Barbara Rose Billings has spent her life trying to bring joy and healing to others.

Her journey has led her from the Catholic convent to hypnotherapy to – most satisfying of all, she says – playing the “healing harp” at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, Calif.

Billings plays a portable harp at the hospital two days a week to soothe people who are ill, agitated or in pain.

“Her music has a very therapeutic effect,” says Susie Laurenson Shipley, MFT, MIM, head of the hospital’s Institute for Health and Healing. “It’s very profound.”

According to Billings, “We can see things changing before our eyes – people grow less anxious, blood pressure goes down.”

Harp music joins a number of other Institute offerings – therapeutic massage, guided imagery, art therapy – that serve hospital patients in addition to conventional medicine. The program began in 1987, and in 2000 it joined with San Francisco-based California Pacific Medical Center to provide various services, both in and out of the hospital.

For Billings, playing the harp fulfills a childhood dream. “Whenever I heard harp music, it would draw me into another realm. Every time I heard it, I felt healed,” she says.

In 1999, her husband, Charles Billings, gave her a Christmas gift of harp lessons.

Billings studied Bach and Beethoven with Georgia Kelly in Mill Valley, Calif., and an alternative repertoire with Bettina Mitchell in Novato, Calif. “I wanted to learn healing music,” she says.

In 2005, she attended a harp workshop in Salt Lake City, where she learned of a dozen programs throughout the United States that train people to play the harp in hospitals.

She chose Bedside Harp, LCC in Bensalem, Pa., and trained there off and on for two years.

While her lessons until that time had been on the large pedal harp, she learned to play a small portable instrument that rests over one shoulder, a 19-string, 7-pound Westover Aidan harp.

The music was different as well. She could no longer play from sheet music, but learned to play by ear and to improvise. “The music came from a different place.”

Bedside Harp required 120 hours of playing onsite for certification. Billings approached Shipley, who had dreamed for years of offering musical therapy at the hospital. Billings completed 120 hours, then 120 more to get a master’s degree in harp therapy.

Now, she teaches healing harp to others in a classroom at the Institute.

Shipley says new “healing harpists” must train for 300 hours. “A hospital is a very intense place; everyone has to be highly qualified to do the work well.” At the hospital, Billings plays at the nurse stations, in the waiting rooms, in the infant ICU, for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and for any patients who invite her to stop by.

On a recent morning, she played for 96-year-old Elena Regalia, whose face relaxed in smiles and whose eyes closed as she listened to Billings play Gregorian chants, the Irish Lullaby and “Aura Lee.” The atmosphere in the room became hushed and serene, despite the bustle of nurses in the hall outside.

“Beautiful,” Regalia says. “Like pleasures floating.”

Nursing assistant Sewantee Keislar says the harp music “helps patients wake up from pain. It stirs the heart.”

Richard Mendius, MD, a neurologist at Marin General Hospital, says Billings’ playing “changes the whole tone” at the nurses’ station. He appreciates it personally. After listening, Mendius says he feels more at ease.

Billings feels she is doing what life intended her to do: heal others.

She joined the Sisters of Mercy Convent in Burlingame, Calif. at 18, and stayed there for 29 years. An illness – later diagnosed as Lyme disease – led to medical treatment and several healing therapies. Eventually, she took a year off to do healing, and to get a doctorate in hypnotherapy.

When she decided to leave the convent, “Everything pointed to the healing harp.”

Once self-conscious about playing, she has learned to transcend her feelings.

“It’s not about me. It’s about the music and the person who’s going to hear it and be healed by it. Nothing could be more rewarding,” Billings says.

Source: Beth Ashley/Marin Independent Journal