"Sound modifies the structure of the body"

Eleventh interview of the series Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis in SON Magazine. In no. 40, July-August 1973 — last interview of the first period before the interruption of more than two years — Tomatis explores body image and how sound sculpts it. Body image is the “neuronal use of self” and integrates the mastered tools (the footballer’s ball, the billiards player’s cue, the musician’s violin, the driver’s car). Sound is not addressed only to the ear — the ear is only a differentiated fragment of the skin — but affects the whole body. Tomatis recounts the Tibetan yogis who sing through the spinal column, the South African stammerer whose body image infects the entire assembly, and the experience of two monks who cannot fall out under an identical curve but argue when the curves are inverted.

“SON” Magazine — no. 40 — July-August 1973
Sound and body structure
Alfred A. TOMATIS: “SOUND MODIFIES THE STRUCTURE OF THE BODY”
Interview gathered by Alain Gerber

Presentation

Each being is steeped in a sound structure that “sculpts” him. Sound — that is to say silence, its diverse modulations and the noises that break its weave — is not addressed only to the ear; it affects the whole body. This is what Doctor Alfred Tomatis explains in this face-to-face with Alain Gerber.

What is body image?

Alain Gerber: Professor, in your books and in your articles on the ear, on hearing, on language and all related problems, an expression often recurs, that of “body image”. Can you specify what it is about?

Alfred Tomatis: It is a very important question, indeed. The notion of body image is one of those most often used by all who claim to know about psychology. But if you scratch the varnish, you very often discover that behind it there is only a great ignorance of the problem, or at least very vague conceptions, mistaken in most cases.

What must be clearly understood, in the first place, is that it is in no way a matter of the image of the body such as could be given by photographic reproduction. Nor is it a matter of that sensible, materialised representation that touch, in palpation, may arouse. Body image is, in fact, the image one has of oneself, or more precisely the “integrated concept” each makes of himself as a bodily schema. An image which, let us strongly underline, is most often different from what would be a perfectly objective image.

The proof is that in certain photographs, we have difficulty recognising ourselves. Others identify us immediately, but we, we are plunged into embarrassment, because this is not the inner idea we have of our silhouette, of our overall posture, etc. Make this experiment: show someone a photograph of himself taken from behind, without his knowing it; you should not be surprised if he does not recognise the person shown.

Reading body image from the outside

A. G.: Is there a means of realising, from the outside, the image that a given individual makes of his body?

A. T.: Yes, if only because you yourself have a certain image of the body of the other, suggested to you by the details of his appearance, of his way of holding himself, etc. Now his appearance, his posture, are in direct dependence on the image he has of it. With a little experience, you can say of an individual whom you perceive for the first time that he is deaf, or a stammerer, or a schizophrenic. For each of these subjects, there exists a range of gaits and of postural attitudes that respond in a precise way to a very particular body image, drawn in part by the deficit of which they are victims.

The neuronal use of self

A. G.: There is then a necessary relation between this image and certain internal dispositions, somatic or mental?

A. T.: I would say that body image for man is the use of his neuronal field, a use that varies according to individuals and the accidental factors (such as deafness or psychosis) that distinguish them from one another. We are never more than nervous systems covered with a somatic sheath. The image builds itself from what functions best. It may be the head; it may also be the feet! It is clear that in the footballer, body image favours the lower limbs more than in the intellectual who remains shut up all day in his study. In the billiards player, it is at yet another level that the greatest neuronal mastery is situated.

Tools prolong the body

A. G.: Can it not be said that, to a certain extent, the body image of the footballer integrates the ball, that of the billiards player, the billiard cue?

A. T.: It is exactly that. One is a very great musician, for example, only if one has integrated one’s instrument in this manner. The violin, or the keyboard, or any other utensil must become the direct extension of the body, as if it were itself equipped with the neurons of the body that plays it. The man driving his car has a very different image of his body from the one he has when walking, because this image extends, in a way, as far as the tyres: he “becomes one” with the vehicle, as is often said.

