What is Harp Therapy?

Tami Briggs offers us this definition of harp therapy: “the use of live harp music by a certified harp therapy practitioner to effect positive changes in emotional, physical, mental and/or spiritual functioning of individuals with health problems.” Grace NotesNote that Briggs refers to a “certified” practitioner. Harp therapists believe that their role is more than simply providing a bedside concert and that to be most effective in facilitating positive change, certain skills, abilities and techniques are demanded of the practitioner. To help potential harp therapists acquire these skills, several harp therapy training courses now exist.

The International Harp Therapy Program

One of the original and best known is the International Harp Therapy Program (IHTP). Founded by Christina Tourin in 1994, the IHTP has so far graduated about 350 certified harp therapy practitioners, mainly from the USA, but also from other parts of the world, including the United Kingdom.

Elements of the IHTP Training

“People are drawn to study harp therapy for many reasons. What mainly attracts them seems to be the blending of music, medicine and spirituality for service.” Christina Tourin in Cradle of Sound.

The goal of harp therapy is to ease suffering, enhance quality of life and promote healing on all levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. In contrast to Music Therapy – which seeks to effect certain behavioral changes in line with goals and agendas set by medical staff – harp therapists take their cue from the patient. The harpist matches their playing to the patient, taking into account their breath and heart rate, mood and preference in music.

Apart from general training in observational skills and the art of being attentive to patients, the harpist is taught several musical tools to enable them to accomplish this matching most effectively.

Musical Tools

The music to be played can either be a well-known tune or improvised. It is important that well-known tunes match the musical taste of the patient and harp therapy practitioners are required to master a repertoire of tunes in twelve different genres for this purpose. These tunes should be played from memory, as reading music can interfere with the harpist’s attention to the patient.Harp therapy practitioners are often called upon to improvise appropriate music, so they also need to be skilled in improvisational techniques.

The IHTP places great emphasis on the use of modes. Different modes have different effects on the listener and so the harp therapist chooses the mode closest to the patient’s mood in order to match them. Christina Tourin offers a series of videos that teach students how to improvise within each mode, as well as how to move between modes.

Each person is said to have their own resonant tone. Playing in modes or keys that reflect a patient’s resonant tone increases the effect of the therapeutic music. For example, for a person with a resonant tone of D, it would be appropriate to play in the key of D major, D minor, the Dorian mode or the G mixolydian mode. The choice of key or mode would depend on the patient’s mood. Practitioners are taught how to find a person’s resonant tone either by listening to their speaking voice or by evaluating the patient’s response to individually played tones.Using these techniques and others, the harpist follows the patient’s lead and chooses the appropriate genre, speed, rhythm, pitch and mode of music to best match the patient. Once the patient and music are entrained, the harpist is then able to subtly shift elements of the music in order to bring the patient along with the music into a more desired state: whether that be a change of mood or a physical change such as slowing breathing patterns.

We have briefly touched on some of the ideas and techniques of the IHTP – for a comprehensive overview, see Christina Tourin’s Harp Therapy manual, Cradle of Sound.