Dr Alfred Tomatis

Dr. Tomatis recognized a profound link between the ear and voice early in his career, a link which was previously unrecognized. Initially, he applied his discoveries to help musicians, especially singers, regain audio-vocal control. His work gradually extended to children whose parents wanted to improve their musicality in order to enroll them in top music programs in Europe.
Tomatis, through his research made clear that the way we listen profoundly impacts all aspects of our being. In the early 50's, Dr. Tomatis also discovered that listening problems are the root cause of many learning problems. He developed a highly effective technique to remedy them based on The Electronic Ear technology which he developed. Thanks to his revolutionary discoveries, he enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of children and adults.

Dr. Tomatis embarked on a lifelong pursuit of understanding the relationship between the ear and its role in communication, learning and brain function. As the pioneer in the field, Dr. Tomatis’ discoveries are the basis for all auditory training programs. He defined the physiological and cognitive differences between hearing and listening that are the foundation of the Dynamic Listening System educational training.

DLS - Dynamic Listening System- developed by Dr Ron Minson, M.D., a psychiatrist and neurologist who trained with Dr. Tomatis.

Dr. Minson found his way to the Tomatis Method and work of Tomatis in order to help his daughter who was struggling and suffering greatly through her teens. The results were so impressive that he chose to study with Tomatis, was certified by Tomatis in 1990 and began to offer the Tomatis Method in the USA.

Dr. Minson developed the DLS equipment which provides the Dynamic Listening education for a variety of reasons, including having locally made equipment and service support available in the USA. DLS is an improvement on the equipment used in the Tomatis Method (The Electronic Ear). The latest advances in digital technology, sound processing and CDs are incorporated into the DLS equipment resulting in a much more pleasant and efficient experience for clients and practitioners. The Electronic Ear which used the best cassette tapes and analog equipment of the time usually meant tape hiss and pop/click noises (as adjustments were made) were prevalent. These are virtually non-existent with the DLS equipment. Also, much more sound information is transmitted to the listener.

Three Laws of Tomatis

When studying people that were exposed to constant noise, he discovered that when our ears cannot hear certain frequencies, our voice does not contain them either. This we now call the first law of Tomatis. The implications of this very simple law are far reaching, as we will see below.

Tomatis liked to experiment. Once he blocked the ears of a famous singer, letting through only certain frequencies. Almost immediately, the voice of the singer deteriorated: the "blocked frequencies" disappeared from his voice. Based on this observation, Tomatis postulated his second law: If we modify the hearing, the voice changes immediately.

Another interesting observation he made was that certain opera singers developed a professional deafness, and as a result were losing their voices. They damaged their ears because they were singing too loudly. More specifically, they developed a "deafness" for the frequencies in the singing range, around 2,000 Hz. As predicted by the First Law of Tomatis, their voices lacked the frequencies around the 2,000 Hz.

Tomatis' father, himself a famous opera singer, urged his son to find techniques to help his friends. Tomatis Jr. thought long and hard why these opera singers were developing this professional deafness. He came to the conclusion that constant exposure to loud noise makes the muscles in the middle ear become "flabby", so that loud sound could not enter into the inner ear. What a wonderful defense mechanism! If that were the case, one could restore someone's hearing (and thus their voice), by retraining these muscles (third law of Tomatis). We all know how to make muscles stronger: train them. But how might you train the two smallest muscles in the body?

After much experimentation, Tomatis found that these two muscles can be strengthened by having someone listen to "music" that is switched on and off continuously. The muscles have to follow by stretching and relaxing, and so become stronger. His first prototype used an old-fashioned sewing machine to switch the sounds on and off. He later found that one could make faster progress if the music would not be switched on and off, but be switched between two canals: one in which the low frequencies are amplified, and another in which the high frequencies are amplified. This he called "gating". It is one of the functions of a machine he developed, called the Electronic Ear.

Listening and Learning

The bridge to learning came when he realized that each language predominantly uses a different set of frequencies. For example, the French language uses mainly frequencies between 1,000 and 2,000 Hz. French ears are thus accustomed to these frequencies. British people are accustomed to listen to frequencies between 2,000 and 12,000 Hz, so they are "deaf" to the French sounds (and vice-versa). That why it is so difficult to learn a foreign language. Tomatis found that you can train the ear to get accustomed to the foreign frequencies, and so learn foreign languages more easily. In broader terms, this means that: to learn, you have to be able to listen.

The discovery that listening is key to learning opened a whole new area of research. One of the things Tomatis asked himself: would it make any difference with what ear you listen? Most people think that our two ears are identical and serve identical purposes. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Tomatis found that people who are right ear dominant learn much more easily. As Tomatis has a strong background in neurology, he readily understood why. The right ear is connected to the left brain, the place where language is processed. That is a fast and accurate connection. The left ear, however, is connected to the right brain, where language cannot be processed. It has to jump via the corpus callosum to the left brain. This is not only a slower connection, but it is also a less reliable connection. In the process, some of the higher frequencies get lost, and these are key to interpreting language. For example, a "b" and a "p" only differ in the higher harmonics and someone who is left ear dominant thus has to guess from the context what was said. That introduces errors and delays. So, Tomatis modified his Electronic Ear so that he could train people to become right ear dominant, and make them better learners.

