Motor skills, dance and sport
By reorganising the vestibular programming, thanks to the close connections between cochlea and vestibule, the Tomatis method proves very useful in situations of genuine motor and postural pathology, and in spheres where a precise motor control is required, such as high-level competitive sport, dance and other artistic activities.
The reciprocal influence that exists between the cochlea (the analysis of sounds) and the vestibule (the management of movement) allows the Tomatis method to re-educate motor functions and finesses in the co-ordination of the bodily segments, otherwise difficult to attain through activities directed exclusively upon the musculature.
The two functions of the ear, cochlear and vestibular, the pillars of the capacity for listening, are mutually interacting. On the one hand, a good listening requires an adequate posture in order to favour perception through the bone pathway and to be able to produce an effective phonatory emission. On the other, posture is influenced by the quality and the type of sounds that reach the inner ear, which programme the vestibule so as to have the best possible perception of them by the bone pathway through, precisely, a posture adequate to this. The better the listening, the better the posture, and vice versa, in a play of reciprocal influences. By improving the perceptual capacity of the ear through stimulation with the Electronic Ear, it is easy to see people straighten their posture.
It is important to point out that the ear is and remains an organ of movement, even in its action as perceiver and translator of sounds. If we pause and reflect upon how it functions to make us perceive the surrounding acoustic world, we notice how the cochlea too is, in reality, in its own way, an analyser of movements. While the vestibule analyses and manages the movements of all the muscles of the body through the continuous feedbacks with the latter and the brain, the cochlea transforms the vibratory movements of the air at the various frequencies into electrical-nervous signals, which the cerebral centres appointed to their elaboration will transform into sound and cortical energy.
Motor delay
The method is used with success in children with motor delay. The first years are surely the most important in which to intervene, whatever the origin of the delay. The cochleo-vestibular re-education with the Electronic Ear will favour a better use of the vestibular receptor, permitting a better relationship with space and with gravity, helping and reinforcing the effects of the medical and physiotherapeutic therapies. The improved vestibular functioning favours a more effective elaboration of the information coming from the receptors of gravity. Thanks to this, the child in motor re-education will finally manage to make the effort to counter the force of gravity that pulls him downwards.
It happens that parents of children in scholastic difficulty who follow the sessions with the Tomatis method notice in them improvements at the motor level, and communicate this to us with phrases such as: "Strange, he managed to learn to ride a bicycle after so many years of trying and having given up", or "He is much more at ease on the skateboard", as well as "The ski instructor noticed that he is more co-ordinated and faster on the descent".
The improvement of the functioning of the ear entails not only a refinement of the perceptual capacity but also of all that is controlled by the ear. We know well, because we see them, that children with a good listening almost always have a good motricity and an adequate posture.
The method, combined with psychomotor or physiotherapeutic techniques for the recovery of movement, can give at times surprising results, besides integrating admirably the physical work carried out by the therapist.
Bodily image and sport
Here we enter a very important aspect of the technique and of the discoveries of Alfred Tomatis. It is the concept of the image of the body, for which the ear and sound assume a role of primary importance.
As Tomatis says well in many of his writings, the bodily image is the consequence of language. The pressures and the excitements in which the body is immersed are of an acoustic kind. Every being is inserted into a sonic structure that sculpts it. Sound, silence, its modulations and the noise that interrupts its weft are not directed only at the ear, but touch the whole body. The ear, certainly, has become the principal sensor of it, but it is only a progressive differentiation, derived from a zone of skin that, at the origin, did not distinguish itself from the cutaneous surface.
The air does not cease to move, to be animated by movements of rotation, and our body in its totality undergoes the consequences. The fact of living in sound — and more precisely in that which we can emit, "language" — imprints a whole series of small impulsions, of touches, upon the totality of our bodily image, upon our whole peripheral nervous system. According to the manner of speaking, the timbre of our voice, we come to touch, more or less intensely, certain parts of our body. It is evident that speech sculpts certain privileged surfaces: the face, the anterior face of the chest and of the belly, the palms of the hands, the dorsal face of the right hand between thumb and index, the inner part of the lower limbs, above all at the level of the knee, the soles of the feet.