A. G.: Yet he keeps the very clear sensation of a differentiation between his feet, the pedals and the wheels…

A. T.: No doubt, but it must be said that body image is increasingly difficult to localise as one rises towards the upper part. If I ask you where your feet stop and where your shoes begin, you will always manage to answer me. If I ask you where your body stops, where your clothing begins, when you are seated, it will be much harder for you to make this localisation. And if I ask you where your skull stops and where your hair begins, you will no longer know what to say at all!

The virtuoso and the auditory diaphragm

A. G.: To return to the example of the musician, his playing must therefore be expected to be determined by bodily and neuronal elements.

A. T.: Take a very great virtuoso and ask him to improvise. Modify at the same time the neuronal field he uses, and you will observe that the structure of his improvisation is overturned. Thanks to the Electronic Ear, you can very well modify his way of hearing. What do you then observe? If you impose on him a very wide auditory diaphragm, you see him play with both arms sweeping the whole keyboard. Impose on him on the contrary a very narrowed field: his hands constantly overlap! You can even act on the filter that passes the frequency band, go for example from the low frequencies towards the high ones: you will observe that the hands follow this path…

The body “sculpted” by sounds

A. G.: How is body image formed?

A. T.: In brief, our body is caught in a structure of pressures and impulses that excite it at all its points. Little by little, the addition of all these excitations composes an integrated image of all the pressures and all the impulses, an image which, as it were, draws the body in hollow. It would obviously be even more sensible if we went bathing in water agitated by waves. When the waves touch us, we better situate the limit of our body.

A. G.: You also write that body image is the consequence of language. How do you link these two explanations?

A. T.: Very simply. You will have understood everything when I have specified for you that the pressures of which it is a question are “acoustic” pressures. Each being is steeped in a sound structure that sculpts him. Sound — that is to say silence, its diverse modulations and the noises that break its weave — is not addressed only to the ear; it affects the whole body. The ear, certainly, has become the principal sensor, but it is only a question of the progressive differentiation of a piece of skin which, at the origin, was not distinguished from the rest of the cutaneous surface.

The air never ceases to move, to be animated by various rotation movements, and it can only be our body in its totality that bears the consequences. The fact of living in sound, and notably in the sound that we ourselves produce through our language, imprints permanently a host of small touches on our whole bodily image, on our whole peripheral nervous system. According to the words we use, the timbre we produce, we will more or less touch certain parts of our body.

The preferential zones of the “verbal flow”

It is manifest that the “verbal flow”, as I call it, leans on certain privileged surfaces: the face, the anterior faces of the thorax and abdomen, the palms of the hands, the dorsal face of the right hand at the level of the pincer thumb-index, the inside of the lower limbs especially at knee level, the soles of the feet.

A. G.: Is there a particular reason for that?

A. T.: Of course! Language progressively sensitises the sensory zones that detect the acoustic waves sustained by phonation. The zones most favourable to this sensible information lie, obviously, where the distribution of nerve fibres specialised in measuring pressures is the densest. Moreover, there is no doubt for me that it is to offer the greatest surface of these elective regions that verticality becomes an obligation when one wants to master one’s speech perfectly. Still, the vertical posture is not the ideal one.

A. G.: What then is the most favourable posture?

A. T.: That which the Yogis name the Asana of the Lotus. There would be much to say on this…

The cyclist’s low voice

A. G.: According to what we are, intellectuals or footballers, our voice does not touch, does not aim at the same parts of the body?

A. T.: Absolutely! Listen to a racing cyclist say that he will do better next time. It is very demonstrative. He has a muffled voice, poor in sibilants. It is because he speaks to the part of himself that functions best, that is the centre of his activity, of his life. This man truly lives in his legs. Now a low voice is needed to touch the lower part of the body… It is sure that a Benedictine’s voice has nothing in common with a carter’s!

