I wasn't really looking at it from a treatment point of view as much as a understanding of where tinnitus originates and festers. Until we have a real understanding of the origin of tinnitus there can't be a cure,, right, maybe? Maybe I should have started this under general discussion, not treatment. My bad. Thanks for commenting though. I feel better now. Ha.
I found a gradual cure without really understanding how tinnitus works. People often find a way of getting better without understanding. But now, having worked with over 600 people with tinnitus over the last 15 years I feel I have started to understand something about this condition. I have had a lot of good results and have a sense of why a lot of people get better. When I got better I vowed to myself to help others. I work very much from the - if I can do it, then others may be able to do it - perspective.
I visited him twice a very well meaning guy.He is profoundly deaf and had really bad T for 16 years but its gone now.
Thing is when he knew I knew a lot about Chi Kung(hadnt done it for years) he very sportingly said instead of spending money with me go away and do your chi kung every day for 30 mins and it will be better for your ears than I can achieve.
All the best Pete
wow - sorry if I gave you the impression of pushing you away.
Body-based practice can be very helpful in letting go of tinnitus. On top of that Craniosacral therapy drops the system into stillness and helps us release and let go far more than we can do alone.
I have noticed that if tinnitus people practice both a body-based therapy and have craniosacral therapy as well they tend to make good progress.
Being with someone who knows this condition can get better is also a great placebo effect to have as square one.
How cured is it? Sometimes I don't hear my T and I think I am cured but then I realize I haven't heard it and it magically appears. Maybe he's figured out the magical way to ignore his T permanently...which works for me.....
Getting to a place where you are not aware of your tinnitus unless you focus on it is good progress. I often describe this as being able to feel your socks. You haven't noticed them all day but if someone had asked you to feel them you probably could have done. But it doesn't matter.
I find when we spend longer periods of time where we have forgotten about it, this is when the sound of tinnitus tends to back right down. It stops mattering. This makes it easier to ignore. Because it is no longer a threat we stop reacting to it and our system stops latching onto it. A positive loop starts and we find tinnitus backing right off.
I've checked this guy out before via his web site and other info on the web even though he 's way too far away for me to visit (across the Atlantic), and I was not too impressed with his theory then. However, after hearing him explain it as he does in this video, I must say that his explaination of tinnitus rings
true to me. His explaination about the nervous system being in hyper mode to the point that your hearing you're brain working (that's kind of what he said), fits my experience and how I feel to a T
(Alright, enough puns).
I do have a high frequency hearing loss in the range of the frequency of my tinnitus which would support that theory of tinnitus, but I often wonder if it is a true hearing loss or whether its the tinnitus masking the external sound so it appears like a hearing loss in a hearing test. To me the sound I hear - or to be more precise, the sound that my brain senses - has always sounded like I've imagined the flow of electricity to sound. Maybe I make that association because the squealing sound I hear is exactly like I remember a failing vacuum tube in an old TV sounding. Now I'm showing my age. Probably many on this forum are too young to know what a vacuum tube is.
If anyone knows of someone who practices Mr. Hill's brand of CST in mid-America, please post info.
I can offer skype sessions if need be. Contact me on
julian@cst.eu.com if you are interested.
Also you could look up this link:
https://www.craniosacraltherapy.org/practitioner-referral
for practitioners of CST in N America.
I am skeptical about Julian Cowan Hill and others like him. They have been around for years, he is part of Curetinnitus.org which is a subscription based site and hasn't been updated in over a years so that can't be good. I know he claims to be completely cured of tinnitus and maybe he is that 1 in a million that it happened to but I doubt it was because of his methods. If his method was truly a "cure" or even a successful treatment, this would have made headlines throughout the world and we would all know about it.
There a loads of people like me who used to have tinnitus. You just don't hear from them because they don't go around saying "Hi. My name is John. I used to have tinnitus." When you get over it, you stop talking about it and move on. I am not one in a million. There are probably millions like me. Tinnitus is frequently a stress-based symptom. When stress backs off people get better.
Craniosacral therapy, psychotherapy, mediation, and diet all played an important part in my getting better. After 20 years of symtoms this was very welcome!
The reason this cure is not making headlines around the world is because it is not a quick fix, or a pill to pop. Craniosacral therapy like most therapies helps people gradually come out of a state of overwhelm and settle. This is a gradual cure that takes time, effort and commitment to benefit from. Most people are quite avoidant when it comes to working on themselves.
Last year my statistics were:
In 2013 Julian took on 21 new clients with tinnitus.
2 clients reported that the tinnitus stopped after one session.
8 clients experienced tinnitus becoming significantly quieter during some of their sessions.
4 clients said their tinnitus became significantly quieter in EVERY cranial session.
14 clients said that their tinnitus was overall significantly better after a course of craniosacral therapy.
4 clients reported no improvement with tinnitus, but found the sessions relaxing and beneficial in other ways.
The average number of sessions attended by this group was 5.
Is this enough to make the headlines?
Important progress tends to happen gradually over a period of months.
Curetinnitus.org and I fell out of touch for various reasons years ago. I still work full-time as a therapist. Dainis who set it up was very well-meaning and we put a lot of videos out there to help people get helpful information in a sea of negativity.
True Louise, this seems to be the best advice for T sufferers in general. Deal with the other issues surrounding your T and it will most likely make your life with T better. If you have extreme anxiety, depression, panic etc --treat it with meds and/or counseling and the T will improve. If you have some type of hearing loss, get some aids and most likely the T will improve. Mix in some "Time" and improvements should come.
and craniosacral therapy can tune directly into the tissues that are literally buzzing with activation and help them settle...
