Volume 6 2009

To Hold A Moonbeam:
Research Supplement A Missive to Harpists in Healthcare
A Missive to Harpists 1–4
Stroke Study to Launch 1, 5 How do you hold a
Happy Music, Healthy Hearts 5 moonbeam in your
Arts & Health: New Publication 6 hand?1
On Our Research Drawing Board 6
Harp Therapist Research Course 7 I approach a room on
the third floor of a
hospital. The patient, a
THE BEDSIDE HARP™ REPORT woman in her 70s, is
Edie Elkan, Founding Director
sitting in a chair star-
Diana V. Nolan, Editor ing into space. She
Neshaminy Medical Professional Center does not seem to notice
4802 Neshaminy Boulevard, Suites 3–4 that I am in her door-
Bensalem, PA 19020 way quietly strumming
(PA) 215-752-7599; (NJ) 609-273-0068 my harp. I begin play-
ing, “You Are My
Sunshine.” She turns to
look at me and breaks
Report
Soon she is humming With a nod and a
along. I segue into smile, I walk slowly to
“Bye, Bye Blackbird.” her. Tears well up in
“How did you know?”
she asks with a child’s
glee, “that’s my all-
her eyes as she tells
me that I will never
know how much she
time favorite song!”
Continued on page 2
As I begin to take my
leave five minutes 2009 MAR YTD
later, she whispers, Number of patients
“Better than medi- in our host hospitals
who received live
cine.” harp therapy ses-
654 1826
Playing softly in sions lasting five or
more minutes
the hall, I notice
another patient in a Number of hours of
live harp therapy
room at the end of

delivered to pa-
tients, their loved
into a smile that seems the corridor. She ones, staff and
167.5 509.75
to radiate from the beckons me to doctors at our host
hospitals
very core of her being. come into her room.

Stroke Study to be Launched at Abington

Memorial Hospital
An exciting new study music was played for stroke stage can en-
at Abington Memorial stroke patients soon hance cognitive re-
Hospital involving after their hospitaliza- covery and prevent
®

stroke patients, Bed- tions. The music gen- negative mood.

side Harp®’s fourth res varied in accor- Most impressive is
formal research pro- dance with the pa- that the differences
ject, is about to be tient’s preference. held true after six
lifted off the drawing The Oxford Univer- months. This led us to
board. As our other sity Journal Brain re- design our project so
studies were, this ven- ported: that we would follow
ture is groundbreaking Results showed that up with participants
for our field both for recovery in the do- one, three and six
the patient population mains of verbal months after their
we will be working memory and focused strokes.
with and for how we attention improved Our study will be
will work with partici- significantly more in different from the Hel-
pants. the music group than sinki study in two sig-
The question we ask in the language and nificant ways:
in this study, “Will the control groups. The Live harp music, of-
intervention of harp music group also ten accompanied by
therapy in the earliest experienced less de- voice, will be played at
stages of a stroke have pressed and confused the bedside for a period
a positive impact on a mood than the con- of about an hour each
THE

