Are you a good listener?
Could you improve your listening in interviews?….with clients?….at meetings? on the job?….on your phone?….in class?….with your partner?….with your kids?
Do you have “an audio-processing deficit” such as ADD (attention deficit disorder) or ADHD (attention deficit with hyperactivity disorder)?
Do you have trouble paying attention to the person speaking to you? Do you fidget and look at other objects in the room or outside? Would you rather argue with someone than hear what the person wants or needs to tell you? Do you interrupt frequently when someone is talking? When you try to listen, do you become distracted by the thoughts running through your own head?
Do you feel tired more than other people you know?
Do you need to lie down and rest often?
Have you had difficulty feeling energetic again after a surgery or an illness?
Do you wake up feeling not rested? Do you have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia, or long-COVID?
Do your muscles tire quickly? Do you have painful joints? Does exercise seem to weaken your muscles instead of strengthening them? Do you fall down easily? Do you find it exhausting to sit up in a chair? Do you have “brain fog” or worry that your memory is not as dependable as it was? Do you know that these and many other symptoms of chronic fatigue could be ear-related?
Why the RIGHT EAR?
Although these problems feel big to anyone who has them, they are some of the easiest problems to treat with a music therapy. However, Focused Listening™ works better than the usual binaural (both ears) methods because it is based on an understanding of what each ear does for the brain and body. Most people think of their ears as “the same.” While each ear is a kind of “backup” for hearing if one of the ears is harmed, normally, each ear performs different purposes for the brain and body.
Your right ear is more important for paying attention, learning language, speaking and thinking logically, and controlling your behavior. It keeps you sane and healthy in other ways, too, because it controls the timing of body systems. Your left ear is more important for maintaining a cheerful and optimistic mood and for developing empathy and “emotional intelligence.” It contributes the meaningful, nuanced tones to speech called “emotional prosody.”
Ear-to-Brain Connections
Each ear has more nerves running to the opposite side of the brain than to the near half. The right ear sends more of its sound energy stream to the left temporal lobe and language centers. The left ear sends more of its sound energy stream to the right-brain’s emotional circuits we call “feelings.” If the right ear muscle is weak, the left brain’s work of putting the spoken sounds heard into the right order malfunctions. If the person cannot hear the sounds in words in the right order, that person also cannot reproduce those sounds in the right order in speech,
How weak the right ear muscle is determines how badly mixed up the person’s hearing and speech will be. At the “low” end of confusion are dyslexia and chronic fatigue. At the “high” end of confusion are schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s, and the temporary forms of psychosis in alcohol and, substance abuse, and some long-COVID. FOCUSED LISTENING™ STRENGTHENS YOUR RIGHT EAR STAPEDIUS MUSCLE by making it move very fast with high-frequency sound.
Left-Brain Dominance
The right ear’s sound stream must be strong enough to keep the left half of the brain dominant over the right half of the brain. It is the left-brain’s job to sort sounds into words, words into sentences, sentences into longer speeches. If you cannot hear clearly, you cannot pay attention. But if your right ear cannot feed enough energy to your left-brain, you can develop any of the learning problems and most of the conditions labelled “mental” illnesses.
Your brain cannot run efficiently if you do not have a dominant right ear. Focused Listening™ helps to make your right ear dominant so that sound energy will run through your brain and body faster.
THE WHY OF FOCUSED LISTENING™
If not enough sound energy is getting into your left-brain, it takes too much effort to try to pay attention.
If not enough sound energy is getting into your right-brain, it takes too much effort to be optimistic — you are depressed.
Either way, you can show signs of fatigue, sleep problems that lead to worse fatigue, slowing down of body systems, and body systems that are out of sync.
Focused Listening™ is an exercise program that strengthens your right ear muscle so the high-frequency sound energy in your environment — and YOU can make sure you have the best kinds of ambient music and lots of it! — can keep your left-brain in control of the rest of your brain and of your whole body.
If you have a left-ear problem causing depression, you might need a binaural — two ears — music therapy to strengthen your left ear muscle. In this case, you really must get an audiogram and keep track of where your hearing problems are happening.