What it is
A listening programme. You hear specially filtered music through over-ear headphones, at home, in short daily sessions, and the listening is held inside clinical work with a therapist.
Sound therapy
Structured listening, with a therapist alongside you
Sound therapy is a structured listening programme developed by Dr Stephen Porges out of his polyvagal research. You listen to specially filtered music through over-ear headphones, at home, in short daily sessions across three to four months. It is designed to help the nervous system settle. The music does the specific work, and Cecilia sets the pace and stays with you through it.
SSP in a nutshell
Five plain answers to start with
Where it comes from
Dr Stephen Porges developed the programme out of his polyvagal research, the body of work on how the nervous system reads safety and threat in the world around it.
How it works
The music has certain frequencies taken out, then slowly given back across the five hours of the programme. That graded return is what the nervous system meets, which is why the hours are heard strictly in order.
What you do
You listen daily, for around a quarter of an hour, to a schedule Cecilia sets for your case. You choose which genre of music suits you, and you keep a short journal of what you notice.
What Cecilia does
Cecilia sets your listening schedule and paces it to your capacity. She can see your listening record: when you listened, how long, where you paused. Your journal is what the weekly session works from.
Common ground
The ordinary states people arrive in
You do not need a diagnosis for this, and you do not need to find yourself in a list. These are the states people most often arrive with. If you want to see whether this fits where you are, there is a self check further down.
Anxiety and overwhelm
A body kept ready for something. Muscles held, breath short, waiting for the next thing.
After stress or shock
A hard stretch or a sudden loss has passed, and the body is still on alert.
Sensory sensitivity
Sound, texture, light and small social shifts land harder than they seem to for other people.
Connection and focus
Being with people costs more than it should, and attention keeps sliding off what is in front of you.
Sleep and settling
Tiredness that sleep does not touch, and a system that will not wind down at the end of a day.
What it is
The Safe and Sound Protocol
Sound therapy here means one specific programme: the Safe and Sound Protocol, or SSP, developed by Dr Stephen Porges out of his polyvagal research. It is a clinical listening protocol with a fixed structure, five hours of specially filtered music heard in a set order, at a pace set for your case and adjusted as you go. The music is the same for everyone. What is shaped around you is how much you listen, how fast, and what is done with whatever it brings up.
Your body sets the pace, and the direction is always the same: towards safety.
At home, through headphones
Short daily listening
Three to four months
For adults and for children
A written exchange first
Clinical guidance throughout
Entirely online
Paced to your capacity
How it works
Frequencies taken out, then given back
Most of what the nervous system does happens below awareness. It settles the question of safety or danger before thinking gets there, and sound is one of the fastest routes to it. Sound therapy uses music filtered around the range the human voice lives in, played quietly enough that the small muscles of the middle ear have to work.
The filtering is precise, and it moves. Frequencies are taken out at the start and returned by degrees across the five hours, so the signal changes shape as it goes. That is why the hours are heard in order and cannot be doubled up, and why the volume is set low, low enough to still hear the room around you.
Cecilia sets the schedule, watches the listening record, and meets you each week to work from your journal. Sound therapy sits alongside talking work, and many people do both. Others come to it first and find their system settles enough for the rest to become possible.
How it works in practice
For you, or for your child
For you
A week of the work
Your listening schedule is set in the first session, and it is short. The app offers thirty minutes; you are asked to set it down to what has been prescribed for you. You listen at home on a phone or tablet, choose the music that suits you, and keep a short note of what you notice. Once a week you and Cecilia go through that week together.
Why a nervous system stays on edge when nothing is wrong
For parents
What a parent does
There is no lower age limit, and there is music made for younger nervous systems. You meet Cecilia first, to work out whether it suits your child. The listening happens at home, in comfortable over-ear headphones. You keep a note of what shifts, mood, sleep, how a day goes, and bring it to the weekly session. You hold the picture of your child; Cecilia holds the clinical frame.
What a parent does while a child listensFrom first session to close
How a plan unfolds
The shape of it
Three to four months
A month of listening, a settling month, and a second month of listening, with a weekly session throughout. Cecilia sets the pace to your case.
Step 1
Assessment
We start with an intake, and it is where your case is worked out. Cecilia goes through your situation, settles which plan fits, and sets the schedule you will follow.
Step 2
The first round
A month of listening. You listen daily at home, to your own prescribed schedule, and Cecilia lays out the listening schedule. The first round takes you through the protocol from start to finish a first time.
Step 3
Weekly session
Every week you go through the week of listening with Cecilia: what you noticed, what moved, whether the pace is right. She can see when you listened and when you paused, so the conversation works from the record as well as from your journal.
Step 4
The settling month
The main programme stops and a consolidation playlist takes over, pieces you choose from a set of options, listened to while your system processes the first round.
Step 5
The second round
A second month of listening, the schedule maintained or adapted according to your needs. People often move through them differently the second time. At the end you have completed a full plan, and further rounds can follow if your case asks for them.
Three levels of support
The same listening, held more or less closely
The listening is identical in all three. What changes is how much support sits around it. Each plan contains the one below it and adds to it, so the choice is a question of how closely you want to be accompanied.
Comfort
The listening, with a conversation at each end and a steady weekly session running through it. You listen in your own time, to the schedule Cecilia sets for your case.
