimental and control groups and found improvement in IQ of learning disabled children under Tomatis treatment.

Two doctoral theses on the effect of the Tomatis method on five dyslexic boys showed improved cognitive control and audio-vocal control in four of the subjects. (Roy and Roy,1980 )
Weiss (Weiss, 1985 ) showed a shift of vocal energy to the higher frequencies and better articulation in theatre students after Sound Therapy.

South Africa
Van Wyk, compared 20 stutterers with 20 normal speakers and found that more stutterers have left ear dominance, confirming Tomatis’ hypothesis of the importance of right auditory laterality. (Van Wyk, 1974 ) This was also confirmed by Badenhorst, who found that right eared people communicate more easily. (Badenhorst 1975 )

Jaarsveld (Jaarsveld 1974 ) treated a group of 43 stutterers, in which 82% got significant relief from the treatment, and 54% retained the improvement for a year or more.

Peche, treated a group of 10 students and found that Sound Therapy helped to alleviate anxiety and remove psychic blocks. He concluded that it is beneficial in conjunction with psychotherapy. (Peche 1975 )
Botes found improved relationships and self concept in an in depth study of three clients with neurotic depression when treated with Tomatis therapy. (Botes, 1979 )

A long term study by Du Plesis over 14 months with subjects carefully selected from a survey of 424 people showed improved mental health and self actualization for both 10 anxious and 10 non anxious people who had Tomatis treatment, as compared to a control group. (Du Plesis 1982 )

De Bruto, (De Bruto 1983 ) found a statistically significant increase in the mental age of profoundly retarded children after Tomatis treatment.

The following studies were done using Joudry’s portable program of the Tomatis treatment method.
U.K.

The audiometrician, Eric Jordan, trialled the Sound Therapy tapes on an unspecified number of subjects and claimed he found that 90% of tinnitus sufferers got some relief as a result of Joudry Sound Therapy tapes.

Australia
Special education teacher, Elizabeth Rintel, used Joudry tapes for learning disabled children and found they advanced faster in reading, spelling and auditory discrimination compared to a control group. (Rintel, 1995. )
Sound Therapy Australia (Joudry 1994. ) undertook a three year survey of 388 respondents which showed 45% to 100% symptomatic improvement in subjects. The percentage who reported a positive outcome for each condition was as follows: tinnitus, 84%; hearing loss, 56%; stress, 86%; fatigue, 84%; sleep problems, 75%; communication, 78%; learning difficulties, 85%; speech problems, 64%; depression, 100%; headaches, 100%; jet lag 100%, and for general well being, 80%. 93% of subjects observed some positive results in at least one area.

Bell, undertook a case study using Joudry tapes on a year 2 boy with delayed development. As a result of the program and according to evaluations undertaken by his mother, the experimenter and his teacher, he showed improved social behaviour and began to read. (Bell 1991 )
Hearing Instrument Specialist, Paula Richards studied the effect of Sound Therapy on hearing environmental sounds while listening and found almost no impairment of the ability to hear surrounding noise while the tapes are playing, meaning that it is quite safe to use Sound Therapy during daily activities. (Richards 2001 )

The portable program
Sound Therapy was adapted for cassette tape in the 1980s by Patricia Joudry and Rafaele Joudry, authors of Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain and Triumph Over Tinnitus. This meant that thousands of people who did not have access or time to attend the lengthy and costly clinic process could now use the therapy during daily activities. Long term use brought to light more benefits in the areas of sleep, improved energy, reduced stress, relief of tinnitus, improved sound differentiation and in some cases better hearing.

Interestingly, the only studies to examine the effect on hearing and ear related problems were the ones using the portable method. It was only with the advent of the portable method that the effectiveness of Sound Therapy for hearing disorders became apparent, as it usually requires long term treatment to see effect in these areas. These studies however were not rigorously controlled and further research is needed to explore the anecdotal evidence which points to many incidences of improved hearing, reduction in tinnitus, improved ability to differentiate sound in a noisy environment, recovery from recurrent and intermittent ear blockage problems, infections, excess wax production and ear related balance disorders.

PART 2
Auditory Neurology That May Support The Tomatis Theory and other Auditory Intervention Techniques. By: George B. Richards, PhD

Call it sound therapy, auditory training or auditory intervention techniques; these therapy approaches have been the focus for investigation into many types of auditory processing disorders through out the world in prestigious institutions of higher learning by leading investigators.

Dr. Tomatis had a rather radical view of the transmission scheme that is 180 degrees out of phase from the traditional viewpoint. He believed that through a negative feedback loop originating at the level of the endolyph, hydraulic pressure was being applied to the ossicles along with middle ear muscle activity as a constant dampening and tuning of the tympanic membrane. The tympanic membrane collected the sound and transmitted it to the organ of Corti via the bony sulcus. Tomatis thus concluded it was the role of the middle ear to regulate sound transmission and provide a buffer for the shearing force required for audition. The human ear must maintain an optimal micro-homeostasis by limiting destructive shearing of the hair cells. Tomatis further believed that it was the middle ear muscles, which control high-frequency audition and have a significant role in cortical charging.


(Figure 1)

Dr. Stephen Porges, at the University of Maryland (USA) working with children with autism and other related disorders, has focused on the two muscles of the middle ear. Porges states that the same nerves that control vocalization, facial expression, heart rate and breathing, innervate the tensor tympani and stapedius muscles. He points out that when the human organism is in a state of fear or high anxiety, the middle ear muscles loose the ability to diminish low-frequency sounds and attending to the higher frequencies of speech is thus impaired. Porges has developed an intervention protocol similar to the Tomatis method using filtered music to exercise the middle ear muscles along with whole body relaxation techniques to restore integrity to the middle ear muscle function and has reported improvements in communication skills, handwriting, balance and coordination, sensory processing, visual skill and sleep patterns. (Porges, 2003)

The research of Rideout and Laubach at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania required eight students to perform spatial-reasoning tasks before and after listening to a Mozart piano sonata. EEG recordings were made in each condition and an interesting correlation was observed. The music condition dramatically increased brain wave activity along with a significant increase in spatial-reasoning performance. (Rideout and Laubach 1997). Musical perception occurs in the right hemisphere of the brain, which is the same side of the brain that is involved with spatial analysis. (Roederer)

Dr. John Hughes, a neurologist at the University of Illinois Medical Center in Chicago found that music that regularly repeats every 20 to 30 seconds, just as most of Mozart’s compositions do, trigger the strongest brain activity. Dr. Hughes studied the effects of listing to Mozart on 36 subjects with severe epileptic seizures and found an outstanding 29 out of the 36 patients showed significant improvement by having fewer seizures of less intensity. (Hughes, John 1998)

Neurobiologist Gordon Shaw of the University of California at Los Angeles using MRI studies to chart the brain wave activity of individuals listening to different types of music found that only Mozart activated areas of the brain that process fine motor coordination, vision and other higher thought processing regions. (Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, 1995)

Dr. Ingmar Klochoff of Uppsala, Sweden, describes a psychosomatic syndrome, known as the tensor tympani syndrome and is caused by increased psychic tension due to mental stress. There are individuals who do not have a constant impedance of the middle ear. The conclusion for this irregularity was spontaneous tonic tensor tympani muscle activity. The symptoms of this syndrome are often a fullness, tinnitus and dysacusis with a high relation to tension headache and vertigo. This syndrome does not in its self cause hearing loss; however, persons with this syndrome complain of difficulties in understanding what people say. This psychosomatic syndrome is likely to be caused by an inability to attend or concentrate caused by the ever-present rise in psychic tension. (Klochoff 1979)


(Figure 2)

The Centrifugal Pathways are where things start to get interesting. We all struggled with the afferent or input pathways and learned how things got to the brain, but it was that efferent or feed back system that always seemed to be so elusive and not very well understood. The efferent nerves run close to, but not within, the same tracts, as do the afferent nerves. The Superior Olivary Complex is the region of the brainstem where efferent neurons arise and have their point of origin, but are not within the afferent nuclei. It is this system that is responsible for the auditory reflex activities of the stapedius and the tensor tympanic muscles. Traditionally we have been taught that the contraction of these muscles causes the ossicles to become less efficient sound transmitters to the labyrinth, thus protecting the delicate hair cell structure.


