“This technique is alive”

Excerpt from the foreword to the book TOMATIS — Une expérience à partager. Approche de l’audio-psycho-phonologie (TOMATIS — An Experience to Share: An Approach to Audio-Psycho-Phonology, by Juan Antonio Timor Pineda and Chaime Marcuello Servós, with the contribution of Christophe Besson), reproduced by permission of the authors.

For Dr Mombiela, who approaches the method from the standpoint of functional neurology, access to the technique developed by Alfred Tomatis represents a precious aid for children and adults alike — and still more, he stresses, for the relationship between mother and child during the nine months of pregnancy. He recalls that the construction of an organized neural network requires, after birth, several years in the course of which the experience of the senses, the inner resonances and the emotional bonds gradually weave together what will become each person’s relationship to their own reality.

It is when this equilibrium is disturbed — a discrepancy between motor and sensory maturity, a perception that specializes too far at the expense of the others — that the way of constructing the real is altered. The technique of Tomatis, he writes, acts precisely at this level: because it intervenes upon a system of interconnected neural networks, its effect propagates like a cascade of regulations that improve overall functioning. He judges it precious in prevention, and more precious still as a complement to the work of other specialists.

The neurologist closes his remarks with an invitation: to read this book slowly, to listen to what it contains beyond the habitual filters of language, keeping in mind the rigour and the exceptional clinical experience of Alfred Tomatis. And he concludes with a phrase that sums up his view as a practitioner: this technique is alive, and not to know it is to reduce, by just that much, the therapeutic options available.