To the question, put to him by the journalist Alain Gerber of the French magazine Son, whether there exists a way of realising the bodily image of a person, Tomatis answers:
"Is it not surely because you have an image of the body of the other that you are struck by how he behaves, by how he stands, and so on? Now, how this person shows himself, his position, are in direct dependence upon the image he has formed of himself. With a little experience, you can affirm that a person you see for the first time is deaf, or a stutterer, or schizophrenic. For each of these subjects there exist a certain manner of walking and postural attitudes that respond in a precise manner to a very particular image of the body, imposed, in part, by the deficit that has struck them."
When the journalist asks Tomatis whether there is a relationship between the image and certain somatic or mental dispositions, he answers:
"I would say that, for man, the image of the body is determined by the utilisation of his neuronal field, a utilisation that varies for each individual, according to the accidental factors (such as deafness or psychosis) that distinguish them one from another. We are nervous systems covered by a somatic sheath. The image is constructed starting from that which functions best. This may be the head, but also the feet. In footballers it is evident, the privileged bodily image is that of the lower limbs, whereas for an intellectual, who remains seated in his study all day, it is different. In billiards players, it is at yet another level that the greatest quantity of neurons develops.
To a certain extent, the bodily image of the footballer integrates the ball, as that of the billiards player integrates the cue.
If one is a great musician, one must have integrated one's own instrument. The violin, or the piano, or any other instrument, must become the direct prolongation of the body, as if it itself were equipped with the neurons of the one who plays it. The person who drives his car has a very different image from the one who instead walks, because in a certain manner this image extends as far as the tyres: 'he is one with his vehicle', it is often said."
Many high-level sportsmen use the Tomatis method to improve their performance. Skiers, cyclists, table-tennis players and other professionals of the sector, often on the suggestion of their coach, follow a training with the Electronic Ear in order to perfect their fine movements, their speed and the promptness of their reflexes.
At the International Congress of Audio-Psycho-Phonology in Madrid in 1974, an important member of the steering committee of the French Table Tennis Federation, Pierre Suire, reported on the surprising results of an experiment carried out with ten high-level athletes at the Institut National des Sports under the direction of Dr Tomatis:
"The positive effect upon sporting performance manifests itself at the various psychophysiological levels touched by the re-education: better cortical recharge, which influences psychic security, the speed of ideation and physical recovery; a better bodily image, with a consequent greater dexterity on both sides of the body. The neurovegetative regulation obtained through the action of the tympanic tension upon the vagus nerve counters the anxiety of athletes who achieve exceptional performances outside the championship and who, confronted with their adversaries during the competition, do not manage to obtain the same result again, for the sole reason that emotivity takes the upper hand, making them lose all their qualities."
In the same experiment of the Institut National des Sports, a better cardiac recovery after the effort of the competition had been detected, through electrocardiographic measurement, in the athletes who had followed the training with the Electronic Ear.
Dance
The method is applied with excellent results in dance, to resolve problems of balance, to improve motor co-ordination and rhythm, and to favour the naturalness of movements.
The great French choreographer and dance teacher of Georgian origin, Ethery Pagava, integrates rehearsals and exercises with an auditory training with the Tomatis method. In an interview with the magazine Actio Humana, published by the Swiss Red Cross, she reports thus: "The Tomatis training is very beneficial. It develops auditory acuity, not much developed in many dancers, reduces the reaction time almost to the point of simultaneity between movement and rhythm, develops memory, increases concentration and leads to an interiorisation of the dance. The exercises with headphones with the Electronic Ear offer to dancers who, until now, had no other ambition than that of impressing the spectator, an encounter with their self. The result is a new quality: sensitivity, which takes the place of mere virtuosity."
Many painters, some of them famous, such as Hans Hartung, have seen their stroke and their use of colour improve by undergoing the sessions with the Electronic Ear.
Of interest is the study carried out by Tomatis on the correlations between acoustic frequencies and colour frequencies, described in the scientist's last book, Ascoltare l'universo (Listening to the Universe).
Bibliography
Nous sommes tous un peu Raymond, in Actio Humana, janvier 1989
Alfred Tomatis, Ascoltare l'universo, Como-Pavia, Ibis 2013, pp. 131-136, (Ecouter l'Univers, 1996)