HOW DOES IT WORK?
EnListen programs impact a person's ability to listen well. Most people who do our programs have normal hearing, which is the basic ability to passively receive sound. Listening is something more. It is the active ability to discriminate between sounds, locate sounds in three-dimensional space, tune sounds in and out from our environment, sequence and organize sounds, and comprehend their meaning. Listening plays a fundamental role in processing all language information, and hence all information learned through language. Before we speak, read, write, sing, and think, we learn to listen.
Research tells us that poor listening, independent of hearing ability, can be a source of problems with learning, reading, attention span, speech and language, music, relationships, and foreign language learning. Conversely, individualized EnListen training programs can produce improvements in these and other areas.
Poor listening can also impact one’s motor skills. The reasons for this can be found in Dr. Alfred A.Tomatis’ description of the ear as one system that analyzes movement in two ways: sound waves in the cochlea and muscle movements in the vestibular system. The vestibular system allows a person to maintain upright posture and move precisely through three-dimensional space. A physiology review tells us that some crossover occurs between the saccule in the vestibular system and the cochlea and acoustic nerve, particularly where low frequency sounds stimulate both types of receptors.
This physiological information helps explain why how well a child listens to his or her body determines how well he or she controls daily living skills, such as toilet training, dressing and feeding oneself, and feeling heat, cold, and pain. Vestibular control impacts both fine and gross motor abilities, such as handwriting, riding a bicycle, swimming, athletic performance, hitting a ball with a bat, performing surgery, cooking, painting, sculpting, and performing music.
With such an important role to fulfill, it is not surprising that considerable redundancy is built into the vestibular system, making it possible for another part of the system to be stimulated and utilized in cases of physical damage, such as from stroke, injury or illness. Re-educating the ear can allow a person to regain at least partial function. In depth information on the ear’s role in optimal functioning can be found in our Resources section under Articles.
Through selective sound stimulation of these two systems, an EnListen program can fine tune the precision of a trained athlete or artist, improve attention to and retention of incoming information, increase reading proficiency (by getting the eye, ear, and voice to coordinate), expand the palette and precision control of the artist, train the body to relax, and advance a child to the next grade when retention was recommended just months before.
Sound segments can be all passive listening (Mozart , other classical music, and stories appropriate to the person’s goals), all active microphone work (user repeats words and phrases, reads aloud, or sings), or a combination of both.