If listening is key to learning, perceiving all the frequencies of the auditory spectrum well is equally important. Based on thousands and thousands of tests, Tomatis came to the conclusion that people with an "ideal listening curve" learn more easily than those who have a distorted curve. To improve someone's listening curve, Tomatis reasoned, we have to use gated music that is filtered. By letting only certain frequencies through, we can train selectively those parts of the listening curve that need to be strengthened. So, he again modified his Electronic Ear, and equipped it with 8 high quality filters. With this new device, the listening curves of his clients improved, and so did their learning.

Tomatis observed, however, something very astounding. Not only did the people learn better, they also gained more energy. What might be the explanation for that? He realized that it was because his clients were starting to perceive the high frequencies well. In the ear, there are many more receptors (Corti cells) for high pitch tones than for lower ones. High frequencies are thus transmitting more the auditory information to the brain, thereby stimulating it more. So, when we hear high pitch sounds better, the brain gets stimulated more, resulting in more energy. We call this Ear-Energy. Tomatis says it this way: ears are like dynamos.

Another surprising side-effect is that motor skills improve. For Tomatis this was not a surprise, as the gated music also stimulates that part of the ear that regulates all of our movements (the vestibule), and when the ear is "normalized", people will improve their motor skills (being able to catch a ball, ride a bike, stand straight, etc).

Listening with your body

As an ENT, Tomatis knew that we listen not only with our ears, but also with our bodies. Our bones are particularly good sound conductors. You can test this yourself, by putting a tuning fork on the top of your skull. You can hear the sound as if it came through your ears. If good listening is a prerequisite for good learning, he reasoned, "I better study both modes of listening: with the ears and with the bones". This led him to develop a revolutionary new theory to explain how sounds enter into the inner-ear:

According to Tomatis, all cranial nerves lead to the ear, which explains why soothing musical harmonics not only induce states of deep relaxation but directly affect breathing, the voice, the heart rate and digestion. In fact, Tomatis' research has led him to theorize that sacred chants from various religious traditions "charge" the cortex of the brain, which sheds light on the transformative power of certain musical and vocal sounds.

Herbert Benson, M.D., of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Boston's Deaconess Medical Center and author of Timeless Healing, The Power and Biology of Belief (Scribner, 1996), has studied the effects of chanting mantras on human physiology. He has found that by repeating a single word (such as "om"), measurable changes are produced in energy consumption, respiration rate, heartbeat, pulse and metabolic rate. An increase in alpha brain waves, associated with daydreaming and meditation, also has been observed. His studies have further demonstrated that through meditation and relaxation, it's possible to improve immune function and alleviate and prevent heart disease, stroke and many other chronic health problems.

What's at the heart of sonic healing, says Jonathan Goldman, is vibration. This is backed up by modern physics, which has taught us that all matter--down to the organs of our body--is in a constant state of whirling vibration. "Everything has a unique frequency, or vibration," Goldman explains. "Illness occurs when some sort of contravibration intrudes on the normal one. Sound can be used to change these disharmonious frequencies back to normal, healthful vibrations, thereby restoring health."

This physiological principle is known as entrainment: "a phenomenon in which powerful rhythmic vibrations from one source cause less powerful vibrations from another source to lock in step with the more powerful one," says Goldman. "External energy sources, particularly sounds, are especially powerful in affecting our internal rhythms."

Sounds that reach the ear are modulated by the middle ear. Some sounds are amplified, some are muffled into the background. The ear acts like a "gate-keeper". This gives us the ability to focus on what is important.

Sounds that are captured by the bones go directly into the inner-ear, without passing through the middle ear, the gate keeper. So, background noise and the voice of the teacher are as loud, making it impossible to really focus.

To learn well, we have to be able to focus. That is not possible if we predominantly listen through bone conduction. To restore our ability to focus (and thus learn), he concluded, we have to desensitize the bone conduction. Could that be done by applying gated music directly to the bone? He equipped the Electronic Ear with a vibrator to be placed on the top of the skull and tested what effect that had on the way people listened. What he found was that it desensitized the bone conduction, making that people started to listen predominantly with their ears. Their behavior problems alleviated and their performance in school improved.

 What problems has Tomatis addressed?

The Tomatis Listening Therapy has helped children and adults with auditory processing problems, dyslexia, learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, autism, and those with sensory integration and motor-skill difficulties. It has also helped adults fight depression, learn foreign languages faster, develop better communication skills, and improve both creativity and on-the-job performance. Many musicians, singers and actors also found it helpful in fine-tuning their artistic skills.

Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis was born on January 1, 1920 in Nice (France), and passed away on Christmas Day 2001. When he was eleven, he moved to Paris and became an ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat specialist).

After the second world war he started studying the impact of occupational noise. What he found was outright revolutionary. Some people believe that he should have been awarded the Nobel prize. In recognition of his discoveries, he was named Knight of Public Health of France in 1951. Later on, he was also awarded the gold medal for Scientific Research.