Harmony and Healing: How Stanford’s Department of Medicine Staff Find Resilience Through Music
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From left: Staff members Winnie Ellerman, Elizabeth Chen, Loto Reed, and Brenda Padia find expression, connection, and healing through the act of making music.
“Making music is healing for the body, mind, spirit, and soul. Music is an invitation to step into a different space that can be healing, fun, wild, and peaceful,” says Elizabeth Chen, a research coordinator in the Division of Nephrology.
Chen is one of many staff members in the Department of Medicine who are also talented musicians. Several shared the different ways they’ve embraced music as a way to navigate challenging periods in their lives. For some, making music presents a much-needed path to the self and a way of practicing mindfulness. For others, it offers a chance to process and manage difficult emotions or to find meaningful connection with others.
Music as a staircase to healing: Staff musicians find solace and strength in their craft, using their art to navigate adversity and explore new frontiers of personal growth. Courtesy of DALL-E.
Music as a Path to Self-Expression and Presence
For Winnie Ellerman, administrative manager of nephrology and a dedicated piano teacher, making music is first and foremost a mode of self-expression.
“Even though a composer can write a piece of music with an intended emotion in mind, a musician has the power of interpreting and expressing that emotion or others,” Ellerman says. “When I learn a piece on the piano, the notes and fingering quickly become muscle memory, but the style and delivery changes almost every time I sit down to play the piece. It takes me a while to figure out my own version.”
For Fellowship Program Manager and vocalist Brenda Padia, singing classical arias represents a method of practicing mindfulness where the goal is to be fully present for the length of a song.
Brenda Padia performing “Batti, batti”
“If I mess up in a performance, I have to continue,” Padia says. “I have to accept what is in the moment so I can remain focused on the rest of my aria and then, afterward, reflect and learn from it. I’ve also noticed applying this approach to work-related or life challenges improves my mental well-being and reduces self-judgment.”
Music as a Way of Navigating Change and Processing Difficult Emotion
In addition to experiencing music as a means of self-expression and presence, staff in the department describe making music as a method for navigating periods of change.
For Loto Reed, administrative supervisor and program manager in Primary Care and Population Health, in the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, playing the piano became an essential source of healing and refuge from the pressures of life and work. During this period, she kept a full-size digital piano in her office. When she felt the need to reset and recharge energetically and emotionally, she stepped away from her desk for a few minutes to play a song or a few chords.
Like Reed, Chen, a pianist and vocalist, recognizes the therapeutic potential of music to help musicians manage the difficult and common workplace emotions of stress and pressure. “Music is a stress reliever, stepping into a world away from obligations, and it brings so much joy and relief, peace, and gratitude,” she says.
For Chen, that joy is linked to the fact that making music is a choice she makes for herself on a daily basis. Her practice is what she makes of it, and it doesn’t depend on anyone else’s schedule or expectations.
“As a Pacific Islander, music is woven deeply into our cultural traditions and identities. It is truly a healing art form and a creative way to bring communities together and share the richness of the cultures.”
– Loto Reed
Music as a Means of Connection
Many musicians in the department also expressed that music has the potential to heal the body, mind, soul, and spirit when it is made in the company or in the service of others.
Reed, for example, found relief from extreme social isolation during the pandemic in making and sharing music with others over social media. Though it was frightening to share recordings with others for consumption and critique, she experienced supportive outpourings of appreciation from listeners. The response served as a reminder that she was not alone, lifting her spirits and helping her get through a difficult period of her life.
Chen describes the critical role that making music played in forging lasting friendships (especially with other musicians): “The ability to make music has brought me so many close friendships. It brings together various people with musical gifts to serve a greater purpose.”
For Ellerman, making music has served the greater purpose of connecting her across time and space to past generations of family musicians. Sometime after her grandmother’s passing, Ellerman found among her things a book of sheet music that Ellerman’s great-grandmother (and namesake) Winnie used in the ’60s and ’70s to teach her mother and aunts.
Elizabeth Chen playing the piano
Winnie Ellerman playing the piano
It was the same book that Ellerman was using to teach one of her young students at the time, and at the top of the piece they had most recently worked on together was a date showing when her aunt had learned that same piece, 50 years earlier to the day.
“That moment was so surreal and grounding,” recalls Ellerman, “and it made me feel connected to a piece of my family history that I hadn’t really thought about before – I never met my great-grandmother Winnie.”
For Reed, the connective power of making music extends to the broader community. “As a Pacific Islander, music is woven deeply into our cultural traditions and identities,” she says. “It is truly a healing art form and a creative way to bring communities together and share the richness of the cultures.”
Reed’s family has made it a yearly tradition to host a “Music for the Soul” recital at their home, in honor of her father Nifai Tonga’s lifelong love of making music and his passing five years ago. The recital reunites Tonga’s grandchildren with other members of their small community, helping the family recover from grief and loss – and, in Reed’s words, “keeping music alive and well” in the hearts of all.
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