(Figure 3)

Unorthodox theories view this reflexive activity to be a tuning system that is continually monitoring the tension being applied to the tympanic membrane and providing protection to the hair cells from superatheshold stimuli.

The auditory efferent system is also feeding information back to the contractile outer hair cells pulling the tectorial membrane into the afferent inner hair causing a mechanical fine tuning effect as in attention and sound localization.



(Figure 4)

These unorthodox theories have merit; in that a true feedback system would have a continuous flow of information that provides maximum tone to the middle ear muscles. Just like an arm or a leg that does not become completely limp when not in use, but maintains a proper tone all of the time, unless injured. This is one of the main theories of the Sound Therapy; that it will restore tone to the middle ear muscle system and in turn tunes up the entire auditory system, which is responsible for 85% of ongoing cortical activity

The system is also very global at a cortical level, sending information to the somatic and automatic nervous system. These more global responses are responsible for feelings of sadness, happiness, anxiety, flight and fight and a host of other visceral responses. It is the ears’ involvement with the X cranial nerve or the vagus nerve (some times referred to as the wandering nerve) that innervates the bronchi and heart going through the diaphragm and on to the entire viscera including the esophagus to the anus. Very simply put, “We therefore have a system in which reflexes can be established at many levels, and in which the cortex controls the reflexes through descending influences..”(Pickles 1988) )

Through over stimulation, sickness and disease, drug therapies and other oxidative stress, the integrity of the afferent and efferent nervous systems is compromised, with loss of muscle tone and synchrony in the synaptic firing order. This compromise manifests itself in myriad of symptomatic maladies, such as hearing loss, tinnitus, loss of balance and coordination, loss of attention, inability to hear and understand in the presence of background noise, fatigue, tiredness, headaches, anxiety, depression and on and on. So when damage occurs to this delicate feed back system, the homeostasis of the entire organism is compromised. Thus is appears through highly organized temporal stimuli (classical music), which has undergone high band pass filtration, a restoration of aural muscle tone and synaptic firing order provides better cortical processing. Better cortical processing corrects a myriad of problems ranging from: anxiety relief, better hearing, tinnitus control, better balance and coordination, to: feelings of happiness and well being.

It seems that it is the reestablishing of the ability to listen to the higher frequency that is responsible for repairing and reorganizing cortical pathways. The energy levels coming in from the high frequency areas are more intense than for the lower frequencies. Dr. Tomatis calls the high harmonics the “charging sounds” while he describes the lower frequencies as the “discharging sounds”. The lower frequencies supply inadequate energy to the cortex and may even exhaust the individual. (Weeks)

PART 3

ANTIOXIDANT SUPPLEMENTS FOR THE EAR
By: Paula J. Richards, A.B.A., H.I.S., C.S.T.P.

This presentation’s purpose is to suggest some non-invasive treatment recommendations and the studies that support their potential for tinnitus relief.

We will discuss types of treatments and studies conducted on tinnitus patients along with specific supplements and their levels

Literature, journals and the Internet are overflowing with data regarding antioxidant effects on just about every subject imaginable. When we began to research statements lauding the antioxidants and help for tinnitus, there was no shortage of information.

After wading through test studies and analysis, I have attempted to pick out those studies with the most validity and relevance to our topic here today.

Typically the medical profession has prescribed little help for tinnitus sufferers over the years. Most often antidepressants or tranquilizers were used simply to ease anxiety. But on the extensive list of drugs which create or increase tinnitus, these types of drugs rank pretty high. The side effects were helpful, but did not address relief of the total problem. Most often patients were told they would “Just have to live with it”. That is a tough call when it affects their entire life.

Treatments of every type imaginable have been suggested over time.

Recent information supplied to the 18th Annual Meeting of the International Tinnitus Forum in 2000 by Dr. Michael Seidman discussed intravenous treatments under consideration including caroverine. Also discussed was memantine, which is delivered locally to the cochlea, as well as catheter-delivered infusion of magnesium sulfate to the round window. Although these treatments showed some tinnitus improvement, emphasis was made that the treatment of tinnitus through transtympanic injections is not only invasive, but entails potential risk of damaging the hearing mechanisms. (Seidman, 2000) A risk that the majority of hearing health care professionals choose to avoid, like the plague.

The total problem is that tinnitus is very complex in that it creates a vicious cycle for the patient to overcome. The sufferers get stressed from the continuous noise, the inability to sleep and rest, the resulting eating problems, increased anxiety along with depression. All these factors continue to increase the tinnitus and the cycle grows more intense and more vicious.

Treatment factors need to be addressed which involve all of the aspects that accompany the noise of tinnitus.

The antioxidant theory that free radicals in the ear cells and nerves, which were created by noise and stress, can be either completely or partially cured is an extensive subject all in itself.

Kopke et al noted that noise over exposure leads to the development of reactive oxygen species in the cochlea, i.e. (oxidative stress). The reactive oxygen steals molecules from the healthy outer hair cell (OHC). These molecules are normally used to support its healthy functioning. Noise over exposure over works the OHC causing the free radicals to release and prevent the cell from replenishing critical nutrients causing the once healthy cell to go into a death cycle. This is why many researchers believe the damaged OHC can be treated with antioxidants before the death cycle reaches a point of no return. (Wolgemuth, 2000)

I will attempt to address the combination of supplements, which we feel are best able to assist with this oxidative stress damage and assist in tinnitus relief; and even in some cases, better hearing.

The first recommendation accompanying all studies is to suggest that patients avoid alcohol, smoking, caffeine and reduce their salt intake. Since this treatment pattern is suggested by doctors for a myriad of ailments and not observed by their patients for any of them, the recommendation of supplements is more widely accepted. After all, we modern, busy people want the perfect pill that will remedy everything that ails us.

The basis of the program dealing with supplements is the inclusion of not just one element, but the combination of Ginkgo Biloba, Garlic, Zinc and Vitamin A.