Tibetan yogis and the singing column

A. G.: Would it not be best for the voice to be able to touch all the bodily surfaces?

A. T.: Yes, and certain ascetic disciplines help to attain it. The Tibetan Yogis seek to obtain that homogeneous sound capable of touching the body in its totality.

A. G.: How do they go about it?

A. T.: It is impossible to enter into the detail of an ascetic technique of this complexity. The important thing is to note that their voice changes from top to bottom. Why? Because it does not touch the body only through the periphery, but through the whole bony structure. To make sound is to make the outside air vibrate, no doubt. But this vibration is not obtained only by making everything come out of one’s mouth, by launching impulses through this orifice. Many people believe this, but it is because of this that they do not know how to speak. Likewise, the bad singer pushes on his larynx as on a trumpet mouthpiece. Whereas he who sings well makes of his whole body a kind of extraordinary instrument, which begins to vibrate through a total leaning of the larynx on the spinal column. And indeed, it is the column that sings, and which, by singing, makes the whole body vibrate, notably the bones of the skull…

The true sound comes out of everywhere and not only out of the mouth. Aristotle and Plato said that to sing or to speak was to make vibrate in unison the air that is outside with that which is inside: they had understood everything!

Re-shaping the body through the voice

A. G.: If body image is the consequence of language, by improving one’s speech, one can therefore re-shape one’s body?

A. T.: Indeed. With a “good” voice, one can even re-shape it completely! According to the voice we can integrate, the structure of our body can be modified. Let me give you a simple example. Take a small Italian from the Naples region, a stringy Englishman, a stocky broad German, and transplant them to the United States. After some time, they all have the same head. By changing language, they also change face. You look at them carefully, and you observe that their head is more flattened, of tall stature, like that of the Indian who was there before. The determining element in this mutation is sound, which models the being in totality. I specify that, in my view, the sounds we form electively touch the endocrine glands. Moreover, the endocrine glands are precisely what certain Oriental ascetic disciplines aim at.

Making the back vibrate

A. G.: Can the voice really reach all parts of the body? The back, for example?

A. T.: One can make the back vibrate with a little practice. The ascetics succeed in this very well.

A. G.: Westerners would therefore have an interest in studying these techniques closely?

A. T.: There is no doubt about it. They have already been employed in the theatre. The whole theatre of Jerzy Grotowski consists in trying to make this or that part of the body vibrate by playing the lion, by vociferating, by uttering great cries. The subject launched into such an improvisation ends up having, to a certain extent, the face of the lion or of the ferocious animal he represents! And as this theatre is based on collective participation, the public itself, at a certain moment, comes to take this or that attitude, this or that face.

The South African stammerer who infects eight persons

A. G.: It is therefore not impossible to impose on the other’s body one’s own bodily image?

A. T.: I shall answer you with a new example. I went recently to South Africa. There, I met a stammerer. I was not alone with him: we were seven or eight at this consultation, counting the interpreter. This stammerer was sixteen and possessed extraordinary dynamism. He was an exceptionally brilliant subject, but afflicted with a very serious stammer, accompanied by uncoordinated movements. After some time, everyone was moving like him, with the same gestures! The most astonishing to observe was the translator, who was the most implicated in the speech of this subject. The body image of the latter was so powerful that during this confrontation, he had imposed it on all of us.

A. G.: I suppose that is the reason why, in the presence of certain stammerers, we end up stammering in our turn?

A. T.: Exactly. It is often the case, when their personality is strong. In the same way, a singer who sings well makes you feel euphoric: after a certain time it is a little as if it were you who sang: you breathe broadly, your face blossoms, etc. In the presence of a bad singer, you suffer a thousand deaths. You have stage fright along with him. You tighten the larynx, you push, etc. It is not astonishing that afterwards you resent him, as if he had personally offended you!

One may even go further: as soon as a subject has pronounced a few sentences in front of you, you have integrated his neuronal way of using his body. You will note that this constitutes a new element of response to your question concerning the possibility of detecting from the outside the body image of the other.

