Therapeutic Listening
Therapeutic Listening® uses sound stimulation in combination with sensory integrative treatment techniques, emphasizing vestibular stimulation, postural, and movement strategies. Therapeutic Listening® integrates a number of electronically altered compact discs (allowing the client to be in their own environment while completing this program), based on some ideas and technology created by Alfred Tomatis, Guy Berard and Ingo Steinbach, within a Sensory Integration frame of reference. These discs vary in musical style, sound quality, and level of enhancement. Individual listening programs are created to address each client's specific program by a trained certified therapist. Listening is a function of the entire brain; when we listen, we listen with the whole body.
The following areas of change have been noted during or following "Listening":
Arousal, Attending, and Focus.
Receptive and Expressive Language.
Speed of Processing for Motor and Language.
Pragmatic language.
Balance and coordination.
Praxis which is composed of the following:
Coming up with an idea;
Planning how to carry it our;
Sequencing and timing the tasks; and,
Completing the task
Affect; Facial expression. and responsiveness.
Motivation.
Awareness of the environment.
Gravitational security (decrease in the fear of movement and an increase in understanding of place in space, relationship to objects in space, and moving through space).
Modulation of ability to stay calm while receiving sensations.
Decreased sensory defensiveness (sound, touch, movement, etc.)
Organization.
Self-initiation of play and work behaviors, and verbal interaction.
Social and emotional development.
Eye contact and tracking.
Decrease in self stimulating behaviors.
Independence.
Feeding Skills.
Eating and sleeping patterns.
Improved awareness and regulation of hunger and thirst patterns.
All of these areas are impacted by the effect of the movement and sound on brain function.
Frick/Oetter/Lawton-Shirley, 1997