patient’s residual ef- trol group. These day, more often when-
fects?” was inspired by findings demonstrate ever possible.
a study conducted in for the first time that Participants will also
Helsinki last year. In music listening dur-
that project, recorded ing the early post- Continued on page 5
Page 1
A Missive to Harpists in Healthcare
Continued from page 1
needs my visit today. I play for her
for about ten minutes. As I finish my
song, she shares with me that she
must make a very important decision.
I play now to the rhythm of her
words. Straightening her back and
taking a deep breath she suddenly
declares, “You know, I feel ready to
do that.”
How do you hold these moon-
beams, these precious moments of
hope, clarity, joy, comfort and sooth-
ing in your hand? How do you meas-
ure a smile, gauge a patient’s delight,
find the frequency of a moment of
healing that you know happened be-
cause you, playing your harp, walked
right into the eye of the storm these
patients are living through?
We are harpists in healthcare, and
we must strive to put what we do to
the same rigorous tests that scientists
hold in high regard. And so we do.
Or rather, we attempt to. Having par-
ticipated in three formal studies over
the past seven years, we at Bedside
Harp® know that the effects of harp
therapy can be measured using strict,
quantitative scientific methods. But
not always and never completely.
Indeed, given the nature of our work,
such methods too often fall short of
capturing the full story of all that oc-
curs when a patient is given a session
of harp therapy.
In an article some years ago,
Wayne B. Jonas, MD acknowledged,
“We have to have deep respect for
the many ways of knowing in the
world. Science, although it is a pow-
erful way of discovery, is just one
way of knowing. Spirituality and reli-
gious explorations are other ways of
knowing. Those are important ave-
nues into the inner world.”2
Dr. Herbert Benson, Director
Emeritus of Massachusetts General
Hospital’s Benson-Henry Mind Body
Institute, was one of the first Ameri-
can physicians to investigate the
properties of spirituality as a healing
Page 2
force. In 1975 he went out on a
limb when he published his semi-
nal work, The Relaxation Re-
sponse. Here he provided convinc-
ing data that interrupting one’s
normal thought pattern for a period
of 11 to 18 minutes twice a day
promoted better healing—at the
time, a fairly revolutionary stance
to be taken by a man of science. It
began with Dr. Benson, a cardiolo-
gist, wondering why certain of his
patients healed faster and experi-
enced far fewer complications than
others after heart surgery. He in-
vestigated this curiosity by ques-
tioning all of them. What he found
was that those who healed more
quickly had one thing in com-
mon—they either prayed or medi-
tated regularly. The more he tested
this, the more this was confirmed.
He termed this phenomenon the
relaxation response (RR).
I first had the pleasure of meet-
ing Dr. Benson in 2004. To my
amazement he told me he had
heard about Bedside Harp and the
work we are doing. He went on to
confirm what I believed—that as
we walk through our hospitals,
playing in hallways, patient rooms,
ICU, PACU and the ER, we are, in
fact, evoking the relaxation re-
sponse—that moment of healing
proven in countless studies of his,
to aid one’s ability to return to a
state of wellness. I took the oppor-
tunity to tell him that when a pa-
tient relaxed into our music, I sus-
pected that it did not take 11 to 18
minutes for the RR to kick in—it
seemed to me to occur fairly in-
stantly. Dr. Benson agreed that our
healing tones could very well
speed things up.
That was the good news.
The bad news was revealed in
March 2006,3 when the results of a
large and lengthy study of the
power of prayer were published.
Dr. Benson was one of the chief
investigators in a research project
lasting ten years, involving 1,802
patients, and costing $2.4 million
dollars. This study provided evidence
that “prayers offered by strangers had
no effect on the recovery of people
who were undergoing heart sur-
gery.”4 Worse yet, one of the parts of
the study indicated, in direct opposi-
tion to the results of a number of
other smaller studies on the same
topic, that having someone you do
not know pray for you could actually
be harmful.
Overseen by top doctors, taking a
decade to complete, this study was
conducted in six hospitals, involved
nearly 2,000 patients, and cost a cou-
ple of million dollars. And with all of
that, what was actually learned here?
That we should never pray for any-
one we do not know? That prayer
chains should be disbanded? Cer-
tainly the good doctor would never
suggest anything of the sort, yet after
looking at the numbers and reading
the formal report on this study, one
could walk away with such conclu-
sions.
Our experience in researching the
effects of harp therapy in many ways
mirrors that of Dr. Benson. In 2002–
03 Bedside Harp and Robert Wood
Johnson University Hospital Hamil-
ton partnered on a project that asked
if a 20-minute harp therapy session
would reduce the stress levels of pa-
tients actively receiving chemother-
apy. To minimize our variables, I
was the only one who played, choos-
ing a repertoire of well-known classi-
cal, pop, oldies and folk melodies. If
the patient indicated their fondness
for a particular tune or requested a
favorite song, I played in and out of
it throughout the session, cradling
him or her with the music.
We used the widely recognized
Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety In-
ventory (STAI) to collect our data.
The STAI requires that the patient
answer questions relating to his/her
THE BEDSIDE HARP® REPORT
state of anxiety both before and af-
ter the intervention. Patients who
agreed to participate in our project
were randomly assigned to one of