The two pianos that come into resonance

A. G.: This amounts to saying that we are not only “sculpted” by the sounds we emit, but also by those emitted by others…

A. T.: Certainly, and that is the whole interest of music.

A. G.: A dialogue, in this perspective, is therefore a certain way that two individuals have of setting each other vibrating?

A. T.: That is it. We transmit our language through the whole body. What we originally desire to transmit are not words, nor even sounds, but sensations profoundly felt, profoundly lived in us by our sensory neurons. I wrote one day that what we desire to mark with our seal were “the tactile impressions that our word rolls on our sensory keyboard”.

Obscurely, we know that the same chords will be transmitted to our interlocutor, who, unconsciously, will set his own keyboard going in the image of ours, while we hold him in resonance through our own chords. This is what happens when you have two pianos and you press the pedals of the first: immediately, the second begins to vibrate. The most curious thing is that Lao-Tzu had already said all this, using, for his part, the example of two harps.

The two monks and the provoked dispute

A. G.: In large measure, the quality of the communication between two individuals therefore depends on the compatibility of their bodily images?

A. T.: Yes, and I have been able to verify this experimentally with monks. Thanks to my filters, I imposed on two subjects identical audiometric curves, then launched them into a very thorny discussion: they could not manage to enter into disagreement! Next, I inverted the curves and started up an innocuous dialogue on the weather: a quarter of an hour later, they were arguing! This shows to what point the mental is soldered to the body, which in its turn will trigger the language by which it will be sculpted.

This system functions in both directions: there is truly an interaction between mental and body. Which of the two is at the origin of the process, this is what is hard to say for the moment. In sum, body image is the integration one makes of the use of self. But it is also a certain way of situating oneself in relation to the other.

Architecture and the impedance of the place

A. G.: In short, the depth of the problem is neuronal, but other elements intervene from the outside. One may evoke the influence of the interlocutor. One may certainly evoke also that of what you call “the impedance of the place”.

A. T.: Naturally. The latter even plays a great deal, and there would be a whole development to do in this direction. One would be led, for example, to raise the problem of architecture. The musician and the racing cyclist are lodged in the same building: this is a non-sense! As long as architecture is not made suited to the individual himself, one will come up against this obstacle. One must arrive at personalising this type of equipment more, so as not to prevent a majority of subjects from finding the equilibrium, the harmony, the perfect mastery of their body, of their word and of their thought.

What is a good body image?

A. G.: I would like to ask you one last question: what is a “good” body image, what is a body image favourable to the blossoming of the being?

A. T.: This problem is precisely one of those where current psychology flounders. But it was at the centre of all the ancient ascetic disciplines of which I spoke to you. The Persians, in particular, have furnished interesting answers. What must be retained is the notion of harmonisation between the different storeys of the individual. For example, the physical storey, the storey of intellect and the storey of spirituality (but one may propose another hierarchy than this). It is necessary that body image be homogeneous with the whole of which it is a part.

Let there be distortion between it and certain objective dispositions of the body or of the mind, let there be, above all, distortion between the levels of which we have just spoken, and one may be sure that the subject will experience difficulties in his adaptation to the world and in his adaptation to himself. Obviously, a “good” body image is a body image that realises the absolute adherence of the real body and of the imagined body: it is the image thanks to which one can be oneself to the last atom. A good correspondence between the imaginary and the real of the body is essential insofar as, as I have tried to show above, the behaviour of the being depends in large part on the image he has of his somatic envelope.

Place of this interview in the series

This interview is the eleventh of a series of fifteen and closes the first period (1972-1973) before the interruption of more than two years. For the complete contents, see the mother-article of the series.

Source: Alain Gerber, “Sound and body structure — Alfred A. Tomatis: Sound modifies the structure of the body”, SON Magazine no. 40, Paris, July-August 1973. Digitisation: Christophe Besson, June 2010.