Ginkgo Biloba: Studies are ongoing and have been in progress for many years relating to use of ginkgo biloba associated with tinnitus as well as hearing problems. Studies have been going on in France, Italy, Germany, Denmark as well as the U.S.A.; and you are all certain to be aware of Jastreboff’s studies with this herbal supplement. (Hazell, 1990) (Jastreboff, 1997)

The German Commission E, who is considered the world’s most knowledgeable body on herbal medicines, recommends EGb 761 (ginkgo biloba) for the treatment of tinnitus. (Bumenthal, Busse, Goldberg, 1998)

There have been 19 clinical trials in Germany investigating the effects of tinnitus treatment with EGb 761. Investigations of prognostic factors revealed that short-standing disorders have a better prognosis; so better results can be expected from early-onset treatment. (Holstein, 2001)

A French multicenter randomized double-blind drug vs. placebo study of the treatment of tinnitus with (EGb 761) extract was very positive. Ten ENT specialists treated 103 tinnitus outpatients during a 13-month treatment period. They summarized that the (EGb 761) extract treatment improved the condition of all the tinnitus patients, irrespective of the prognostic factor. (Meyer, 1986)

A pharmacologic study in Denmark attributes that the therapeutic effect of ginkgo is based on several active constituents that have vasoactive and free radical scavenging properties. The Danish study also found ginkgo biloba to have a very tolerable side effect profile. (Soholm, 1998)

Garlic is lesser known, but not less valuable. Stress is a significant factor in increasing tinnitus noise levels. The modern use of garlic has focused on its ability to reduce stress, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood pressure. A side effect of reducing cholesterol and blood pressure is reducing the volume of noise produced by tinnitus.

The majority of studies show that the positive effects of garlic are those that delivered a sufficient dosage of allicin. Since allicin is the component responsible for the distinctive “ODOR” of garlic we have all come to know and love, manufacturers have developed methods of concentrating another component in garlic, alliin (which is odorless), which is then converted to allicin in the body. (Angerstein, 1995)

Zinc: Studies on zinc and hearing have evolved valuable insight. In 2003, a Turkish placebo-controlled study with tinnitus patients was very successful. Researchers Arda et al, measured blood zinc levels at the beginning of the study. They found that 31% of the subjects suffering tinnitus had lower-than-normal-zinc levels. In the same research group, 82% of the tinnitus sufferers reported a significant decrease in tinnitus severity. (Arda, 2003)

A Japanese study of 121 tinnitus patients suggested a benefit from zinc supplementation. This same investigation suggested it was possible to identify tinnitus patients by measuring serum zinc levels; thus aiding in the overall treatment. (Ochi, 1997)

An important note on Zinc is that large doses can be toxic and should be recommended at less than 40 mg per day.

Finally, Vitamin A: A New York Otorhinolaryngologist, M. J. Lobel, was one of the first to demonstrate in 1949 that vitamin A is useful in treating human hearing loss and tinnitus. Between 1941 and 51, five experimental research studies were conducted into the correlation between the ear and vitamin A. Authors concluded vitamin A was a valuable therapeutic agent in the treatment of deafness and tinnitus. (Lobel, 1951)

Identical trials with 103 patients in 1952 by G. Nager concluded that vitamin A did accomplish an improvement in pure-tone hearing, improvement in speech perception and reduction of accompanying tinnitus. (Nager, 1952)

It is important to note that vitamin A can be toxic in large amounts (over 50,000 I.U. per day) and should be consumed in the form of beta carotine, which the body then converts to vitamin A. (Diesel, 2002)

The trial period in the studies and product literature ranges between 60 to 120 days to determine if any result will be obtained. In many studies, extended trials gave even better results. The majority of recommendations for trial periods of the supplements were 90 days.

Most of these supplements include little or no side effects. As with any patient who is taking medications, they should be informed to check with their physician for any contraindications. However, caution must be exercised to warn patients who might be taking agents for blood-thinning such as coumadin or warfarin to check with their primary physician before taking Ginkgo Biloba.

Additionally, Ginkgo Biloba should be discontinued two weeks prior to any surgical procedure.

Of course if any of your 60 to 80 year old patients are pregnant, they should also check with their doctor.

Futuristic scientific research at Harvard Medical School involved reproducing mouse embryonic stem cells inculture that resemble sensory hair cells in the inner ear. These cells were transplanted into developing ears of chickens and appeared to be very similar to the chicken hair cells surrounding them. This technology may be used to treat disorders primarily due to cell degeneration, including hearing loss. (Cunningham, 2003) But not in the near future.

In summary, areas presented here today are non-intrusive methods that give some level of relief to most tinnitus sufferers.

In our practice, we recommend the combination of Sound Therapy and antioxidant supplements. This synergistic combination allows hearing health care professionals to offer an alternative path for their patients to follow in an effort to alleviate tinnitus suffering.

PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
by Rafaele Joudry

Sound Therapy International recommends a combination of Feroxin and Revenol in combination with the Sound Therapy program. Feroxin provides a wide range of at least 60 minerals in a colloidal (liquid) form, derived from a natural source. These minerals assist with a wide range of body and brain functions, assisting the liver to detox so the body can more effectively utilize other nutrients.

Revenol is a powerful antioxidant formula containing several of the most powerful and effective natural antioxidants. The first generation, vitamins A, C and E will work for three hours in the body. The second generation found in grape seed extract and pine bark extract and Ginkgo biloba will last two to three times longer. Third generation anti oxidants, (circuminoids) have now been discovered and will last for up to three days, cleaning your body of free radicals.
 

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Tinnitus and the brain

By Rafaele Joudry

Tinnitus is the condition where a phantom noise is heard inside the head with no external cause. The noise can be anything form ringing to buzzing, roaring, whistling, popping or clanging. Ringing is the most common. The sound may come on gradually or suddenly and it may be intermittent or constant.
Tinnitus is the name of the condition or symptom, so while there may be many causes, if you have noise in your head, it is called tinnitus, just as a pain in your head is called a headache, regardless of the cause.

For many years tinnitus was considered untreatable and the advice given by doctors and tinnitus associations was simply “you will have to learn to live with it.”

However, many pioneering researchers have been quietly working on this problem so it is no longer necessary to take a fatalistic attitude. Several treatments are now available which may help different individuals.

Though tinnitus is generally caused by damage to the ear, either through noise exposure, injury, illness or drug side effects, this article focuses on the more complex question of how the brain is involved.

One possible cause of tinnitus is an acoustic neuroma, a benign tumour on the auditory nerve. A specialist will perform tests to eliminate this possibility and if an acoustic neuroma is present, will monitor the tumour and may recommend surgery. However, this condition is relatively rare and there are many other possible causes of tinnitus.

The limbic system
Respected Sydney ENT, Professor Gibson, explains the role of the limbic system in tinnitus. The limbic system is the part of the brain that generates primitive, instinctive emotions, those ones which occur before reasoned thinking even has a chance to start.

Whilst tinnitus is usually generated first by noise damage, it then travels to the limbic system, which acts as a big amplifier. Most international tinnitus experts are now focusing on the limbic system as a major player in the tinnitus cycle.

We can understand the role of the limbic system better by looking at a couple of examples. When an animal gets scared its ears pop up and this actually increases its level of hearing because of the extra amplification given by the brain. In humans this is the mechanism that makes us “spooky.” Imagine you are walking along through a graveyard and somebody, a friend, goes “Boo” and you clutch your skin. It’s not because your ears are working better, it’s because your brain amplifies the sound. The problem, as Professor Gibson explains, is that the tinnitus will be more or less amplified by activity in the limbic system, so depending on how focused you are on that sound, the sound will become louder or softer. If you’re threatened by the sound then the brain makes it louder. Therefore those who are alarmed or distressed by their tinnitus will find that it becomes worse.