I have the same feeling. But he is cured, which is great for him.
I've always assumed there is an audiological defect that is starting the problem. From there, it becomes neurological.
When some experts talk in psychological terms, about anxiety and "being too sensitive", it can get confusing for some of us. Fundamentally, tinnitus has got to be an audiological and neurological problem. Psycho-babble can generalize and group together a whole slew of mental conditions, swapping common terminologies that may not apply to tinnitus.
Tinnitus isn't depression or anxiety, it's more complicated. I find it hard to believe that tinnitus can be caused by such things a guilt trips.
When I walked in front of a loud speaker at the Notting Hill Carneval I damaged my right ear and became severely deaf. Having cured my tinnitus for a decade or so it came back moderately again. However 6 weeks later it was gone. So I have had stress induced tinnitus and noise induced tinnitus.
Working with the central nervous system directly causes things to change. Using models like the flight or fight response can be ways of helping people understand quite specific processes.
The vast majority of my 600 plus clients had stress induced tinnitus. Loud noise is a very common cause too. But it is the central nervous system that manages what happens to tinnitus later. Whether we like it or not our beliefs and the way we manage our central nervous system have a huge impact on what happens to tinnitus.
In my mind the hardest thing to change in a typical tinnitus person is their fixed ways of thinking. Everything is plastic and changeable underneath.
The Psychobabble that people tell themselves in their own heads is very influential.
Ive met the guy ,totally well meaning. he has to lipread as he is very deaf had very bad tinnitus for 15 years.
,,,and how decent he is is this.When i told him i know a lot about chi kung he said dont go to him for his treatments do chi kung for 30 minutes a day. He did treat me twice i think he uses cranial work to ease the adrenaline in the body.
Although I genuinly believe he is well meaning I reckon you will need many treatments and still get nowehere.....but hey.......
In 2013 Julian took on 21 new clients with tinnitus.
2 clients reported that the tinnitus stopped after one session.
8 clients experienced tinnitus becoming significantly quieter during some of their sessions.
4 clients said their tinnitus became significantly quieter in EVERY cranial session.
14 clients said that their tinnitus was overall significantly better after a course of craniosacral therapy.
4 clients reported no improvement with tinnitus, but found the sessions relaxing and beneficial in other ways.
The average number of sessions attended by this group was 5.
Thank you carlover for your reply
I spoke to him over the phone and seems like a genuine and nice guy. But I'm quite skeptical that the treatments he offers work. Argh if only I had all the money in the world to try every treatment option available !!
Why don't you learn a body-based practice like tai chi or yoga. That is cheap and can help long-term.
Julian also changed his diet, cut out processed foods, containing MSG etc, and ate natural , home cooked meals, as well as having CST. He does not claim that CST cures tinnitus, but helps to calm the nervous system, which can contribute to easing tinnitus, he said that anything that calms the nervous system can help, like Tai Chi and Yoga. I think he took a holistic approach and lifestyle changes, getting plenty of sleep, not worrying about things, and somehow his brain seems to have reverted back into a non-tinnitus state. He says he gets it briefly (a few seconds, and hardly noticeable), when he gets a cold. He is not completely deaf. He has some hearing in one ear. He says it is not just habituation, he says his T has gone and he is now able to tolerate caffeine, alcohol and chocolate etc again. I am wondering if he has somehow managed to reset those excitable auditory neurons with his approach, especially, chemically - i.e. natural diet balancing calcium and sodium and potassium etc and controlling anxiety hormones i.e. cortisol and adrenaline. We all hope for a medication to do this for us, but I wonder if the body can achieve it itself given the right conditions?
I also have experienced my tinnitus backing off with craniosacral therapy during the session. The first time I tried it, my tinnitus of 20 years changed like the practitioner was tuning my head like a transistor radio. This rocked my world! When I work with clients as a craniosacral therapist this sometimes happens too. Craniosacral therapy helped me more than anything else.
My nervous system is calm these days. I was a bit of an oversensitive nervous fearful wreck for the first 30 years of my life! Therapy has definitely been the main helper for this.
While we are all waiting for the magic pill to pop, good therapy work helps a lot over time.
@Lisa88
Hi All,
Would be nice to know what he means by his T gone. Is it really gone or is it just habituated for him..and how loud intrusive was his T. and would he be happy to do a freebie on someone form TT as an experiment - I would like to volunteer please as I have no money to go to him. This experiment (with me?) could him bring him big business or much more business and advertising and profit so could be a win win for him. My T is new so I may be a very good candidate for him. Can we ask him that please as well as the other query above re has it gone for real.
But surely if it or he or his method should I say is genuine, he would not be a pure profit from it organisation but would genuinely want to help fellow sufferers as well as make a living so - in the words of @Dr Nagler, there are some practioners who will offer their services free or reduced or on a payment system to those who genuinely do not have the financial means to pay. Would he do this for me please - and he can do it on skype from what I have understood..I would follow to the T (no pun intentional LOL!) all his instructions if i could get rid of this cos it has stopped my life completely.....so change of diet, mentality whatever is needed..
@carlover
How do we find out about CHI KUNG and obviously it did not work then? Or you would not have gone to him..
My tinnitus has gone. It comes back a bit when I get a cold. I do offer concessionary rates for those struggling.