She felt a tap on her shoulder. The doctor whispered into her ear,  "Pythagoras said that music heals. Please don't stop playing."  She had asked to be allowed to play the harp for her father, who was not expected to live through the night, in the hospital's ICU "as a final gift to him", and had been given permission to play for five minutes.  

But then no one had asked her to stop - the monitors were showing that her father's vital signs were beginning to improve.  His oxygen saturation level was rising; his heart rate and breathing were moving to within less critical limits.   After playing for her father day and night for a week, he was out of danger, and Laurie Riley decided to make therapeutic music the focus of her life.

    Stella Benson was playing the harp to an unresponsive elderly man in the oncology ward; a man about 70 or 80 years old. He had many tatoos. At one point she noticed he was no longer staring at the wall but had turned his gaze upwards towards the ceiling. A moment before, she had sensed a need to change the mood of her playing. 

He had a different expression, as if he were looking at something.   "It was the closest thing to ecstasy I've ever seen," she said.  "He was in a place that was unimaginable."  Then she noticed him taking a breath. His eyes closed. A tear formed in the corner of his eye and then rolled down his cheek.  It had been his last breath. His color changed, and she realized that he had made his transition.  "I sensed something of the mystery was present," she said. 

Who has not been charmed and elevated by the sound of the harp! Mythology abounds with tales of the magical healing properties of the harp. Orpheus softened the heart of the Hades to release his beloved Eurydice.  David with his harp was the only one able to soothe the troubled soul of King Saul.

Virtually every visitor to our workshop recalls a memory of a harpist or performance with the words angelic, soothing, relaxing or healing. What are the secret qualities that make this instrument, above all others, an icon of healing?

The harp is a harmonic instrument. So is the human being. The harp has the same range of frequencies as the human body. When you pluck a string on a well- tuned harp, not only does that note sound forth, but the whole harp sings. The other strings resonate and echo creating a ringing sound as the overtones are activated.  There are two principles of physics at work here: 

1) When a string is plucked, not only does that note (called the fundamental) sound, but also the harmonics or overtones. These are a series of notes that also sound, beginning with the octave, the fifth above that, the fourth above that, etc., each progressively quieter. These frequencies of sound result from the division of the vibrating string into wavelengths of diminishing sizes, all happening simultaneously.

2) The other principle is that of resonance, or entrainment. If you were to activate a tuning fork and place another of the same frequency in close proximity, it too would begin to vibrate. Itzhac Bentov in Stalking the Wild Pendulum, describes how the pendulums in a room full of grandfather clocks all synchronized after 24 hours even though they all started out at different rates of swing.

Practitioners of vibrational healing today have at their disposal an array of devices and machines that "tune" various parts of the body to specific frequencies to "remind" them of their natural resonant frequency. (See the article on Sound Wave Energy in the premier issue of Magical Blend's Natural Beauty & Health ) . Some use crystals, aromatherapy, flower essences, sound, color, etc. These modalities all use this principle of resonance. Because everything is energy, and made up of vibration, the resonance effects a healing.

Sarajane Williams, harpist, psychologist, and editor of the Harp Therapy Journal, has been treating patients suffering from pain, stress, anxiety and depression using the acoustic harp plugged into a vibroacoustic table. The harp music is not only perceived through the auditory sense, it is felt kinesthetically throughout the body. She has documented the results of her work in the journal. She quotes D.

Estes as saying "No other vibrating medium (strings) except water produces such a full complement of harmonics - and the graphed wave-form of a plucked harp string approximates that of the human voice. The very special waveshape is the sound-equivalent of white light".
(Quoted from "The Harp As a Divine Communication Tool", The HarpTherapy Journal, vol. 3, no.3).