How Much Focused Listening Is Needed?

 The answer to that question depends on several factors:

• the degree of damage to the ears
• whether or not the person is medicated with a substance that harms the ears
• whether or not the person is reliant on or addicted to prescribed or to non-prescribed substances
• the length of time a person has been taking ear-damaging substances;
• possibly on other underlying physical conditions
• possibly on certain environmental conditions.

And that’s assuming the person is capable of sustaining a daily routine of at least an hour per day or has someone who can help  her or him to do that.

Focused Listening is not a one-time cure. No music therapy can be for the simple reason that the ear muscles are vulnerable to various lifelong assaults. Please read What Harms the Ears? to learn when Focused Listening or binaural listening may be needed to counter an assault on your ears.

 Focused Listening may take minutes, weeks, months, or longer. If the person beginning Focused Listening has badly damaged ears and is heavily medicated, tapering off the drugs that prevent the ear from healing and gaining tonus can take a long time. We have very little information at this point about how long it takes to taper off drugs while the ears are being supported by music stimulation. Several people in that situation are reporting back to me and I will post their progress from time to time. Those withdrawal protocols that take years might be dramatically shortened, as has been demonstrated in Daniel’s three recoveries from schizophrenia that entailed getting off street drugs as well as off Risperdal.

 Focused Listening can begin to have a noticeable effect on the ears within minutes, although the changes will not likely be sustained until normal tonus has been developed in the ear or ears, which usually takes at least two weeks for unmedicated people with mild to moderate symptoms. Unless you are familiar with the role of the ears in behavior, you may not recognize those changes. I describe changes in Daniel’s dyslexic behavior and changes in his schizophrenic behavior in Listening for the Light. The Appendix of Daniel’s artwork during recovery from schizophrenia in Hemispheric Integration and the Ears is a valuable guide to the maturational changes driven by increasing speeds of integration under Focused Listening. Appendices to Ear Function in SSRI Withdrawal list the symptoms of dyslexic syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, suicidal tendencies, bipolar II, bipolar I, and schizophrenia and the 2,000 symptoms reported by the SSRI withdrawal syndrome informants.

Daniel’s recovery from dyslexic syndrome took 10 days of Tomatis Method treatments (approximately two weeks), but that treatment was not sufficient to create lasting strength in his ears, which had been damaged by substance abuse.

My recovery from CFS took less than four days of Tomatis Method treatments, but catching a cold two years later caused enough harm to my ears for a relapse into CFS. After that relapse and others, several incidents of ear stimulation reversed my CFS symptoms instantly. Those incidents were (1) my own sudden laughter, (2) listening to ordinary CDs of classical violin music with ordinary headphones, (3) the sound of a smoke alarm shrieking for a couple of minutes. My own singing and humming from time to time likely helped, too. Eventually, I used headphones to listen to music for an hour a day for a few days at intervals several weeks or months apart. That somewhat haphazard strategy kept me healthy. At the first sign of a cold, I put on headphones and listen for an hour or so, and that amount of binaural listening is effective for chasing away most colds.

In my experience, Focused Listening works as fast as the Tomatis Method, which four members of our family, several friends of the family, and about a million other people have found helpful. However, the Tomatis Method is binaural, which is not optimal for all conditions, and is expensive. Focused Listening reinforces the neurology of the right ear. Focused Listening can be directed to the left ear for cases of depression. You can use your binaural headphones for binaural listening ONLY after strong right-ear dominance and strong left-brain dominance have been achieved. For schizophrenics and others who have suffered extreme right-ear problems I would caution against ever using binaural headphones except as part of a strategic measure for synchronizing the dominance of the right ear over the left ear.

Daniel’s first healing from schizophrenia using Focused Listening took about 4 weeks and treatment was conducted under the influence of a minimal dose of Risperdal, 0.25 mg. He achieved healing only after the medication was withdrawn, so it’s possible that his ear would have been ready to sustain left-brain dominance sooner than at 4 weeks.

