At my last training session for Tomatis practitioners I met Sharmila, a speech pathologist, who was also updating her training. She told me her personal story about working with the Tomatis method and I promised I would share it.
When Sharmila’s second son Ryan was born in 1992 everything seemed normal. He was the best baby ever, he hardly ever cried and slept through the night. He seemed to develop normally until age two. After age two he started to regress. Language disappeared and he started to wear diapers again. Sharmila started taking him to Doctors and the Doctors kept telling her she was crazy and that maybe she was overly stressed. She kept persisting over a period of one year during which time the light kept dimming in Ryan’s eyes, it was like his soul left but his body was still there.
Finally, she found a new pediatrician who immediately referred Ryan to a pediatric developmental neurologist. The neurologist gave no diagnosis but said the child needed to start occupational therapy, speech therapy and a special preschool class. After a year and half Ryan was given the diagnosis of Autism. After six years of occupational therapy, behavior modification therapy, speech therapy, educational therapy, the child had no speech, was still wearing diapers and was having difficulty walking. Sharmila felt the therapies had helped to control his behavior and tantrums, but now she had a robot instead of a son. The developmental neurologist did another evaluation and said Ryan was not making any more progress and should be institutionalized.
Sharmila was upset, she would not put her son in an institution. She pleaded with the doctor, “There must be something else I could try”. The doctor sighed and gave her the name of a Tomatis practitioner, “You can go see this crazy doctor, I don’t know what she does, but it seems to help”
From Ryan’s first Tomatis treatment changes started to occur. The light started to come on in his eyes and he started to say words but his behavior started to worsen. It was like his behavioral therapy was dissolving. For 15 days it was sheer torture. Sharmila was driving 800 miles a week for the various treatments and would have stopped but she met another woman with an autistic child who had been through the program and saw positive changes in her son.
After 15 days of Tomatis sessions Sharmila’s son started communicating. She decided to continue with the Tomatis program, 15 days on, 1 month off for almost a year. During the year of Tomatis work Ryan continued with his other therapies and started to make progress in all areas again. After one year Ryan had made tremendous progress. He was communicating through speech and was potty trained. His behavior had begun to normalize and was walking in a typical manner.
The owner of the Tomatis clinic closed her California office to focus on her practice in Arizona and Sharmila started her own journey to become a Tomatis Practitioner and continued to work with her son using sound therapy. At age 20, Ryan has a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He is an Eagle Scout and just passed his written drivers test. He still has learning challenges, but he is a productive young man.
Sharmila now helps many other children with learning challenges at her clinic in L.A. and is profoundly grateful for the Tomatis method and for the Cellfield program which corrected some of Ryan’s vision problems which Tomatis alone did not address.
Sharmilla can be reached at Integrated Therapy Solutions 8885 Venice Blvd Ste 105 Los Angeles, CA 90034 310-838-1552 www.itssca.com info@itssca.com