Origins
Indigenous societies around the world have traditionally used sound in healing ceremonies, including drumming, hand-clapping, singing, dancing, and pulsating. The broad spectrum of sound therapy includes chanting, an activity long connected to healing and religion, and sounds of nature. Different sounds have elicited a variety of emotional responses and altered mental and physical states in people. For example, the chimes of a church bell pealed during a happy time and tolled slowly to announce a death. The connection between sound and healing was chronicled in 1896 when American physicians discovered that certain music improved thought processes and spurred blood flow. More advances in sound therapy came after World War II. Music therapy began in the 1940s, when it was used as part of rehabilitation treatment for soldiers.

During the 1950s and 1960s, sound wave therapy developed in Europe. British osteopath Peter Manners developed a machine to treat patients with healing vibrations. The machine is placed on the area to be treated and a frequency is set to match the cells of a healthy body. Advocates believe that the treatment makes the body's cells vibrate at a healthy resonance.

By the 1990s, Manners had developed a computerized system with about 800 frequencies used to treat a range of conditions. Similar therapies are also known by names such as bioresonance and vibrational therapy. This therapy is used to treat conditions such as cancer.

After Manners developed cymatics, two ear specialists in France developed therapies that focus on listening. Dr. Alfred Tomatis' Tomatis method and Dr. Guy Berard's auditory integration training involve the patient listening to sounds through headphones. Currently, the Tomatis method is used to treat conditions ranging from learning disabilities to anxiety in both children and adults.

Benefits
The Sound therapy focuses on balancing energy to treat a condition. Advocates maintain that sound therapy is effective in treating conditions such as stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, depression , and autism. Therapy is said to help with memory function. Physical conditions treated by sound therapy include pain during labor, muscle and joint pain like arthritis, back pain, sports injuries, soft tissue damage, and cancer.

The Tomatis method is used for conditions including dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Down syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, autism, depression, and behavioral problems. The method, also known as listening therapy, is used to help older people with coordination and motor problems. Furthermore, performers take the therapy to refine their skills.

Description
The spectrum of sound therapy is so broad that a person has many choices about the type of treatment and its cost. Some therapies can be done at home; others require a practitioner or therapist to perform the therapy or to provide initial instruction. As of June 2000, most health plans did not cover the cost of any form of sound therapy, including music therapy. However, some sound therapies may be part of integrative treatment for a condition.

The premise upon which most auditory integration programs are based is that distortion in how things are heard contributes to commonly seen behavioral or learning disorders in children. Some of these disorders include attention deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD), autism, dyslexia, and central auditory processing disorders (CAPD). Training the patient to listen can stimulate central and cortical organization.

Tomatis Method
Internationally renowned French otolaryngologist, psychologist, educator and inventor Alfred Tomatis perceived the importance of sound and hearing early in his career. He took his degree as a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Paris and specialized in ear, nose and throat medicine. The son of two opera singers, Tomatis early in his career treated some of his parents' fellow opera singers. From these experiences with the sound of music, he developed the principle that has come to be known as the Tomatis Effect, i.e. that the human voice can only sing what it hears.

Tomatis has been called the Einstein of the ear. It was his research that made the world aware that the ears of an infant in utero are already functioning at four and half months of age. Just as the umbilical cord provides nourishment to the unborn infant's body, Tomatis postulated that the sound of the mother's voice is also a nutrient heard by the fetus. This sound literally charges and stimulates the growth of the brain.

Tomatis took this further, into the realm of language. Tomatis concluded that the need to communicate and to be understood are among our most basic needs. He was a pioneer in perceiving that language problems convert into social problems for people. "Language is what characterizes man and makes him different from other creatures," Tomatis is quoted as saying. The techniques he developed to teach people how to listen effectively are internationally respected tools used in the treatment of autism, attention-deficit disorder, and other learning disabilities.