two groups: those who received
harp therapy and those who did not.
The study took nearly a year to
complete, and we did indeed find a
statistically significant difference
between the two groups, thus
“proving,” albeit with a small sam-
pling,5 that a 20-minute harp ther-
apy session reduces anxiety in pa-
tients receiving chemotherapy in an
outpatient oncology setting.
Nearly as exciting as these re-
sults was the recognition we re-
ceived for this accomplishment—a
cover page article in The Nursing
Spectrum,6 honors bestowed upon
us by the hospital,7 recognition from
Johnson & Johnson,8 and on top of
that, first place in the Society for the
Arts in Healthcare’s 2005 Blair L.
Sadler International Healing Arts
Competition.
Still feeling the afterglow of that
first highly successful formal study,
we launched a second study a year
later at two of our host hospitals,
this time asking the question, “Will
a daily dose of harp therapy and/or
remote intercessory prayer reduce
hospital stays of patients with con-
gestive heart failure or pneumonia?”
To our utter frustration, this turned
into a terribly complicated venture,
one fraught with nearly insurmount-
able obstacles, taking over a year to
launch and practically two years to
complete. To make matters even
worse, the results of Dr. Benson’s
prayer study were announced right
in the middle of our project.
Now two years after the last par-
ticipant was played and prayed for,
our quantitative results have still not
been formally tabulated. It appears
though, that we will not be able to
prove a statistical difference here.
Even so, every harp therapist who
played for the participating patients
knows s/he made a significant differ-
ence in the quality of each day of
those patients’ hospitalizations.
VOLUME 6, RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT
The fol-
lowing year we
forged ahead
with a new
study to find
out if two 20-
minute harp
therapy inter-
ventions would
reduce the
amount of pain
medication
requested by c-
section moms.
Now just completing the clinical por-
tion, we are hoping to have the sta-
tistical results on this by the end of
this summer. Again, whether the
numbers prove a difference or not,
we who served the participants know
the qualitative differences we made
with these moms and their fami-
lies—the magical moment that hap-
pened between a husband and wife
because a harp therapist played,
“Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”;
the delight on a big sister’s face
when “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little
Star” was played just for her; the
fussing day-old infant and tense
mother who both relaxed and fell
asleep to the music gently played at
their bedside.
We at Bedside Harp celebrate all
who create and facilitate such pro-
jects and pledge to continue to do
our part to advance the body of evi-
dence-based data in our field. With
three formal studies under our belt,
we understand well the challenges
inherent in such ventures. Research
projects can be demanding, time
consuming, costly and highly unpre-
dictable, both in their facilitation and
of course, in their outcomes. It is
also not unusual for the harp thera-
pist to run into unwelcome surprises
at every juncture—from project con-
ception through proposal prepara-
tion, to attaining formal approvals, to
gaining patient consents, to playing
for subjects, to recording the re-
quired data.
Certainly you will have a far bet-
ter chance of succeeding if your pro-
ject is simple, if you have the ongo-
ing support and cooperation of at
least one doctor and a head nurse, if
that nurse or doctor sits on the facil-
ity’s Institutional Review Board,
and if you are able to carry out the
clinical portion without having to
rely too heavily on others. Even if
all of this is in place, your attempt
to employ strict, quantitative meth-
ods to measure something so com-
plex and profound as the effects of
harp therapy may prove to be im-
practical at least, and impossible at
worst.
So if some of the effects of harp
therapy are too subtle to be tested
the same way we test drugs, how do
we prove our value to the medical
community? I believe we begin by
acknowledging the inherent differ-
ences between tangible and elusive
interventions and then by develop-
ing a methodology to include not
only our recitation of the hard num-
bers, but of our narratives as well—
all that occurs as we deliver each
therapeutic session. It is, after all,
the patient encounters that offer
glimpses, even if brief, into the very
essences of human nature, human
joy, and yes, of the spirit of harp
therapy.
I propose we tell the stories be-
hind the numbers in every formal
report we write—of the patient who
heard the music and found the will
to get out of bed; of the patient who
entrained to the beat of a tune and
Continued on page 4
Page 3
A Missive to Harpists in Healthcare
Continued from page 3
returned to breathing normally; of the
family who released their grief as they
listened and cried to the strains of
“Amazing Grace”; of the surgeon who
took a seat to take in “Over the Rain-
bow” before beginning an operation—
for indeed, such authenticates, at least
as much as the numbers do, the nature
and effect of our work, as much as
they make the case for our rightful
place in healthcare.
As it was, our first study in the
outpatient infusion room turned
out very well quantitatively. But
even though the numbers were in
our favor, data essential to the ef-
fects of harp therapy were left out
of all of our formal accounts.
Missing, for example, was the ac-
count of the patient, beautifully
made up, a brightly colored ban-
dana wrapped smartly around her
head, who, amidst smiles and tears,
told me that the music gave her
hope. And missing too, was the tale
of the man, gaunt and pale, who
leaned back in his leather recliner