Counselling and cognitive retraining helps you to re-evaluate the tinnitus as an unimportant sound. The limbic system, that part of the brain concerned with emotion and learning, can then be calmed, and the perpetual sound may decrease or even disappear. Meditation or other forms of mental training such as bio feedback, tai chi or chi gung can achieve similar effects, as can calming activities such as Sound Therapy or a relaxing holiday.

Chronic pain syndrome
Chiropractic neurologist Ted Carrick has created a new and exciting field of treatment, sensory therapy, which stays away from drugs or surgery. He treats neurological disorders through non invasive intervention using the sensory pathways, kinaesthetic, auditory, visual and vestibular (balance). Along with chronic pain specialists, he asks the question, “why does the pain continue long after the injury occurred?”

The answer seems to lie in the fact that all our body parts are constantly sending signals to the brain along our nerve pathways. However, when a body part, say a foot, is injured, that foot stops sending those messages that were letting the brain know, “yes, I’m here, I have five toes, I’m bearing weight, I’m OK” etc. When those familiar messages cease, the brain assumes the foot has been injured or there is something wrong, so it creates another signal, a distress signal, called “pain.” In the healing process, if the foot does not regain full function, if there is scarring, or nerves have been severed, or there is damage that doesn’t heal, the normal signals never resume, so it is possible that the pain signal will continue on and on. Experts now think that the same thing may be happening with tinnitus. Perhaps part of the ear is damaged, say by industrial deafness, so a sound signal is missing in certain frequencies. The brain has to compensate for that lack of signal, so replaces it with tinnitus.

Chronic tinnitus
There is a parallel between chronic tinnitus and chronic pain. One simple form of sensory therapy, which has been found helpful for both chronic pain and tinnitus, is Sound Therapy. Sound is a direct and easy way to stimulate the brain. A French ENT, Dr Tomatis, used highly filtered classical music with augmented high frequencies to produce global brain reactivation. It has been observed that this regular stimulation which reconnects many parts of the brain, seems to provide the necessary signal so the brain can let go of its repetitive chronic pain or tinnitus signal. Those with chronic pain from old injuries or phantom pain from amputation have achieved complete relief through Sound Therapy, as have those with long term chronic tinnitus.

Hyperactive brain cells
Eric Jordan, a hearing specialist in the UK, performed trials with Sound Therapy to measure its effect on tinnitus. After testing numerous patients over a two year period he concluded that 90% of them gained relief from Sound Therapy. He attributed this success primarily to the fact that Sound Therapy calmed hyperactive brain cells, also helping to relieve stress, anxiety and depression. He found that it was much more effective than tinnitus maskers, a technique commonly offered by audiologists where an external sound distracts the attention away form the internal tinnitus.

Sound Therapy
Several researchers have developed ways of treating the ears with sound. The first method was the tinnitus masker which was developed by a doctor who had tinnitus himself. He noticed that when he was standing beside a fountain he could not hear his tinnitus and this gave him a sense of relief. He then developed a little device that could be worn in the ear to develop a sound that would match and drown out the tinnitus. This provided temporary relief, but only while the device was being worn.

A more effective treatment was developed accidentally by Dr Alfred Tomatis, the inventor of Sound Therapy. His method, intended originally to help singers sing better, stimulates the ear with a range of frequencies within the complex structure of classical music. Because this music is stimulating and pleasant for the brain, it activates many different parts of the brain simultaneously.

The limbic system is involved as the emotions are engaged by the music, the sensory pathways are activated due to the extra stimulation of the high frequencies. The ear is connected via the cranial nerves to all the other senses and many internal organs including the heart and the digestive system. Therefore stimulating the ear with music engages numerous brain centres in a harmonised way. The entire nervous system is both calmed and enlivened, creating a better environment in which the body can heal from a troubling, stress related condition like tinnitus.

Ordinary music would not achieve this to the same extent. It is the specific filtering applied by Dr Tomatis to the sound that brings about a new gymnastic response of the ear, opening sensory pathways and activating brain systems that may have fallen into limited usage. Therefore the therapy helps to interrupt patterns of chronic worry, obsessive compulsive disorder, agoraphobia, insomnia and depression. All these conditions are related to inadequate performance of certain sensory pathways or brain systems, and may sometimes be linked to tinnitus as well.

Sound Therapy can be used as a portable system at home, making it affordable and convenient. The full details on how the program was developed and can be used to treat tinnitus are available in the book Triumph Over Tinnitus, by the Australian author and educator, Rafaele Joudry. A recovery handbook for tinnitus sufferers, Triumph Over Tinnitus documents many case histories and delves in to a variety of available treatments for tinnitus.

The book is available through libraries, bookstores or from Sound Therapy International, Phone: 1300 55 77 96 website: www.soundtherapy.com.au
 

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Treating Meniere’s with Sound Therapy

What causes Meniere’s? At a purely physiological level it is related to an excess of fluid in the vestibular system which controls our balance. But this does not explain why the attacks are sudden. A French ear specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis, came up with an explanation which leads to new treatment options.

Dr. Tomatis has proposed that Menieres’s vertigo is due to a sudden change in the tension of the stirrup muscle. This muscle may be subject to involuntary twitches, like any other muscle in the body. Such twitching would radically alter the fluid pressure in the inner ear chambers, thus causing havoc with the balance mechanism.

This communicates to the brain via the vestibular branch of the auditory nerve, that there is sudden movement of the head, which gives the patient the feeling that the world is spinning or falling away beneath them. Dr Tomatis designed a treatment program which creates a general rehabilitation for the ear by activating the middle ear muscles. It has many different benefits, and one of them is the significant relief that it can offer to Menieres’ sufferers. It is believed that the re-toning of the stirrup muscle achieved by Sound Therapy means that the pressure on the inner ear chambers is properly balanced and the sudden changes and resulting dizziness subside.

Tomatis explains that once the stirrup muscle has been rehabilitated with the regular exercise provided by the Sound Therapy program, it no longer goes into spasm and the Meniere’s attacks do not recur
Sound Therapy also impacts on various parts of the brain, producing better interconnections and coordinated sensory integration. It may be therefore that Sound Therapy impacts on Meniere’s in other ways through its direct effect on the brain.

Now available as a self help program, thousands can have access to this therapy who could not afford the cost and inconvenience of traveling to a clinic. No consultation is necessary, but a book by Rafaele Joudry explains how to use the program at home.

Sound Therapy helps sufferers of tinnitus and vertigo in the following ways:

• rehabilitates the ear, resulting in the reduction or stopping of the tinnitus in many cases.
• improves sleep
• reduces stress
• reduces or eliminates dizzy attacks
• improves energy levels and the ability to communicate, thus encouraging the person to take up activities and stop focusing on the tinnitus.

I felt like I was falling through the floor
Lee Heffele, an orchardist from West Australia shared her story also.
Lee has used many different approaches to helping her hearing over the years. She has modified her diet and had chelation therapy. She found that chelation helped a lot. (Chelation is a treatment that uses concentrated nutrients to unblock arteries).