- An intake session, weekly sessions, a closing session
The base plan
Therapy
Everything in Comfort, with the weekly session becoming therapy: work with Cecilia on what the listening is stirring and what your system is asking for. The listening itself is unchanged.
Everything in the Comfort plan
- Weekly sessions become therapy sessions
Everything in comfort, and more support around it
Accompaniment
Everything in Therapy, and Cecilia is present for the listening itself, by video or phone, from the start of a session to the end. You listen together, with her there for whatever comes up.
Everything in the Therapy plan
- Every listening session guided, start to finish
Everything in therapy, and more support around it
Prices are available upon enquiry and depend on the plan and your case.
Self check
Safe and Sound Self Check
This self check is purely informative. Nothing you mark is saved, and nothing is sent unless you choose to at the end. Mark what sounds true for you.
Step 1 of 7 What you are living with
Step 2 of 7 If any of it has a name
Step 3 of 7 Space to listen
Step 4 of 7 Is now the time?
Step 5 of 7 If this is for a child
Step 7 of 7 Overview
Nothing here rules you in or out. This is what you marked, and what it means for a plan.
Nothing in the way, and the timing looks right. Write whenever you are ready.
Who delivers it
The nervous-system work and the relational work sit in one pair of hands
Cecilia Altieri has been practising since 2010. She completed a degree in psychology at UNED in Spain and holds a Diploma in Coaching from the University of Cambridge. She trained in polyvagal theory with Deb Dana and Stephen Porges, and is a certified Safe and Sound Protocol provider through Unyte. She works with adults and with children.
The listening is never handed over on its own. Cecilia sets the schedule against what she knows of your situation, adjusts it as the weeks go, and holds the therapy around it herself. The filtered music does precise work at the level of the nervous system; the weekly session does the relational work; both happen with the same person over the same months.
How this begins
Let us know where you are at
You write, in your own words, about what has brought you here. Cecilia reads it herself and answers you in writing. From that exchange you both know whether sound therapy fits where you are.
Why you are writing
1 / 3
Your questions, answered
Is this therapy?
Sound therapy works on the nervous system through listening rather than through talking. What makes it clinical is the frame around it: Cecilia works out whether it suits you before anything starts, sets the schedule for your case, watches how you respond week by week and adjusts it. The weekly session is about what you are noticing now, not about your history. Some people do this instead of talking therapy, some before it, some alongside it.
Can my child do this, and from what age?
Yes, and there is no lower age limit. Cecilia works with (parents of) babies, with older children and with adults. There is music made for younger nervous systems, and the listening is fitted to how your child's day actually runs. Whether it is right for your child is worked out with Cecilia before anything starts, in writing first and then in the first session.
What if it feels like too much?
You stop, and you pick it up again later. The listening is built to be interrupted, so nothing is lost by stopping short, and the schedule Cecilia sets is sized to what you can hold rather than to what the programme contains. You are not asked to judge it. Your body gives the signal first.
What might I notice while listening?
Everyone responds differently. You may notice very little, or you may notice changes, and both are ordinary. Things do come up for some people during or after listening. That is expected rather than a problem, and it is what the weekly session is there for.
How do I start?
You write to Cecilia and she emails you back, with more information and answers to your questions. You say what has brought you here and ask what you need to ask, and from that exchange it becomes clear whether sound therapy fits. If it does, you book an intake session.
How long does it take?
Three to four months for a full plan: a month of listening, a settling month with a consolidation playlist, and a second month of listening, with a weekly session running throughout both rounds. Some people stop there. Others add further rounds at later stages if their case asks for it.
What equipment do I need?
Comfortable over-ear headphones and a phone or tablet. Active noise cancellation, transparency mode and ambient-sound mode all have to be switched off, because noise cancellation works by generating frequencies of its own and that interferes with the filtering. The volume is set low, so you can still hear the room.
Is it online?
Yes, entirely. You listen at home, wherever home is, and the sessions around the listening happen by video or by phone. Nothing in a plan asks you to travel, and the daily listening sits wherever it fits in your day.
Is any of it reimbursed?
Usually not, in Belgium. Belgian mutualities generally do not reimburse this kind of work, though some international insurers cover therapy. You can check with your own insurer, who can say what your policy covers. It is worth asking, without counting on it.
If sound therapy is not the right next step, there are other ways.
Private sessions Choose a practitioner and work with them one to one. Family constellations What the work is, what happens in a session, and who runs it. Workshops A group setting, a lower threshold, and dated events to join. Training Learn to facilitate constellations yourself, on the institute's own programme.
You can ask without writing a message
Mark what sounds true for you, mark what you would like Cecilia to answer, and send it as it stands. Nothing you mark is saved, and nothing is sent unless you choose to.
Take the self checkScope and safety
The right support at the right time
Sessions support change in how you live, relate and decide. They sit alongside medical and psychological care, and they do not replace it.
If you are in crisis right now, or you are having thoughts of harming yourself, please turn first to your doctor, to a crisis line where you live, or to the emergency services. If you are being treated for a psychiatric condition, or you have questions about medication, that care belongs with your prescriber, and our work can run alongside it.
If you are unsure where to start, ask us. We will tell you honestly whether this is the right support for you now.