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Learning Disabilities and Tuning Forks

Occasionally I will be contacted by a parent who has a child with learning disabilities. The question they have is what frequencies or tuning fork sets should they get to help their child. To my knowledge, there are no definitive studies on the use of specific frequencies which will help with learning disabilities. What I have seen is that certain tuning forks can help as part of an overall treatment.

A few years ago I was working with the Occupational Therapists (OC) at Pediatric Therapeutics in Chatham NJ. They work with children having learning disabilities. I would visit their center every few months for about a year, complimenting their therapies with tuning forks as well as teaching the OCs and parents how to use the tuning forks on their own. The therapist told me that they were seeing positive results using tuning forks in combination with their therapies.

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Children who had trouble walking showed marked improvement after a few months. I also saw children whose motor skills were greatly improved, their ability to draw and write letters was noticeably better. We used the weighted tuning forks almost exclusively, primarily the Otto 32 and Otto 64 focusing on the bottom of the feet, ankles, legs, knees, hips and lower back. We also used the Otto 128 along the spine. The weighted tuning forks seem to be a better fit because I believe it helped bring about body awareness. It was not clear if the children noticed the unweighted tuning forks such as the Solar Harmonic and Solfeggio.

One thing was clear, if I put the forks on a table the kids would tell me which ones to use and many of them told me exactly where on their body to put them. It was really remarkable.

So while there is no research on tuning forks for treatment of children with learning disabilities, I can say that I and the therapists at Pediatric Therapeutics witnessed some great results.

To read more about some of the weighted tuning forks mentioned, click the links below:

Pediatric Therapeutics in New Jersey can be contacted at 973.635.0202. Ask for Sheila Allen or Anne Toolajian.