Lee describes her experience with Meniere’s as horrific. She says, “I think anyone that has Meniere’s would say it’s horrific, if they have the severe one. I ended up in the hospital, on one occasion because I couldn’t stop vomiting and you feel as though you are falling through the floor. You are lying on the floor and you are hanging onto the floor virtually in terror because you feel as if you are flying backwards. It’s the balance in the middle ear that’s effected, and it’s terrifying, to the point where I was almost suicidal at one stage. No one can describe it, you have to experience it.”

Lee got to the stage where she was getting an attack once a week. It would take a week to get over it and then she would get another one.

The attacks would last for about two or three hours and then she would be ill for a week.
Lee obtained the Sound Therapy tapes and used them constantly. She took it to the shopping centre, wherever she was she had it going. And it brought incredible relief. It is now several years later, and Lee remembers that using the Sound Therapy at that time stopped her Meniere’s attacks entirely.

Its like a new life
Darrell Johnson, a listener from Saskatchewan in Canada gave the following report on the treatment:
“About four years ago I started getting ringing in the left ear, followed by light-headedness and dizziness. Sometimes I couldn’t stand without falling. This I was getting about once a month, then twice a month, soon twice a week and not long later three or four times a day. My doctor told me I had Meniere’s Syndrome, which is a problem of the inner ear past the stirrup. There wasn’t much that could be done; I would just have to put up with it. Being my age was 53, I knew I would be quite some time putting up with this problem.

“Then I heard about Sound Therapy. I bought the Sony Walkman and tapes. Now, four months later, I have no light-headedness and dizziness, and the ringing in my left ear has gone. The hearing in my left ear has also improved. I can’t express how much Sound Therapy has done for me. I am never dragged out and tired any more. I can stay up very late at night and still get up rested early in the morning. Also, I don’t get uptight and stressed about the little setbacks of the day, but can just relax and take them in my stride. I even find it easier to talk to people — am not so shy! It’s like a new life.”

Her advice to someone else with Meniere’s would be definitely to try it. “It can’t do any harm, like all natural therapy it can’t hurt you, and it could very well help.”

To receive a free information pack contact Sound Therapy International
Phone 13 55 77 96
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Triumph Over Tinnitus

A new book by Rafaele Joudry reveals varied possibilities for treatment of tinnitus

Tinnitus describes the symptom of ringing or noise in the ears. The noises may be anything from ringing, buzzing, popping or roaring, but the name is always tinnitus. The causes of tinnitus also vary greatly which is why it is difficult to find one, universal treatment. Tinnitus can come from many different places, one of which is noise damage or industrial deafness due to repetitive sound in the work place. It can also come from rapid or loud sounds such as gun shot. However, noise is not the only factor in causing tinnitus. In research for my new book over the past twelve years I have learned that different health practitioners have a great variety of approaches to tinnitus. In fact general digestive health and the state of our internal organs may be a factor in tinnitus.
Clive Tasker is a naturopath and Life Fellow of A.N.T.A. (Australian Natural Therapists Association) who has also studied music. Clive looks for digestive disturbances, because he says we constantly change mucus levels and other levels within the body. Clive says, “I’ve seen results when people lose their tinnitus once the digestive processes are changed.”

Chinese doctors have a different way of evaluating and diagnosing the body’s state. Daniel Weber, is a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine and CEO of the Green Medicine company. Daniel says that there are a number of approaches to tinnitus treatment. The first thing a Chinese doctor will do is to determine whether it is an excess type or deficiency type. For example, Daniel explains “we have excessive types, we have things that are called the rising of liver fire; which is a way of describing a condition such as hypertension, pre eclampsia, emotional irritability, and also things in excess might be called phlegm-fire, which again are excess conditions involved in inflammation.”

Ross Penman is an acupuncturist and acumoxaist (using a burning charcoal stick to heat the acupressure points) who has been practising in Sydney for 20 years. He talks about how different types of tinnitus may relate to a different organ. He says that from a Chinese point of view there is a dampness tinnitus, there is a wind tinnitus, where wind gets into the ears, there is a kidney type tinnitus, a heart type tinnitus, and a liver type tinnitus.
He explained that the Chinese have an anthropomorphic view of the body. Each of the organs is a member of parliament, so the heart is the emperor, the lungs are the prime minister, the gallbladder is the minister of justice. The gall bladder channel goes around the ear and a branch travels through the ear. It is interesting that the gall bladder is the minister for justice, Ross said, because he has observed that people who are under a lot of stress trying to make judgements and decisions get an incredible stress built up in them. This affects their neck and their shoulders and then it goes straight through to the ears and causes tinnitus.

What these conversations make clear is that while noise damage plays a major role in many tinnitus cases, other very common contributing causes are lymph and liver toxicity and biochemical imbalances caused by diet, stress, drugs and digestive disorders. All parts of the ear require highly concentrated nutrients to effectively deliver accurate sound signals to the brain. Nowhere in our bodies do nutritional deficiencies produce more obvious or annoying results than in our ears.

To fully understand the importance of nutrients to the ears, let us take a look at exactly how the ear works. The inner ear cells require a very delicate chemical balance for sound to be successfully conveyed to the brain. If the nerve cells are not receiving the necessary nutrients to keep them in balance and functioning correctly, they become deprived of oxygen. They then become blocked up with calcium, just as unhealthy arteries do, and die. But before the cells die they send out disturbed electrical signals resulting in tinnitus.

The chemical basis of hearing
In a normal, healthy ear the otoacoustic emissions (the noises created by the inner ear itself) are inhibited by a chemical messenger called acetylcholine. This chemical messenger travels to a nerve receptor site composed of five proteins arranged like a five petalled flower. These proteins enclose a central channel that penetrates the core of the flower shaped nerve receptor cites. A reaction is triggered when an acetylcholine molecule binds to two of these proteins. Like a camera shutter, the channel then opens for a thousandth of a second, allowing 10,000 positively charged sodium ions to rush through the channel into the nerve cell. Their arrival changes its electrical state, thus prompting sound to be transmitted to the brain for interpretation. A defective acetylcholine receptor will adversely affect the fidelity of the sound signal received.

The delicate balance of this system can be upset by;

• insufficient oxygen due to poor circulation in the inner ear;
• a deficiency in the trace minerals essential for enzyme activity;
• a toxic overload being carried by the body; or
• excessive free radical activity.

Most middle ear problems are due to imperfect performance of either the bones or the muscles of the middle ear. The common bone disorder, otosclerosis is actually a misnomer, most ENT doctors agree. The problem is not that the bones harden but that they become porous and spongy. Research into this condition has revealed deficiencies in amino acids and minerals. The preferred medical approach of cutting out and replacing the bones could be avoided if this nutritional deficiency had been addressed earlier.

Calcium supplementation is important, but only works if it is combined with the right trace minerals, vitamins and enzymes and is in a naturally derived and easily bio-available form.

It is also important to ensure that calcium is not being leached from the bones faster than it is being absorbed. There is no point bolting the door after the horse has bolted! Too many processed foods and accumulations of toxic metals destroy phosphorous which is necessary for the absorption of calcium.