and reminisced about how he had
long ago built a harp and had put it
in the back of a closet. My playing,
he said, got him thinking that it was
time to take it out, tune it up, and
maybe even play it.
Fortunately we are not the only
ones seeing the evidentiary value of
the reporting of such special mo-
ments. Our hospitals’ healthcare pro-
fessionals tell me that they look at
least as much to our qualitative and
interpretive data9 when evaluating
the effectiveness of our program as
they do the numbers we report to
them each month. Those first-hand
descriptions of our encounters with
patients, staff, and the worried well,
written by our professional and in-
tern harp therapists as they make
their rounds, place the reader right in
the room with the patient and harp
therapist, providing the administra-
tor and those with whom they share
this information, with the clearest
Page 4
understanding of what we do and the
effectiveness of our program.
Last fall we recorded some con-
versations with several top health-
care professionals at our host hospi-
tals. One after the other cited the dif-
ferences our little harps make in their
facilities. They spoke too about how
their patient satisfaction scores con-
tinue to rise as a direct result of our
program. And then a number of them
smiled, leaned back in their chairs
and shared a moving encounter they
either witnessed or heard about, an
example of one of our harp therapists
serving one of their patients in need
or suffering. Indeed, such moments
come closest to touching the heart
and soul of harp therapy.
The Handbook of Qualitative Re-
search10 proposes that qualitative and
quantitative research are indeed differ-
ent landscapes, each of them equally
important—one public, the other pri-
vate; one scientific, the other sacred;
one seeking disciplined inquiry, the
other, artistic expression. Both, I be-
lieve, are essential if we hope to tell
the whole story of what we truly ac-
complish in the healthcare setting.
In the coming months we hope to
launch two additional projects—one
involving stroke patients; the other
looking at the effects of harp therapy
in the ER. Our plan is to collect,
study and report all of the data,
quantitative and qualitative—two
ways of knowing—with the hope of
learning more about how what we do
affects not just the body, but the
mind and spirit of our recipient as
well. Without question the task be-
fore all of us is daunting, for we
must be both scholar and poet, if we
hope to reveal the truth of the effects
of harp therapy.
I leave you, dear harpists in
healthcare, with one last message,
and it is this: whether you participate
in research or not, know that next to
your instrument and your music,
your most powerful tool as you do
this work, is your pen. Write out
your narratives using active verbs.
Be sure to include as many details as
you can fit onto the page. Put the
reader in the room. Submit these
reports regularly to those to whom
you report—let the full wonder of
your sessions be known. Pretty
quickly you will see that such anec-
dotal evidence is key to your being
able to hold that moonbeam in your
hand and as importantly, to giving
others a chance to hold it as well.
And do this as if the future of harp
therapy depends upon it—because it
just may.
References
1
From the song “Maria” (sometimes known
as “How Do You Solve a Problem like
Maria?”) from The Sound of Music, music
and lyrics by Richard Rogers and Oscar
Hammerstein II, 1959.
2
Gazella, Karolyn A., Suzanne Snyder and
Mehmet Oz. 2005. “Wayne B. Jonas, MD:
Supporting the scientific foundation of inte-
grative medicine.” Alternative Therapies,
Sept/Oct, Vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 68–74.
3
Carey, Benedict. 2006. “Long Awaited
Medical Study Questions the Power of
Prayer,” The New York Times, 31 March.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/
health/31pray.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>
4
Ibid.
5
There were 50 patients each in Group 1 and
Group 2.
6
Miller, M.S. 2003. The science behind the
art. Nursing Spectrum, Vol. 12, No. 10, 19
May, p. 9.
7
Nominated by Robert Wood Johnson Uni-
versity Hospital Hamilton, I was awarded
The Friends’ Health Connections’ Frances
Black Humanitarian Award in 2004.
8
In 2005–06 Johnson & Johnson awarded a
grant to the Jacob Perlow Hospice at Beth
Israel Hospital, NY, to pay for Bedside
Harp’s participation in a special project.
9
In addition to our monthly statistical and
narrative reports, we provide administrators
of our host hospitals with The Bedside Harp
Review, a compendium of the practicum
projects of our graduates, published by Bed-
side Harp biennially, consisting primarily of
observational narratives. The Review is
available to all others for purchase.
10
Denzin, Norman K. and Yvonne S. Lin-
coln, eds. 2000. Handbook of Qualitative
Research, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, p. 8.
THE BEDSIDE HARP® REPORT
Stroke Study
Continued from page 1
be invited to play a 10-string lyre.
The lyre will be kept at the hospital
for the participant’s use throughout
his/her hospitalization.
Heading up our study is neurolo-
gist Dr. James M. Burke. Dr. Burke,
along with Deborah Murphy, MSN,
RN, ANP-BC Stroke Program Coor-
dinator at Abington Memorial Hos-
pital and Edie Elkan, MA, HCMHT,
Founding Director of Bedside Harp
are all named as investigators. Bed-
side Harp interns and graduate harp
therapists will deliver the music and
encourage participants to make mu-
sic themselves on the lyres. Their
preparation includes reading and
discussing Jill Bolte Taylor’s pow-
erful book, My Stroke of Insight, and
instruction on how best to encourage
patients to play the small lyre.
All of us at Bedside Harp are very
much looking forward to participat-
ing in this exciting project which we
hope will take harp therapy to new
levels.