Daniel’s second healing from schizophrenia took about 11 months from the onset of schizophrenic symptoms and entailed a total of about 9½ months of Focused Listening, depending on how you count the time. From normal integration in 2006 and most of 2007 he deteriorated in late December to bipolar I symptoms, which I interpreted as the onset of schizophrenia. When I introduced his former low dosage of Risperdal, 1/4 mg every second day (equivalent to 1/8 mg per day), he became severely psychotic within a week. It was clear that the medication had further harmed him, but I did not know how and I was afraid to withdraw it. By mid-January of 2008, Daniel said he thought the effects of the LSD he had taken the previous November had worn off. He still had extreme mania. He may still have been adjusting to the Risperdal. He began Focused Listening with very short sessions of about 5 minutes in mid-January. By the end of the month he could sit still for longer and could listen for perhaps 15 minutes per session. In February, he continued to extend his listening times a little but his pressured speech and extremely manic pacing continued. Ambient Gregorian chant on a tape cassette also helped and Daniel would turn it on himself or turn it off. I sometimes turned it on for my own sake, to mask Daniel’s constant verbalizing. In early March he was showing some signs of improvement but at the end of March his rants took on a more violent tone. We increased his medication to 1/4 mg per day, which elicited the same negative effects as in January. He gained better control in about a week. From that point, the slow improvement in his cognition and self-control proceeded until a day or two in May and June when he achieved normal integration but could not sustain it.

In mid-July, Daniel refused to continue Focused Listening, probably because he had improved so much in his own estimation that he thought he did not need the therapy. His slow deterioration became sufficiently obvious to him by the end of August that he resumed Focused Listening. His slow improvement resumed. In mid-October, we agreed to reduce his medication. Within 10 days, Richard noticed that his behavior was less stable after his evening dose of ¼ of a 0.25-mg tablet. He thought the medication might be preventing healing. By then, I had a clear idea of what “healing” means in the right ear and in the brain. However, it took me four days to see the pattern my husband had noticed. We withdrew medication November 16. Daniel was the last in the family to catch a flu virus. He slept for a day and a half. For the first time in 10 months the daily incessant sound of his voice was silenced. Richard kept the radio in the next room tuned to the classical music station. On the morning of November 26, Daniel awakened normal. He was fully rational and had control over his voice. He immediately began making plans to get his life back.

Daniel remained left-brain dominant for the next eight years. He still had addictions, but with a dominant left-brain he began to learn better control over alcohol. He avoided hallucinogens. Cannabis and cigarettes remained constant. He developed a pattern of trips to Montreal to visit friends where loud music in clubs, binge drinking, and amphetamines were more intense assaults on his ears. He usually avoided that behaviour at home excepting semi-annual Punkfests. He used Focused Listening often enough to maintain himself at a bipolar II level.

Following his younger brother’s massive left-brain stroke at the end of August 2015, Daniel’s use of cannabis escalated until he became unstable at the end of December. I was available to help but did not interfere in his decisions. He was sure he could go back to Focused Listening under his own steam, but he lacked the self-control to maintain a routine. He stopped using cannabis and alcohol but continued to deteriorate. He continued to try to manage his mental condition without help. In mid-February, he lost control of his voice and began vocalizing his alternating left-brain and right-brain streams of consciousness all day long. Finally, he admitted to his father that his substance abuse had caused schizophrenia again, an illness he had not intended to cause. He admitted his need for help. I began to supervise daily Focused Listening sessions, as well as his colouring of mandalas and other artwork. Actually, my supervision was minimal. After listening at my computer for a few days he had built up his attention span to ¾ of an hour and was able to sustain that routine in is own room, bringing his artwork to me as proof that he was putting in the Focused Listening time. He took no medication. After about a week, I began to notice subtle improvements in the tone of his voice and in the content of his verbalizing. He was able to extend his Focused Listening sessions to over an hour. He used Gregorian chant sparingly. His progress was identical to his previous healings as his left-brain dominance increased his integration speeds but the healing process was faster. I attribute the speed of his recovery to his not using medication. He regained left-brain dominance on July 25, 2016, about five months after he had begun Focused Listening. He has remained left-brain dominant despite fairly heavy use of cannabis and cigarettes. His ears’ tolerance for alcohol is much less than formerly. His drinking has decreased to the occasional two or three beers.