For example, aluminium causes the body to dump large amounts of calcium in the urine. Most westerners consume up to 20 mg of aluminium per day, in baking powder, deodorant, drugs, food additives and through using aluminium cookware. Avoiding aluminium wherever possible is an essential part of metabolic ear treatment. Lead toxicity is another cause of calcium deficiency.

There is a high lead content in hair dye, so to be safe, go natural. Many other chemical toxins are found in common bathroom products and may lead to long term diseases.8 Make sure your bathroom is safe by buying products informed by biochemical research and a commitment to non toxic ingredients.

The cochlea
The cochlea is the spiral shaped inner ear chamber containing the hearing organ, which relays sound directly to the auditory nerve. The cochlea deals with electrochemical processes in which electrically charged ions interact in complex ways between the various fluid filled compartments to generate electrical charges. The electrical stability of the cochlea depends upon the presence of minerals such as magnesium and calcium, and on a correct balance of necessary enzymes, fatty acids and amino acids.

The tiny, hair like cells called cilia are the final stage of sound transmission before the charge is relayed to the auditory nerve. Slight disturbances in the equilibrium of enzymes can lead to the death of a cilia. This is the beginning of what is known as sensorineural hearing loss or nerve deafness. Tinnitus can also be caused by cilia damage, because when the hair cells lack certain nutrients they produce continuous noises like the feedback from a microphone. In most cases, these conditions can be reversed, at least to some extent, by consistent, significant dietary changes combined with Sound Therapy.

Much ear damage is due to the process called oxidation which results from free radical activity. It is caused by environmental pollution, biochemical imbalances and loud noise. Free radicals are unpaired electrons which in turn steal electrons from other cells. This causes a chain reaction of cellular breakdown called oxidation, which is similar as the process of rust as seen on metal. This breakdown of cells produces serious electrical disturbances in the inner ear causing great harm to the delicate filaments and membranes of our hearing organ. It can be counteracted by avoiding toxic substances and taking sufficiently high doses of antioxidants.

Antioxidants
The vitamin antioxidants, vitamin C, A and E are important parts of an antioxidant supplement. However, these only stay active in your system for about three hours. Recent discoveries have found much more powerful antioxidants which will work for up to three days. These include ginko biloba, grape seed extract, pine bark extract and circuminoids. A highly effective antioxidant supplement should include all of these ingredients.9

Minerals
The four minerals most essential for balanced ear health are calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. It is best to take these macro minerals in a chelated form (bound to protein molecules) and combined with vitamin D3 for better absorption. To fully meet the body’s mineral requirements, these must be combined with at least sixty trace minerals. To be easily absorbed by the body these minerals should be in a colloidal (liquid) form with fulvic acid.

Some basic dietary guidelines:
Of course correcting the diet is also an important part of getting the right nutrients and for best results should be combined with taking quality supplements.

• Cut down on salt and use sea salt instead
• Reduce intake of acid forming foods, meats, refined flour, starch
• Increase alkaline foods, fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Reduce saturated fats and replace with cold pressed olive oil, safflower, sunflower and flax seed oil.
• Eat less meat and dairy products and more fruit and vegetables
• Obtain protein from seeds and nuts, tofu (bean curd).
• Eliminate or reduce intake of refined sugar or artificial sweeteners (aspartame). Replace with naturally sweet fruits or honey.
• Increase intake of complex carbohydrates, whole grains.
• Eat more foods in their whole, raw, unadulterated state.
• Supplement with minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and amino acids.

Some points to remember:

1.) Good diet is absolutely essential for balanced good health

2.) Diet alone, without supplementation is insufficient to correct serious health problems for the following reasons:

• reduces or eliminates dizzy attacks

• reduces or eliminates dizzy attacks
• Our world and our bodies are becoming laden with toxic chemicals which we need added help to discharge.
• Foods today are lacking in essential minerals and vitamins because of depleted soils and forced agricultural practices, pollution, transportation, chemicals, hormones and genetic modifications.

Numerous studies have verified that dietary changes can result in hearing improvement and decrease of tinnitus. 10 My aim in writing Triumph Over Tinnitus was to assist tinnitus sufferers to understand the diverse causes and wide range of possible treatments for this troublesome condition. While the medical profession has been largely stumped by this condition, those who take an investigative approach to their own case can often achieve a good result. For more information about quality nutritional supplements and safe bathroom products contact Sound Therapy International on 1300 55 77 96 or 02 4234 4534. Ask for a free information package or order the book Triumph Over Tinnitus by Rafaele Joudry. (Also available in bookstores.)


Ear diagram attached
 

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“What? I can’t hear you!”

Does your wife frequently complain that you don’t listen to her? One of the most common problems in relationships of people over fifty, according to Sound Therapy specialist, Rafaele Joudry BSW, is that one partner has difficulty in hearing what the other is saying. Most often, women complain that their husbands cannot hear them, or perhaps don’t want to. There are several possible reasons for this, explains Rafaele, who lectures to many Probus, Rotary and AIR groups.

One reason is that the man may be deaf in certain frequencies, and those may be the exact frequencies in which his wife is speaking. Many men have suffered industrial or military hearing damage and deafness usually occurs in the high frequencies first. Women have higher frequency voices and this accounts for the gender specificity of this problem. In other cases, Rafaele explains, the problem may be one of selective listening, where the dynamics in the relationship, perhaps a power struggle or nagging have led to one partner just not paying attention. Another possible cause is the “Cocktail Party Syndrome” where laziness of the middle ear muscles makes it hard for the person to decipher conversations when there is background noise. Rafaele’s mother suffered from this condition, and this led them to explore Sound Therapy, which completely solved her problem.


Sound Therapy was developed by the French ear specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis, over the course of his life work from the 1950s to the 1990s. His theory of how the ear works is quite unique and offers an understanding that the ear, while it can be damaged by noise, can also be healed by the right sort of sound.

The ear is more complex and less well understood than any of our other major sense organs. No scientist can explain how it is possible for the extraordinary range of sound vibrations which hit our eardrum simultaneously in a noisy environment, such as a café, to be sorted, measured, located and interpreted by the ear.

Sound Therapy uses classical music specially filtered by a method devised by Doctor Tomatis, so that it exercises and stimulates the ear. As well as improving hearing it also helps tinnitus (ringing in the ears), energy and stress levels.

The ear never sleeps
Through its two crucial roles of hearing and balance, the ear is the means by which we know our environment, what is out there, and where we are in the environment. Unlike our other senses, the ear never sleeps. Thanks to the vestibular labyrinth, as soon as we wake up we know which way we are lying. We are immediately oriented in space.

Brain waves
The ear also plays a crucial role in our inner harmony and our overall brain states. Neurologists agree that alpha rhythms are primarily an ear state. Dr Lozanov, the Bulgarian psychiatrist who invented Superlearning (the springboard for accelerated learning) discovered the powerful impact of slow baroque music (60 beats per minute) to put body and brain into a harmonious rhythm and Alpha state.

There are three times as many nerve connections between the ear and the brain as between the eye and the brain. While the eye is the most obvious and dominant sense, it does not have such a deep, primeval role in our being and our relations with others. The ear is the only primary sense organ which registers at all three levels of the brain: the brain stem, mid brain and the cortex. In our evolution, hearing was essential to our survival, for we can hear in the dark. We can hear what is not seen.