Happy Music, Healthy Hearts

Laughter has long been understood
to cause positive physiological ef-
fects. Now researchers at the Uni-
versity of Maryland Medical Center
in Baltimore have shown that happy
music causes “the endothelial tissue
(that layer of cells lining the interior
surface of blood vessels) to expand,
thereby increasing blood flow to the
heart and vital organs.”
Michael Miller, MD, of the Cen-
ter for Preventive Cardiology at the
University of Maryland Medical
Center and lead investigator of the
study explains, “We had previously
demonstrated that positive emo-
tions, such as laughter, were good
for vascular health. A natural exten-
sion of the research on laughter was
the question of whether other emo-
tions, such as those evoked by mu-
sic, have a similar effect.”
The April 2, 2009 special report
of the Bottom Line’s Daily Health
News, contains the details of the
study:
In Dr. Miller's latest study, 10
healthy, non-smoking volun-
teers (70% were men, with
mean age of 36) participated in
four different study phases in
random order. In two of the
phases, participants either lis-
tened to music they selected
that evoked joy and made them
feel good, or other music that
they said made them feel anx-
ious. In a third phase, the par-
ticipants listened to relaxation
tapes and in the fourth phase
participants were shown humor-
ous video clips. When the study
volunteers listened to the joyful
music, brachial artery (the ar-
tery located in the upper arm)
flow increased 26% compared
with baseline measures. In con-
trast, when they listened to music
that made them feel anxious, the
brachial arteries narrowed by
6%. Blood flow increased by
19% during the humorous video
phase and by 11% during the
relaxation phase. The study re-
sults were presented in November
at the Scientific Sessions of the
American Heart Association.
For more information, visit
www.bottomlinesecrets.com/
article.html?article_id=48091.

We put out a call to our graduate and intern harp therapists to find out what happy songs they play. Here’s what they gave us:

Put Another Nickel In Happy Song Deep in the Heart of Texas Pop Goes the Weasel
(Music, Music, Music) Jump in the River of Joy Country Roads Music Box Dancer
I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl I’ve Got a River of Life Good Morning Starshine Getting to Know You
that Married Dear Old Dad How Much is that Doggy in the Here Comes the Sun Happy Days (TV Theme Song)
Mares Eat Oats and Window Ob la di, Ob la da Happy Days are Here Again
Does Eat Oats High Hopes Under the Boardwalk Hello My Baby
You Are My Sunshine I’m A Believer Rhythm of the Rain Oh Susanna
Begin the Beguine Always Look on the Bright Magic Moment I’d Like to Teach the World
La Paloma Side of Life You and Me and Rain to Sing
La Cucaracha Tiptoe Through the Tulips on the Roof Sing, Sing a Song
Ah Marie Three Little Fishies Jamaican Farewell Frère Jacques
Ode to Joy American Pie Yellow Bird The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Morning (from the Peer Gynt suite) Red Robin Heart and Soul B-I-N-G-O
When Irish Eyes are Smiling Don’t Fence Me In I Whistle a Happy Tune Build me up, Buttercup
Beer Barrel Polka This Land is Your Land Puttin’ on the Ritz Take Me Out to the
She’s Too Fat for Me Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree Waltzing Matilda Ballgame
That’s Amore (with anyone else but me) Bye, Bye Blackbird She’ll be Comin’ Round
Singin’ in the Rain Viva la Compagnie What a Wonderful World the Mountain
My Favorite Things Yellow Rose of Texas In the Mood Joy to the World

