Tomatis Listening Pedagogy
The Tomatis Method re-educates auditory processing and stimulates the brain through the ear. Designed for children, students and adults, it helps optimize their potential by improving:
– Interpersonal communication
– Memory
– Concentration
– Confidence
– Learning ability
– Language acquisition and expression..
Listening Begins Before Birth
The mother’s voice transmits by bone conduction to the fetus, creating the foundation upon which language, learning and emotional development are built.
Intra-uterine listening connects us to the earliest structures of life through vibration, rhythm and sound. We have both collective & cellular memory.
The Tomatis Method revisits stages of this internal structure:
-Sonic return,
-Mother’s voice
-Sonic birth
-Pre-language
-Language development
After ensuring lateralization on the right, the individual begins a deeper process of self-recognition through listening. When we listen to ourselves, we exist.
The Tomatis Effect (1960, Academy of Medicine, Paris) is expressed by 3 laws:
- The voice only contains what the ear can hear
- If sounds are restored to the ear, the voice will immediately retain them
- It is possible to durably transform phonation when auditory stimulation is maintained over a certain time (law of duration)
The task is to endow children with vertical posture, well-established language skill, and right sided laterality.
Verticality/upright posture accompanies a child’s spatial structurization of the outside world. It is deeply connected to language development and self-awareness. A good listening posture controls tension on the muscles of the hammer and the stirrup (which regulate the passage of sound to the inner ear).
Language is organized around body awareness. Speed, rhythm, pronunciation and inflection are important in language. To speak is to be, to verbalize thoughts in the body’s image. Thus, we speak, read, write and communicate thanks to our Ears.
Laterality (2 kinds: sensory motor and perception)
Laterality is responsible for self-image and self-mastery. The problem is not to take a lefthanded person and make him/her right-handed, it is to give him/her mastery. Effective verbal communication requires a leading right ear.
Voice
The voice nourishes and stimulates the nervous system. Reading out loud activates the auditory system and strengthens communication pathways. A rich and vibrant voice contains a lot of overtones (harmonics) and uses the whole body as an instrument. Through bone conduction, the voice gives life to the body.
Our inner voice tells us what direction to take. The desire to learn comes from inside.
Internal and External Listening
The Ear is one of the defining elements of human development. Humans are designed for both internal and external listening.
External listening occurs via air conduction and engages intellect and analysis.
Internal listening is internal, vibrational and sensed by bone conduction. It precedes external listening. Heart listening creates authenticity, happiness and inner peace.
Consciousness Intuitive consciousness creates new analogical, neurological circuits.
Becoming conscious means reconnecting with your inner self.