Who invented Acutonics

The Swiss mathematician and musicologist formulated the “Cosmic Octave”: the period of any cycle can be converted into a frequency and raised by octaves until it is audible. Every number on planetary tuning forks came out of this — and our frequency chart is entirely his work.

The idea of placing a sounding tuning fork on an acupuncture point does not belong to the school. German naturopaths working with Cousto's forks did it from the late 1970s — Cousto himself called it “tonepuncture”; the Frenchman Fabien Maman had been working with sound and the body since 1977; the American John Beaulieu published a book on tuning forks in 1987. The school appeared ten years later.

This is not a reproach: almost every method is assembled from techniques that already exist. But it is useful to know what came before — if only so as not to buy “the only way” where there are several.

The system was put together in the United States, and there were three founders, not two. Documents from both sides name Donna Carey (a licensed acupuncturist) and Marjorie de Muynck as co-creators; Ellen Franklin is a co-founder of the institute, its head and a co-author of its books. De Muynck's name has all but disappeared from the school's current pages, and it is more honest to say so than to repeat the familiar line about “two women”.

What they actually created themselves: a training ladder of about four hundred hours with three titles, a system of correspondences “planet ↔ meridian ↔ interval ↔ archetype” and — most concretely — frequencies that Cousto does not have at all: Chiron, Sedna, Nibiru, Hygiea and four asteroids.

The most precise definition of the method came not from advertising but from a government register. In its service mark registration the school described itself as training in a sound healing system that applies tuning forks, symphonic gongs, resonator plates, singing bowls, bells, rattles, drums, didgeridoos and sound discs to acupuncture and acupressure points.

Notice what is missing from this definition: frequencies. The novelty it claims is a WAY OF APPLYING instruments to points, not the numbers. So it was the school itself — in its lawyer's hand — that drew the line between Cousto and the school.

This has to be said plainly. ACUTONICS® is a trademark registered in the United States to a private company, Acutonics® Institute of Integrative Medicine, LLC: for tuning forks (registration 2550297, 2002) and for educational services (2473241, 2001). The same owner holds ACUTONICS OHM®, ACUTONICS OHMWORKS®, HARMONIC ATTUNEMENT® and HARMONIC ESSENTIALS®.

We are not affiliated with this school in any way, offer nothing on its behalf and do not teach its program. On this site the word “Acutonics” is used as the name of a method — sound practice with tuning forks — and not as the name of someone else's organization. Everything that concerns the school itself is called by its own name on this page, with a link to it.

If you are looking for its tuning forks, training or certification specifically, they are at acutonics.com, and we are not an intermediary.

The school's official list of instructors includes one person from Russia — Oksana Merimskaya, Moscow, with the title Senior Faculty, the school's senior teaching rank. No other instructors from Russia or the CIS countries appear on that list. According to her biography on the school's website, she is a certified instructor for Levels I–IV and translated the school's programs into Russian.

Biography on the school's website · her Russian-language site acutonica.ru

Checked against the instructor list on the school's website in September 2026. We are not connected with the school or its instructors and do not recommend anyone: the links are here so that the facts can be checked at the source.