A Nanoose Bay special needs educator hopes new technology will bring healing with music.
Pippa Olivier has been teaching for more than 30 years and is a disability specialist with a focus on ADD. She and her daughter, Meryl Olivier, have run their business, Integrated Educational Consulting, for the past two years.
But it was while still working in Alberta in 2014 that Pippa saw the benefits of sound therapy.
A parent whose kids had been traumatized by their sibling’s death from cancer had hired Pippa to get her kids reading and writing as they should. The mother had also started using an Integrated Listening System — a sound therapy approach offered by the Integrated Listening Systems company.
After four months, the woman’s daughter went from not being able to read or write, to reading Anne of Green Gables, said Pippa, adding she never expected such speedy improvement.
“I thought, ‘OK, I have got to look at this more carefully,’” Pippa said.
Now, Pippa is a proponent of using sound to help people with disabilities and without to focus and learn.
Just this week, Pippa got her hands on Integrated Learning System’s new product, the Safe and Sound Protocol, which she calls “groundbreaking.”
The approach was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges from Indiana University, and uses music to “reverse engineer” impulses to the brain that reduce anxiety, allowing people to learn and communicate better, said Pippa.
The music targets a particular muscle in the ear which goes taught when a person is fearful, she said. “When we direct sound to that muscle, and we put that muscle through like a (sound) treadmill, it then tells the brain that it’s safe,” said Pippa. “So it’s like reverse engineering safety to the brain.”
This allows for better learning, she said.
This new Safe and Sound Protocol is not just for children with learning disabilities, but “for anyone who’s baseline is no longer calm,” said Pippa.
The Safe and Sound Protocol helps to reset this baseline, allowing for further therapy that can correct developmental delays.
Though the protocol, which takes place over five days, remains expensive, Pippa said she hopes families without extra financial medical support might nonetheless try it and see the benefits.
Pippa was one of the presenters at the Oceanside Family Health and Wellness Fair, speaking on the effects of anxiety on learning.