Noise
While the ear serves us with uninterrupted vigilance, we unfortunately abuse our ears as though there was no tomorrow. Our world grows noisier by the minute, and while industrial noise is now being brought under some control, recreational sound is being used by younger people to do irreparable damage to their ears, and who can stop them? It is as though we are afraid to hear and will take this to the ultimate extreme of making ourselves deaf. Frightening statistics show that the death rate among people living around Los Angeles airport is about 20 per cent higher than in the rest of the city. There are also 31 per cent more psychiatric cases and 14 percent more liver diseases. Children suffer from high blood pressure and have greater difficulty than their peers elsewhere in coping with mathematics, solving simple problems or even doing jigsaws.

As early as 1976 nearly a third of all vocational ailments were caused by noise. Noise is thus the most dangerous illness in the world of work. Not only do we feel it, but our organs feel it and become ill.

Tinnitus
Tinnitus is one of the worst afflictions resulting from ear damage and has caused a great many musicians to change careers. The word, ‘tinnitus’ describes the symptom of either continuous or intermittent noise in the ears which is only heard subjectively but not by others. The noise may be anything ranging from ringing, buzzing, rushing, roaring, to beating, clanging or crashing. The most common sound is similar to the noise of cicadas.

The Electronic Ear
Sound Therapy uses classical music filtered through Dr Tomatis’s invention, the Electronic Ear, which alters the frequencies of the music so as to have a gymnastic impact on the middle ear muscles (hammer muscle and stirrup muscle). The low frequencies are progressively removed from the music to retrain the ear to reach for the high sounds. Alternating channels of high and low sound cause constant fluctuations, making the muscles repeatedly contract and relax. As the ear opens to sounds it had forgotten how to admit, the hair cells in the inner ear are stimulated and the cortex of the brain finally fed with the sounds that it needs to reach its full potential. These, according to Dr Tomatis, are the sounds above 8,000 Hz. As long as they are quiet, high frequency sounds will not harm the ear, but in fact serve to keep the cortex stimulated. It is the dearth of these sounds in our environment today, says Tomatis that causes the extreme fatigue, sleeplessness, discord and proliferation of learning disorders in the young. The use of classical music is a vital part of the therapy for it is the complex rhythms and natural harmonies of this sound which not only stimulate, but harmonise the entire nervous system.

Rafaele Joudry’s recently released and fully revised book: Sound Therapy: Music to Recharge Your Brain is available in good bookstores or from Sound Therapy International on 1300 55 77 96.

Sound Therapy International also provides free speakers to groups in most cities, availability permitting. www.soundtherapyinternational.com
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Why Aren’t I learning?

Informed parents want the answer
By Rafaele Joudry

Children build their sense of the world, contact, meaning and love from listening to their mother’s voice in the womb. Through the miracle of life, the baby’s brain is formed out of neurons, axons and dendrites; patterns and meanings are created as the mother’s voice lays down an imprint of order. No wonder, then, that sound has such a powerful capacity to heal. This was the basis of Dr Tomatis’ remarkable discoveries which launched the field of Sound Therapy.

Sound Therapy assists to:

• Enhance learning and concentration
• Improve communication and social skills
• Speed language and literacy acquisition
• Fine tune coordination
• Helps child to achieve full potential

Sound Therapy works by retraining the ear - activating and building brain pathways so the child’s ability to learn is dramatically enhanced. Connections between the two hemispheres of the brain are strengthened so that thinking and co-ordination improve in many areas. The child’s equilibrium, sense of self-control and self-esteem develop, so naturally, behaviour also improves.

The added stimulation benefits all children, and is especially necessary for those who are a little slower in their development.

Successful listening and learning depend on good auditory processing, which means the ability to translate the stream of vocal speech sounds into words and meaning, and then recreate those sounds as speech.

Sensory Integration
Research in a number of fields indicates that inadequate sensory integration is a key to most learning disorders. Not only must the brain process five senses, but it must integrate all that information so it makes ‘sense’ together.

Children with Sensory Integration Dysfunction are likely to become abnormally upset by loud sounds or bright lights, or by being touched or moved unexpectedly.
Research shows that sensory integration, auditory processing and many other issues that affect learning can be effectively improved through Sound Therapy. The program is done at home using specially filtered music and story tapes which the child finds enjoyable. The tapes are listened to on a portable player, such as a Walkman, at bedtime or during other quiet activities.

What families say about Sound Therapy:
“Emily before Sound Therapy was a very anxious, quiet, shy child who would cry at the drop of a hat and get very upset when she couldn’t do things that other children could do in her class. After two weeks of Sound Therapy she was actually putting her hand up and wanting to answer questions, her confidence levels were very high and she was retaining information, which was most important. And she felt good about herself.”
Julie Welch -Mother of a child with learning difficulties

“Our son John is in Grade six and showing terrific improvement in reading since beginning on the Sound Therapy tapes two months ago. He says a lot of people don't even know he has dyslexia anymore. His teachers are amazed and thrilled. We are so excited because last year John was in a special programme but this year he's in a normal classroom situation. He was on medication for his learning disability but now he's off the Ritalin.”
Judy and Gerrit Westerhof - parents of a child with dyslexia.

“My five year old son, Quannah, has always been very hyperactive with an energy that just bounces off the walls. He also showed a lot of anger. I obtained the Sound Therapy story tapes and let him listen to these for an hour or so each day, letting him feel that it was a privilege and in no way forcing it on him. In about two weeks there was a noticeable change in his behaviour. He became very quiet and calm, and somehow mellow. He also seemed much happier.”

Brandy Graham - mother of a child with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Rafaele Joudry is the founder and director of Sound Therapy International and the author of three books on Sound Therapy, including, Why aren’t I learning? Listening is the key to overcoming learning difficulties. For information or to order the book, contact: Sound Therapy International, phone 1300 55 77 96 info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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Why Aren’t I learning?

Informed parents want the answer
By Rafaele Joudry

Children build their sense of the world, contact, meaning and love from listening to their mother’s voice in the womb. Through the miracle of life, the baby’s brain is formed out of neurons, axons and dendrites; patterns and meanings are created as the mother’s voice lays down an imprint of order. No wonder, then, that sound has such a powerful capacity to heal. This was the basis of Dr Tomatis’ remarkable discoveries which launched the field of Sound Therapy.

Sound Therapy works on the whole being by retraining the ear—activating and building brain pathways so the child’s ability to learn is dramatically enhanced. Connections between the two hemispheres of the brain are strengthened so that thinking and co-ordination improve in many areas. The child’s equilibrium, sense of self-control and self-esteem develop, so naturally, behaviour also improves.

Successful listening and learning depend on good auditory processing, which means the ability to translate the stream of vocal speech sounds into words and meaning, and then recreate those sounds as speech.

Sensory Integration
Research in a number of fields indicates that inadequate sensory integration is a key to most learning disorders. Several modalities including Sound Therapy, behavioural optometry and physical therapy can help to remedy this issue through the different senses.

As well as the five main senses there are some little known senses, which respond only to internal stimuli. These include the vestibular sense, which informs us of movement and balance, and the sense of proprioception, which tells us the position of our joints and limbs.