VOLUME 6, RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT Page 5

On Our Research Drawing Board:
The Effects of Harp Therapy on the ER Staff
Imagine, if you will, the Emergency
Room of a popular suburban hospi-
tal—nurses flying out of one cubicle
and rushing into another, the hallway
lined with impatient patients, phones
ringing, doctors being paged—a typi-
cal day in a unit jumping with activity
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Now imagine a harp therapist gliding
through, stopping at this cubicle and
that one, offering soothing, comfort
and hope with every string she plucks.
The transformation is nothing short of
amazing—with each tone, patients
breathe more easily, nurses appear to
Arts & Health: An Important New Publication
The inaugural issue of Arts &
Health: An International Journal
for Re-
search, Pol-
icy and
Practice has
just been
published
and appears
to be essen-
tial reading
for all harp
therapists. In
the editorial
welcome
message Executive Editors Paul M.
Camic, Stephen Clift and Normal
Daykin state their aims:
Our aims for this journal are
purposively broad and we
hope, considering the interdis-
ciplinary nature of the work,
inclusive of many disciplines
and perspectives. The mission
of Arts & Health is to develop
an international forum for the
dissemination of research, pol-
icy and best practice within the
interdisciplinary field of arts
and health.
One article in this first issue of
the publication is of particular inter-
est to us at Bedside Harp®: “New
theories and research findings on
the positive influence of music and
Page 6
be less stressed, and everyone is smil-
ing. What a difference a little harp
makes in the ER!
Even the untrained eye can easily
observe these changes, but only if we
design a formal research project to cap-
ture them will we be able to point to
them as evidence-based. That is pre-
cisely what we are hoping to do in the
coming months.
A research project focusing on the
effects of harp therapy on the staff in
the ER is the concept of Linda Lewis,
Vice President–Patient Care Services,
Chief Nurse Executive, at our host hos-
art on health with ageing,” written
by Gene Cohen from the Center on
Aging, Health & Humanities, at
The George Washington Univer-
sity. The article underscores our
realization that taking up the harp
as an adult and playing for others in
a healthcare setting are two ex-
tremely meaningful and fulfilling
experiences, especially as one ages.
The article states:
The midlife re-evaluation phase
generally occurs during one’s
early 40s to late 50s: plans and
actions are shaped by a sense of
crisis or quest, though consid-
erably more by quest. Midlife is
a powerful time for the expres-
sion of human potential because
it combines the capacity for in-
sightful reflection with a power-
ful desire to create meaning in
life. This quest is catalysed in
midlife by one seriously con-
fronting for the first time their
sense of morality; one contem-
plates time left instead of time
gone by upon passing the mid-
point in the life cycle. This dy-
namic new inner climate be-
comes a catalyst for uncovering
unrealized creative sides of our
selves. The inner climate is en-
hanced yet more in its capacity
for reflection, re-evaluation, and
pital, The Valley Hospital in Ridge-
wood, NJ, Presently in its earliest
stages, we are hoping to launch this
venture in the coming months. Our plan
will be to provide as much harp therapy
in the ER as possible for one week, and
then the next week, provide no harp
therapy in that area. The staff will
evaluate their stress levels and states of
being with and then without harp ther-
apy. We think that four rounds of this
protocol—one week with harp therapy;
the next without—will statistically vali-
date what we harp therapists believe to
be the case.
quest in midlife in association
with the brain hemispheres work-
ing in greater synchrony with one
another (the all-wheel-drive phe-
nomenon). It is in this context that
many begin to experience music
and art “like chocolate to the
brain” and become newly at-
tracted to it or attracted in a new
way to an art form they had been
exposed to in the past.
And there’s more. A number of
studies have found that taking up mu-
sic and art as one ages heightens
one’s sense of control which in turn,
increases the level of T cells and NK
cells in the bloodstream:
T cells are lymphocytes that
ward off bacterial infections;
NK or natural killer cells combat
cancer cells. These findings con-
tributed to the start of the field
of psychoneurimmunology
(PNI)—reflecting the influence
of the mind on neurological cen-
tres of the brain, and in turn, on
the immune system....This, in
effect, contributed to the start of
