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A Voice Test To Find What Ails You
Kathryn Thompson, an American naturopath who developed Voice Bio-Analysis, talks to JAIME EE from NewAsia Biz Woman - 29 March 2001
When it comes to medical examinations, which sounds better to you? Being naked in an ugly gown having strange technicians prod you in places that don't normally see the light of day? Or speaking into a microphone -- fully clothed -- and having Kathryn Thompson tell you within minutes not only what's wrong with you but what can afflict you later if you don't take the right health precautions?
Neither science fiction nor late night infomercial, Ms. Thompson is an American naturopath who developed Voice Bio-Analysis technology five years ago as a diagnostic tool that breaks down a person's voice into a set of frequencies which correlate to his or her physical and emotional make-up.
Following a basic principle that is similar to the acupuncture concept of chi -- in which the energy or life force of a person needs to be in balance for the body to function normally, and that imbalances are what cause disease and illness -- Voice Bio-Analysis measures the "frequency" of each organ and detects irregularities in that frequency, which in turn mean that the organ is not functioning properly and hence, illness results.
"Based on your voice, we can see problems while they're developing before they even become symptomatic," says Ms. Thompson, who is in Singapore this week to conduct a workshop on Voice Bio-Analysis starting tomorrow.
"We can tell if a person is going to become a heart attack victim or if he or she will develop diabetes later on if they don't correct their lifestyle now. And I don't need to know anything about the client before hand. They can just come, I take a sampling of their voice and in five minutes I can tell them what kind of symptoms they're experiencing."
Naturally, scepticism is not new to the softspoken Ms. Thompson, who tells of one client in the US whom she advised to see a cardiologist because his voice analysis showed that he was on the verge of a heart attack. "I didn't want to take the time that was needed for nutritional therapy so I recommended that he go to a cardiologist for chelation therapy which is intravenous and fast."
Of course, when her client went to the cardiologist and told him what Ms Thompson had said: "He laughed and said, 'yeah, right. I'm not going to do anything until I do my own tests'. So he did, which took five days and when my client went back, he told him 'Ok, you're ready to have a heart attack, let's start you on chelation therapy immediately'."
Not surprisingly, Ms. Thompson developed Voice Bio-Analysis out of her own scepticism, not just of conventional medicine, but with the kind of sound therapy that was practised in the US.
"I had taken some courses from people who taught sound therapy -- which is basically healing with sound. But it was very scattered, there was no technical basis I could rely on. For example, if someone came to me with multiple sclerosis and had a certain voiceprint, then logically, the next person who comes to me with multiple sclerosis should have the same voiceprint. But it wasn't so with the other therapies.
"They couldn't diagnose from a voiceprint. They couldn't say, your thyroid's low or you have an adrenal imbalance; what they did was ask the client what their symptoms were and they would do different sound formulae to repair it.
"I found that backward. I felt that we should be able to take a sampling of a person's voice and, through that energy, be able to tell them the symptoms they had."
Convinced of the power of sound but also burdened by the fact that the sound therapy she had applied to one of her best friends had made his illness even worse, Ms. Thompson went to bed one night and "basically prayed and said, God, if I'm supposed to be doing this, you better show me and show me really fast because I'm going to quit next week!"
In what she can only explain as a series of dreams over the next four months, she worked with computer engineers and medical clinics to work out a computer software that uses a voice "imprint" to chart a person's well-being.
"It's not that unusual," says Ms. Thompson, who takes the basic principles of voice analysis from the teachings of Harold Burr, a Yale professor in the 1920s to 1950s who discovered that living things are controlled by electro-dynamic fields which essentially formed a blueprint of life. These could therefore be measured to reveal physical and mental conditions and used to diagnose illness before symptoms develop.
"A doctor has to rely on his tests to really figure out what's wrong with you. Unfortunately, many of your symptoms could be cross-over symptoms, i.e., you've got the same list of symptoms but they could be for five different diseases. You could tell him your symptoms and he might give you medication for it, and you still wouldn't feel better and you go back to him and he gives you something else. In the meantime, you're on medication that's not normal. But we don't have to guess. We take the voiceprint and it shows us exactly what the core problem is. You may have different types of symptoms but really there's only one thing wrong and if you fix that one thing, everything else will fall in place."
Prevention is better...
Today, while Voice Bio-Analysis is still a relatively young field, it is practised by some 300 US natural health practitioners. Ms. Thompson has also drawn interest outside the US -- Canada, the UK, Australia, Belgium and Asia, including Singapore. In South Korea, she is now involved with local doctors in petitioning the government to adopt Voice Bio-Analysis as a medical screening tool.
She is trying to do the same thing in the US, where doctors are keen to use her technique, but are not encouraged to because of rigid health insurance companies. "We have doctors who want to use this. I have people who want to put this in medical clinics to use as screening devices so we can help these patients. But the insurance companies aren't open to preventative care."
Indeed, preventative care is a core issue that is close to Ms. Thompson's heart. She first turned to naturopathy in her late 20s -- after the birth of her first child -- when her doctor was unable to diagnose a pain in her uterus. She suffered for the next two years before another surgeon discovered a growing tumour that had to be removed immediately. The resulting surgery left her devastated and unable to bear any more children, which she so badly wanted.
Seeking more natural means of health care, she became a qualified naturopath and hypno-therapist before developing Voice Bio-Analysis. And because voice analysis only pinpoints the problem and doesn't cure it, there is still need for therapy like nutrition, acupuncture and if, necessary, medication. And here she feels there is enormous room for working hand-in-hand with the medical profession.
But what, in the end, does she get out of this?
"My goal is to keep people healthy. To make them aware of what's happening in their bodies so they can take the nutrition or make the lifestyle changes before illness strikes."
With more funding on the way in the US, it looks like Ms. Thompson is well on her way to fulfilling her goal.