These internal senses should operate automatically, so that the child can turn his or her attention to the outside world. If they do not, it is very difficult to direct the attention outwards. Inefficient sensory integration is like a traffic jam in the brain.

Children with Sensory Integration Dysfunction are likely to become abnormally upset by loud sounds or bright lights, or by being touched or moved unexpectedly.
Sound Therapy is particularly powerful tool for sensory integration as it works specifically on both the auditory and the vestibular sense.

The vestibular system in the inner ear provides our sense of balance and movement, and tells us where our body is in space. One easy way of testing your vestibular and proprioceptive acuity, is to stand on one foot and have someone observe how much you wobble. Then stand on one foot with your eyes closed. Do you wobble more? Can your vestibular system work well without visual assistance?

As the child grows, he develops reflexes gradually as the brain matures. The brain learns to distinguish vestibular sensations, so that the baby can feel himself move, he becomes self-aware, he understands and learns to manipulate his position in space. He is able to manipulate his motor responses.

He learns to enjoy all kinds of movement. There is linear movement: up and down, or side to side, or back and forth. This back and forth movement is very soothing and has been used since time immemorial to rock the baby to sleep.
Many individual therapists and centres are beginning to offer programs which address sensory integration disorders. Sound Therapy is probably the easiest type of sensory integration therapy to apply as it can be done at home with portable equipment.

What causes Sensory Integration problems?
Far from these problems being of random nature or hereditary causes, as most doctors will postulate, for those who wish to look there is substantial evidence that the causes are environmental.

Those with sensitivities may be exhibiting the ‘canary principle’. They are the first to go down, but we should all heed the warning that our environment is becoming unsafe to live in.

Environmental medicine is a new and rapidly growing field in response to the proliferation of environmentally related diseases, which include ADHD, autism, asthma, arthritis, cancer and diabetes.
Environmental medicine examines the impact not only of chemical toxins added to food, air and water, but also the cumulative effect of these on the immune system in combination with viruses and immune compromising diseases such as giardia, glandular fever, tick bites, et cetera.

Diet and nutrition
Due to many added toxins and stresses in today’s environment, food intolerance, commonly associated with ADHD, is becoming more prevalent. Children with sleeping difficulties and allergic type food reactions have been found to respond well to diet. If there is a family history of eczema, or any recognised response to foods, it is likely that diet will help. It is essential to follow an elimination diet to determine which foods your child is sensitive to, and this should be done under the supervision of a qualified dietician experienced in this field.

Also be aware that many ingredients used in personal care products, skin care products, and standard bathroom and cleaning products, may contain harmful chemicals. Most commercial bathroom products contain sodium laryl sulfate and propylene glycol. These chemicals denature protein, so they are not suitable for use by humans. There is evidence that these chemicals often cause skin reactions; and also that they accumulate in the organs, affecting the liver, kidneys and possibly eyesight, over the long term.

The support of a properly balanced diet can be greatly enhanced with good quality nutritional supplements. There are sixty minerals which the body needs to support optimum immunity, digestion, respiration, lymphatic drainage, and sensory integration. These are best accessed in the form of a colloidal mineral supplement which is derived from plant matter and comes in a liquid form that is easily absorbed by the body. In addition, a growing child needs high levels of antioxidants and the right mix of vitamins. A high quality, chewable children’s multivitamin tablet will provide the right proportions.

Could Ultrasound be harmful?
Ultrasound technology is based upon ultra high-frequency sound waves, which bombard the child in the womb at an extremely high rate of speed. To get an idea of what this may do, think of the situation where a woman with an extremely high voice can break a glass by singing an extremely high-pitched note. That is an example of what just ONE relatively slow sound wave can do. Ultrasound is super high frequency, which may have more detrimental effects. Ultrasound waves in laboratory experiments have been known to damage chromosomes, produce internal cellular heat which damages cells, retard the normal development of cells, and many other phenomena.

According to the World Health Organization and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Report, ‘It is not clear at this time whether ultrasound foetal monitoring is beneficial to the mother or foetus in terms of pregnancy outcome...If there is no generally acknowledged benefit to the monitoring, there is no reason to expose patients to increased cost and risk. The question of benefit has not yet been resolved...and the potential for delayed effects has been virtually ignored.’

Before you allow an ultrasound to be done on you, do some research, thoroughly question your healthcare provider about safety as well as the value of the information which would be received from doing the procedure. Don't be afraid to refuse the test if you are not comfortable with the information you have discovered. It is your legal right to refuse any tests you do not want.

Vaccination and learning difficulties
Vaccination is a complex and emotion-fraught question which all parents must address. To learn more about it, I went to visit one of Australia’s leading authorities on the subject of vaccination, Dr Viera Scheibner, who lives in the Blue Mountains.

Of Slavic origin, Dr Scheibner holds a PhD in Natural Sciences. After an eminent scientific career, during which she published three books and some ninety scientific papers in refereed scientific journals in Australia and overseas, her study of babies’ breathing patterns and cot death in the mid 1980s clearly pointed to vaccines as being behind the majority of cot deaths. Together with Leif Karlsson, an electronics engineer, she developed Cotwatch, a breathing monitor to be used for babies thought to be at risk of cot death or ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ (SIDS). In her own words, ‘It took over three years of research before we looked at each other and said, “Vaccines are killing babies”’. This introduced her to the subject of vaccination, which she has, as a result, been avidly studying ever since.

Despite extensive examination of orthodox medical research published on vaccines over the past one hundred years, Dr Scheibner told me she could find no scientific evidence that these injections of highly noxious substances prevent diseases. To the contrary, she found that they increase susceptibility to them, in addition to causing a host of immune disorders and other damage to the body, including the brain. She was therefore forced to conclude that they represent nothing but a medical assault on the immune system. Having vaccinated her own two daughters when she was a young mother (and also, more recently, having insisted on being given a tetanus vaccine herself) this was not easy to come to terms with.

Dr Scheibner believes in having full knowledge, and insists that it is imperative that parents educate themselves about the whole issue, because, as she says: ‘Some of them may continue vaccinating their children. Or the other children in the family, thinking that it only happens to one in a million, which is not true. Every child is affected. Vaccinated children are not the same as unvaccinated. There is some damage in all of them. Allergies are number one. Or eating problems, mild digestive problems, it still is totally unnecessary.’

For more information on this subject read the very informative article, ‘Do vaccines protect against diseases at all?’ by Bronwyn Hancock 1999 found on www.vaccination.inoz.com

This information about the potentially damaging effects of chemical toxins, ultrasound and vaccination, will inevitably bring grief, remorse and anger to parents who find out too late what they might have avoided. However, it is better to be informed than not. On the encouraging side, we continue to receive remarkable reports from parents about the positive changes which can be achieved in healing children with sensory integration therapies.

Rafaele Joudry is the founder and director of Sound Therapy International and the author of three books on Sound Therapy, including, Why aren’t I learning? Listening is the key to overcoming learning difficulties. Contact: Sound

Therapy International,
phone (Int +612) (Aust 02) 4234 4534 or 1300 55 77 96
info@soundtherapyinternational.com
www.soundtherapyinternational.com
 

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