The basis of Tomatis' work is a series of principles that follow: The most important purpose of the ear is to adapt sound waves into signals that charge the brain. Sound is conducted via both air and bone. It can be considered something that nourishes the nervous system, either stimulating or destimulating it. Just as seeing is not the same as looking, hearing is not the same as listening. Hearing is passive. Listening is active. A person's ability to listen affects all language development for that person. This process influences every aspect of self-image and social development. The capacity to listen can be changed or improved through auditory stimulation using musical and vocal sounds at high frequencies. Communication begins in the womb. As early as the beginning of the second trimester, fetuses can hear sounds. These sounds literally cause the brain and nervous system of the baby to develop.

Tomatis' listening program, the invention of the Electronic Ear, and his work with the therapeutic use of sound and music for the past fifty years have made Tomatis arguably the best known and most successful ear specialist in the world. There are more than two hundred Tomatis Centers worldwide, treating a vast variety of problems related to the ability to hear. The Tomatis method involves the client using special headphones with bone and air conduction to listen to electronically recorded music frequencies. These are believed to open the brain to greater frequencies of sound. As of June 2000, there were 250 Tomatis centers located around the world. Furthermore, the Mozart Center in northern California began offering home treatment in the late 1990s. Treatment for the three-phase program cost $3,210 in mid-2000. Therapy lasted about three months and started with initial testing and instruction about how to use equipment.

The client used the equipment for two hours per day for 15 days. A diary was kept during that time, and a practitioner made weekly check-up calls. A month after therapy started, the practitioner returned to the home and reinstalled the equipment. The two-hour daily therapy continued for 10 days, along with the diary entries. The third phase of therapy continued six weeks later with 10 days of therapy and diary-keeping.

Another program, developed by a French doctor, Guy Berard, works similarly. Berard's auditory integration training consists of twenty half-hour sessions spent listening to musical sounds via a stereophonic system. The music is random, with filtered frequencies, and the person listens through earphones. These sound waves vibrate and exercise structures in the middle ear. This is normally done in sessions twice a day for 10 days. The cost is around $1,200.00.

The major drawback with both Tomatis and Berard’s methods have been the high costs, which include traveling to their facilities. The Listening Program, a new program developed in the late 1990s, can be used at home for a much lower cost.

The Listening Program

The Listening Program (TLP) is a sound stimulation auditory therapy program consisting of eight specially developed Compact Discs (CDs) conveniently bound together with the 9-part Instructional Guidebook and Listening Journal. Each CD contains four progressive segments that are 15 minutes each. Re-arranged, specially engineered classical music and nature sounds comprise the listening content. The arrangements are treated with "filtering" and "gating" at gradually increasing levels through the course of the eight CD series. These techniques are the basis for the therapy process. The basic listening schedule calls for two 15-minute segments of headphone listening per day, 5 days a week, for a period of 8 weeks. It can be completed at home, at school, or in the office.

The Listening Program was designed to help balance, strengthen, and/or restore our ability to listen to and process sounds across the full auditory spectrum, from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. This can result in striking improvements across the human continuum, from academic performance to emotional balance.

Using The Listening Program literally exercises and tones tiny muscles in the ear and helps build stronger multi-sensory pathways in the brain. The brain receives especially rich auditory stimulation, and its ability to process sound improves.

In children, auditory problems may be identified by speech and language problems, sensitivity to sounds, poor attention, difficulty following directions, difficulty expressing oneself, difficulty with listening comprehension as well as reading comprehension, difficulty with social interactions, or auditory self-stimulation, such as constant humming or self-talk. Children who have had a history of ear infections or chronic middle ear fluid are at a higher risk for having difficulties in auditory perception and processing.

In adults, auditory problems may manifest as difficulty retaining auditory information, inattentiveness, sound sensitivity, or speech/language and voice concerns. For individuals who have hearing loss, an auditory stimulation program is important to aid in improving the functional use of their hearing. So although actual hearing levels may remain the same (as indicated on an audiogram), The Listening Program may help to train the individual's listening skills so that existing hearing may be used more efficiently.

In addition to treating attention problems, such as ADD, The Listening Program has helped with learning disabilities and dyslexia The Listening Program has been found to help in the following areas: