Providing Therapy With A Unique Bedside Manner

The idea for a harp therapy school had come to Edie Elkan earlier.

But it was at her husband's bedside at a Philadelphia hospital where it really hit home.

“My husband was on life support for seven days in 2001 and I played at his bedside and it brought down his heart rate and blood pressure,” she said. “Nurses were astounded at what they saw. I asked him 'What did it do for you” and he said, 'It gave me hope.'”

At first, officials at that hospital objected to her harp playing in the ICU. But soon, she said, “Patients and staff would gather by his door to catch the notes that floated out of my little harp.

“It was through this experience that I realized that the best facility to run my harp therapy school would be a hospital.”

Soon after her husband's recovery, Elkan said an official of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton saw her performing at a health fair.

“I wanted to partner with a health-care program. I wanted that legitimacy,” she said. “I had been planning it for years but I needed to have a partner.”

Elkan said RWJ Hamilton “is and has been a very progressive hospital.”

“So they understood nearly immediately what a little harp could do within their midst,” she said.

Today – the first-ever exclusively hospital-hosted, college-based harp therapy training and certification program – is utilized at six area hospitals: RWJ Hamilton, RWJ Rahway, Abington Memorial, Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Eastern Regional Medical Center (Philadelphia), Saint Clare's (Denville, NJ) and The Valley Hospital (Ridgewood, NJ).

And, Elkan said, the instruments can be found anywhere in those facilities.

“We walk around with our little harps, they're in the ERs and ICUs,” she said.

In emergency rooms?

“They love it. Doctors and nurses are stressed out and we walk in with our harp and they have an opportunity to breathe,” Elkan answered.

The therapy ranges from the passive mode of simply listening to taking lessons.

“We model our program after what David did in the Bible. He used it both for self healing and to heal others,” Elkan said. “The harp is the only instrument mentioned in the Bible as an instrument of healing.”

While a Biblical reference means a lot to some people, Elkan said, the program is not religious in nature.

The Bensalem resident says the harp has several properties that make it “ideal” for healing in a very direct way including the sensory event of plucking it.

“It's a hallow sound box that the music comes out of and the first person to feel the vibration is the harpist,”she said. “We lean it again the chest so it goes right through the chest area, which is very soothing to the harp player. Also we use a small, 24-string harp and we put it on with a strap so when we play it we're actually hugging the instrument.

“A lot of people have suffered a loss and the act of hugging the instrument seems to fill them up with something they really need to have after sustaining a loss.”

Elkan first took harp lessons in the 1960s while attending Northeast High School in Philadelphia.

She won a Board of Education scholarship to study with Marilyn Costello, the principal harpist with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“I'm trained classically but that's not the way we teach our students,” she said.

Elkan hadn't touched a harp in 28 years when in 1992 and 1993 three loved ones died within eight months. It was her return to harp playing, she said, that brought joy back to her life.

Today, her organization gives lessons at its office on Neshaminy Boulevard in Bensalem, Bucks County Community College and at her home.

“We have a very intense program through Bucks County Community College,” Elkan explained.

Bedside Harp has about two dozen volunteers working on their certifications at the five host hospitals. In addition, there are nine mastery level graduates who are paid to play at those facilities.

Since 2002 more than 600 people, aged 8 to over 80, have been taught through the program and 68 have graduated as certified harpists. This year alone, Bedside Harp has provided sessions to 5,864 patients in their host hospitals.

“I expect to do this amazing work for many, many years to come, especially since my mother is 94 and still vibrant,” said Elkan.

If you'd like to see a Bedside Harpist perform live, go to the on Street Road on or .

Download the movie