the mind/body movement.
Published in association with the
Society for the Arts in Healthcare,
Arts & Health website, where one
can subscribe and also have access to
articles, is www.informaworld.com/
artsandhealth.
THE BEDSIDE HARP® REPORT
What Harp Therapists
Need to Know About
Research: New Online
Mastery-Level Course
Bedside Harp®’s newest online offer-
ing, “Conversations on Research for
Harp Therapists” began on Monday
April 6, 2009. This 12 week online
course is a two part study: the first 7
weeks focus on the NIH guidelines
for conducting research involving
human subjects and the final 5 weeks
engages students in writing a research
proposal from conception to formal
proposal. There are 12 objectives of
this comprehensive course. Students
will:
(1) Learn research terminology,
practices and protocols;
2) Describe the history and impor-
tance of human subjects protec-
tions
(3) Identify research activities that
involve human subjects;
(4) Discover the risks a research
project might pose to partici-
pants;
(5) Understand how to minimize the
risks posed by a research project;
(6) Describe additional protections
needed for vulnerable populations;
(7) Understand additional issues that
should be considered for interna-
tional research;
(8) Describe appropriate procedures
for recruiting research partici-
pants and obtaining informed
consent;
(9) Identify the different committees
that monitor human subjects pro-
tections;
(10) Understand the importance of
study design in the protection of
research participants;
(11) Understand the challenges in-
herent in testing harp therapy; and
finally,
(12) Understand the differences and
challenges of both quantitative
and qualitative research.
This course, as our other mastery
online course, “Conversations on Eth-
ics for Harp Therapists,” will be of-
fered once a year.
VOLUME 6, RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT
THE BEDSIDE HARP REVIEW:
A COMPENDIUM OF RESEARCH
Written by our own harp therapist graduates, the Bedside Harp Review is essen-
tial reading for everyone interested or involved in the field of harp therapy.
Now specially priced, there’s never been a better time
to purchase both volumes!
Volume I: Highlights of Contents
Summary of dementia unit, Leslie Stickley, RN,C, HCMHT
Harp therapy is not just for the medical floor anymore: harp therapy in the
field of behavior health, Patty Turse, BA, CMT, HCMHT
Effects of harp music on staff, Bedside Harp Mastery-level graduate
Four-week overview of a Bedside Harp research project, Norine Stewart,
HCMHT
Live harp therapy and Reiki: Combining integrative therapies, Jane Taylor,
MMus, HCMHT
Playing familiar songs evokes verbal response in patients, Patty Turse, BA,
CMT, HCMHT
Positive effects of live harp music on Alicia, Cindy Dixon, BS, HCMHT
202 pages: if purchased individually, $25.00
Volume II: Highlights of Contents
Barriers to implementing a harp therapy research project at health care facili-
ties, Donna J. Byrne, HCHT
Harp therapy and healing imagery, Barbara Rose Billings, Ph.D., CMHT
Gently rocking the cradle of sound: Harp therapy in the NICU, Kristine Kran-
yak, HCHT
Does time of day a harp therapy session is offered make a difference? Janet
Zimmerly, HCHT
Harp therapy in the Emergency Room: A personal observation, Ray Pool,
BMus, HCMHT
Harp therapy for terminal patients and their feedback, Kar Shan Yuan, CHT
Storytellers and the art of listening, Laura Cole, HCMHT
How does it make you feel? A study of my own responses to providing harp
therapy, Eileen McIntyre, HCMHT
Sound and sound healing through the use of ancient healing instruments,
Nancy Beal, HCMHT
352 pages: if purchased individually, $35.00;
Volumes I and II together, $50.00
Page 7

® tic use of the harp in healthcare. Committed to making a differ-
Neshaminy Medical Professional Center
4802 Neshaminy Boulevard, Suite 3-4
Bensalem, PA 19020
Phone (PA): 215-752-7599;
(NJ) 609-273-0068
Email: bedsideharp@aol.com
Our Mission and Core Values
The mission of Bedside Harp, LLC is to promote the therapeu-
ence in that setting, we play for patients, the worried well and
staff; teach staff and members of the community how to play
the therapy harp; provide harp therapy training and certifica-
tion; and participate in research projects. We exist to bring re-
lief, comfort and hope to patients, their families and all who
care for them. To achieve our mission, we are committed to:
E Excellence
P Professionalism
I Integrity
C Collaboration

Check out our

website!
www.bedsideharp.com

Thank you, Nina Kohl!

Neshaminy Medical Professional Center

4802 Neshaminy Boulevard, Suite 3-4
Bensalem, PA 19020
Phone (PA): 215-752-7599; (NJ) 609-273-0068
Email: bedsideharp@aol.com